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.