Want a wife? Hire a love hunter Would you marry this guy? YOU'VE heard of matchmakers and gold diggers, but what about love hunters? In China they exist, and their job is to chase people down in the street and set them up for a life of wedded bliss with super rich clients. In a year-long investigation, New York Times journalist Brook Larmer followed the life and work of Yang Jing, one of the country's most prolific and highly sought after love hunters. Working as an agent for the Beijing branch of Diamond Love, her job is to literally scout shopping centres, parks and other public areas for women who fit her client's expectations. Diamond Love have four million members, the majority of whom are wealthy men, who pay the company thousands of dollars to find them a wife with attributes like perfect skin, a pretty face, and virginity intact. Once an appropriate woman is found, she is subjected to rigorous testing to establish that she is truthful, honest and not after money. When she passes these tests, she is then put through a series of "how to be a better wife" workshops. Here, women are coached on how to manage a wealthy household, how to read their husbands' moods, and educated on "the importance of sexual relations." The fee for two 14-day courses is $16,000 - the bill assumedly is footed by the prospective husband. On the other end of the spectrum are women like Ms. Yu, who spends her days standing near a temple with a paper sign, advertising for a wife for her 36-year old son. She has been trying to find him a significant other for four years - a job that has been difficult considering her son has a low-paying job and does not own an apartment. But, she joins hundreds of other mothers across China who have dedicated their lives to finding wives for their sons. While matchmaking is a familiar tradition in China, the extreme lengths people are going to to find a husband or wife reflects the state of the country, according to Larmer. The gap between rich and poor is widening, more and more people are moving from rural areas to the city, families are becoming more separate, women are postponing marriage to pursue careers, and too many hearts have been broken from failed online dating attempts. "The old family and social networks that people used to rely on for finding a husband or wife have fallen apart," James Farrer, an American sociologist and author of Opening Up, a book which looks specifically at dating and marriage in contemporary China, told the Times. There's a huge sense of dislocation in China, and young people don't know where to turn. By the end of this decade, researchers estimate that China will have a surplus of 24 million unmarried men. So are love hunters the way of the future? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Read more about China's matchmaking schemes here