Raised expectations

Shanghai has China's most henpecked husbands?

Armpit hair here to stay

"There are quite a lot of women now who declare that they belong to the Good-looks Club, that they would rather remain single if they cannot marry a decent-looking man. They do not subscribe to the traditional belief that a man needs to offer either fortune or fame," he says.

A cross-cultural survey, conducted by Zhang Jiehai, a psychologist with Shanghai's Academy of Social Sciences, shows that Chinese men fail to attract Western women mostly due to poor hygiene habits such as wearing untidy, crumpled clothes, keeping long fingernails and spitting.

Modern Chinese women not only follow Western fashion trends, but they are beginning to think like their Western sisters.

Zhu Jiemin, 36, a human resource director at an advertising company in Shanghai, says financial pressure or a commitment to work should not and must not be the excuses for Chinese men to neglect grooming.

"I work hard in the company and to support my family and I spend most of my spare time taking care of my four-year-old son. I think I am the one who is stressed, but I still manage to make myself look decent," she says.

"I do not think wearing a Hermes belt or a Louis Vuitton bag makes one fashionable. It is the good habits, manners and politeness that place one apart, no matter men or women," she adds.

Having said all that, the situation seems to be improving as younger generations of Chinese men grow up.

"A lot of the younger ones I see have a better fashion sense. Five to six years ago, many young Chinese were unfashionable compared with the Koreans in a class I attended. Now, you can't really tell the difference anymore.

"Males in China may have had lower self-esteem due to the historical roots tied to the country's social and economic past. Imperialism and oppression kept self-esteem down. I think it's changing now," says William Cauffman, 21, a male student from the US.