How and why did I get married in China at the ripe old age of 51?
I can understand if you’re scratching your head.
Getting married in China as a foreigner, and a mature one at that, isn’t the most conventional path in life.
Let me take you back to the very beginning and start with a little background.
I had always wanted to get married
Ever since I was a child, I determined that there were a number of life goals that I wanted to achieve.
My goals were to go to university, get a professional job, get my driver’s license, buy a house, and get married. I achieved the first goal in 1993, the fourth goal in 2012 and the second goal a year later.
But as a shy and reserved man, the last goal (to get married) eluded me for many years.
I was never able to get a date for my school Summer Balls. If I’m being honest with myself, I became increasingly desperate as the years went on.
I finally decided to join a dating agency and met my first serious girlfriend at the relatively late age of 21.
Unfortunately, there were a number of problems in the relationship and we broke up a few years later.
I was not to find love again until I was 37 years old. Unfortunately, this girl wasn’t my Miss Right either.
Then the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 hit.
It put me out of work for four years, forcing me to consider moving overseas for employment.
My first Chinese girlfriend
I finally decided to leave the UK and teach English in China.
Just a few weeks short of my 40th birthday, I decided to join a dating website called China Love Cupid and started exchanging messages with numerous Chinese girls.
It was through this website that I met my first Chinese girlfriend, whose name was Angela.
Angela and I got along like a house on fire. Even though we lived in different cities, we would still chat with each other for an hour every evening on QQ (one of the popular apps in China).
Angela’s sex drive has to be experienced to be believed and we spent many a morning romping on my hotel bed whenever I went to see her.
Angela was also able to play badminton and table tennis and we would also go to the cinema together and have many dinner dates too.
Since we were getting along so well, pretty soon we started discussing the issue of marriage. She asked for a 700,000 RMB (yuan) apartment and a 200,000 RMB bride price.
This equates to about US$120,000 or £100,000!
The woman I got married to (not Angela). Image supplied by Kim Ooi.
The apartment could only be in her hometown and nowhere else because she wouldn’t leave her widowed mother.
My parents on the other hand, felt that if we were to provide the dowry and the apartment, Angela should be the one to move to where I was, since it was the duty of every wife to live with her husband, wherever he might be.
We eventually broke up because I was unable to find a job in her hometown and she wasn’t prepared to wait a year for me to try again.
That’s how I blew my first chance of getting married in China!
My second Chinese girlfriend
My next Chinese girlfriend went by the name of Cao.
We met via the same dating website where I had met Angela but she was very different from Angela.
Cao assured me that she wouldn’t need a dowry or an apartment and on our first date, she even paid for my hotel room and most of my meals.
Once she had me in her clutches however, the demands came thick and fast.
She wanted 300,000 RMB a year to fund her daughter’s education in the US and also demanded a 300,000 RMB car for her birthday.
This totals around US$80,000 or £65,000!
We didn’t just argue about money.
I was exasperated once because she hadn’t been willing to make a 30-minute journey on the subway to meet me when I had gone all the way from Zhenjiang to Shanghai to meet her.
Cao said that it wasn’t safe for a woman to travel on the subway alone and accused me of “Not knowing how to look after a woman”.
She wanted to be the boss in the relationship and even wanted me to hand over all my wealth to her.
We also argued over the issue of co-habitation. I had suggested that we live together as an experiment to see how well we get along before getting married but she said that in Chinese culture, co-habitation meant committing to marriage.
Eventually, I lost my second chance of getting married in China when my father declined to help fund Cao’s daughter’s education and I wasn’t able to do that on my own.
The date from Hell
I went back on China Love Cupid and this time, I met a girl called Sophie who was from Chengdu.
She was a teacher of Chinese, English and French but was unemployed at the time.
Sophie suffered from depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.
She was always looking behind her to check that she hadn’t left anything behind, was extremely controlling, used me as a wallet or personal ATM and was very bad-tempered.
Her punctuality was atrocious, and she would sometimes keep me waiting for over two hours.
I had intended to spend my entire winter break with Sophie but we argued so much that I cut my trip short and went back home after just a fortnight.
That date traumatized me so much that I swore that I wouldn’t ever want to be in a relationship with a woman again!
That would blow my chances of getting married in China for good but I was so upset that I didn’t care.
How I finally got married in China
In any city in China, you’ll be able to find thousands of shops and small businesses.
When I was living and working in Zhenjiang, there was a small sundry shop near my campus that I frequently went to.
The shop assistant was gorgeous and had a great personality to boot. I was smitten.
So, I began to go to that shop regularly to buy my groceries. The assistant told me that her name was Hong Hu and that she was 32 and divorced with a son.
When the summer vacation began, I went back to the UK but in September 2019 we started dating.
Since my Chinese wasn’t too good and Hong Hu couldn’t speak a word of English, we chatted via WeChat.
We were a constant source of amusement to the waiters – a man and a woman sitting together at a table, silently tapping on their phones and not saying a word to each other!
