For their own benefits, matchmakers would try their best to negotiate a positive outcome for each marriage proposal, even through cheating. In reality, there were numerous matchmakers who forgot what was right to get the prospective profit and made money at the sacrifice of the future couple’s happiness. Chen Duo (1488-1521), a poet in the Ming Dynasty, composed a song entitled “Matchmakers”, giving a vivid description of them, “They wish this family happiness and that family prosperity with a honeyed tongue. And like the wind blowing they cross this or that lane. This girls’ beauty may be exaggerated and that girl made less ugly in their words.

Never hesitating to cheat, they dare to do everything for their own benefit. They never feel guilty for this family’s regrets and that family’s complaints.” That is why matchmakers are always characterized as merry-andrew on the stage. Knowing that “matchmakers are indispensable to marriage and yet their words can not be totally counted on”, upper-class people usually asked their relatives, friends or colleagues to act as amateur matchmakers, since they would not propose marriage for the sake of making money alone. They would not cheat the either side since they had connections with them. Nowadays, matchmakers gradually disappeared, especially in the cities.