Chinese marriage certificate and divorce certificate Photo: Sina Weibo

A pair of newlyweds from Northeast China’s Jilin Province felt terribly offended when they received their marriage certificates they had longed for which, however, surprisingly turned out to be divorce certificates. The involved marriage registration office has apologized for the mistake.

A netizen posted a video on social media on Monday, saying that she and her husband registered their marriage at the civil affairs bureau of the Changchun Automobile Economic and Technological Development Zone in Changchun, Jilin and the marriage certificates they had longed for turned out to be divorce certificates. The incident quickly stirred heated discussion online. 

According to the netizen, the maroon-colored certificates were stamped with “Divorce Certificate” in on the covers and the “Divorce Certificate number” on the inside pages. 

In response to the incident, the civil affairs bureau involved admitted their mistake and promptly replaced the certificates for the newlyweds, which the couple accepted, Hongxing News reported on Monday. 
According to a staff member from the civil affairs bureau, they increased more copies of the new versions marriage and divorce certificates on Monday and mistakenly placed the divorce certificate in the wrong stack, resulting in the error. 

The official also noted that except for the wrong certificates, all the couple’s marriage registration information was recorded correctly. 

According to the notice issued by the General Office of China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs on October 31, 2003, the new-version of marriage certificates have been in use since January 1, 2004, Beijing Daily reported. 

The new version of marriage registration certificates are divided into marriage certificates and divorce certificates, both in maroon of their covers. The differences are that marriage certificate cover is stamped with gold lettering Chinese characters, while the divorce certificate stamped with silver lettering Chinese characters. 

The new version of the divorce certificate is in stark contrast to the old version which had a green cover. According to the notice, the old-version divorce certificate was discontinued on July 1, 2004. 

Global Times