Be careful what you wish for

[Al-khiyal]

“My name is Zhang Mengqian, a grade one student,
and I think I am attractive, but strangely I can’t find a boyfriend.
However I believe in destiny. If you have the same wish,
please come under my dormitory building
and shout for my name in between 12:30 to 12:50 on March 11th,
and I will observe you secretly up on the building.
If you’re my type, I’ll come down to meet you.”

Romance by numbers:
Chinese girl's lonely heart advert attracts mob

March 12, 2010 -- When Zhang Mengqian announced that she was looking for a boyfriend on a "wish wall" at her university in south-west China, she must have been hoping that she'd get a few eligible responses. All potential suitors had to do, her message said, was complete a couple of simple tasks – turn up outside her dorm building on a certain date and time and shout her name. Imagine her surprise then, when she looked down from her window at the appointed hour to find a scene more akin to a football crowd than the tender balcony moment from Romeo and Juliet. Her message had touched the hearts – or something – of not just a few potential suitors, but thousands.

Perhaps the enormous response was entirely predictable. The University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, Sichuan province, has a male to female ratio of 25:1. Mengqian had announced her search for love as part of the university's "girls' day". Each female student was given a blank card and asked to write their wish and place it on the wall. Of the thousands of young men who made the effort of turning up, however, surprisingly only a few were brave enough to complete the last part of her challenge and shout out Mengqian's name.

[Al-khiyal]

A true story?

Or have all the Western media that published it been taken in by the cunning guile of ' Zhang Mengqian' - whose name just happens to be almost identical to that of the Zhang Meng Qian Network - a dating site ? (If you look carefully, you'll see her 'wish' on it)