No free lunch

The princesses' requirements have remained much the same over the last decade.

"They are basically looking for a sincere, reliable bachelor with a promising career and a good disposition," Li said.

"For most girls' families, they already have houses and cars. Some already have their own companies.

"All they care about is whether you can treat their princesses well. We have some parents who come to register without even letting their daughters know."

The bachelors who aspire to marry up into a rich family understand that there is no free lunch.

To what degree they are willing to suck it in, sacrifice their dignity and lose a little dominance can become a daily dilemma after the wedding.

Husbands can suffer too great a loss of dignity in this kind of marriage, wrote BTV show host Wang Fang in a blog about the issue on October 25.

Wang's friend had married into a family where the mother-in-law demanded their baby be named after the wife, not the husband. He was also ordered by his new mom to hand his entire 1,300 yuan monthly salary to her. Unsurprisingly, problems arose.

Most of the divorces in Xiaoshan are actually launched by the wives, according to the Hangzhou-based Today Morning Post.

Some husbands not only struggle with their diminished status in the marriage, but can also find it difficult to integrate into the local community and culture.

"If it's about love and romance, why do we marry in such a way?" Chen Andong told the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly after being divorced by his wife.

Hukou

By marrying into a Xiaoshan family, Chen had gained the local hukou residency permit and a well-furnished villa. He lived off pocket money from his in-laws who ordered him to quit smoking. Suffering occasional derision from members of his wife's family was also routine.

"The wives are manipulated by their parents," Chen told the paper, while we husbands are manipulated by reality.

"I think I overestimated myself and underestimated my wife's family and the environment."