TanTan had just launched that year, and was designed to be like Tinder with Chinese characteristics — the founders had studied abroad in Sweden and come back to China to start the company
Hutong Jiemei is a RADII column in which sisters Krista and Sophia Pederson — Tulsa natives who’ve been living in China for a decade each — navigate lifestyle trends in today’s Beijing. “Hutong” is the name of the city’s traditional alleys, where they share an apartment; “jiemei” is Chinese for sisters. Today’s entry is a first-person account of Sophia’s dating life on Chinese mobile app TanTan.
There are a few different dating apps built for China. I first started using what is now the most popular, TanTan, in 2014, after a friend suggested it over Momo , a competing app. Fast forward a few years, and in , the company has raised over 120 million USD and listed on the NASDAQ .
Momo always intimidated me. It felt a bit too complicated and required too much effort compared with a simple swipe-left-or-right app. So after my friend suggested free LDS online dating TanTan, I quickly downloaded it and set to uploading my pics and a short introduction in Chinese: “Paper Tiger” (a reference to Mao’s quote about American imperialists — basically all bark and no bite) + some selfies. At the time, I was in the prime of my 20s. I was single and ready to mingle (online of course).
For me, the Chinese dating scene is difficult since I am an outspoken American white female who likes (or at least, used to like) Chinese rockers — guys in bands with long hair and leather jackets. Շարունակել դիտել …