Taiwan Strait now no chasm for lovers
Source: Xinhua |
00:29 UTC+8 December 22, 2012
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IT used to be considered sleeping with the enemy.
Marriages across the Taiwan Strait, exceedingly rare during the long estrangement between Chinese mainland and Taiwan after the Kuomintang was defeated in a civil war and fled to the island in 1949, have blossomed with the thaw in relations.
Take Chen Chien-ming and Xiong Tingting, two students who first met in 2005 while participating in a cross-Strait exchange program in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Chen's major at National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan was called "studies of communist bandits" when the island was governed under martial law between 1948 and 1987. It is now called "mainland studies." He ended up marrying the mainland woman, who majored in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao studies at Peking University in Beijing.
When they finally tied the knot in Shanghai in 2007, their friends mocked them. No longer.
Both sides restarted communications across the Taiwan Strait in 1987, with Taiwan authority allowing military veterans to return to their hometowns on the mainland.
In 1988, about 100 cross-Strait couples registered for marriage. The number of such marriages increased dramatically in the following decade.
The year 2000 witnessed about 26,000 cross-Strait marriages and the total count has topped 330,000 so far, with nearly 20,000 cross-Strait marriages registered annually.
Cross-Strait marriages cause tension in some communities due to the fact that people from both sides are often unfamiliar with each other.
Ni Yanbao had problems getting her family in central China's city of Zhengzhou to accept her husband from Taiwan, as her parents did not trust him. In order to prove his innocence, Ni's husband took his elder sisters to visit Ni's family three times to explain their background.
Currently, Ni lives with her husband in Taipei, while Chen and Xiong have a home in Shanghai.
Chen works as a Shanghai-based public relations specialist for a Taiwan firm and spends most of his time on the mainland. Chen and Xiong's son is three years old and will have to decide whether he wants to be a mainland or Taiwan resident. "He will make his own decision when he turns 18. Both choices are fine to me," said Chen.
Marriages across the Taiwan Strait, exceedingly rare during the long estrangement between Chinese mainland and Taiwan after the Kuomintang was defeated in a civil war and fled to the island in 1949, have blossomed with the thaw in relations.
Take Chen Chien-ming and Xiong Tingting, two students who first met in 2005 while participating in a cross-Strait exchange program in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Chen's major at National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan was called "studies of communist bandits" when the island was governed under martial law between 1948 and 1987. It is now called "mainland studies." He ended up marrying the mainland woman, who majored in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao studies at Peking University in Beijing.
When they finally tied the knot in Shanghai in 2007, their friends mocked them. No longer.
Both sides restarted communications across the Taiwan Strait in 1987, with Taiwan authority allowing military veterans to return to their hometowns on the mainland.
In 1988, about 100 cross-Strait couples registered for marriage. The number of such marriages increased dramatically in the following decade.
The year 2000 witnessed about 26,000 cross-Strait marriages and the total count has topped 330,000 so far, with nearly 20,000 cross-Strait marriages registered annually.
Cross-Strait marriages cause tension in some communities due to the fact that people from both sides are often unfamiliar with each other.
Ni Yanbao had problems getting her family in central China's city of Zhengzhou to accept her husband from Taiwan, as her parents did not trust him. In order to prove his innocence, Ni's husband took his elder sisters to visit Ni's family three times to explain their background.
Currently, Ni lives with her husband in Taipei, while Chen and Xiong have a home in Shanghai.
Chen works as a Shanghai-based public relations specialist for a Taiwan firm and spends most of his time on the mainland. Chen and Xiong's son is three years old and will have to decide whether he wants to be a mainland or Taiwan resident. "He will make his own decision when he turns 18. Both choices are fine to me," said Chen.
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