Since the founding of the Chinese Republic in 1911, well-educated Chinese women have not looked happily on polygamy. Their convictions were solidified and shared by millions of other Chinese wives when Red China tightened the marriage laws, making monogamy not only legal but practically mandatory. These improvements in the status of Chinese women have not gone unnoticed in Hong Kong, where a British, Christian, monogamous community finds itself in the embarrassing position of tolerating plural marriage among its Chinese subjects long after the institution has been outlawed in China.
There is nothing in this thorny problem which lends itself to edicts and sweeping judgments. It is charged with the most delicate emotional considerations, involving not only the legality of existing marriages, the legitimacy of offspring and the fundamental rights of women, but also the division of property and the inheritance of estates. Colony officials are aware that the work of solving it must be approached with the greatest subtlety.
To begin with, there are six kinds of marriages to be considered, all with different premises. Two are classified as Chinese Modern Marriages; those contracted in Hong Kong under Nationalist China laws, and those contracted in China or any other place outside the colony under the same Nationalist laws. Marriages contracted under Chinese custom as it existed and was recognized in 1843 are Chinese Customary Marriages. Marriages under the colony’s laws, Christian or otherwise, are called Registry Marriages. There are also Reputed Marriages, which is the colony designation for common-law marriages, and, finally, a group called Foreign Marriages, which includes all those contracted outside the colony under foreign laws, particularly those performed and registered in Red China under its monogamous marriage law. Thus, the usually simple question, “Are you married?” when fully answered in Hong Kong, may take a considerable amount of the inquirer’s time.
Chinese Customary Marriages, still popular in the colony, are generally recognized as valid, but there is no single definition which covers them. There are any number of ancient prescriptions for them which contradict one another, but they are alike in that they follow the accepted rites and ceremonies of the families of the bride and groom. Chinese women with a modern consciousness of their rights have no affection for such unions, since they permit a husband to divorce his wife for any reason and give her no right to leave him if she really feels inclined to do so. Furthermore, and this is an equally sore point, it permits the husband to take concubines, though the notion that a wife might adopt a similar polygamy is quite inconceivable.
Chinese Modern Marriages in the colony far outnumber all other types—more than 200,000, by an official estimate—although Registry Marriages have recently gained in number. All that is required to make them valid is an open ceremony witnessed by two persons. The Nationalist laws applicable to such unions give the man no legal right to acquire a concubine, despite the fact that some husbands in the colony find it convenient to pretend they do. The “extra” girls are naturally flattered to be told they are concubines (i.e., secondary wives with full domestic rights), rather than mistresses with no legal or social standing.
In everyday relationships with the courts and the government, Chinese Modern Marriages are recognized as respectable unions. None the less, they have no legal validity when contracted in Hong Kong, for they are neither entered at the Marriage Registry nor are they celebrated according to “the personal law and religion of the parties,” as colony laws require.
Reputed Marriages are, in many respects, exactly like common-law marriages in the United States: two people live together, sometimes have children and are regarded by themselves and their friends as married, unless they should grow weary of each other and part. In Hong Kong, however, a concubine is sometimes added, making the institution look something like a house of cards with an annex. Foreign Marriages, or unions contracted abroad and according to the laws of the country where the couple formerly lived, present few legal obstacles. If they were married in Red China, and the marriage was registered there, the union is monogamous; when the couple move to Hong Kong, their marriage has the same standing as that of an American or European couple living in the colony.
The complications arising from this matrimonial disparity have been the subject of intensive study since World War II. In earlier days, the marital customs of the Chinese community were of little interest to the British. One did not associate with the Chinese unless it was required for the purposes of political window-dressing. But the glacial snobbery of old colonialism suffered a disrespectful mauling during World War II from which it has never quite recovered. At that time the Chinese penetrated all but the tightest circles of Hong Kong society, and hundreds of British and Chinese intermarried without loss of “face” in either group. This last was the boldest departure, for while it was true that outcasts of both races had intermarried since the founding of the colony, a socially acceptable member of either race who attempted it was snubbed by both English and Chinese.
British-Chinese intermarriages are monogamous, and in spite of the inevitable interference of aunts, uncles and cousins, have generally worked out better than either race would have expected them to two decades ago. Of themselves, these mixed marriages are not a social issue in the colony, but they have indirectly breached the barrier between the two racial communities. Marriage laws of all sorts have become the concern of the entire colony population.
The 1948 Committee on Chinese Law and Custom defined many of the marital contradictions which persist to this day. Then, as now, one of the most vexing questions was the legal status of the “secondary wife” or concubine sanctioned by Chinese Customary Marriages. The English meaning of “concubine,” connoting a mistress or secret paramour, was not applicable to the Chinese concubine; she joined her husband’s household, with or without the principal wife’s consent, and it was his obligation to support her. Her children were legitimate, but her husband could divorce her more readily than he could his principal wife.