The Double Seventh Festival, also known as Chinese Valentine’s Day, falls on the seventh day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar. 

This year, young lovers will be celebrating on August 7. Yet for many of the country’s tens of millions of singles, the occasion is one to ignore.

In China, tradition surrounding relationships and marriage remains strong. Continuity of the family line is a very important concept – so much so that an unmarried man with no children over the age 40 may be considered unfilial. 

According to traditional Chinese thinking, the age of 30 is a key threshold for a young woman. Past that age, if she hasn’t settled down and started a family, she’s likely to be regarded as a social misfit.

The country's rapid urban development has fostered new attitudes among young people towards marriage and starting a family. 

There are those who have simply decided they are not cut out to bring up children, while a growing number of well-educated young women are putting career before marriage.

To get married, or not? It's a personal choice often made in the face of heavy parental and social pressure. But more young people are choosing not to compromise, when it comes to what they want from life. 

Respect and tolerance for personal choice is a product of the transformation China is currently going through, in which tradition is mixing with modernity.