Lonely path

Monologues drama shines a light on 'leftover' women and the pressure to marry, The Associated Press reports.

For many of today's Chinese youth looking for a partner, love takes second place to parental pressure, moving up the social ladder and a heavy dose of fear drummed into women that they will end up as "leftover". These aspects and others relating to love, dating and women's status in the Middle Kingdom was examined on Saturday in a China-inspired version of The Vagina Monologues, a Broadway hit exploring womanhood that got actresses voicing women's most intimate feelings to packed theaters.

In The Leftover Monologues, Chinese and foreign women - and a few men - told their own stories of searching for a partner, their observations of love and sex, and the panic aroused by the thought of becoming a "leftover woman", defined by a women's agency as a single urban female over 27 years.