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BEIJING (Reuters) - Shanghai has banned a party for a tour group of 11 American men wanting to meet Chinese women, saying matchmaking agencies lack licences to set up dates between locals and foreigners, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Shiji Jiayuan, a Chinese online dating agency, invited women online to apply to meet 11 men from Washington state touring the city at a party on August 15, the Shanghai Daily said.The men, all single or divorced, were aged from 43 to 67 and included computer engineers, doctors, lawyers and bankers, the paper said.
The agency chose 25 women out of 230 applicants to meet the Americans, basing their decisions on "family background, appearance and profession", the paper quoted Gong Haiyan, the agency's founder, as saying.
"We declined the really young applicants -- some were only 20 years old," Gong said.
The event was scrapped after Shanghai's Civil Affairs Bureau sent a notice of the ban to the agency, the paper said.
"Many issues show up during (cross-cultural) relationships, but they rarely occur in relationships with someone from the same country," the paper quoted Xu Anqi, a relationship expert, as saying, who cited problems including communication, cultural values and living habits.
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