Chinese woman stuck in blind date’s home by abrupt COVID lockdown

When authorities in Zhengzhou suddenly placed the central Chinese city under a COVID-19 lockdown last week, a woman known only by her surname, Wang, was having dinner – at the house of her blind date.

“Just after I arrived in Zhengzhou, there was an outbreak and his community was put under lockdown and I could not leave,” Wang told Shanghai-based outlet The Paper on Tuesday, adding that she went there for a week-long trip to meet potential suitors.

“I’m getting old now, my family introduced me to 10 matches … The fifth date wanted to show off his cooking skills and invited me over to his house for dinner.”

Stuck in the house, Wang began posting short videos documenting her daily life in the abrupt lockdown. The clips, which show her date cooking meals for her, doing household chores and working at his laptop while she sleeps in, have gone viral.

Related hashtags have racked up more than six million views on the Twitter-like social media site Weibo by Wednesday.

So far it seems romance has yet to blossom during their prolonged date, according to Wang, who says she is looking for a more talkative partner.

“Besides the fact that he’s as mute as a wooden mannequin, everything else [about him] is pretty good,” Wang told The Paper.

“Despite his food being mediocre, he’s still willing to cook, which I think is great.”

But Wang, who did not disclose her age or the identity of the man in the videos, said the recent surge in online attention prompted her to remove the videos.

“Friends have been calling him and I think this has definitely affected his life, so I have taken them down for now,” she said in a video posted on Tuesday that was widely republished in Chinese local media.

“Thanks everyone for your attention … I hope the outbreak ends soon and that my single sisters also find a relationship soon.”

There have been more than 100 COVID-19 cases reported in Zhengzhou since last week, as China battles to contain multiple local outbreaks of the Delta and Omicron variants.

A few cities, including Xi’an, had been placed on lockdown, leaving 14 million of its residents stuck in their homes. Other cities have imposed limited quarantines for specific areas while others have imposed mass testing including the city of Tianjin, another city of 14 million people.