The presentation focuses on a co-authored study which investigates marriage patterns and underlying preferences in China. Weiwei Ren, Jeanne Bovet, Paul Seabright, Charlotte Wang and I estimate mate preferences based on the evaluation of a series of randomly created profiles and connect our results to recent marriage patterns in the general population. Data is collected on parents (or other relatives) who search for a spouse on behalf of their unmarried adult child and on unmarried students. Furthermore, I sketch avenues for future research in this area.