Hundreds of guests wanted to celebrate their friends' wedding day. Scores of Chinese police and security officials were equally determined to stop them.
Many of the wellwishers were halted before they even boarded trains to Hubei province. Others made it as far as the venue, where almost 100 were detained and some beaten, said the bride, Wang Xifeng.
"I predicted the pressure and the threats when I chose this path, but I had never experienced it before. I am very scared," she told the Guardian.
The path is marriage to a veteran democracy activist. Qin Yongmin's campaigns have repeatedly angered authorities; the 59-year-old was released from the latest of his three jail terms in late 2010, having served 12 years for subversion of state power after trying to register an independent political party.
In addition to the disruption of their wedding in Qin's hometown of Wuhan in May, said Wang, the couple have been detained twice and repeatedly harassed, are under round-the-clock surveillance and remain legally unwed, despite holding a ceremony, because the authorities refuse to register them and issue a marriage certificate.
The authorities cited problems with their household registration documents, which every Chinese person needs, but Wang said officials had either failed or in some cases flat out refused to carry out the procedures needed to resolve the issue.
Wang, 36, has now written an open letter to the United Nations asking for help. According to her account, released via the group Human Rights in China, she terminated a pregnancy because she feared that without a marriage licence she could be forced into a late-term abortion for breaching China's strict birth control laws. Although such measures are illegal in China, they still occur.
