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It's "Guanggun Day" in China and 1,111 lonely hearts are sitting bashfully across from each other in the vast banquet hall of a Beijing hotel.

The men -- the true Guanggun or single sticks, as bachelors are called in China -- are on one side, while the women, known as Mingming or bright, are on the other. They are all single and today, the eleventh day of the eleventh month is their day.

The number one plays out in almost every aspect of the day. The singles paid 111 yuan to attend the get together.

The hope for today's party is that a Guanggun and a Mingming will meet and become a "guangming" which literally means light.

Guanggun Day or single stick day originated in the 1990s. College students came up with November 11th with all it's single digits to celebrate and perhaps wallow in the loneliest number.

"At 11 minutes past 11 o'clock on November 11, we started banging washbasins and shouted,' give me a chance to love you', only god knows who we were sending the message to", Zhang Xiaohao, 30, in recalling a Guanggun Day when he was a university student.

Still single and still shouting, Zhang is now an engineer with a US-based software company. He says he works late almost every night and his "social circle is too limited, with few women around me."

A survey of "single sticks" conducted by China Youth Daily showed that 58.6 percent of the respondents say they are single because they have few opportunities to make new friends.

"I know more people today, but feel close to very few," Zhang said.

Sociologist Wu Qinghua said even in big, crowded cities like Beijing and Shanghai people can feel isolated as human contact is increasingly restricted to people in business circle.

Men in China are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to finding mates and experts warn it's going to get worse as the population's gender imbalance grows.

Government statistics show that 117 boys are born for every 100 girls in China. If current birth ratios continue, there will 25 million more men than women in China by 2030, according to a study issued by France's National Institute of Demographic Studies in October last year.

But on the 11th day of the 11th month many of the singles at the Beijing party are neither bashful nor discouraged.

"I have participated in this kind of party more than 30 times," said Wang Bing, 39, who runs his own business and says he's a part-time Latin dancer with in National Chinese Opera and Dance Drama Company.

"I haven't found my love yet, maybe my standards are too high," he said as he browsed more than 20 name cards or 'paper butterflies' he had collected. Just so there's no doubt about his intentions, his email address includes a combination of his name and the word playboy.

"I've rejected the traditional way of finding love, through introductions by family and friends, because I want to find a perfect love on my own," Wang said patting his balding head.

The atmosphere in the banquet hall eventually warms up after some lonely-heart tunes are sung and three-legged races are run, but it's still dripping with a lot of self consciousness.

"I am a little bit ugly and often blush when I talk to women," said 38-year-old Liu, who didn't want to provide his given name but told Xinhua he worked for the Chinese Academy of Sciences and had a doctoral degree in biology.

Although his only goal in attending the party was to find a girlfriend he claims not to be worried about it. "I'm already overall the pressure to get married," said Liu who was a little short, a little older but far from ugly.

The hundreds of Mingming (single women) in the crowd neatly reflected the personality types found in the men. Some were shy, others were looking for a good time and a few were classic gold diggers.

Psychologist Windy Chen says women face a lot of pressure to be married by the time they're 30 and worry they'll not find a partner if they leave it too late.

"The fact is the more people worry about getting married the harder it is to find a suitable partner," said Chen, "And a marriage of convenience can damage a person's future."

In the past, some women married for financial security but that's less a necessity nowadays. Many women now earn more than many men and they're less willing to sacrifice their independence for a less than ideal marriage.

Angel was another Mingming who wouldn't offer her full name but said she is a successful career woman with a big income. She's looking for someone who is kind, wise and considerate but above all wealthy.

"He'd better have a big apartment in Beijing too." she said with a smile as she described her future husband whom she has yet to meet.

Not everyone at the Guanggun party was on the hunt for a relationship or were upset about being single. Many were there just to make friends adding that they may be alone, like the number one, but they were not lonely.

(Xinhua News Agency November 12, 2006)