The best gift a Chinese bachelor can take home for parents is a bride-or-bridegroom-to-be. Being pressurised to marry, many bachelors in China opted to hire women during their homecoming for the Lunar New Year.

Some men preferred hiring women to please their parents -- at least temporarily -- on the occasion of Lunar New Year, which fell Monday this year, Xinhua reported.

Online advertisements offering surrogate boyfriends and girlfriends started appearing on Taobao.com, China's largest consumer e-commerce website, several weeks ahead of the traditional Chinese holiday.

Dozens of Taobao stores offered rental services. The prices depended upon the required intimacy, time and distance. The average price for a handshake was 3 yuan (about half a dollar), while hugs and kisses were priced 5 yuan and 10 yuan respectively.

Most of the stores charged 8 yuan per hour for the hired date to accompany customer to a family dinner, and 15 yuan per hour to join them on a party or a shopping tour.

The prices, however, were reserved for local service. But if the fake date had to travel to another city, the price was several times higher.

A store based in Guangzhou city charged 1,500 yuan a day for such a service.

Software engineer Hu Xiaofei said he spent 6,000 yuan, more than half of his year-end bonus to rent a girlfriend for a week-long stay at his family home in the countryside of central Hunan province.

"My parents want me to marry early, but I can't find a girlfriend easily. So I might as well hire one to make them happy," Hu said.

Hu said a colleague had told him to rent a date. "He rented one for three days last year. This year, he hired someone else for five days."