One of the best ways to understand a foreign culture is to watch one of their movies. Here's a fantastic film about the last days of the Chinese Empire, brought down by a beautiful young lady who became a concubine of the Emperor. CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO WATCH THE MOVIE.

And there you will be at the film, exactly as I saw it many years ago when I sat in a movie theater in Chinatown every Saturday (when there still were movie-theaters in Chinatown), the only gweilou (white ghost 鬼佬)in the theater. I sat in the front row on the right with popcorn and a large coke, taking notes in a small pad in my breast-pocket, typing up the notes when I got home.

This led to my search for women who looked like the beautiful Chinese women in the movies. There weren't many at the time, although I found some (and married one). Now there is an influx of Chinese women from everywhere, often well-educated. Still, they don't believe in kissing. And the primary objective of Chinese women is to get (and stay) married (at all costs).

There are highly educated women in China who are not married by the time they are thirty, which is considered tragic. They have seminars/conferences for these women--to teach them how to find a marriage partner in spite of their age. 

Richard Koenigsberg