Recently, we have been watching a Chinese quiz show called 'If You are the One on television. In the show, 24 single, young ladies are presented with a male candidate. He introduces himself through 3 short videos and takes questions from the young ladies for the purpose of scoring a date with one of them.
Within the 15 minutes, the girls can choose to reject the candidate at any time by switching off their light. If there are more than 1 girl who have left their lights on for the candidate, he can choose who he wishes to go on a date with by switching off all lights bar one.
It turns out that this show has been popular in China since 2011, but has only hit our shores recently. Since discovering this show, Gaz and I have been hunting down previous episodes of the show on the Internet as well as religiously watching the weekly episodes on telly as they air.
What we like about the show is the occasional fairy tale ending of a 'prince' finding himself a 'princess' through the show. But more often, we witness the 'demolition' of a male person's ego and confidence as the 24 lights switches off in quick succession.
The complexity of the human mind comes to light in this show. Sometimes, the lights switches off at what I would think is a benign statement, such as, 'I do not mind my future wife to be unambitious in her own career as I am able to support her'. How would this be a turn off coming from someone who has a successful business? Would anyone mind withdrawing from the rat race?
Obviously, some people would not miss working for anything. Recently, I spoke to a lady who is preparing for the birth of her first child. She shared with me her plans of getting back to work post the birth. It went something like this:
Month 1: Give birth
Month 2: Take care of the baby
Month 3: Work
Given that the family is quite well off, I did not think that money was an issue. I can only attribute this to her dedication to her employer!