Lonely path for 'leftover' women

Leftover women or an unappreciated feast?

Easy Talk: 'Leftover women'

"If those criteria fit, then they start to talk about whether they should be boyfriend and girlfriend, and then they talk about if they have some intimacy or not," she says.

Liu Chang, a 27-year-old engineer, says his friends would never consider a woman without a Beijing hukou as a long-term prospect, mainly because of pressure from their parents. They worry that while she would receive the same benefits as her Beijing husband, her parents wouldn't and are a potential burden, Liu says.

The pressure on women in particular has grown as the phrase "leftover woman" (shengnu) gets flung around.

The term was defined in 2007 by the All-China Women's Federation, an organization that promotes government policies on women, as an unmarried urban professional woman over the age of 27.

This came on the heels of a government policy goal of "upgrading population quality", suggesting it wants smart women to pass on their genes to children, says Leta Hong Fincher, who has written a book called Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. The subsequent promotion in State media of the "leftover" label is intended to put pressure on women to hurry up and get married and bear children, she says.

Song says she didn't want to get married simply to get rid of the "leftover" label.

"I'm just trying to find someone who I really adore."