Marriage is Big Business in China

Before you read: some questions to help you think about the topic and the words you might need.

How do people meet their future marriage partners in your country?

Is the way people are meeting someone for marriage changing?

What do you know about marriage in China?

Three decades of high economic growth in China has reshaped the marriage landscape. With the country’s transition to a market economy, many traditional ways for finding a marriage partner have been swept away. In the past, most people had a similar amount of money, but things have changed. There are big differences in wealth now.

In China, matchmaking for a future husband or wife has always been a traditional way of meeting someone, but the method of matchmaking is changing. These days there are very rich Chinese (90% men) who are seeking love from professional matchmaking agencies. And they are paying huge amounts of money to find someone that meets their picky tastes. Now in China there is a class of new rich who have worked very hard and have not had time for love, or are very careful about who they trust. That is why they are turning to exclusive dating agencies.

And this is where exclusive agencies like Diamond Love and Marriage are coming into play. These men don’t want to just spend a lot of time just looking through pages of women. Furthermore, they are afraid of meeting gold diggers and liars. Sometimes they want someone that is just too hard to find: women who are possibly not in dating books. To find these women, Ms Yang from Diamond Love and Marriage will go to department stores and observe potential women walking between the Zara store to the Calvin Klein jeans shop. They are looking for women that meet the special expectations. Once they see these ideal women, then they will approach them with an offer to introduce them to someone.

Sometimes Ms Yang says that the clients’ expectations are unrealistic and are women that she says just don’t exist, so she has to use her special skills to bring the customers around and get in touch with reality. But it is well worth all their hard work because of a bonus of $30,000, which is five times an average salary.

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning.

 The answers are below the table.