The coming of age of generation I

On a freezing evening in late January, Han Dan and a female friend jumped into a taxi in Beijing.

Han sat in the back, and before long a conversation between her female friend in the front and the driver turned to the subject of marriage.

The driver was a middle-aged man from Yuncheng, Shanxi province, a medium-sized city whose main claim to fame is that it is where Chinese civilization is said to have originated.

"In my hometown, if a woman doesn't marry before she's 27 or 28, we reckon she must have a screw loose," the taxi driver said.

The female friend turned to Han, 31, in the back and laughed.

"Did you hear that? 'She must have a screw loose.'"

Han shrugged.

Han, 30, a cartoonist born and bred in Beijing, says she cannot envisage a day when she will get married.

"Whether you're married or single, they're just different lifestyles," she says.

Although traditional ideas about marriage and what it means continue to hold great sway over Chinese society, delaying marriage, or declaring one's intention not to marry at all, is becoming more common as material well-being improves, Han says, echoing the opinions of experts.

"It's also because women are becoming more economically independent," she says.

In 2015 there were more than 200 million single adults in the country, the National Bureau of Statistics says, and the proportion of the population living alone had risen from 6 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2014, or more than 58 million people.

A survey by the market research company Euromonitor International in 2016 reckoned that the number of single adults between 20 and 39 years old in China had reached more than 50 million.

The great bulk of them live in cities of comparatively advanced social and economic status such as Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen, the survey found.

One reason for the increasing trend of young people to remain single is changed attitudes to marriage and its meaning for life, so many tend to pay more attention to their growth as individuals, says Gong Lanyun, 29, of Beijing.

"There are a lot of problems that marriage cannot solve. Originally men and women got married for economic reasons or to have children, not to satisfy two people's emotional needs. Generally marriage cannot meet a couple's emotional needs. In modern society, it can't meet material needs either because many women earn more than men."

Gong, who has her own house in Beijing and has recently quit her job with an IT company to pursue her dream of working in the literature and arts, says she is sticking to her lofty ideals about love and marriage, "as impractical as those in South Korean TV plays, in which one can die for his or her beloved", she says.

It may be one reason why she has never had a serious romantic relationship, neither at Peking University where she studied psychology, nor in the United States, where she continued her studies for four years.

"There was a time in the US when I quite enjoyed dressing up, dating guys and dancing with them, but for me it was still not the good way to find Mr Right.

"I am expecting someone who can grow together with me, both as a lover and a good friend, a highly matched soul mate, so it's very difficult. If it cannot be like that, what's the point of getting married?"

As society advances, the values and views of life that the two sexes hold are becoming more disparate, says Chen Hao which is why it is so hard for modern men and women, especially those living in first-tier cities, to find the right partner.

Chen, 32, a computer programmer who has lived in Beijing for more than five years, says that since breaking up with his last girlfriend more than a year ago he has lived with a couple in a rented apartment.

"Things are heading in the right direction, but society should be more tolerant toward different models of relationships between the two sexes," he says, adding that "I always believe that urban life to some extent will break family units down to lonely individuals who will pursue their freedom."

Apart from his onerous duties with an online education company, Chen spends a lot of his free time watching performances such as plays, symphonies and ballets, movies, attending reading clubs, traveling and trying well-rated restaurants.

"However, I don't really enjoy being alone. I have to fill my time with things or just sleep," he says. So he has been expecting a new romantic relationship.

But Chen says that it is difficult to find Miss Right because he has high requirements: good looking, well built and emotionally matched.