In America, romance and sex — or the lack thereof — have become preoccupations for millions of people struggling with intimacy. “Are young people having enough sex?” The New Yorker asked this year. In China, the situation is even more pressing. Its one-child policy left it with over 30 million more men than women. These men confront a smaller dating pool, and it’s even harder for working-class and rural men to find a partner.
In my feature-length documentary “The Dating Game” I follow a group of young single men as they complete a weeklong dating camp. In “Only the Lonely,” the short film adaptation above, I captured something else: the stakes of lonely young men struggling to find love across the world. “I’ve been alone since I was little,” Wu, a young delivery driver, told me. “The feeling of loneliness,” he added, “it’s been the same my whole life. The only difference is I’ve learned to feel numb to it.” But at night, he continued, “the feeling comes back strong. It never disappears.”
Violet Du Feng is a documentary filmmaker.
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