A woman has gone online to say that her recent blind date suggested they split the bill depending on how many pieces of meat they ate during a hotpot meal, sparking a wider debate about the state of modern dating in China.
The woman, whose identity has not been revealed, revealed in a recent Xiaohongshu post that her date asked her to go out for drinks alone after the meal, which ended around 11pm. She felt it was too late and declined the invitation.
After she turned down his invitation to go for drinks, the man’s attitude changed and he said, “You’re not the kind of woman who’s after money and expects a man to pay on the first date, are you?”
In response, the woman offered to split the bill and called the waiter over to calculate the amount of the bill.
According to the receipt she gave them, the meal cost 300 yuan (US$40), and they had both written in pen on the check who was paying for what.
“The funny thing was when he said that since he didn’t eat any of the fried tofu rolls, that should be on my bill. He also said that since I ate most of the meat and he only had a few pieces, he would only pay a third,” she said.
The difference in drink prices of 3 yuan (40 US cents) was also taken into account.
In the end, women paid 48.6 yuan (US$6.7) more than men.
To make matters worse, after the date the woman received a call from her mother who told her the man had criticised her for being “spendthrift and materialistic”.
At the end of her post, she expressed her frustration, asking, “Am I the only one who encounters these weird people?”
The woman, who described herself as “an older, single female employee at an internet company,” said she had agreed to the arranged marriage because she felt pressured by her family to get married.
“My mother has always encouraged me to get married, even going so far as to ask my aunts and uncles to set me up on blind dates,” she writes.
Her post struck a chord with many, and she was inundated with supportive comments complaining about dating.
One person wrote: “They should have called in a matchmaker on the spot to act as an auditor while splitting the bill.”
Another said: “They should get security camera footage from the restaurant to see who ate what and how much and tell him to do a clear calculation.”
A third said: “If it were me I would say forget about the calculations, I would just see it as a payment to pay the bill and avoid any further trouble.”
Stories of strange blind dates often reverberate on social media in mainland China.
In October 2020, a woman in eastern China’s Zhejiang Province decided to invite 23 family members to dinner to test the generosity of her blind date, which ended up costing her a bill of about 20,000 yuan (US$2,800).
The man made the woman pay, finished his dinner and left.
