This photo shows some dishes and an old dining table that a Shanghai girl cannot bear when she meets his boyfriend's family for the first time during the Spring Festival holiday. (Photo from Weibo)
Romance was in the air on Sunday, when Chinese celebrated Valentine's Day. But a recent social media post has set Chinese netizens wondering whether true love actually exists.
During the Spring Festival, a man brought his Shanghai girlfriend back to his home village to meet his family for the first time. But they later broke up because the woman did not enjoy the "humble" food she was being treated to.
During Spring Festival, a photo of simple dishes and an old dining table with the title "Thinking about breaking up" went viral on the internet.
The photo was posted by a woman who states that she is a 27-year-old from a well-off family in Shanghai and works in HR at a foreign company. Her boyfriend comes from a poor village in East China's Jiangxi province.
The couple had been together for a year, despite protests from her parents, who worried that her boyfriend was too poor and would not be able to buy a house in Shanghai for their marriage.
The woman says that she thought that things were good. But when her boyfriend brought her back to his home village to meet his family for the first time and sat down at the dinner table, she abruptly changed her mind.
The woman decided immediately, and caught the first train back to Shanghai. Despite some people questioning the authenticity of the photo and the story, it has triggered heated discussions online in China.
More than 180,000 comments have been made under the original post on Weibo, with many writing in to emphasize the importance of shared socioeconomic status in relationships.
"The families of a couple should be well-matched," one netizen commented. Meanwhile, most have criticized the woman for her lack of manners.
"Breaking up was the right thing to do, but she should have been a little smoother about it," another netizen wrote.
Even People's Daily, the official newspaper of China's ruling party, has published an article commenting on this tragic love story, and talking about the widening urban-rural gap in China.
