WeChat Nearby Dating & Chinese Culture of Asking Age | Women Looking for Men

If you have spent time living in China/South-East Asia/East Asia, you’d have a better sense that dating in Asia is indeed a bit different experience. Especially in China, there could be huge cultural differences in terms of relationship dynamics. I have spent a significant amount of time living close to the Chinese community – initially during PhD in Singapore – then directly in the mainland China for a job (I chose to work in Suzhou). Of course, I have dated Chinese girls and the so gained “experience” further enlightened my thoughts about dating and relationship in China to the next logical level.

I have been writing a series of blog-posts about dating in China and in this post, I’d further discuss a Chinese dating App – WeChat. In particular, you’d learn about the WeChat nearby function – a feature that allows you to make new friends online – with a clear possibility of finding real-time dates! Later, I’d also share my experience about a freaking common issue regarding dating and relationship in China – the culture of asking age in the very beginning of a social interaction!

Update (August 2019) – I’ve just covered comprehensive reviews of the Chinese dating market (WeChat, TanTan, mindsets) in my books available on Amazon, feel free to stop by:

1. Online Dating in China (Paperback Edition),
   • Kindle Edition (same book – Online Dating in China).
2. Dating Chinese Women (Paperback Edition),
   • Kindle Edition (same book – Dating Chinese Women ).

After reading this post, hopefully, you’ll have a better understanding about the women looking for men. Stay with me for a while!

Setup a great WeChat dating profile

In order to fully utilize WeChat dating features, you’ll need to set up a good profile. For example, make sure to add a great profile picture. Add your English name and make it sound cool, something like: Mr. David (老外). In the What’s up field, add a funny line, say 老外在中国 (Lǎowài zài zhōngguó – a foreigner in China). Add your country name – this would heavily influence your dating success in the Asian world as the Asian women looking for men care a lot about your nationality. Add a cool WeChat ID, something like David_California_USA or David_ Software_Engineer (once setup, the WeChat ID can’t be modified).

• MeiMei Dance Hall – Suzhou China Holidays, Bar, Club, Nightlife & Travel Attractions.

WeChat Nearby Dating

Well, WeChat, the most popular messaging App in China, has a nearby feature/function. The feature allows users to connect with the people (often strangers) located in a close proximity. Usually, WeChat would show you nearly ~40-50 people living within a ~20km distance.

The users seen in the “nearby list” are those who have enabled WeChat nearby function on their phone, and hence are supposedly available for a social text interactions or beyond. However, owing to the language and culture barriers, not everyone might be comfortable interacting foreigners.

Also, there are a lot of WeChat fake accounts active all the time. You’ll need to weed them out. There is also a common taxi scam in China – the girl asks you to transfer her some money by a red-packet to hire a taxi in order to get to the meet-up venue! Poor WeChat fake accounts – we know you! TanTan (Chinese Tinder) Scams.

how to enable WeChat nearby function?

Well, enabling the WeChat online dating function is not at all tedious. Let me tell you the simple steps:

1. Open the WeChat App,
2. Click on the “Discover” button,
3. Click on “People Nearby”,
4. You’ll see a note (terms and conditions) – click ok. Now the WeChat nearby dating feature is enabled on your smart phone.

Here are the screenshots for a better clarity:

Filter by gender

Once you enable the nearby feature, you’ll see a list of contacts along with their physical distances from you. You’ll have an option to filter out the contacts by a preferred sex/gender. If you are looking for dating, you just can’t ignore the filter option.

Once the contacts are filtered out, you’d only see the person of the desired gender. Here is another screenshot-

Send greetings

Here comes the time to start interacting with the people in your faltered nearby list. A 10-15-word long greeting is fine. Do add 你好 (Nǐ hǎo – Hello) in the message prefix.

You can also send the same/similar messages to more than one person. In general, I have not seen any issue regarding broadcasting the same message to the different persons.

However, once WeChat had disabled nearby function in my account for some 24hours after I fired same message. Here is the warning message sent out by the official WeChat team to me-

This happened to me only once and I think, in general, WeChat algorithm hardly cares about the duplicate messages.

WeChat Texting

Once you send a greeting to a person, he/she will receive a WeChat friend request from you (along with the greeting message). The recipient has a couple of broad options-

1. Reply your greeting (and don’t accept friend request),
2. Accept friend request and then continue chatting (like with any other WeChat contact),
3. Not reply at all.

Once the friend request is accepted, you can continue with a WeChat text game as I explained in my other post: TanTan & WeChat Dating Review – Online Dating and Relationships in China.

At any time, if you wish to disable the WeChat nearby function, just clear the location (from option menu).

Chinese Culture of Asking Age

Alright, now is the time to dig a new issue that I have often seen in China – a woman outrightly asking a guy- hey, how old are you? If you are coming from a western country, it could be a huge surprise. But in China, it seems to be rather common and widely practiced.

