With all the media attention being paid to matchmaking businesses and television shows designed to introduce ordinary, if extraordinarily beautiful, young women to millionaires, I can tell you how to really marry a man worth a million dollars, for 5.9 yuan.

That's the price of a DVD of an old American movie, How to Marry a Millionaire, at the local Wu-Mart here in Beijing. It's in English, with Chinese subtitles. There's also a dubbed option. Three glamorous 1950s actresses star in this 1953 movie: Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall.

The characters they play in the movie decide to temporarily live in an expensive apartment to impress millionaires - their shortcut to a life of happiness and security, they tell themselves. They decide that because they're all beautiful, it will be easier to work together to find their millionaires.