(Photo/Chinanews.com)

Expressing love for Valentine’s Day has gradually become natural for Chinese in recent years. A group of statistics recently released by Taobao, China’s biggest online shopping site under e-commerce giant Alibaba, might give you some insight into China’s current romance economy.

After Taobao released “relative accounts,” a function that allows users, especially family members to pay for each other’s orders last February, over 12 million Chinese couples have signed up for this new feature, according to statistics released by Taobao Thursday.

According to statistical analysis, the provinces that saw the most numbers of relative accounts witnessed the lowest divorce rate. For instance, Guangdong province, which ranked the first in this regard, was the 25th in terms of the divorce rate in 2017.

Females initiated 6.5 million related accounts and over 5.5 million by males, data suggested. Studies suggest that men born between the 1950s and 1980s were more active than women in initiating relative accounts, while it was the other way around for those born after 1990.

Before the eve of the Valentine’s Day, Alibaba announced its top ten most sought-after products for couples, among which customized gifts took the lead. Surprisingly, strawberries became new hit gifts for people to express their love with sales growing by 226 percent.

Furthermore, the Valentine’s Day shopping spree is not dominated by females anymore. Statistics from Taobao showed that the sales of trendy clothes, smart toys, and personal care products for male have also shot up.