Celebrating the New Year with your nearest and dearest is supposed to be a joyful experience. But in reality, it’s often far from peaceful. If only your family could stop nagging and pestering you, picking apart every aspect of your life from why you work so much overtime, live such an unhealthy lifestyle, to your relationships. If you’re single at Spring Festival, you’re bound to hear that one big question: “why don’t you get married?”

It’s an awkward situation faced by millions of single young people across China as they return home for the Lunar New Year. But more and more smart youngsters are well prepared for their family’s annual inquisition, by coming up with counterplans such as renting a partner.

Indeed, the demand for temporary partners is so high that it’s fueling a massive “partner-for-rent” market, with desperate singletons willing to pay as much as 1,500 yuan per day to have someone to bring home to shake off nosy parents and relatives, Beijing Youth Daily reported.

And it’s not difficult to find a fake partner. There are websites dedicated to partner rental services, and offline matchmaking agencies look to do the same. Many are also turning to social media platforms such as WeChat, where group chats with hundreds of people act as informal hook-up marketplaces.

Those who look to sell their services as a partner for rent will have their ages, physical attributes, such as height and weight, academic qualifications and occupations on display. Once both sides strike a deal, the rented partner is on hand to usher the poor guy or girl through potentially awkward scenarios such as family gatherings, shopping trips or even parental interrogations on marriage and life plans.

In China, there is huge social pressure to marry young, especially for women. And those who postpone their marriage plans till their thirties or later are usually referred to as “shengnan” and “shengnü” (剩男剩女, “leftover men and women” in English). When someone reaches a so-called marriageable age, parents and family members will push them on the issue, with typical questions such as “have you got a girlfriend/boyfriend?”

As a result, many singletons decide to dodge these questions by finding someone to pretend to be their sweethearts. The week-long Spring Festival public holiday is made bearable by the new partner-for-rent industry, and brings relief to under-pressure youngsters and a false sense of security to anxious parents.

But the lack of supervision and legal restrictions for this new ecosystem of services has raised concerns about financial and personal safety, for example, with sexual assault considered a real risk. In 2016, a man from southeast China’s Fuzhou was cheated of 3,000 yuan, when he found the woman who was supposed to be his rented girlfriend disappeared after taking her fee, according to the local newspaper Fuzhou Evening News.