One man; two identification cards for the same person; two legal names; six hukou; three wives; four children. And yes, it’s all legal: he’s got the paperwork.

This is the legal morass that a Shenzhen woman named Chang must deal with now that she’s found out her husband is a bigamist, already having having married two other women in other parts of China. When Chang finally found out, she was already five months pregnant.

After receiving a strange phone call asking for her husband but with a slightly different name, Chang because suspicious and confronted Liu about it. Liu finally confessed and explained that having a large family is a Jiangxi tradition because there is “happiness and strength in numbers”.

Chang wanted a divorce, but Liu rejected the idea, so she is taking Liu to court. Chang’s lawyer, Ma Xueping, doesn’t say Chang’s and Liu’s marriage should be annulled because polygamy isn’t tolerated in China. Instead, Ma explains the situation this way:

If we are to accept that Liu’s identification and hukous are authentic, or at the very least the majority of them are authentic, then it is likely that Liu had been involved in bribery or had forged a government institution to get receive multiple identification or hukous, and that this bribery or forgery of a government institution to receive this identification is a crime.

Yes, the lawyer isn’t even disputing that this marriage is illegal because Liu has all the right paperwork for it; it’s only the pretenses behind the documentation that Ma is questioning.

We hate to say it, but it looks like Liu has beaten a mammoth bureaucracy by becoming a saber-toothed paper tiger.

Photos: Sina