Made in China: A Memoir of Marriage and Mixed Babies in the Middle Kingdom

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Getting married in China can be a breath-taking, memorable and hopefully also a lifelong cultural experience, but my first Chinese wedding experience was not my own.

Patrick, my French-Canadian roommate in Sichuan University, in early 1996, was marrying the love of his life, a sweet local girl, and I was invited. Also invited were my friends Sasha from Vladivostok and fellow Russian roommate Pasha, who were the godfathers of the foreign students dormitory, and Radek from Poland. They were a jolly bunch and skilled in the art of heavy drinking, but also took their time in the local university gym very seriously, and certainly looked the part too. After leaving our hongbao (red envelopes containing newly-printed cash that was immediately counted and registered) out front, we grabbed some of the sweets and cigarettes on offer (many of the Chinese guests put the cigarettes behind their ears), and then, together with Sasha’s American girlfriend, Jennifer, were politely shown to our table. It was in a giant hotel ballroom with about a couple of hundred guests, and as the only foreigners, and as such treated as guests of honour, we were sitting right in front of the red silk-clad happy couple and the bride’s parents.

The Chinese students at Sichuan University called our drab, three-story building surrounded by a high wall with broken glass on top, the ‘Panda Building’, apparently because we were better protected than China’s most famous and cutest animal. Being rare and precious, I’d say we got at least as much attention at the party as the bridal couple.

After the obligatory tea ceremony where the couple bowed three times in front of her parents, it seems to me that every Chinese male in the room started to queue up in front of us. They saw it as their polite obligation to toast the foreign guests, and so they did, several times over. While I vividly remember the hundreds of anonymous people standing in line before me and the clear, strong Chinese liquor known as baijiu (pronounced bye Joe) that was thrown down with each toast, I remember almost nothing about the food, apart from the fact that it was an incredibly spicy hot pot. The succession of red faces quickly became a blur as the toasts came faster and faster. Also the alcohol-soaked table and the slippery floor, because many of the toasters, simply took the easy way out. I noticed that aspect just a little bit too late. When I finally collapsed in the Panda Building, I remember thinking that it had all happened at a trailblazing speed, the whole thing was over in just a couple of hours.

Although the many local Chinese traditions are definitely an important and fun part of getting married here, still tasting the Sichuanese baijiu even several days later during continuous and vicious hiccups, this was definitely not how I envisioned my own wedding.

I can’t help but consider myself luckier than Patrick, as Fu and I, on the first Saturday in December 2008, celebrated our betrothal with a relatively small gathering of family and friends. Fu, wore a stunning red silk wedding dress and I stood by the door passing out candy and cigarettes to the thirty some people we had invited. On the way in, many congratulated us with a "baitou xielao", to live together until the white hairs of old age, which I learned is a common blessing for Chinese newlyweds. Apart from Fu’s cousins who were apparently very hungry, no one was in a rush. Underneath the Chinese character for double happiness 囍, which is exclusively used for weddings, we had magnificent Sichuanese and Guangdong cuisine at a restaurant (more than four stars as the well-trained and beautiful young waitress repeatedly told us) managed by my brother-in-law, but owned by the air force and normally off-limits to foreigners. The fine red Bordeaux was not accompanied by any baijiu (in time, I learned to appreciate the finer nuances of the best-selling liquor in the world), but rather by huge glasses of peanut milk, not altogether a bad combination, but mostly because Fu and many of her family members would have been knocked to the ground with even the smallest amount of alcohol. It is a condition caused by an inherited deficiency in one of the enzymes involved in the breakdown of alcohol and results in almost immediate nausea, sweating, headache, racing heart, dizziness, along with facial flushing. It’s often called Asian flush or Asian glow, and it’s very common in East Asia.

While the majority of our guests spent the afternoon enjoying themselves drinking green tea, smoking and playing mahjong, which looks like dominoes but has rules similar to the card game Rummy, I have to admit that Fu and I sneaked out for a cup of Starbucks coffee. However, one of the benefits of being in a mixed Chinese-foreigner relationship is that most of us are going to have another wedding party at a later date.

In Chinese, how to say to marry... is gender specific. For women, Chinese use the character 嫁 (jia), comprising of ‘woman’ and ‘family’, which basically means that she will enter the man’s family. For men, they use 娶 (qu), comprising of ‘woman’ and ‘to take’, which clearly indicates what will happen. Traditionally, in China, the groom’s family pays for the entire wedding, and also have to deliver an apartment, a car (with parking space) and preferably both a PhD and a Beijing or Shanghai hukou–the Chinese household registration system that fixes people in their place, and which can be described as a modern form of serfdom. And that is just to get started! I know you should follow the lead of those who know the ropes, but still. Author of Leftover in China, Roseann Lake wrote Basically, marriage in China has the equivalent social force of a steamroller. It’s simply what one does.

