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Student couple's wedding arouses public interest
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-05-07 10:42
The wedding of a junior student and her fiance in the northern China
municipality of Tianjin over the week-long May Day holiday has aroused the
widespread interest of the local media and general public alike.
Wang Yang, a student with the Tianjin Teachers' University, invited over 20
classmates and most of her friends and relatives to her wedding at a four-star
hotel in downtown Tianjin at the start of the holiday.
Wang Yang and Liu Hang make pledges at their
marriage ceremony held in Tianjin on May 1. Wang is a 23-year-old
junior at Tianjin Normal University and Liu Hang is a doctorate at Tianjin
University. China's marriage regulation, into effect on October 1 last
year, allows any one up to the marriage age to marry. Before that,
students were not allowed to marry while studying for their
degrees.[newsphoto] |
She is the first full-time student in Tianjin ever to host sucha wedding,
which has received wide coverage by the local media. A Shanghai-based TV station
even broadcast her wedding live.
"I didn't mean to call anyone's attention," said Wang, 23. "I just felt a
student has the right to celebrate the most exciting occasion in her life like
anyone else, now that China has removed the ban on marriage on campus."
East China's Shandong University based in the Shandong provincial capital
Jinan was the first in China to remove the 24-year-old ban on marriage and
childbirth on campus.
At the start of the spring semester this year, the university issued a
provisional regulation allowing students to marry and have children as long as
they were of age according to relevant laws on marriage and family planning.
Boys over 22 and girls over 20 can get married at school, and astudent couple
should be at least 23 and 25 years old respectivelyto have a child, says the
regulation, citing the legal age.
The school also requests the new mother to stay away from schoolwork for one
year in order to take care of the baby and recuperate herself.
When nationwide colleges and universities started to recruit again in 1977,
after the 10-year Cultural Revolution, many students who stood out in the
competitive exam were already in their late 20s or even 30s and had to leave
their spouses and children to receive higher education.
The increasing number of teenage students in the following years led to a
regulation in the 1980, in which China's education authorities outlawed marriage
and childbirth on campus. Some schools even forbade students to date in the
early 1980s.
In 1990, the Ministry of Education included the marriage ban inits code for
college students.
But ever since China simplified procedures for marriage application in
October 2003, schools had less track of the students' marital status.
According to the new procedure, a couple no longer have to get a written
approval bearing the official seal of an administrative department. They only
need to present their identification cards to be declared man and wife by the
marriage registration offices of the civil affairs authority.
The school authorities said they had removed the ban mainly to show respect
for the students' rights and choices, and vowed to provide student couples with
care and necessary help.
Wang said she was confident that married life would not conflict with her
study. "It'll be a driving force instead becausewe'll encourage each other to
move towards our established goals."
Wang's bridegroom Liu Hang has a full-time job and is studying for a doctor's
degree at the prestigious Tianjin University in hisspare time, and Wang herself
plans to go on to graduate school next year.
"To get married is not a spur-of-the-moment idea," said Liu. "We're fully
prepared to shoulder the responsibilities of married life and my single income
is enough to cover our daily expenses."
Their parents and teachers have all voiced support for their decision, saying
they are adults and are capable of choosing theirown life.
Wang Jie, an associate researcher with the Tianjin Academy of Social
Sciences, said "the society should show more understandingto the student couple,
as long as they can find a balancing point between family life and campus life."
Though most students say the policy marks the birth of a more humane and
personalized school management system, many think it is"nothing to do with us"
after all because they are under too much pressure from schoolwork and the job
market
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