God forbid, Chinese girls, even if they don’t have any romantic interest, invariably interview guys. There will be tons of questions that you may have to answer. The more you answer; the more supplementary questions would follow. That’s why when I go on a date with a Chinese girl, I try to keep my mouth shut to the best possible extent and let them do most of the talking. In fact, the girls would keep asking you questions and simultaneously try to find inconsistencies in your answers – and you’ll be asked to clarify accordingly (more questions).

For example, once I told a girl I was 28 (first date). The talk continued and later I mentioned that I had a PhD. When we met on the second date, she was interviewing me about my current job – “why did you join university not a company?” – a question that was never ever even asked by my current supervisor. Anyways, I calmly replied, “I earlier worked more than two years with a company and felt academic would be more suitable for me”. The next question was – how can you work for two years, have Masters’, and still complete PhD by 28. Gosh!

Let me now share with you another story about the same question – how old are you?

I received greeting and friend request

I met this woman by enabling the WeChat nearby function. She was the one to send me greetings first -and as stated earlier, I got an accompanied friend request. I accepted it, and we started exchanging text messages.

I was asked my age

On the expected lines, soon I was asked for age. I didn’t want to discuss age, so I redirected the question to her- somehow unconsciously thinking that the topic would get changed as she might not be comfortable sharing her age.

To my surprise, she repeated the question, “I said, how old are you?”. WTH!

I didn’t want to spoil chance of a date, so I told her my age, not correctly though.

Now, I asked her age again, and she didn’t reply it with a number. I was rather given weird responses. Initially she said, “older than you”.

So, I further pressed her to share her age- she went on to call me a “teenager”. I even fired her her-own text – “I said, how old are you?”

Eventually, I learnt that she was 44, married and not available for dating. She was not one of the women looking for men (which is completely fine).

Why did she ask my age?

So, the question is, why the hell she’d start this weird topic? I mean, despite having a sub-zero level of interest in romance, she’d insist on knowing my age. Why?

Well, somehow asking age has become an integral part of the dating culture in China. Although the people would get married in due course, the HABIT persists. Moreover, I don’t remember any instance about a guy asking my age. It’s just the Chinese women that have asked me this question – again and again.

• Rule Number 1 & Relationship Management

A sad situation

Also, Chinese people expect foreigners to learn and respect Chinese culture. That’s of course understandable. But do foreigners respect the Chinese culture?

Well, absolutely YES. For example, I have been learning Mandarin, try to visit Chinese historical sites, love Chinese food, songs, music, etc. Also, we don’t go on asking one’s personal life questions. Specifically, we’d never ask the age (until they initiate), salary, etc.

But how about the Chinese people (living primarily in the mainland)? Do you genuinely intend to (may be learn a bit and) appreciate other cultures? Do you know how to interact with foreigners? What to ask and what to not ask? Do you realize that the foreigners who come to China to work have to go through a lengthy and time-consuming bureaucratic process – first to secure a job, then a working visa, then even learn Mandarin – the list is rather long. The inbound expats do have a good education level accompanied by a no-criminal record (yes, we provide authenticated certificates) – foreigners working in China are, in general, law abiding citizens.

In fact, not asking age, salary, etc. is such a basic issue that the Chinese people hardly realize. They often try to judge foreigners based on their nationality, race – rather than the intellectual qualities. And what about the dating drama and gold-digging?

As another example, I have been often asked – are you from Pakistan?

Why do Chinese people ask a YES/NO question about the nationality? There is nothing wrong about being from Pakistan or elsewhere (we don’t choose our country of birth – right?). Why don’t you ask me where I’m from rather than giving a weird YES/NO option? Not everyone who looks like Indian is from India (or even South-Asia). This stereotyping ought to have a limit.

When I came to China, I had lots of positive expectations – only to be time and again disappointed later. And I’m already actively considering moving out.

I’d still humbly agree that there are lots of great things about living in China, such as people are easygoing, the country is safe, not much religious drama, loads to learn about a new culture. Chinese food is always my favorite. I love Asian kids who are so adorable. Not to mention, the economy is growing – so there are numerous jobs!

However, the Chinese culture of asking age and certain nationality based stereotypes are not welcoming gestures. In the coming future, I look forward to see more mindset changes on a rational line!

That’s all in this post about WeChat nearby dating in China.

Have you dated an Asian girl before? Wanna share? Do let me know in the comments or post in our forum.

Also, if you have any question about online dating and relationships in China, feel free to post in our forum so that others could also contribute and learn. For regular updates like us on Facebook, or follow on Twitter!

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Wish you a great time dating women looking for men!

Cheers!

Last updated: Tuesday, October 8, 2019