What if your ex didn’t block you... but endorsed you like a LinkedIn referral?
Right now on China’s social apps, women are listing their former boyfriends with full specs — “Emotionally stable, owns an apartment, good with children, breakup due to long-distance, available immediately.”
It sounds like satire — but this trend reveals something deeper about Chinese dating culture, trust in the algorithm, and how societies built on referrals are quietly reinventing modern romance.
In this episode, we peel back the layers of this phenomenon and ask the important question of… WHY?! Is it absurd, or pragmatic? And this trend spark the most honest re-design of modern love?
More deep-dives and show notes here
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🌏 About Mandarin Unpeeled: Bite-sized explainers that unwrap how China really thinks, feels, and evolves, and how it is already impacting you — told by someone who’s lived, studied, and worked across both East and West.
References:
Fei, Xiaotong. From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society. 1947.
Harriet Marsden, “‘Are We Dating the Same Guy?’: Do Facebook Groups Harm or Help?,” The Week, April 9, 2024, https://theweek.com/culture-life/are-we-dating-the-same-guy-facebook-groups.