Trip 3 - July 19 Marriage Day

The day started out well.  We were in a great mood. Breakfast at 9:00am that consisted of Noodles, Eggs and Pork.  Mmmm...

We headed for the marriage office in a government complex.  The first thing was kind of strange, there was a key in the door at the marriage hall.  Xin Jiao turned the key and locked us out. She was confused so I told her to turn it back the other way and we went inside.  I wondered if it was a test.

Sorry the photo is terrible.  It was the best one taken by the marriage administrator. 

We were in this large room and one woman who sat behind the desk. We handed our paperwork to her and she looked at it.  She even wanted to see the English originals to compare.

Then the woman asked questions and I could tell by the look on Xin Jiao's face the questions were not good.

The issue was in the understanding of the word "residence."  Apparently in China it means something a little different than in America.  All I did was fill in the blanks on the form provided by the American Consulate.  The question asked where is her residence and I wrote she lived in Guangzhou which is true but the woman in the marriage office wanted me to write where she was born which is Shaoguan which is where we are getting married.  In China the paperwork must be perfect.

The woman provided us a copy of a document written in Cantonese that I needed to have translated into English, sign and have re-translated back into Cantonese.  So we had to go back to the lawyers office and thewording is renegotiated between the marriage office and the lawyers office and they came up with a new letter for me to sign.

Basically I had to sign a letter saying that I was stupid and filled out the form incorrectly and that I understood that she was born in Shaoguan.  This way no Chinese official made a mistake.  I swallowed my pride, signed it, and now we are married.

After we finished the woman told Xin Jiao that she knows about the error in the paperwork and that I should convence the consulate to change the wording of their paperwork.  I told them that we were talking about the American Government and Chinese Goverment changing things.  The woman laughed.

No, I will not let anyone see the signed form in English saying I am stupid.  All evidence will be destroyed and buried in China's politcal paperwork vault and believe me they believe in paperwork.