Beauty search stirs up anger

Created: 2009-12-4 0:29:15

Author:Wang Xiang

THE head of a provincial education department in southern China warned local universities to act quickly in order to avoid becoming "wife candidate pools" for bachelors from wealthy families.

The reprimand from Wang Yuxue, vice director of Guangdong Province's education department, came after a company started seeking beautiful female undergraduates at six universities who would be interested in marrying one of two bachelors. The bachelors claimed to be "second rich generation," a Chinese term referring to those born into extremely wealthy families.

"These people think money is everything and the idea should be stopped from spreading at once," Wang was quoted as saying yesterday by Guangzhou-based Information Times. He said the campaign was vulgar and a shame on the province's education system.

Six young women wearing red Christmas dresses have been distributing leaflets at Jinan University in Guangzhou. The leaflets say "post-80s entrepreneur looking for innocent young campus queen," the report said.

Jinan University, a prestigious institution in China and said to be the first stop of the beauty seekers, said it ordered campus security guards to expel anyone spreading such leaflets. An unnamed teacher at the university told the newspaper they did not know about the leaflets until hearing about them in the media.

Some students on campus were critical of the campaign.

One male student said he felt wealthy people were depriving him of a chance for true love.

Some female students also said they were not impressed. One student surnamed Qiu said her roommates all agreed that true love could not be traded for money.

The two young entrepreneurs apparently were not that sincere either. In the leaflets, 27-year-old "Jack" and 24-year-old "Xiao Hai" did not reveal their real names nor pictures. The only thing the leaflets provided were stunning descriptions of the two wealthy families.

The recruiter said they will start looking for potential beautiful brides for their clients at other universities as none of the 20 women who responded to the leaflets came for an interview.

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