Tyranny of distance

According to legal experts, many Chinese couples divorce after relocation overseas. Gao Erqiang

"I don't know how this has happened to me," he says.

Like many ambitious young people in China, Sun, born in Shanghai in 1973, went to the United States in 1995. Now a software engineer, he earns an annual salary of $100,000.

"We've entered a stable stage of our life," he tells China Daily in a telephone interview. "But our marriage is ending."

He says that he met Zhang Yanping, his separated wife, in 1991. "She is my first girlfriend and the only woman I have ever been with," he says.

The two had been separated a lot since Sun moved to Hong Kong in 1993 with his parents' family and then to the United States. They married in 1996 and had their first child, a boy, in 1999. The two lived apart in the first five years of their marriage until in 2001, Zhang finally managed to get her US visa.

In 2005, the wife became pregnant again. According to the husband, since last year she has been getting closer and closer to a mutual friend of theirs, an American man who is 29 years older than her. One month after she gave birth to their baby daughter, Sun says, she began to go to this man's home everyday.

"I have tried to persuade her not to go, but she simply ignores me," says the husband. "I have never changed (my love) for her, it is she who has changed."

Last November, Sun filed for divorce at the Superior Court of California, County Santa Clara. Three further litigations followed. Upon calling, Zhang Yanping's lawyer Monica J. Asplund, said she would not divulge any information before getting approval from her client. "But I can tell you we have lots of evidence," she says. She did not call back.

Tang Jian'an, a divorce lawyer in Shanghai, says that problems often occur when a couple has to live apart for a long time.

"In this case, they do not have a very sound base at the beginning of their marriage as they had been living apart for a long time," he says.

"When the wife finally went to the United States, she would have faced attractions not just from men, but also from a totally different culture."

Tang says that he had received many clients who have had problems with their marriage when one in a couple went abroad. "As a whole, Chinese people are now more open-minded about divorce," he adds.

Wu Dong, a Shanghai lawyer who is studying in the United States, says that he knows many Chinese couples that divorced after going abroad.

More than one million Chinese people have gone overseas for study in the past 20 years. In 2006 alone, the figure stood at 140,000.

"After 911, the United States applied tighter visa controls and many couples had to live apart because of it," says Tian Tian, a 30-year-old who is studying at a university in New York State.

"Those who live in China can't get a visa to America and those who are in America do not go back because of the worry that they will not be able to come back."

In 2006, Dong Ming, 49, filed to Tianjin Dongli District People's Court to divorce his wife whom he had not seen for years.

Dong, from Guangdong Province, works as a researcher in the United States after finishing his PhD program there. He posted an advertisement for a wife on Internet and on March 2001 Ren Xuan, from Tianjin, saw it. They chatted online for half a year, met in September 2, 2001, and married in 10 days.

But Dong had to go back for work. In order to reunite with Dong, Ren had been trying to secure an American visa but failed.

"It is not easy to be alone in a place with a totally different culture," Tian Tian says. "Going abroad does force many couples apart.

"Even when they both in the same country, they often have to live in different cities for study or work. And some live apart even after finishing their degree, when one wants to stay and one wants to go back. In that situation, people tend to find solace from those who are closest to them.

"Many men who go back first have an affair because many young girls consider overseas returnees wealthy and with a better future and go after them."

Tian says that many of her Chinese girl friends insisted on staying in the United States for fear that their husbands would become too popular back home.

"But there are couples who become closer after coming to America, because they have only each other to depend on," she says. "And you have less influence from families."

Sun Hua, 27, moved to Osaka, Japan with his parents from Weihai, Shandong Province, when he was 18. He is now studying for a PhD in computer science at Osaka University. In one week, he will welcome his wife from Guangxi Zhuang Automonous Region to their home in Osaka.

The two met on the Internet four years ago and Sun has been to Shanghai. They married in June.

"We have just started and I will try my best to make the marriage happy," he says.

Sun Yijun's divorce is still ongoing. When he flew back to Shanghai in May to settle a dispute with his wife's family over property, they had fierce arguments. This ended up with a visit to a police station.

Wu Taohong, Zhang's mother, said at the station that Sun and his father went to the apartment that morning and Sun grabbed her right hand and beat her on the head.

"The two later grabbed my head and feet and carried me out of the room," according to Wu's report from the station. "This apartment belonged to my daughter and Sun," says Wu. But Sun says that his father gave him the apartment when he was 16. Sun and the wife's family members sued each other over it.

He came back to the United States days later and found the wife was appealing for a restraining order to keep him away from their two children, herself, and her American boyfriend. She presented the Superior Court of California with testimonies provided by her three family members in Shanghai, which claimed Sun had threatened to kill her and the two kids on his last visit to the hometown.

"Sun yelled to us, 'I will kill you, I will kill your son and his family ... I will kill your daughter and our two children when I get back to America'," Zhang Xuefu, the father of Zhang Yanping, said in his testimony.

But Sun says that the testimony is pure lies and has taken defamation action against his three ex-in-laws. "In no condition, would I have wanted to kill them," he says. Both Zhang Xuefu and his lawyer Jiang Tao declined to comment upon being called.

But the wife has got the order and under it Sun must be stay 300 yards away from the two kids, aged 8 and 1.

(China Daily 08/22/2007 page18)