The marriage candidates on offer in the parks, she discovered, were often a mismatch of shengnu (leftover women) and shengnan (leftover men), two groups from opposite ends of the social scale.

The preliminary entry must show the marks and numbers of the shipping packages and the contents of each package, stating the number of rugs of each quality and commercial size contained therein and whether fringed or unfringed.

But in cases of love bombing, attention flows in a single direction: One person tries to become the other’s whole world.

He leaves the mild Alexander to continue, under the pressure of fraternal competition, the hereditary policy of Peter and Catherine; to raise levy after levy, loan after loan, ineffectually, while loans of any amount required are given openhanded by the people of France and England to their governments and the seas of the world remain open to the commerce of the Allies.