THERE are many horror stories about wives and mothers-in-law, but less is said about boyfriends, husbands and mothers-in-law, demonic and angelic. Yao Minji tells a Mother's Day story.

Chinese used to say that when a woman courts a man, he is only a thin piece of gauze away, but when a man courts a woman, she is a mountain away, meaning it's much easier when women take the initiative in love and marriage.

Today there's a new saying: When a man courts a woman, she is a mother-in-law away, indicating fear of a girlfriend's mother who is worse and more obstructive than a mountain.

Much has been said about what seems to be the inevitable tension between wife and mother-in-law, but the relations between prospective husbands and mothers-in-law is no less interesting.

"Mothers have different tastes than daughters. They care much less about appearances, in fact, they often prefer men who are a bit chubby and seem to be kind and honest over those good-looking ones. They look for stability, such as jobs in banks or state-owned companies, and they want the guy to do all the housework," Wang Huaqin, producer of popular local matchmaking TV program "Because of Love," tells Shanghai Daily.

The program, launched a year ago, is aired on Channel Young on weekend nights. On Saturday evening, mothers and daughters select from male guests and on Sunday night, mothers and sons screen females.

The highly rated program is especially popular among mothers, who say they find it more truthful than the other fancy matchmaking shows, because the mothers on "Because of Love" are very selective, like those in real life.

"The moms demand a lot, but in the end, they often bend to daughters' decisions, they are not as unreasonable as many people would expect," Wang says.

Unlike wife and mother-in-law, the tension between husband and mother-in-law often relaxes quite a bit or dissipates after the marriage. Another Chinese saying applies - when a mother-in-law judges her daughter's husband, she finds him increasingly more adorable.

"Of course I'll treat him very well after they get married, because then he'll be a family member and I want him to pass on the kindness to my daughter," says Wang Juan, a local retired auntie whose daughter has been married for five years.

Some men also consider themselves fortunate to get a very open-minded mother-in law, such as Indian spouse Anand Bhardwaj who has fun learning Chinese from his mother-in-law.

"She feels just like my own mama," he says. The two enjoy spending time together, touring local places of interest such as Oriental Pearl TV Tower and seem to have few problems understanding each other across cultural and language boundaries.

Bhardwaj's Chinese mother-in-law from Dalian in northeastern China's Liaoning Province, whom he intimately calls "mama," has liked him from the very beginning, when he visited and stayed with them for a week.

"I trust my daughter's choice, and he is very polite, smart and adorable, perfectly easy to get along with. He doesn't feel like a foreigner at all, just naturally a family member," says "mama" Sun Jihong.

But men usually have a long way to go before they win approval from the mother after long and intense scrutiny. Some men find their mother-in-law's almost constant attention and caring to be a burden.

A recent Internet hit is a notebook of tips on screening prospective blind dates (prospective husbands), purportedly written by a mother-in-law for other mothers and daughters. It was first posted on weibo, and in two weeks, the notes received millions of comments.

The anonymous mother screens candidates to make sure her daughter's blind dates are worthy of marriage consideration. There's no dating just for the sake of having fun.

She scores the men on a scale of one to 10 in 27 categories, including income, appearance, career potential, career stability, higher education, astrological signs, Chinese zodiac signs and even the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which many big companies use in their recruiting process.

For example, she gives a high score to a Capricorn because she believes that Capricorns are meticulous and tend to be achievers.

Those who get high scores in all categories are granted a first meeting with her daughter.

Many Internet users express amazement by how professional and systematic the woman is and joke that she must work in the human resources industry.

Many mothers who exchange information in the famous matchmaking corner of People's Park keep similar notebooks, some more complicated, some simpler.

China's family planning policy has helped make daughters precious and their parents more cautious about giving a daughter's hand to the right man.

"The online mother-in-law is an extreme case, but many young women's mothers do pre-screen candidates like this. Because their daughters are so busy or have very few ways to meet men, mothers always conduct the initial rating, though it's less complicated," Li Meihua, a popular aunty matchmaker in Shanghai's Jiading District, tells Shanghai Daily.

"It is understandable too, since mothers always think they've got better eyes and are more experienced than their daughters when it comes to spotting a good husband candidate," she adds.

Before Jerry Liang's marriage, everyone doubted whether he could live happily forever after. They were concerned and joked about how he might become enslaved or stressed out to death by his mother-in-law.

"My wife is beautiful, smart and considerate, but we were all worried about her mom - she was literally a demon," says Liang, a 32-year-old entrepreneur who has been married for six months.

"It's okay for me to say this now because we get along very well, but at the beginning, she didn't like me even before we met," he says.

Liang still remembers his frustration when his then-girlfriend said her mother didn't like him, after they had dated for five months. She said her mother, a high school Chinese teacher, was not satisfied with his job as an entrepreneur - she didn't think it was stable enough and may encounter risk in the future. She also thought his bachelor's degree insufficient - she expected a master's or even a PhD.

