She sat on a stool checking the morning news on her laptop by the window of their favourite cafe, looking out to the green hills beyond the bay, where seagulls circled over colourful fishing boats and junks. She swung around when she heard his footsteps on the hardwood floor.

When he saw her against the pristine scenery outside the window, steeped in the morning sunlight, he was mesmerized by the almost mystical beauty of the moment. He held her face with both hands and kissed her tenderly on the lips. That was the spark which lit an improbable love affair, defying an unbridgeable age gap, vastly different family background and wholly disparate social status.

Although he is earning a decent salary, he is not rich. Material consideration has never been a part of their relationship.

If you think that this cannot be true because it seems to defy all logic, think again. It has been nearly four years since they met that morning in the deserted cafe, and they still care deeply for each other.

In this age of computer match-making, spontaneous romance has become a lost intuition that can only be recovered in legends recounted in folklore or acted out on the stage. Many young people in the big cities, including Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, have become so worldly that they harbour a deep cynicism for any form of relationship that does not fall in line with an accepted set of materialistic conditions.

This is not to suggest that they are wrong. It is just regrettable that they will never know what they missed.

Last year in Shanghai, I attended a large-scale match-making event for concerned parents, organized by a community service agency. Hundreds of parents crowded into a standing room-only auditorium, exchanging information about their marriage-aged sons and daughters, who apparently could not find the time for courtship.

It seemed that these young people in Shanghai were willing to delegate the choice of their prospective mates to their parents, who had to base their decisions largely on age, educational background and financial resources. The hottest candidates were those who worked for banks or multinational companies and bought their own apartments with mortgages.

I didn't have a chance to meet any of those young people. None of them were there. But their parents seemed to believe that taking charge of their children's relationships was the best way to ensure happy and enduring marriages.

The rapidly rising rates of divorce in Shanghai and other major mainland cities have apparently caused many parents to lose confidence in their children's capability to choose their own partners. Love, as they say, is blind.

But the couple who sealed their love that glorious morning would argue otherwise. To be sure, unexpected circumstances have forced them to stay apart for long periods of time. The nature of their relationship has changed under unbearable pressure, especially on the woman, from family and friends. But I am convinced that all these troubles served only to strengthen the bond, more powerful than marriage, between them. And I am sure that they are happy because they know they can count on each other for solace when they feel lonely and apprehensive.

Based on their respective personal data, no number-crunching machine would have paired them off as a likely match. No parent of one would have picked the other as a prospective candidate. Neither one of them would have considered the other if they had applied the commonly accepted criteria for choosing partners.

Then, they would never have known what they missed.

(China Daily 12/05/2006 page4)