Ruan Qi Photo: Courtesy of Ruan Qi

Photo: IC

In 2007, Ruan Qi, known as Mogui Zixunshi (lit. evil consultant) online, started a group on douban.com that was dedicated to teaching men how to start conversations with women and become friends with them. He shared his personal experiences in this forum, which soon became very popular among netizens who flooded in to ask for his advice.

"There are people called PUA (pick-up artists), who often wear exaggerated clothing and try to pick up girls with tricks. That's not who I am," Ruan told the Global times in a gentle but calm tone. Of average height and looks and wearing a dark navy shirt and black-framed glasses, Ruan came across as low-key and serious during our interview, a far cry from most people's idea of a playboy.

"A PUA's goal is to date a girl and finally get her in bed. But what I'm doing is very different from that. I'm trying to teach people how to start a long-term relationship," Ruan told the Global Times.

A course in love

Graduated from Peking University with a BA in Psychology, Ruan has published two books that teach men how to pick-up women. He also began holding courses on the subject starting back in 2008. 

According to the introduction to his Douban group, 6,800 yuan ($1,040) gets you the course and follow-up service. The course starts with a three-day practical course, then a three-month online course and then three months of personal supervision. Student members can attend events throughout the year and can join discussion forums where they can share their experience.

A class for the practical course usually consists of five students or less and covers advice on personal appearance, body language, language usage and an analysis of each individual's strengths and weaknesses. Courses are not held in classrooms, but in cafes at downtown shopping malls so students can put into practice what they learn as soon as they can.

"Most of my students are introverted, male, and between the ages of 20 to 35," Ruan said, adding that while chasing the opposite sex is more often left to men sometimes even women will attend a class.

One afternoon last December, Ruan took five male students to a shopping mall in Beijing where he had them randomly pick up girls. After two hours, they returned to Ruan and shared their results. Some of them had successfully gotten some women's numbers, while some still lacked the courage to even start a conversation. 

Ruan teaches that the first step in starting a conversation is that "it should just be natural, just like talking between friends, and make sure you avoid any misunderstanding when it comes to your real intentions. Sometimes girls might think that you're dangerous, or see you as being a good salesman. That's not a good start."

One of Ruan's students shared his experience with the Global Times. Coming up on 30, he was not satisfied with the blind dates his family was constantly setting him up on. This dissatisfaction encouraged him to head all the way to Beijing to attend one of Ruan's weekend classes.

"They were not pretty enough. I want to chase those 'high-score girls.'" Like some of Ruan's other students, he divides women into "high-score girls" and everyone else.

"I now have the courage to say hello to a 'high-score girl' on the street. That's an improvement for me," he told the Global Times.

Ruan doesn't just teach how to start off a relationship, he also provides relationship advice such as how to deal with emergencies such as when a woman becomes suddenly angry or decides to break up with her boyfriend. During our interview, Ruan had to pause several times to answer students dealing with such emergencies.

"I keep in touch with my students and stand by them all the time," he said.

Broader application

Although he may be one of the earliest, Ruan is not the only teacher offering such classes. In fact, Ruan feels that these classes have grown to become an industry now. Some PUAs have their own companies staffed with employees. Some show off their pick-up skills on TV shows, like how they can get a telephone number from a random girl in under a minute. 

Market demand for PUAs is huge. There are nearly 200 million single adults in the Chinese mainland. Around 14.6 percent of people in China were not in a relationship in 2013, while this number was only 6 percent in 1990. According to Yangcheng Evening News, some experts predict that there will be about 30-35 million single men in the Chinese mainland by 2020, while a survey on marriage revealed that 19 percent of respondents said that they were single because they lacked the ability to communicate with the opposite sex.

However, some wonder if love is something that can be taught.

 "What I'm doing is teaching people the skills they need to communicate and deal with problems," Ruan said, mentioning that some enterprises have also invited him to give courses to employees so these employees can use techniques used to talk with women on customers.

"Creating a friendly and natural connection is something that can be applied in many different fields."