The price of fake love

For this type of service, most shops clearly mark their price. After the order is placed, the customer service sends the customer's request to a special order group, and the clerk decides whether to take the order. After the transaction is completed, consumers evaluate the service and choose to renew or end the transaction.

In China such chatting services alone are not illegal, as long as the contents and methods of the service are legal. Any obscenity, fraud or extortion takes the activity into illegal territory, with those involved liable to prosecution.

"He sang to me on my birthday, but that cost 50 yuan," said a woman who did not want to be identified, talking of a virtual boyfriend she had gained as a result of an online gift from a friend.

For 30 minutes the birthday girl and her boyfriend chatted, and at her request he played the guitar and sang a song called Summer Breeze. Over the half hour, the woman said, she had mixed feelings.

"My gut feeling was this stuff is a bit expensive, but on the other hand in that short time I did feel I was being pampered and cared for."

"With the advance of digital tools, human senses extend from the real world to the online world," says Jiang Wenxiu of the Department of Psychiatry, Zhongda Hospital, Southeast University.

"However, ubiquitous entertainment and media have squeezed real social interaction and emotional communication. It has become the norm for city dwellers to become more and more lonely, and people's needs for emotion and companionship have become stronger. Virtual-lover services cater to this kind of emotional demand that has nowhere to be trusted."

Virtual boyfriends drew a lot of attention on the internet in 2014, when such services were first popular on online shopping platforms. The owner of one of the businesses says that since the store opened nine years ago trade has been brisk.

"Our shop has an average of 5,000 visitors a day and about 100 orders," he says, stressing that the chat involves nothing obscene.

Besides such paid services, voluntary virtual-lover groups such as Seven-Day Couples on Douban are popular. The service, set up in 2014, has 1,300 members. The service provided is similar to that on Taobao for single men and women in big cities to find suitable internet chat companions. The game rules are online only, no meeting in person for seven days.

The group profile made no bones about the kinds of people it thought would be interested in its activities:"Do you often leave work alone, squeeze out of the crammed back of the bus late at night, arrive home to an empty room, play with your phone late into the night and then fall sleep without so much as a 'Good night'? Although I don't know who you are, what does it matter? I just like the feeling of being loved and loving others."

Jiang Wenxiu, the physician, says:"This fast-food fragmented virtual emotional consumption is both simple and complex. The market place dictates that anything can be bought and sold. However, now and again imperfect business rules and blurry service boundaries can strike a raw public nerve. In the era saturated with media where real social connection is scarce, more and more young people are crying out to be with others and for companionship. The popularity of the companionship economy points to the demand for the virtual emotional consumption market and the potential it holds."