Puppy love goes online in China

BEIJING: One hundred lonely Shanghai dogs will have a chance to find their ideal mates at a dog-dating event hosted by China's first professional online pet matchmaking company, the Shanghai Daily said.

The event, later this month, is organised by gougou520.com, which will try to match the pooches with the perfect partners -- though it may not only be the dogs that benefit.

"For single pet owners, this may lead to a real romance. We found most people who register are under 35 and working-class singles," the Web site's director, Zhou Handong, told the newspaper.

Zhou said the service had matched 100 pets, using basic data and personality information, and registered 2,000 since it launched in December.

Raising dogs was banned under the rule of late Chinese leader Mao Zedong as a bourgeois pastime and was only made legal a few years ago as living standards rose.