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



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.

 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 a student couple should be at least 23 and 25 years old respectively to 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 in its 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 because we'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 his spare 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 their own life.

 Wang Jie, an associate researcher with the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences, said "the society should show more understanding to 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.
 

Editor: Wings