Having spent nearly one-fifth of my life in China, I am still continually fascinated by cultural differences.

A couple of days ago, I was having lunch with a new friend and generally talking about cultural differences between China and the West.

I mentioned that in 2005 I carried out a survey among 23 young ladies I knew. They were from throughout China, all were university educated, in their late twenties, and all were single, unattached.

I asked each, over coffee or pasta, to list the five most important qualities she expected in a husband. Over the following few months, I found my answers.

Without a single exception, each one listed "financially stable" as one of the first two qualifications. Other qualifications were an emphasis of the first: must have a house; must have a car; must have a good job. Only a handful of girls listed something non-monetary - that he be humorous.

Each had a well-thought-out list in her head, like I might have a list of accessories I wanted in a new car as I headed down to the dealership on a Saturday morning.

Out of curiosity, and wondering if I was out of touch with reality, I contacted eight European girls working in Shanghai who were also unattached and in their late twenties. Having been asked the same question, the first or second answer that popped out of their heads was "that he loves me."

At lunch, I commented on this enormous difference in one's approach to life's most important relationship.

My new friend then defended a husband-finding system that is led by the head instead of one led by the heart. He defended the rational system because love, as a foundation for marriage, is unpredictable and unreliable.

Is the foundation that comes from match-making - whether by wizened old women or shiny computers or a careful list on a poster in the middle of People's Square on Sundays - a better creator of a stable relationship than one that starts with John Donne's, "Come live with me and be my love, and we will some new pleasures prove, of golden sands, and crystal beaches, with silken lines and silver hooks ..."?

Is love predictable? Is love reliable?

Certainly not! How can you call predictable an emotion that caused the King of England (Edward III) to abdicate the throne (think of all those castles, and yachts, and pomp and circumstance) so that he could be with a divorced plebian whom he loved?

Certainly not! How can you call reliable an emotion that caused Jacob to offer seven years of farm labor to Laban for the hand of his daughter Rachel? And then, when, at the wedding, the old geezer tricks him by delivering instead the older sister Leah, Jacob chooses to work seven years more, to also be with Rachel whom he loved.

Love hides the incompatibilities, the flaws, the differences, the obvious difficulties. But such inadequacies must surely be clearer than crystal to a computer or a matchmaker.