In the Mencius, a man asks why it was so hard for the gentlemen of old to take office. Mencius answers with marriage. “If, without waiting for the command of their parents and the words of a matchmaker, they bore holes to peep at each other and climb over walls to meet, then their parents and everyone in the state despise them.” (不待父母之命、媒妁之言，钻穴隙相窥，逾墙相从，则父母、国人皆贱之。)
“The men of old always wanted office,” Mencius goes on. “But they hated to go there by an improper way. Going by an improper way is like boring holes in the wall.”