We since went to many weddings in China and witnessed many both fun and romantic traditions and ceremonies, but often we felt that the bridal couple had no idea what they signified and why they were necessary. And that, most often, at a trailblazing speed that left even the ‘Fast and Furious’ movies looking slow. It was also frequently a fascinating cocktail of both Chinese and Western traditions, all orchestrated by an unknown toastmaster, working against the clock, fitting in as many traditions (real or invented) to the shortest amount of time possible.

The day before, we had shown up at a local government office whose sole task in this world is to marry or divorce Chinese citizens who are in relationships with foreigners. The cost of a marriage was sixteen yuan (about US$2.50), while a divorce cost close to half that at nine yuan. After entering what could best be described as an anonymous lobby in a nondescript, dull, ten-floor toilet-style Chinese office building plastered with drab whitish tiles and blue or black-tinted windows, a skinny office clerk in his late twenties approached us with a straight, slightly nervous expression.

Are you getting married or filing for a divorce? he asked.

We replied marriage, and his face lit up. He invited us to step inside and take out all the necessary documents. It had been next to impossible to find out exactly which documents we needed to bring, except my certificate of marriageability issued, translated and stamped by the Danish Embassy, so we were quite nervous. Some friends had even had to provide a letter from the parents of the Chinese partner including the fingerprints of both parents, giving permission for their daughter to marry a foreigner. Until 2003, it was mandatory to have a pre-marital check-up at the hospital to ask about tobacco and alcohol habits, check for venereal diseases as well as for leprosy, mental disorders, and other hereditary diseases, and to make sure that the future bride was a virgin. Afterwards, you also had to sit for a movie or talk about the use of contraceptives and how to make babies. I read in a local newspaper about a Chinese couple who, according to doctors’ orders, literally had ‘slept together’ for several years, but couldn’t understand why she was not getting pregnant. Now it was voluntary.

I would have liked to sit for the talk as it could have been fun, but then a slightly intimidating, heavy-set woman in her late forties, powerfully built with broad shoulders and with her black hair pulled sternly away from her face and rolled into a tight twist at the back of her head, stepped out, pointing stringently at the time. Even though it was only 10 am and the office was, except for us, absolutely empty, she glanced worriedly at the big clock in the hall, and asked us to come back after 1 pm, because she was afraid that we would infringe upon their two-hour lunch break.

Fair enough, this is China, and if there is one thing you quickly learn, it is that midday meal times (and the subsequent nap) are almost sacred. Having said that, we were apparently in luck that day because upon our return in the afternoon (after a visit to Fu’s favourite local restaurant which probably makes the best spicy noodles east of the Himalayas), after being interviewed by the clerk who meticulously dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s, and after receiving dozens of stamps here, there and everywhere on the documents, we were cordially married. Just like that, it was over. A little bit too quickly, with no ceremony, and not really what Fu or I had in mind when thinking of such a huge and important occasion in our lives. To make it a little romantic, I got down on one knee, looked Fu in the eyes and put the ring on her finger. We kissed and that was that. Later we went to one of the cosy teahouses in the peaceful Wenshu Monastery, dating back to the Tang dynasty, and in the evening went for great spicy Sichuan food with a few good friends.

Now newly-wedded, we went for a short honeymoon at a small mountain spa outside Chengdu, where we were the only guests in a rather deserted hotel. A few days later, we flew back to Beijing, where I made sure to carry my bride in through our rather narrow front door. According to Chinese beliefs, it should have been over a pan of burning coals to ensure a trouble-free labour in the event of a future pregnancy, but we were out of coal and the BBQ had been put away for the winter.

Many Chinese couples perform the official marriage registration months or even years before they embark on any kind of celebration. Many also go through very elaborate wedding photo sessions in picturesque or exotic locations such as in front of Christian churches and other Western-style buildings, even way before they actually get married. I just love to watch the happy couples lining up, often half a dozen at the same time, each with their own entourage, for their individual shoots, which often take the better part of a whole day, and involving numerous rented outfits both Western and Chinese-style, and sometimes even include bridesmaids. It’s fun to see that, when the bride lifts up her shining white wedding dress to actually be able to walk, you can often see that underneath she is wearing a pair of sneakers, and, in season, woollen long johns. The photo shoots are a little like getting a memory of something which has not yet taken place.

