Love may be waiting for you across the ping-pong table

Dating service aimed at Chinese community lets members meet with exercise as excuse

Sep 19, 2008 04:30 AM
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Huixia Sun
Special to the Star

Every weekend at a formerly deserted warehouse on Melford Dr. in Scarborough, Chinese men and women, mostly in their 30s and 40s, play table tennis, mahjong and poker. The admission fee is $5 for registered members of a marriage-oriented dating website. For non-members, it is $8.

Charlie Chen, 30, a business consultant, has come here to play table tennis and look for love since he moved to Scarborough last July.

"I am single and looking for a dream Chinese girl," said Chen, who had studied in Britain for two years and received an MBA degree there before he immigrated to Canada. Though a global traveller and a big fan of Western culture, he prefers a Chinese woman when it comes to a life-long partner.

"It would be easier to live with a Chinese woman since we share similar values and backgrounds," said Chen.

He is not alone. The website qingtianlove.com has attracted more than 6,000 members since its launch last October. About half come from the GTA, and nearly all are of Chinese descent.

A relatively small pool of candidates for husband or wife in the GTA, compared with an enormously populous China, has made the website a popular place.

"The life for a new immigrant is not easy and many Chinese immigrants are struggling to get a job," said Qing Yin, owner of the website, the largest Chinese online dating service in the GTA. "This has made the situation even worse: They have less time available for seeking love."

When Yin immigrated to Canada in March 2006, she had neither friends nor boyfriend. As a former saleswoman in China, she saw an opportunity in the desperate loneliness in a new country.

She launched Qing Tian Love (which translates to "Sunny day love") and quickly won a two-year online advertising contract with a financial company.

Yin also offered chances for members to meet face to face under the pretext of exercise.

"The Chinese men in their 30s and 40s would find it very hard to ask for a phone number from a girl in a bar," said Yin. "Ping-pong or mahjong provide an atmosphere for people to naturally expand their comfort zone. Men can teach women how to play ping-pong or they can chat when playing mahjong."

A man, who gave his name only as Daniel and works in downtown Toronto, spent $70 to rent a car to go to Scarborough.

Leon, who lives in Guelph, came to Toronto every weekend for a few months.

When table tennis and mahjong end at 8:30 p.m., members often go to a nearby Chinese restaurant to have dinner together. They continue to chat and see if there are any sparks .

As a well-known Chinese writer put it, two heads are better than one head, particularly on a pillow.

So far 50 people have deleted their profiles from the website, presumably having met their match.

One of those is Yin herself, who says she has found her soulmate through the service she created.


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