"Even though my wife promised she would not be influenced by her mother, I still fell into a panic. The news was unexpected and it was so devastating," he recalls.

His first meeting with his girlfriend's mother was a catastrophe, Liang recalls, although he sought advice beforehand from married buddies and was prepared.

It took place at the prospective in-laws' apartment where he went for dinner. Unfortunately, an important client who flew in for a conference was late, so Liang had to rush and barely made it on time.

"She spoke softly and she wasn't as straightforward as I anticipated, but still, it felt like meeting the principal in elementary school after I made mistakes. She was very skilled in interrogation and trickily questioned all details of my life," he recalls.

In order to win her heart, Liang tried to complete a master's degree management course in his spare time. He kept explaining how his business in the marketing and exposition industry had great potential in Shanghai.

"It still wasn't enough. She keeps telling my girlfriend that I would spend very little time with her or our children because I would have to work very hard," he says, adding that he ended up promising the mother that he would devote at least two weekends every month to family days, no matter what happened at the company.

Eventually, Liang persuaded the woman he was worthy of her daughter's hand. After they got a marriage license, she stopped complaining, helped them arrange everything for the big ceremony and has been supporting. She found the best bargain in buying their new apartment and furniture. Every time she goes shopping, she buys something for Liang, sometimes clothes, snacks or his favorite Transformers toy.

She frequently invites the couple for dinner at her home so they won't have to cook or wash dishes.

"She's just turned from a terrifying demon to an almighty angel," Liang says. "I feel like I can see her wings now."

Local Shanghai auntie Yang Jie finds it difficult to understand why people find mothers-in-law so fierce, especially in Shanghai.

"People always talk about how Shanghai mothers-in-law cause so much tension, but I simply want the best for my child, like mothers everywhere in the world," she says. "And often my daughter doesn't know what's best for her, so I have to take the responsibility as her mom to choose for her."

She is proud of intervening and forcing her daughter to break up in her first serious dating with a rich and handsome man the young woman considered Mr Right.

"It's one of my greatest life achievements because I save her life and her future," Yang says.

The doomed boyfriend was a high school sweetheart and the two had dated since high school. Though he was good-looking and wealthy, Yang never liked him as her daughter did. She opposed the match since the beginning.

"My daughter, like all young women, was easily attracted by his looks, his money and his expensive gifts, but I could see through him. He's no achiever. He has no ambition. He has no goal in life. And he's popular among women," Yang recalls. "He was very nice to me too, but my daughter deserved someone better."

She thought the couple would naturally break up as her daughter matured, so she didn't push at first. She was wrong and the relationship continued after she began to pry them apart.

Yang took immediate action. She forbade them to see each other, regularly checked her daughter's cell phone and e-mail, and took her to pre-screened blind dates set up by her friends.

"If I only did one right thing in my life, that was it," Yang says, recalling how her daughter met her current husband through one of those blind dates.

The young woman now has been married for three years and has two children. Her husband has been promoted four times by his employer, a bank, which has made it possible for her to quit her job and stay at home.

"I was so happy during Spring Festival this year, when my daughter told me she would thank me forever for having stopped her from marrying him," Yang says. "She realized she would never have the dream life she enjoys now if she married him."

Unlike Yang's daughter, Zhang Fan considers her mother's intervention or meddling in her relationship "a complete disaster."

The 29-year-old works as the general manager's secretary at a state-owned company, a fairly good and influential position for a young woman, but her love life is lagging far behind her career.

She broke up with her ex-boyfriend two years ago, a day before they planned to register for marriage and three weeks before the grand ceremony - they had already booked the banquet hall, bought the apartment and taken the happy wedding photos, among many other things.

"I know it's bad for a daughter to say so, but my mom is a big liability," Zhang explains. "She was the greatest, if not the only, reason that we broke up."

Zhang's mother, a widow for 10 years, considered Zhang her only hope and the light of her life. She gets upset when her daughter doesn't call her every day when she's out of town for travel or business trips.

She also insisted that she and the couple would live together after the marriage. The young couple resisted, but couldn't persuade her.

"We couldn't even touch the topic, she would always get out of control. It was clear that it was not for negotiation," Zhang recalls.

"But we naively hoped that the problem would naturally be solved, that my mom would suddenly get enlightened and realize that I'm not the only thing in her life or that she would become obsessed with a hobby and leave me alone.

"We thought that if we got married and insisted on living apart, she would just change her mind."

They went on preparing for a wedding, hoping it would be fine.

It wasn't.

Her mother threw a fit, shouting and calling Zhang "a traitor to the mother" who loved her and reared her. She called the fiance "a thief" trying to steal her daughter. The woman became paranoid and believed her daughter and son-in-law would abandon her in a few years, leaving her to rot in a home for the elderly.

"It was so out of control that we all got exhausted. When my ex-boyfriend said to me 'I just realized that you could turn out to be your own mother in the future'," Zhang said, "I couldn't get that out of my head and I knew it was over."