Lovelorn Peasants Victim of ‘Matchmakers’
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PEKING — Swindlers posing as matchmakers are roaming the countryside near Peking and cheating peasant men who want to marry, China Legal News reported Saturday.
Police are looking for 37 people from China’s southern Guangxi province who swindled at least 14 men, the newspaper said. The swindlers, some of them women posing as eligible females, stay with other Guangxi natives in the area and seek out single men willing to pay a matchmaking fee of $80 to $540. Peasants in the area have an average annual income of about $108.
Matchmaking was common throughout Chinese history, but was outlawed when the Communists came to power in 1949. The government has acknowledged that such customs have been revived recently in rural areas, and is trying to crack down on them.
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