When you\u2019ve had no luck in the dating department, a makeover is an easy place to start. The trouble is, you don\u2019t always know what needs to change. For Chinese bachelors Zhou, Wu, and Li, dating coach Hao has a blunt answer: everything.<\/p>\n
Violet Du Feng\u2019s documentary The Dating Game<\/em>, now in theaters in New York City, follows these men\u2019s attempts to reboot their dating lives in the wake of China\u2019s former one-child policy. A long-standing preference for sons created one of the world\u2019s starkest gender imbalances. \u201cWe have no women,\u201d Hao says. Indeed, in 2015, the year the policy ended, about 116 boys were born<\/a> for every 100 girls in China\u2014likely condemning almost one in five boys to a lifetime of singledom.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n When you\u2019ve had no luck in the dating department, a makeover is an easy place to start. The trouble is, you don\u2019t always know what needs to change. For Chinese bachelors Zhou, Wu, and Li, dating coach Hao has a blunt answer: everything.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Violet Du Feng\u2019s documentary The Dating Game<\/em>, now in theaters in New York City, follows these men\u2019s attempts to reboot their dating lives in the wake of China\u2019s former one-child policy. A long-standing preference for sons created one of the world\u2019s starkest gender imbalances. \u201cWe have no women,\u201d Hao says. Indeed, in 2015, the year the policy ended, about 116 boys were born<\/a> for every 100 girls in China\u2014likely condemning almost one in five boys to a lifetime of singledom.<\/p>\n Feng\u2019s protagonists are wracked with self-doubt and anxiety over their poor romantic prospects. Pressure to marry comes from every direction\u2014families, friends, and even the state itself<\/a>, which openly pesters young people to get married and have children.<\/p>\n Hao claims to have more than 3,000 clients, most of them working-class men\u2014the least likely demographic to find wives in a country where owning an apartment is often considered a necessary precursor to marriage. Though he dismisses them as failures, Hao says they deserve a chance at love. Yet as the bachelors\u2019 journeys unfold, viewers may begin to question Hao\u2019s methods\u2014and worry about the social fallout from a dating system that, by failing to deliver the success it promises, can drive men toward the dangerous politics of resentment.<\/p>\n We first meet our wannabe lotharios at a mall in Chongqing, China. Over the course of a week, Hao promises to teach them how to attract women in today\u2019s digital age. Zhou, 36, is the most skeptical. He balks at Hao\u2019s fashion advice, saying people back home would be shocked to see him wearing a pink shirt with bold lettering. At the salon, Zhou remarks, \u201cI\u2019m not good-looking. What\u2019s the point in styling?\u201d A stylist responds, \u201cIt downplays the weakness of how your face is shaped.\u201d Such blunt remarks repeatedly assail the dignity of our protagonists. Equally blunt are the bachelors\u2019 own observations about China\u2019s money-driven dating culture. Zhou laments that taking a woman to dinner, buying a gift, and paying a matchmaker\u2019s fee could cost him $300\u2014half his monthly income. Later, a woman says her ideal partner would make \u201cmore than $1,500 a month.\u201d<\/p>\n Bachelor Li poses for dating profile pictures in a high-rise.Fish and Bear Pictures<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n To compensate for their economic disadvantage, Hao essentially teaches the bachelors to fake it, sometimes advising them to outright lie. For instance, we see the men posing for dating profile pictures in luxury high-rises\u2014and, in a moment of levity, with a dozen or so Huskies, even though Zhou is clearly afraid of dogs. (Big dogs are technically illegal in many Chinese cities, making them a status symbol.) Zhou hesitates to use his new profile pictures because they depict experiences he\u2019s never had. Women will see through it, he insists. Hao counters by arguing that everyone deceives online. Wu objects, \u201cI don\u2019t like to pretend. I am who I am.\u201d Hao simply tells them not to concern themselves with authenticity.<\/p>\n As he coaches the men through excruciating dating exercises\u2014including approaching random women on the street to ask for their WeChat information\u2014viewers begin to suspect that he is underqualified. The men are desperate for authentic connection found the old-fashioned way, yet they are still instructed to spend a full day swiping right indiscriminately for leads.<\/p>\n Feng presents their failures (and rare, shocking successes) without comment, allowing viewers to form their own opinions on Hao\u2019s methods. But eventually it becomes apparent that these so-called techniques are really just pickup artist<\/a> (PUA) moves.<\/p>\n Something of an underground movement dating back to the 1960s, pickup artistry exploded into the mainstream following the release of Neil Strauss\u2019s 2005 book The Game<\/em>. Relying on psychological manipulation and cheap techniques to seduce women, PUA has been widely condemned for objectifying women and encouraging men to pursue romantic or sexual conquests far beyond reasonable boundaries.