For the right price in China, just about anything can be faked — from Louis Vuitton bags to iPhones. But the latest instance of mass-manufactured fakery in China goes way beyond such mundane merchandise to include matrimonial matters — from fake marriages to fake divorces.
Last month, a sleepy little town in Chongqing provincial municipality in central China, considered the world’s most populous, recorded a sudden spurt in the number of civil weddings and divorces. Some 1,600 couples lined up for civil weddings — and nearly 850 couples for divorces — at Tushan town in Nan’an district, leaving staff at the marriage registrars overworked. Befuddled authorities even clamped a ban on divorces for a week from October 1, which marked the 60th anniversary of China’s founding as a modern nation-state.
In some cases, the ‘marriages’ lasted barely a few days. Bizarrely, one of the marriages solemnised was between a 52-year-old man and his 82-year-old bride — whom the groom carried into the registrars’ office on his back!
The murky matrimonial goings-on were easily explained: it turns out that Tushan town had been chosen as the site for a new project, and people from the town were being displaced. But the ‘compensation package’ for the displaced persons opened the door for these ‘shotgun weddings’ and ‘instant divorces’. That’s because each resident displaced from Tushan was to be paid 1,35,000 yuan (about $20,000 or Rs 10 lakh); but if s/he was married to an ‘outsider’, the partner would be paid 65,000 yuan. If they had a child, they were entitled to an additional 67,500 yuan in compensation.
The townsfolk of Tushan pulled out their calculators and reworked their familial relationships with an eye on maximising returns. A marriage license cost only 9 yuan, so if an unmarried resident (who would otherwise have got 1,35,000 yuan) married an outsider, the ‘couple’ would get 2,00,000 yuan; if the ‘outsider’ already had a child, the compensation would rise to 2,67,500 yuan.
At the next level, things got more complicated. A married couple of Tushan would be entitled to a total of 2,70,000 yuan; but if they got divorced, and each of them married an ‘outsider’, the collective compensation would rise to 4,00,000 yuan. And if each of them married outsiders with children, they would rake in 5,35,000 yuan!
Pretty soon, a marriage market cropped up. ‘Outsiders’ signed on to become ‘shotgun spouses’ for a price – which was as low as 10,000 yuan. Everyone walked away richer. Authorities told the local media they suspected shady goings-on, but were powerless to interfere in personal matters.
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