While attitudes toward love and marriage have become freer since the early 20th century, matchmaking has continued to exist to this day. Matchmaking is, of course, not exclusive to China: It has existed in different forms all across the globe.

Do they still do matchmaking in China?

There are more than 20,000 matchmaking agencies in China. They have names like the Tianjin Municipal Trade Union Matchmakers Association and the Beijing Military and Civilian Matchmaking Service. Some of them are unscrupulous brokers who try to con women into marrying lonely rural men.

Do Chinese still have arranged marriages?

In 1950, China passed the New Marriage Law, which outlawed arranged marriages and concubines, and enabled women to divorce their husbands. But in practice, arranged marriages remained commonplace, and the language of freedom of marriage and divorce was not translated into the freedom of love, Pan said.

How old did people marry in ancient China?

PIP: The changes in age of marriage in ancient China can be classified into 3 periods. Around 680 B.C., the government set the age of marriage at 20 for men and at 15 for women. Even though it was written in the works of the Confucian school that men should marry at 30 and women at 20, it was never really followed.