HAINAN (CHINA) - THE lanky 49-year-old sits outside his spartan house, staring blankly into space. Rice farmer Ji Renming says he is lonely and has never had a girlfriend.

'I want to find a wife, but who wants me? I'm not good-looking, I'm not good at talking and I'm not rich,' he laments.

His income depends on the harvest, but averages about 400 yuan ($80) a month.

It does not help, of course, that there are simply not enough women to get to know in his village of about 200 people.

Most of the single women have left for the city to find work. Those remaining are either still in school or are already married.

Mr Ji's plight is common in numerous villages across Hainan's central and southern counties - home to the Li ethnic minority, which numbers over a million here.

With too few women for too many men, guang gun villages have sprung up in Hainan, as in other parts of China.

Guang gun means bare branches in Chinese, and it describes bachelors as the branches of the family tree that will never bear fruit.

It has been estimated that as a result of its lopsided male to female sex ratio, China will have a surplus of between 29 and 33 million males aged 15 to 34 by 2020.

Demographers worry that this could spell problems such as bride trafficking, a surge in sexually transmitted diseases and a higher crime rate.

Ms Zhao Baige, Vice-Minister for the Family Planning Commission, admitted to the American CBS News network last year that China has already begun seeing the effects of its gender imbalance.

She said there had been a surge in the trafficking of baby girls of late but did not provide details.

Political scientist Valerie Hudson of Brigham Young University in the United States, who co-authored a book on Asia's male surplus, said these baby girls are sold to village families to raise as brides for their sons.

At Sanbo village in Hainan's Ledong county, located in the south, bachelors are a common sight in the community of about 2,200. At least seven in 10 singles are male.

Mr Liu Yonghui, the village secretary, says: 'It's much harder for men to find wives as the women leave the village for a better life elsewhere. Many men marry late or settle for divorced women or widows.'

Village girl Wang Haibo, 22, left to work as a waitress in the tourist beach city of Sanya, where she met and married her husband.

They have now returned to tending her husband's family farm in Pai Shen village in Ledong county. They have a one-year-old son.

Hainan University sociologist Zhan Changzhi explains why women leave their villages: 'Hainan men are lazier. They are not as keen as the women to improve themselves, so it's harder for them to find jobs in the city.'

While China's urban dwellers have embraced the Internet age, life in Hainan's villages remains very much as it has been for decades. People still cook by firewood and draw water from the well.

In these rural communities, people tend to marry early, even in their late teens.

Mr Liu Jixiang, a 45-year-old bachelor, says that he has missed the marriage boat.

He said: 'Which man doesn't want a wife? But at my age, thinking of getting a wife is pointless as most women here are already married.'

Mr Liu spends his spare hours playing chess, and confesses that his life is rather aimless - a common refrain echoed by many bachelors interviewed.

Many of these single men, villagers say, take to drinking.

Besides dealing with their loneliness, the bachelors often have to put up with the shame of being wifeless in an agricultural society that sees singlehood as an anomaly.

Hainan university researcher Zhang Shuoren says problems are already surfacing. Aimless, lonely and frustrated, some of these bachelors, he says, have taken to a life of crime.

He adds: 'Whenever there is a robbery, people will wonder if the guy is from Ledong county, notorious for its bachelor villages.'

Meanwhile, Mr Ji says life in his village in Baoting county is peaceful but very lonely.

He readily admits to visiting massage parlours in a nearby town and paying for sex.

Pointing to the farm animals roaming about freely in his village, he adds: 'Even chickens and pigs have to mate.'

PLEASE SEND ME SOMEONE TO LOVE: Bachelors (from left) Chen Guoneng, 26, Huang Wen, 25, Li Yonghua, 22, and Fu Zechuan, 26, all share the same unspoken, worry - that they cannot find a woman to marry. Most of the young women in their village have left for greener pastures in the city. The quartet, who holds jobs such as farm hands and odd-job workers, say they have to pray hard to find themselves a match.

However, he returns home to an empty house. A television set and radio keeps him company at night.

He says: 'A life without love is so lonely. Often, I have no one to chat with.

'If I have a wife and kids, I will have people to talk to. That will be so comforting.'