When I came to Beijing as a fresh college grad in February 2012, I hoped to learn Mandarin, reflect on my Chinese roots and return to the US with skills that would make me more hirable. I had no idea that I would run into my future husband while late to class on Xueyuan Road. No idea that we would bond over bowls of spicy malaxiangguo or bellow together like Tarzan from the top of Beijing’s Fragrant Hills. Later, we found out that we had moved to China on the exact same flight, on the exact same day. Valentine’s Day.
Because we had met, dated and fallen in love in China, we thought it was only fitting that we tie the knot here, too. We decided to sign the papers when my mother visited in the spring.
Compared to other official procedures, getting a marriage certificate in China is a fairly realizable task. If you’re a foreigner marrying another foreigner, all you need are your passports, an official photo as a couple and notarized statements from your respective embassies in which you aver you’re unmarried.
I sheepishly bypassed the masses of Chinese nationals outside the US embassy, my blue passport a golden ticket to cut in line, and started filling out a form at the area for US citizen services. When the notary called me up, he had me raise my right hand and swear that I had never been married, before he pressed an eagle-bearing seal into the plain white paper. He was the first person to congratulate me on my upcoming nuptials.
The US embassy’s form was written in both English and Chinese, but my soon-to-be husband’s home country, Canada, only printed its statement in English and French. Knowing we would need a Chinese translation, I typed it out myself in a Word document and ran my final text by my Chinese teachers. To this day, I cannot fathom why I thought this layman’s translation would be acceptable, considering that practically every bureaucratic step of every bureaucratic process in China must be completed by an arm of the bureaucracy itself. I chalk up my gigantic lapse in judgment to premarital giddiness.
Because my mother’s visit coincided with a local holiday, the marriage registration office would only be open on one day that worked with all of our schedules. The office occupied the second floor of a senior citizen services center in an old Beijing hutong. I clicked in on high heels, decked out in a dress flecked with glitter from a peach rose bouquet my mom had bought for the occasion. My fiancé’s tie dangled above the registration table as he leaned over to hand the office worker our papers. Our formalwear was a magnet for stares amongst the other couples’ track pants and sneakers.
It wouldn’t have been a true China marriage unless a hiccup gave the otherwise smooth procedure an interesting wrinkle. The stern-faced clerk announced that since one of our Chinese translations wasn’t done by an official company, we couldn’t get married. In an attempt to squeak past this rule, we wheedled. We argued. But nothing we said could shift her stance or crack her facial expression. We began to despair that my mother wouldn’t be able to see us sign the papers – it was nearly 3 PM, and our appointment period ended at 4.
A less impassive staffer suggested we find a nearby translation office; the translation shouldn’t take long. I did a quick Baidu Maps search to suss out the closest contenders. Four years in China had taught me to call ahead to confirm that the venues in question were manned or even existent, so I began dialing down the list of search results. The first was closed and the second had long been out of business, but eventually I got ahold of a man who assured me he was indeed open and able to translate a one-page document within 15 minutes. His office was nearly three kilometers away. Being the only person present in flat shoes, my fiancé volunteered to flag down a cab and rush the document over, leaving my mom and I to wring our hands in the waiting area, willing him to return in time.
Just shy of 4 PM, beaming, he sprinted back into the office like a comic book superhero. The staffers must have been secretly rooting for us, because they ushered us into the marriage registration room, even though we were practically out of time. We sat down across from yet another clerk and giddily began filling in forms, scribbling out passport numbers and dates of birth. After my camera-toting mom was told that photos weren’t allowed, she just became sneakier with her snapshots.
The clerk stamped our completed forms and adhered our couple photos into small red booklets that bore the date and our names; the Chinese version of a marriage certificate. She handed these to us with a quick “congratulations.” I couldn’t believe it. We were married!
Although the official paperwork was complete, social customs demanded one final step. We walked down the hall to the room in which couples hold up their red booklets in their first photos as husband and wife. The corny, bright red backdrop was adorned with fireworks, Chinese lanterns and drawings of lion dancers, but I loved every cheesy detail. We took some 20 photos in a row that day, and there’s not a bad shot among them. We couldn’t stop smiling.
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