For us, this all happened on two typically damp, cold and misty Sichuan December days in 2008. It was a year of great significance for not only Fu and I, but also for China. It was the year of the Beijing Olympics in August, preceded by inescapable countdown clocks, and massive destruction of Beijing’s age-old houses and neighborhoods with the whole world watching. The change of pace in Beijing was overwhelming, but fitted very well with the Olympic slogan Faster, Higher, Stronger. The American journalist, Alex Pasternack described it really well when he wrote: It all happened so quickly that there wasn’t much time to consider what had been erased. Just time to get in (an orderly) line, move on (or move out to the suburbs), and stare slack-jawed at what replaced it all. We lived through it all, and even survived as a couple even though Fu was close to being thrown out of Beijing ahead of the Olympics because, at the time, God forbid it, we were living together without being married.

We made up for the lack of a romantic ceremony, and the absence of sun and warmth on our wedding day when, half a year later, on a beautiful Beijing Saturday in May, surrounded by our family and close friends, with nearly a hundred guests in all present, our marriage was blessed by a Danish priest. It took place near the old Drum Tower, in a charming Beijing rustic courtyard dating back centuries, which was covered in purple flowers from a large wisteria vine climbing up to lend shadow to where we were kneeling. As the wisteria symbolizes both love, reverence and longevity, it could hardly have been more romantic. It was a spine-tingling moment to cherish for life, and we had the most beautiful evening with delicious light and sophisticated spicy cuisine from the multi-ethnic province of Yunnan in southwest China, which we both love, and a Mongolian band played their rhythmic music accompanied by the characteristic throat singing that we had come to cherish so much. In the afternoon we took all the hundred guests for a successful publicity stunt, when we lined them up in front of the little shop my friend Lars Ulrik and I had opened just months before in the nearby popular Nanluogu Alley, selling historic maps of Beijing and China and old-school black and white postcards. Drawn by the crowds, Chinese and other tourists quickly started lining up as well. All in all, it was a great day and a perfect mix of Chinese and Danish traditions, the party continuing on to the early hours of Sunday morning, when the Chinese neighbors, understandably, wearing their pyjamas and slippers started coming, looking less happy about the music and noise. The only spoiler was that a few weeks before I had broken my right foot in a football game, so I was wearing my black suit on top of an oversized and ugly grey walking boot, and, not least, the fact that Fu couldn’t hide the baby bump on her milky white and later (after changing) red silk wedding dress.

The first time I really started to consider my life as a prospective father was when I was around twenty-two or twenty-three years old. One day, as I was staying in a small village in the southern province of Guangxi, I chanced upon an old soothsayer from the Yi ethnic minority who I still remember vividly. She stood only about 1.5 meters (less than five feet) tall, had more wrinkles than a Chinese Shar-pei puppy, and only a few crooked teeth left in her mouth, all stained a reddish-black, dyed from years of chewing betel nuts. She wore a big black turban with her white hair sticking out, and a cape over a simple blue and reddish set of clothes. Around her neck, dangling from her long earlobes, and wrapped around her wrists were elaborate and lovely pieces of silver jewelry. I believe (maybe naively) that I was the first foreigner she had ever set her beady black eyes on. She looked directly at me for a while and then took my left hand and turned it over and looked at my palm with a concentrated look on her face. Then she started to tell me what my future would be. Maybe because of the betel in her mouth or because she spoke only limited and broken Chinese, and my Chinese was very far from perfect at the time, I did not understand that much. However, what I did understand was that I would live to be 88 years old, and father no less than four children. After she finished predicting my future, almost to underscore her divination, she spat a red chunk of saliva on the ground dangerously close to my feet and left.

Fu and I had been trying for children for some months (Fu had long since given up smoking), even before we were married (please don’t tell anyone), but since nothing had really happened and considering we were both already in our mid-thirties, we began to wonder if everything was okay down there. This included me visiting a very local hospital to have ‘my everything’ looked at thoroughly, while struggling to keep the door closed to prevent people from peeking in. Ultimately, I was prescribed something probably derived from a poor dead animal or a fast-disappearing exotic forest somewhere in Southeast Asia. It wasn’t fair on my little boys to stand trial on such a hot and humid August day in Beijing anyway.

Then I did what probably quite a few Chinese, but very few foreigners, would consider normal. I invited a couple of friends out for a meal at the local restaurant called Guolizhuang, which translates into something like the contents of the pot will make you strong. Here we were shown into a small private room for a dinner consisting of mainly animal genitalia, which, according to Chinese beliefs, should increase male potency. To be more precise, a set menu which had been given the poetic name The Essence of the Golden Buddha was presented to us and it included not only ox, sheep and dog penis and testicles, but also a floating turtle and a sprinkle of seahorses. To my surprise, it was really tasty, although the dog penises were a little like eating a really old gummy bear. The waitress politely explained that our female companion should avoid eating the testicles, because it could give her both a deeper voice and even a beard. But she added that the penises would be fine for her to eat. Harmless