Inter－racial marriages going down aisle to wedded bliss   2002-10-21 10:11:38 In most of China's urban areas, it's not uncommon to see inter－racial couples walking down the street. For these couples, life in China is not much different from other countries. Like any young Chinese couple, the Bredemeyers are planning to buy an apartment in Beijing to settle down in. Cord Bredemeyer is German, his wife Chinese. They find China a friendly and easy environment to live in. The rapid economic development also provides them with great work opportunities to lead comfortable lives here. What's more, although they are an inter－racial couple, they feel no different from ordinary Chinese couples. Mr Bredemeyer is a German chef working at a hotel in Beijing. When he married Maggie, as she likes to be called, in China not long ago, he didn't find much difficulty in the application process just because he wasn't Chinese himself. However, 10 years ago, this might not have been so simple if only one half of the couple was Chinese. Ken Rose is an American who married his Chinese wife in 1993 in China's southwest city of Chengdu. As he recalls, even then, not even 10 years ago, local Chinese were conservative and quite critical about inter－racial marriages. It was even hard for he and his wife to walk on the street like an ordinary Chinese couple. Mr.Rose has never forgotten how difficult it was to get married in China 10 years ago, but he said people's attitudes towards inter－racial marriages had changed a lot as their minds had opened. In the early 1980s, some 14,000 couples a year registered at inter－racial marriage bureaus across China. By the early 1990s, that figure had jumped to nearly 24,000. And in the late 1990s, it was a huge 50,000. A decade ago, many Chinese regarded inter－racial marriage as a means to go abroad and to get more opportunities to become rich. But now, like the Bredemeyers, more and more inter－racial couples have chosen not only to marry in China, but also to work and live here. With China opening up further to the rest of the world, contact between domestic citizens and people from around the globe has been increasing by leaps and bounds over the past two decades. For most people, there's never been a boundary for love and now, the increasing number of inter－racial marriages in China seems to be proving the point.