Around March the following year, Hong Hu started asking me for money. I was very reluctant to lend her money as I knew that this was a tactic that romance scammers use to extort money from their victims.
But I was impressed when she paid me back.
As time went on, she began to depend more and more on me for financial support whilst she provided me with emotional support. This is the deal that we have to this day.
When my university declined to renew my contract and I was at risk of having to leave China and return to the UK, possibly for good, the first thing she said to me was: “We must not be separated under any circumstances”!
I agreed, so that’s how we ended up registering our marriage.
Hong Hu was the first and only girlfriend I had in China who didn’t require an apartment.
All she wanted was for someone to provide for her and pay off her debts. That was something that was finally within my means, with some help from my father.
The marriage process in China
In order for me, a foreigner, to marry a Chinese citizen, first we had to prepare a number of documents.
This included a scanned copy of my passport, proof of address in China, and an affirmation that I was legally free to marry.
If you’re a UK citizen like me, the process for obtaining the affirmation is outlined on this British government website so I won’t go into all the details here.
It’s a straightforward process so long as you bring all the documents to the embassy, including your prospective Chinese spouse’s ID card and household registration (Hukou).
I was asked to swear an oath that I was legally free to marry, before being given my Certificate of No Impediment. For UK citizens, this is in both English and Chinese.
Hong Hu and I then went to a photo studio to get three photos of us sitting together.
My Chinese wife and I enjoying a meal. Image supplied by Kim Ooi.
The following day, we got up early to visit the marriage bureau in Guiyang, which is the nearest big city to my partner’s hometown.
At the marriage bureau, we were asked to fill in a form in Chinese (Hong Hu did it for me) and hand that over together with the documentation that we brought.
A clerk then took more photos of me and Hong Hu. Thumb prints were taken too.
The clerk then handed over our marriage booklets, and that was it, we were married.
It’s unbelievably cheap to register a marriage in China. My wife paid and I don’t know how much she handed over, but I believe it’s the price of a cheap lunch.
For me and my wife, there was a great urgency to get married because at the time I had less than a month before my residence permit expired.
So, there was no ceremony, no fanfare, no reception and no exchange of gifts.
However, my father paid my wife’s family a dowry or bride price totaling 220,000 RMB (US$30,000 or £24,000) and will be arranging a wedding reception for us in the summer.
The problems we faced after getting married in China
Whoever said that marriage is the hardest job in the world was certainly right. We faced numerous problems as a married couple.
I generally feel more comfortable being cold whilst my wife prefers it warm.
I also snore, which kept my wife up at night. We ended up sleeping in separate bedrooms, much to my disappointment.
I have a poor memory due to hydrocephalus.
One day, my wife told me that we were going to a very important dinner with her parents and gave me a list of instructions – dress well, remember to bring a gift, etc. I remembered to dress well but totally forgot the gift, so she got rather angry.
I felt unhappy about the lack of notice or explanations given by my wife. She might come home and out of the blue, say “We’re going to Place X now, please get ready”.
My father faced significant problems transferring her dowry to China. The money that we were told would arrive within three working days took well over a week.
In the meantime, she was giving me a hard time and calling me unreliable and untrustworthy.
She has tried to control every aspect of my life. For instance, she tried to dictate how often I should change my clothes, what I should wear, how often I should take a shower, cut or wash my hair.
I’m used to cutting my hair fairly short and then not having another haircut for a couple of months, so I wasn’t happy when she tried to make me cut my hair once a fortnight.
During the recent Spring Festival celebrations, the amount of money that I was expected to spend on red packets literally gave me palpitations.
I was very angry at being left out of the family mahjong game and left to twiddle my thumbs alone for four whole hours just because I didn’t know how to play the game.
Hong Hu also once told me “My friends called me out to drink, bye!” Why couldn’t she have taken me with her?
Unless we both eventually calm down and are able to resolve these issues satisfactorily, a future appearance at the divorce courts is a distinct possibility.
Feel free to comment or ask me any questions about marriage in China further down.
Some of my other articles
I hope you liked my article about tying the knot in China.
You might like my other articles too:
And, don’t forget…
The internet is censored in China
So, if you do intend on coming over here, for marriage or just to travel around, you’ll need a virtual private network (VPN) on your phone and laptop.
This is one of the few VPNs that work in China:
Otherwise, check out this page for more info on China VPN. And remember you must download it before you arrive.
Government resources for China marriage
Main image credit: Image supplied by Kim Ooi.
FAQ about getting married in China
If I marry a Chinese citizen can I live in China?
Yes, but whether you’re allowed to work depends on your visa.
Is it easy getting married in China?
It’s relatively easy. You and your spouse just need to gather the relevant documentation.
Where can I get married in China?
You need to go to the marriage registration office that is the closest to the town where your Chinese partner is registered (their ‘hukou’).
Can two foreigners get married in China?
No.
