Just married!

This morning Ling Ling and me were legally married, hip hip hurray! The event took place at the marriage registration bureau in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province. We had to go there because Ling Ling is born in that region, and thus has her hukou (registration) there. Nanchang is one of China's four "ovens", or hottest cities, which was especially true on this day in August. As if you're constantly chased by someone carrying a hairdryer.
We arrived in the late afternoon by plane from Xiamen, after some delays, but even late in the evening the air feels hot and heavy. We found a comfortable hotel right at 8.1 Square (八一广场）, not far from the two locations we had to visit the next morning.

The first location was a translation office where we had to go to translate my passport and a statement that I was not married, issued by the Dutch consulate in Guangzhou. The office was a bit hard to find, and turned out to be a department of Jiangxi University. Just one room with a couple of desks.
A teacher and an assistant (probably a student) were busy translating documents for a crowd of a dozen or so people who got there before us. It was a chaotic affair, but it did not take more than an hour to get it done, for a fee of 240 RMB. After that we jumped into a taxi to the marriage registration bureau, on the 26th floor of a large government building. The same group of people we met at the translation office assembled there, plus a handful of others. All were foreigners getting married with a Chinese. Mostly young Asian women marrying Chinese men, but also a Japanese man marrying a Chinese women, and a very old Chinese man in a wheelchair marrying a women at least 30 years younger. Possibly an overseas Chinese widower who returned to his home country to marry again, who knows. I was the only Westerner.

The two women behind the desk were having a hard time keeping everything under control. A lot of yelling and telling people to stand back and await their turn. Some couples were told to leave, because of unreadable stamps or suspected forgery of documents. Their bad luck. Our documents were approved, and we were requested to pose for the official photo in an adjacent room, in front of a red backdrop. The photo was placed in the marriage booklets (a slightly different copy for each of us), then another form was signed and fingerprinted, and after paying the 141 RMB fee, and a final oral confirmation that we indeed intended to get married (by saying "I do"), the deal was done.
It was just a few minutes before noon when we left. After a good lunch, we spent most of the afternoon in the comfortable Lavazza coffee house near our hotel, awaiting our trip back to the airport for the flight home.
It feels good to be married to my baby :)