What Happens to China’s Surplus Men?

Violet Du Feng’s documentary The Dating Game, now in theaters in New York City, follows these men’s attempts to reboot their dating lives in the wake of China’s former one-child policy. A long-standing preference for sons created one of the world’s starkest gender imbalances. “We have no women,” Hao says. Indeed, in 2015, the year the policy ended, about 116 boys were born for every 100 girls in China—likely condemning almost one in five boys to a lifetime of singledom.

When you’ve had no luck in the dating department, a makeover is an easy place to start. The trouble is, you don’t always know what needs to change. For Chinese bachelors Zhou, Wu, and Li, dating coach Hao has a blunt answer: everything.

When you’ve had no luck in the dating department, a makeover is an easy place to start. The trouble is, you don’t always know what needs to change. For Chinese bachelors Zhou, Wu, and Li, dating coach Hao has a blunt answer: everything.

Violet Du Feng’s documentary The Dating Game, now in theaters in New York City, follows these men’s attempts to reboot their dating lives in the wake of China’s former one-child policy. A long-standing preference for sons created one of the world’s starkest gender imbalances. “We have no women,” Hao says. Indeed, in 2015, the year the policy ended, about 116 boys were born for every 100 girls in China—likely condemning almost one in five boys to a lifetime of singledom.

Feng’s protagonists are wracked with self-doubt and anxiety over their poor romantic prospects. Pressure to marry comes from every direction—families, friends, and even the state itself, which openly pesters young people to get married and have children.

Hao claims to have