When 33-year-old Elaine Chen met her Chilean ex-husband three years ago in Beijing, she believed that she finally found "the one." Despite the fact that they spoke different languages and came from diverse cultures, the two leapt into marriage one month after they met.
"He is handsome and he has lived in Japan for several years. Since I studied Japanese language and cultural for many years, we had a lot to talk about," Chen said.
"Besides, he and I share the same eagerness to start a family, so we decided to take a leap of faith," she said.
Chen had no idea that only four months later they would be divorced.
"I guess the tragic result was mainly due to lack of understanding each other's past and character before we were married; the different cultural backgrounds caused tension and communication issues and we fought a lot because of that."
In recent years, the number of cross-national marriages in China has made a noticeable increase. According to a August 2015 report by news portal cankaoxiaoxi.com, the website of a daily newspaper run by the Xinhua News Agency, cross-national couples that are married in Beijing have increased by about 1,000 every year over recent years.
Cross-national marriages have a sense of romance; two people falling in love and tying the knot after they travel through the world and find each other. Unfortunately, they also have a high divorce rate, according to Shi Qingpan, a cross-national marriage lawyer from S&P Law Firm in Beijing. Shi said that in recent years, cross-national marriage divorce rates have witnessed a steady growth.
A staff from Beijing Civil Affairs Department told Metropolitan that in recent years, the divorce cases are increasing. There were 173 cases in 2013, 203 cases in 2014 and 254 cases in 2015. Those numbers do not include the divorces in process and ones handled overseas.
Shi said according to his observation and experiences in cross-national divorce cases, the top reasons that these marriages end are cultural differences, conflicts on how to raise their children, extramarital affairs and long-term separation caused by work or visa problems.
According to a Southeast Business Daily's report on July 2013, the cross-national marriage divorce rate reached 20 percent in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province the first half of that year, excluding the divorces processed overseas. The top reasons behind the divorces were lack of communication, the different styles of daily life brought on by cultural differences and long periods of separation.
The truth hurts
For Chen, one of the main flaws in her marriage that led to divorce was the lack of understanding her ex-husband's past.
Before they got married, Chen's ex-husband told her that he divorced once before, in Chile and he has a son.
However, after they were married, he began to let out more information little by little. He revealed he had a son when he was at university and another son with his ex-wife in Chile and he married and divorced again while he was living in Japan.
"It was not that his complicated history startled me, but his lying showed a lack of sincerity in our marriage," Chen said.
"I guess that's one of the disadvantages in cross-national marriage; you don't really know what that person had been like before he or she came to China."
According to Chen, she never had the chance to meet her ex-husband's parents, and because of the language and culture barriers, she was not able to have much communication with his friends either, which added to her inability to know her husband more.
"If I dated a Chinese man, it would have been much easier for me to get to know him," Chen said.
Shi said in cross-national marriages, it is much more difficult to know a person completely. He has handled many cases where one partner hides that they had previously been married in another country and when the facts surface, it hurts the relationship.
Shi said cross-national couples should try to spend a lot of time communicating and getting to know each other's friends and family before getting married.
Shi added that cross-national couples also face conflict related to children's education.