<\/p>\n Hao sprays his hair while his clients get styled.Fish and Bear Pictures<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n In recent years, PUA has spawned a mutant relative in the \u201cmanosphere<\/a>\u201d: a loose collection of online communities that espouse misogynistic views and, in more fanatical cases, advocate for violence to restore traditional gender hierarchies. As investigative journalist James Bloodworth documents in Lost Boys: A Personal Journey Through the Manosphere<\/em>, the expansive networks of men\u2019s rights groups, PUA organizations, \u201cinvoluntary celibate\u201d forums, and fringe misogynist influencers are linked. For example, before going on a killing spree in 2014, the British American murderer Elliot Rodger complained about his inability to get a girlfriend, partially blaming the failure of PUA techniques for his romantic impotence.<\/p>\n The PUA-to-manosphere pipeline is coated with the grimy assumption that if you plug in the correct variables\u2014whether a neg, flamboyant gesture, or suggestive touch\u2014you will \u201cacquire\u201d a girlfriend. But no matter how much you peacock<\/a>, or how witty your opening line is, eventually you have to form a genuine bond with another human being.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The strongest evidence for this comes not from the bachelors\u2019 trials but from Hao\u2019s own marriage to Wen, a fellow dating coach. Their relationship forms the film\u2019s surprising emotional center, almost overshadowing the bootcamp. Where the bootcamp is cringey and silly, Feng\u2019s access to Hao and Wen is intimate and tense, almost scandalous. Should we really be witnessing this?<\/p>\n Wen is, in many ways, Hao\u2019s foil. To the women she coaches, she preaches authenticity and self-improvement\u2014the kind that requires hard work and introspection. Hao\u2019s methods feel dark, ugly, and doomed in contrast. Wen even says that these tactics were the parts of Hao she initially disliked and found insincere. The gap between these approaches and mentalities is tragic and baffling. As an audience, we are not given much insight into what prompted Wen to push through Hao\u2019s firehose of pickup sludge to see his better side, nor what keeps these two together. They seem to have diametrically opposed views of not only how to date, but of how to understand human interactions and how to value humans as individuals. This friction becomes so unbearable that I had to avert my eyes more than once.<\/p>\n To viewers watching this unfold, it is somewhat confounding why thousands of men are supposedly signing up for this awful advice.<\/p>\n One reason for Hao\u2019s appeal is that many rural, working-class men grew up with almost no interaction with girls. Li, 24, says there \u201care only a few girls for every dozen boys\u201d in his village. Many parents, meanwhile, migrated to cities to work in the rapid national industrialization effort, leaving children to be raised by grandparents. In an archival clip, then-leader Deng Xiaoping implores citizens to modernize China quickly, because if the country cannot provide a good life to its people, it will become a dead end.<\/p>\n From left: Hao, Wu, Li, and Zhou walk through a mall.Fish and Bear Pictures<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Feng\u2019s inclusion of that footage in the current moment feels particularly pointed, given that China is facing an economic slowdown<\/a> that has generated widespread youth frustration. With an official urban youth unemployment rate of around 17 percent<\/a>, and with the largest university class on record graduating in 2026, young Chinese are entering the workforce burdened with a distinctive malaise. These economic challenges cast a gloomy shadow over an entire generation\u2019s romantic prospects. And in a country infamous for its \u201c996<\/a>\u201d work system, there is a growing sense that everything they\u2019ve strived so ruthlessly toward has been something of a mirage. So great is some young people\u2019s feeling of economic and social futility, and so tied is one\u2019s income to finding success in dating, that some men and women choose to withdraw from dating entirely.<\/p>\n Those who stay in the dating pool may resort to unconventional means. Hao\u2019s coaching is just one such approach, but Feng also shows us various attempts at matchmaking, including one rather depressing gathering of parents<\/a> hoping to find partners for their adult children.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, at a state-sponsored matchmaking event, a Communist Party representative tells the gathered singles that they are \u201cthe future.\u201d Participants list desired traits for their potential partners\u2014\u201cobedient,\u201d \u201c[has] a job,\u201d \u201cnot too fat\u201d\u2014and play awkward icebreaker games. When a pair successfully couples up, the hosts demand they hug and hold hands, wishing them a happy future marriage. With a plummeting<\/a> birthrate<\/a>, tact has been discarded.<\/p>\n
\n
\n <\/span>
\n ![\"Hao](\"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/3-the-dating-game-documentary-china-dating-game-sundance.jpg\")
\n <\/span>
\n ![\"From](\"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4-the-dating-game-documentary-china.jpg\")
\n <\/span>