- A growing urban/rural divide, with many villages having large numbers of unmarried men, as the women (already in short supply) having left for the cities
- An obsession with money, education and height
- A finishing school for being a good trophy wife
... and much more besides:
continued: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24264693China is moving forwards at an astonishing rate, but parents' preference for boys and the one-child policy have left a shortage of young women. Men of marriageable age are confronted by a shrinking pool of potential female partners - and the competition to find a bride is fierce.
Clutching his iced coffee, Peng Tai strolls down the street and disappears into a shopping mall.
Half way up the escalator, he surveys the scene below.
"What about that girl in a yellow dress?" I venture. "Uh uh, too short," he says.
And the girl in micro shorts coming out of a shoe shop? "No way. Too skinny."
"I am looking for girls with nice skin, nice white skin," he adds. "They should be not too thin and not too chunky with a normal way of walking."
A minute later he sidles up to a fashionable twentysomething girl trying on perfumes.
"Are you single?" he coos. "Looking for love?" She quickly shakes her head and walks away.
He gets the same brush-off from a few more young women - some look embarrassed, others impatient.
Peng Tai rejoins me by the entrance and sucks dejectedly on his drink. "The girls should not look angry. We do not want one with a sour face."
Suddenly he spots his prey - a very young girl in a sleeveless top with platform heels.
Cautiously he approaches her, all smiles. She listens wide-eyed to his opening gambit and looks intrigued as he takes down her details.
Then, iPhone in hand, he moves in for the kill and snaps her picture in the doorway of the mall.
Peng Tai has a quota of three suitable girls a day. He is what is known as a "love hunter".
He works for the Diamond Bachelors' Agency, a Shanghai outfit which has hundreds of wealthy single men looking for wives on its books. The joining fees range from £15,000 to more than £1m ($1.6m) a year depending on the level of service required.
Peng Tai and dozens like him remind me of small fishing trawlers, scooping up what they can in their nets.
But their catch then needs to be specially prepared for the customer and China's billionaires are a notoriously fussy bunch.
One client insisted on a girl who looked identical to Zhang Ziyi, the star of the hit film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
...
