My experiences told me that foreigners regard  marriage as an outcome of a relationship after a few years of dating and cohabitation. They want relationship first then see if they could share
each lives together, then consider marriage; while Chinese regard marriage as the purpose of dating, they want marriage so they go to date, they date because both of man and woman want to make sure if they can live together.

     I had met some Chinese mem before, they liked me, so they come to see me. After a few times, they talked about marriage that they wanted to marry in one or two months. I was afraid, I just finished my study I didnot want to be someone's wife or A child's mother or daughter-in-law. I was not ready to take so many responsibilites and I wanted to enjoy single life and dating first. So I refused them. After I moved to Shanghai, spent 3 years in school on improving my English. There was only a few chinese male students in a class of about hundred female students, besides I was not interested in my peer guy.  And I liked to practice english, so I tried to catch as many opportunities as I can to practice English with foreigners. They like or love me, but they just want long-term relationship first, and may marry me after 3 or 4 years of dating. I am old enough, I cannot afford time on long-term relationship and finally end up being alone.  Women above 25 are like chirstmas cake in China-- we all want to get married before 26.

     I have 2 real love stories to share with you here.

     One is my Chinese girl friend. She was 28 and played piano in a nice hotel in Guangzhou, south China. One day in April in 2003 she got notes from hotel that a french guy was interesting in knowing her and wanted her contact number, so she gave her contact number to the french guy and then they started to chat on MSN. The french guy stayed in the hotel that March during his business trip and one day he drank coffee in the lobby and listened to my girl friend playing the piano, but he did not talk to her. After he went back to France, he thought he should contact her. They chat on MSN with Web ca, she introduce her family to him, they talked on MSN for about 2 months,then they decided to get married. Because of SARS , he had to postponed his trip for one more month.
Finally he went to Guangzhou to marry her in July. The day he arrived,the civil bureau has closed, so they went to register for marriage the very next day. After that, he finally met her family in life. In October, she flew to France to live with him. They have been in marriage and live happily since then, though no kid yet.( Unfortunately I lost contact with her since last late year.)

     The other story is a dutch friend which I met in 2006. He met his wife through his friend. His wife is the sister of his friend and was visiting her brother. She is a muslin and lived in Morocco. He fell in love with her, and went to Morocco with her, after 3 weeks, they got married. Before marriage, they had not slept together. They have been in marriage since then,  and have a little boy and girl, live happily.

     The quality of marriage is not determined by the length of the dating. People have a wonderful marriage without dating but people still get divorced after many years of cohabitation.