Canadian puts his heart on the line, and causes tears, on blockbuster Chinese dating show (2025)

James Alofs took off his black tuxedo jacket and got down on one knee. This was his chance. His moment. He had five minutes to tell the woman he loved or at least a woman he thought he could love why they were soulmates.

Why the fact that she was Chinese and he was Canadian did not matter. How he knew she had studied ballet in school; how he was OK with moving in with her and her mother if that is what she wanted since nothing is more important than family; and how pretty she looked in her flowing pink gown, with her black tresses cascading about her shoulders.

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How she was perfect.

Then it happened. The unthinkable. The implausible: a sight so unlikely that the studio audience gasped and 50 million Chinese viewers at home gasped along with them: Xing Xing, known as the “Ice Queen” to her fans and the suitors she so ably and summarily dispatches each week on Fei Cheng Wu Ra (If You Are The One) — a Chinese reality matchmaking show and the second-highest rated program on Chinese television — melted.

“She started bawling,” says the 25-year-old Canadian who made her cry. “That was a first on the show, and so that was a good sign for me. I was also the first guy in two years to kneel, and so that was a good sign.

“I thought I was closing the deal.”

The deal with James Alofs is that he is a Toronto native, a Queen’s University graduate with an MBA from York and a fascination with China. It started almost by happenstance six years ago after he answered an ad to teach English overseas during an otherwise directionless summer.

Mr. Alofs decamped to Beijing for good a year ago to launch his own business as a “fashion entrepreneur” importing high-end U.S. brands into Chinese department stores.

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He speaks Mandarin, picking it up by studying obsessively, talking to locals and watching Chinese TV.

If You Are The One features 24 women and one suitor. There is a host and two psychologists who offer play-by-play analysis of the dialogue between the man and his prospective dates. The women are looking for their match and if they don’t like the man they can reject him at anytime.

They also ask questions, about whatever they want. In the days before James Alofs’ bid for reality TV true love many of the queries focused on wealth.

Ma Nau, a Chinese model, scandalously rejected a suitor in 2010 by saying: “I’d rather cry in a BMW than laugh on the backseat of a bicycle.”

The Communist Party issued a stern warning in response: “Incorrect social and love values such as money worship should not be presented in the shows,” a government directive stated.

Mr. Alofs admits he is no “Donald Trump” but he can afford to take a girl out for a “nice dinner.” His Chinese television debut was last Saturday night.

“I had been watching Xing Xing on the show for about four months and I decided why not go on as a cultural experience,” he says. “Xing Xing is very pretty. Not like you want to saw your right arm off beautiful, but very pretty and gentle and patient and smart.

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“She’d be a good companion, a good partner, a good wife and a good mother. I had a serious TV crush on her.”

Then he got crushed. Xing Xing and Mr. Alofs were alone on stage, a final pair. The end was near, the crowd anxious for a love connection. Even one of the psychologists dispensed with his typically mocking comments and endorsed the Canadian.

Xing Xing dabbed her eyes. The Ice Queen had something to say: How old are you?

“I said I am 25 and she is 24 and so at that point I thought I had her for sure,” Mr. Alofs says from Beijing, chuckling. “Then she sighed and said, “You’re too young for me.”

“I really didn’t see that one coming.”

National Post
joconnor@nationalpost.com

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