12 年的"被结婚"：张蕾的撤销之路

Beijing, Shijingshan district.

A woman born in 1993,

let's call her Zhang Lei,

is at work.

She gets a phone call.

The voice on the line says:

"I'm with the Baoji, Shaanxi police.

"In 2013 you married a man.

"You have a 12-year-old son.

After she hung up,

Zhang Lei thought it was a scammer.

In 2013 she was a sophomore in Beijing,

just past 20.

She had never been to Baoji.

Let alone gotten married.

But she was still a little uneasy.

She looked up the phone number online —

it really was the landline of the Duanjia police station in Fufeng County, Baoji.

Then she logged into the government services platform

and looked up her own marital status.

The platform said it plainly:

Zhang Lei, married,

marriage date October 30, 2013.

She really had been "married against her will."

For a full 12 years,

she didn't know that in another province,

she had a husband in the eyes of the law,

and a 12-year-old "son."

This is a very particular social phenomenon in China in recent years.

It has a Chinese name:

"bèi-jiéhūn" — "married against your will."

Meaning:

"I didn't get married,

"but the national system says I did.

Zhang Lei's story

actually has two protagonists.

One is Zhang Lei.

The other is Liu Yongqiang, who lives in Shaanxi.

Liu Yongqiang was working in Beijing in 2008.

He met a girl who worked as a waitress at the Wangfujing food street.

She told him

her name was "Zhang Ting."

In 2012,

they had a child.

In 2013,

they went back to Liu's Shaanxi hometown for the wedding

and registered the marriage.

Around 2015,

"Zhang Ting" said she was going back to Hebei to see her parents.

Then she never came back.

13 years on,

their son is in middle school.

In November 2025,

Liu Yongqiang went to the police to file a missing-person report,

trying to find his missing wife.

The police looked up the ID number on his wife's household registration,

and the person it actually belonged to was Zhang Lei —

a complete stranger.

What came next,

every detail of it is chilling.

First,

Zhang Lei's former name

was "Zhang Ting."

That was a name typo when she was first registered as a baby,

later corrected to Zhang Lei.

Second,

the fake "Zhang Ting's" household registration

listed her former name as — Zhang Lei.

Third,

the two are from the same village.

Their household addresses are identical:

a village in Wangjing Town, Tang County, Baoding, Hebei.

That is to say,

there really is a "Zhang Ting" from her village,

who used her ID number,

got herself a completely separate household registration booklet,

and then used that booklet to register a marriage.

After discovering she'd been "married,"

Zhang Lei set out to cancel the registration.

But what followed over the next half year

is more unsettling than the "marriage" itself.

She went to the civil affairs office.

The civil affairs office said:

You're not the person who registered.

You can't cancel another person's marriage.

Cancellation requires evidence from police or judiciary.

Go to them first.

She went to the Duanjia police in Fufeng, Shaanxi.

The police said:

The ID-fraud part of this

has to be investigated starting from the fake "Zhang Ting's" Hebei household registration.

You should report it where the registration was issued.

She went back to Wangjing police in Hebei.

The Wangjing police said:

This is a Shaanxi matter.

You should go back to Shaanxi.

She went to her local Doudian police in Beijing.

Doudian accepted it at first.

But a month later they told her:

We don't have jurisdiction.

This should be handled by Shaanxi or Hebei.

That is to say,

the police in three different places —

not one of them opens a case.

She also went to court.

The court said:

You have to apply for administrative reconsideration first.

You can't come straight to court.

She filed for administrative reconsideration.

The Fufeng civil affairs office wrote her a letter.

The letter said:

The marriage registration at the time didn't violate procedure.

It is genuine and effective.

And, Zhang Lei, you weren't the registering party at the time,

you have no right to cancel another person's marriage.

She then went to the prosecutor's office for supervision.

The prosecutor's office said:

This isn't within our jurisdiction;

you should go to the courts.

Over six months,

Zhang Lei's case bounced around four departments — civil affairs, police, courts, and prosecutors.

Every department

said "not in my jurisdiction."

Every department

told her to go ask another department.

In Chinese law,

there's a phrase for this:

"chéngxù kōngzhuǎn" — "the procedure spinning empty."

But —

she isn't alone.

In 2020,

the Supreme People's Procuratorate published a similar case.

A man in Fujian, surnamed Yao.

In 2013 he registered a marriage.

The day after registration, the "wife"

ran off with 70,000 yuan of betrothal money.

Yao later discovered

that the woman wasn't actually the "Mo" on the ID card —

she was an identity thief who'd come to defraud through marriage.

Yao also tried the police, civil affairs, and the courts — nothing worked.

Until 2020,

when he went to the prosecutor's office.

In the end it took seven years

to cancel that marriage registration.

This case later turned up more:

the real "Mo" person's ID card

had five overlapping marriages registered to it.

Guangxi, Zhejiang, Shanxi, Fujian, Anhui.

Later "Mo" was sentenced to three years and nine months for fraud.

In 2021,

the Supreme Procuratorate, Supreme Court, Ministry of Public Security, and Ministry of Civil Affairs —

the four agencies jointly issued a document

specifically to handle these "married-by-fraud" cases.

By November 2024,

nationwide, 2,068 such cases had been processed.

118 criminal leads were transferred.

That is to say —

Zhang Lei isn't alone.

Across China,

there are at least two thousand other Zhang Leis.

It's just that most of them

don't make the news.

That said,

Zhang Lei's case has seen a bit of progress.

On the morning of May 19, 2026,

the Baoji Intermediate People's Court issued a new ruling:

the lower court's earlier refusal to accept the case

is rescinded.

The case must be opened.

That is to say,

the courts are now engaging.

But what happens next

nobody yet knows.

Reading this story,

what makes me saddest

isn't the ID fraud itself.

What makes me saddest is the six months that came after.

Every department,

viewed individually,

was following the rules.

Every one said: "not in my jurisdiction.

Put together,

they trapped an ordinary person

in the middle.

There's a Chinese phrase:

"go by procedure.

Procedure is supposed to protect people.

But when procedure starts "spinning empty,"

procedure becomes a wall that keeps the person on the outside.

Zhang Lei will keep waiting.

Maybe after May

she really will get that "marriage" — that isn't hers — canceled.

Hope that day comes soon.

Okay.

That's all for today.

Talk tomorrow.