In a desperate bid to find the son that cut off contact with his family, a Chinese mother living in Guangzhou recently took out a full-page advertisement on the front page of the Chinese Melbourne Daily, a Chinese language newspaper in Australia. In the open letter to her son named Peng, she begged him to come home for Chinese new year promising "Mom and Dad will never ever try to force you to marry."

Throngs of Net users rushed to offer their two cents. "I think he'll come back soon if you add that you don't care whether he brings home a boy or a girl," one suggested.

"Wow! Front-page-ad-mom must be super rich. Can I be your son, auntie?" wrote another.

All joking aside, most Net users stood by Peng. Many knew firsthand the pain that comes from constant questioning about their love life.

"When are you going to stop being single and get married?" For many young people in China this is not an easy question to answer, and in fact many would like to know the answer for themselves.

One of my friends, a PhD candidate from a famous US university, underwent the same interrogation every single day before she met her current boyfriend. Calling her from China every day, her mother constantly encouraged her quest for Mr Right.

"But how?" she asked me over the phone one day, "My mom just introduced me to a Chinese boy who's also studying in the US, but she doesn't realize that there's a several-hour time difference between us.

"I said 'hi' to him on Microsoft Instant Messenger, but it took him until the next morning when I was offline before he replied 'hi' back."

Another friend wrote in her blog: "My mother told me to focus on my studies rather than waste time on college romance, but as soon as I graduated she demanded I find someone who is tall, loves me, has a house and owns a car.

"What's even more unbelievable is that I actually accomplished this mission!"

The generational clash over getting married does seem more and more like a geographical conflict. Each of my old classmates who chose to go back to their hometown to live with their parents now lead a stable life - all are married, have a house and a car, and some are already planning to have a second child since the one-child policy has been loosened.

Meanwhile, those that rebelled against their parents' wishes now live far from home and are forced to deal with constant pressure from their parents who don't know a single detail of their lives.

I believe this pressure to marry will ease within one or two generations. After all, our generation understands just how slim a chance there is for a 25-year-old fresh out of graduate school with practically zero romantic experience to quickly find a person with whom to spend their whole life.

At the moment there is no good solution and each Spring Festival is a tortuous experience for a young single person. One of the hot topics on Weibo is: "What's the most terrifying question asked by relatives at Spring Festival?"

Different people have different answers.

For people with an average job it's "How much do you earn a month?" For college students it's "What do you major in?" quickly followed up by "Why did you choose that?"

While neither is an easy question to answer, everyone's most hated question is still "When do you plan to marry, dear?"