Love Hunters 2
The day Mr. Big signed, Ms. Yang took a flight to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, where she would kick-start the campaign. During her 20-day search there, she had recurring nightmares. "I always feel unsettled during a campaign," she said, "but this time, the stress was crazy."
Her team of 10 love hunters scoured university campuses and shopping malls for three weeks, trying to meet a daily quota of 20 high-quality women, or two per person. Ms. Yang offered a bonus, about $16, for every candidate above the quota and set a personal goal of finding 10 "Class A" women a day herself.
Ms. Yang wasn't just haunted by a fear of letting the ideal candidate -- and the bonus -- slip out of her grasp. The office leak had also made her worry about security. One more false step and Mr. Big would bolt.
One afternoon in Chengdu, after slurping down a bowl of beef noodles at Master Kong's Chef's Table, Ms. Yang noticed a young woman sweeping past her into the restaurant, chatting on a cellphone. Long black hair hid most of the woman's face, but there was something captivating about her laugh and easy gait.
"She seemed open, warm, happy," Ms. Yang said. After a moment of indecision, Ms. Yang followed her inside, apologized for the intrusion and switched on her charm. Linking arms with the woman -- one of her patented moves -- Ms. Yang came away with her phone number, photograph and a few pertinent details: she was 24, a graduate student and a near-ringer for the TV hostess Zhou Tao.
Mr. Zhao has met several women on online dating sites, but he lost faith in the Internet when several women lied to him about their marital status and family backgrounds. His mother, however, had come through, arranging a meeting between him and the daughter of the woman she had met in the marriage market.
Not long after our conversation in McDonald's, Mr. Zhao met the woman at a coffee shop. It was, he told me later, even more awkward than most first dates. A rural migrant and door-to-door salesman, he struggled to find a shared topic of interest with the woman, a 35-year-old entrepreneur and Beijing native who had arrived driving a BMW sedan.
The lack of chemistry didn't seem to bother the woman, who told him about her profitable photo business and the three Beijing apartments she owned. Mr. Zhao didn't find her unattractive, but how was he supposed to respond? Then, even before broaching the possibility of a second date, he said, the woman made a proposition: if they married, he wouldn't have to work again.
"She said she made enough money for the two of us," he said. "I could have anything I want."
The marriage proposal stunned him. He had never heard a woman talk in such blunt, pragmatic terms. A life of wealth and leisure sounded tempting. Still, in the end, he couldn't imagine being subordinate to a woman. "If I accepted that situation," he asked me, "what kind of man would I be?"
It took Mr. Zhao several days before he worked up the nerve to tell his mother he had rejected the offer. He knew how hard she had worked, how much she had been counting on this. The news frustrated Ms. Yu. "Kids these days are way too picky," she said.