I was wandering one of Dalian's many parks with a few friends the other day, when we came across a number of notices pinned to trees, with a gaggle of Chinese grandmothers, matrons and termagents clustered round them... Being somewhat intrigued, we ventured over, only to discover they were lonely hearts ads, of a kind, posted by Chinese mothers determined to find respectable partners for their children (said children normally being mid-twenties).
Sadly, in the process of working out what was on teh posters, and scribbling down characters we didn't recognised, we attracted the attention of the mob. They closed in slowly, but inexorably, until we found our backs against the trees, and were stammering answers to questions such as 'How old are you?', 'What are your job prospects?', 'Are you sure you aren't Russians?', and finding that our various pleas that we w all already had boyfriends fell on deaf ears.
Believe me, there is something truly intimidating in watching a Chinese matron gaze at you fixedly, slowly remove her sunglasses and still staring, mutter 'I've found a good one'.
We beat a hasty retreat, at this point.
Postscript: It could have been much worse. The one guy in our group was told he had 'eyes like Bill Gates' rendering him irresistable to Chinese women... I'm still not sure that the guy who annouced this to him wasn't himself interested...
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