Learning lessons in marriage

It became legal for students to wed 10 years ago but some young couples find it tough to adapt

Fan Jingyu, a junior student at Xi'an International Studies University in Northwest China's Shaanxi province, married her boyfriend in 2013. Just eight years earlier, it would have been impossible for the two undergraduates to wed.

Until 2005, Chinese undergraduates were not allowed by law to marry while studying at university. Ministry of Education regulations at the time stipulated that if they decided to marry, they had to quit college.

But this began to change in 2005, when the ministry scrapped the rule, saying that undergraduates' freedom to wed would no longer be restricted under China's Marriage Law and Marriage Registration Regulations.

The new rule, which took effect from September that year, meant that undergraduates - men aged 22 and above, and women aged 20 and above - could get married as they wished, like other Chinese citizens.

Fan, 24, says she was lucky to have been studying at a time when the ban was lifted. "Otherwise, I would have had to make a choice between marriage and study."

She met her future husband when she went to study at the University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil, as a one-year exchange student in 2012. He was a student at that university and is three years older than her.

"We soon fell in love and went to register for marriage in San Paulo a year later, before I returned to China," says Fan, who graduated from the Xi'an university last year and now lives and works in the Brazilian city.

She says that when she married she did not have to comply with any procedures from her university.

"I was not asked to hand in any applications I just told my teachers and classmates I was getting married and all of them wished me a happy marriage."

Lao Kaisheng, director-general of the National Research Society of Education Policies and Laws, welcomes the abolition of the restriction.

"It had infringed the civil rights of undergraduates, who should have enjoyed the same freedom to marry as other Chinese citizens after reaching the legal age," says Lao, who is also a professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing.

"It's good to see that the Education Ministry abolished the restriction 10 years ago to make student management regulations at universities comply with the law," he says.

Although the ban was lifted, undergraduates' willingness to marry has not changed much in the past 10 years.

A survey conducted in 2012 on Renren.com, a social networking website popular among college students, showed that only 17 percent of such students were willing to marry while at university.

Lao says he received wedding invitations from some of his graduate students in the past 10 years, but none from his undergraduate students. "Only a minority of undergraduates are getting married at university in China," he says.

Zhou Xiaopeng, director of the Marriage Research Institute under Baihe.com, a dating website, says most undergraduates get married on the spur of the moment.

"As young people, they are keen to make promises, and a key way of doing that is to get married."

Fan says her marriage was, to some extent, the product of a sudden impulse.

"When I had to leave Sao Paulo in 2013, I couldn't bear to be separated from my boyfriend. I wanted to stay with him forever, so I married him," she says.

Some students get married because of unexpected pregnancies.

A 23-year-old woman in Chong-qing, who declined to give her name, is one example. She married her boyfriend, also her middle-school classmate, in November last year, when she was a senior student at a local university.

"We had been in love for years and had planned to register for marriage after I graduated from university in June this year," she says.

"We finally had to marry earlier because I conceived. We want the baby to have a complete family when he or she is born."

But she says she had felt scared about having a family. "I was not sure whether I was ready to give birth to and raise a baby."

"I was also worried about our finances. Questions of whether we were capable of supporting a family kept haunting me and made me nervous."

But her husband was running his own business and earning good money, which helped her to decide to get married.

Zhou from Baihe.com says finances play a key role in marriages.

She suggests undergraduates ensure they can feed themselves and run a family before deciding to marry.

"Otherwise, they may soon encounter a crisis in married life," she warns, adding that marriage is not only about love and romance but more about making a lasting promise to the partner and maintaining a family together.

"Most undergraduates rely totally on their parents before graduating and entering society. They are unable to afford a family of their own under such circumstances and are therefore unable to make real promises to their partners," Zhou says.

Shen Ying, a senior marriage expert at Jiayuan.com, a dating website in China, says some undergraduates who marry while at college do not realize the difficulty of making a living and running a family until they graduate.

"Life is not easy, especially when you first enter society as a fresh graduate," Shen says. "Couples who marry at university may have disputes over economic issues if they are not financially prepared."

The problems may not end there. University couples who marry face a wide range of other challenges, from setting a common goal for life to how to understand and tolerate each other.

This calls for young couples to address the situation with some skill and wisdom, according to Zhou.

"But young undergraduates are immature and lack enough experience to handle such issues, which may lead to a marriage crisis or even divorce," she says.

A Chongqing resident who asks to be identified by her surname, Xiao, says her university marriage failed for this reason. The 28-year-old married a man two years older than her in 2009, when she was a junior student at a university in Chongqing.

"He was a cousin of my roommate at the university," Xiao says. "He treated me well and cared for me a lot. I was moved, and agreed to marry him."

But the marriage lasted for just six months. At the beginning of the fourth year at university, the woman ended the unhappy union, saying it resulted from pressure imposed by her husband.

"He would make repeated telephone calls to me when I hung out with friends to ensure that I was not with a man. We quarreled a lot over this," Xiao says, adding that her former husband had not behaved like this before they married.

Because of her experience, Xiao has a negative view of undergraduates marrying while at college, saying: "As undergraduates, they are too young to understand marriage."

For a stable and happy marriage, Jiayuan.com's Shen suggests that undergraduates discuss every aspect with their partners before marrying.

"There are so many decisions to make together, like choosing a city to settle down in, figuring out the financial resources and way of spending money," she says.

"Don't underestimate these things. They are ... really crucial in married life."

Shen also suggests that undergraduates try to get to know their partners as much as possible, and to make sure that they marry for love.

"You will then find that love helps you to overcome difficulties and solve problems in married life," she says.

Zhou says there are generally three steps for a romantic relationship to evolve into marriage - getting to know each other, trusting each other and making a promise to each other.

"It takes some time to complete the three steps, so I suggest that people, especially undergraduates, take at least one or two years for the steps before getting married," she says.

Contact the writers through zhaoxinying@chinadaily.com.cn