Page 64 of He Is My Bride
“You have to stop thinking that.” Anne put her hand on Li Ying’s. “The Wus will protect you. Although your and the baby’s security should be another reason for the Wus not to question your choice to carry the baby to term in another country: you are out of the Wangs’ reach here.”
“I suppose that’s right. Anyway, we haven’t discussed the details yet, but Hanjun should be the one to inseminate the first one so that it definitely bears his resemblance, and if anyone wants to accuse me of infidelity, they are free to do a paternity test. Surrogacy also lets us choose the baby’s gender, which, well, it would be nice if it didn’t matter, but I don’t mind either way, so I suppose a boy it is. It’s so damn old-fashioned…”
“‘The first one?’ Implying there’s going to be more?”
Li Ying grinned. “I think I would like to have more than one.”
“I guess it’s easy when you don’t have to carry them to term,” Anne grumbled.
“Hey! Is it weird that I actually wish I could be pregnant for Hanjun?”
Anne blinked in surprise at Li Ying’s reaction. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I know. It’s okay, I didn’t think I would feel this way, but… I mean, I am a man, at least most of the time, does that make sense?”
Anne wasn’t sure she understood, but she listened.
“It’s just so intimate between two people who love each other, to make another human, right?” Li Ying mused. “So, I thought I might want to be pregnant for real if I could, even if it started as a joke.”
“Hmm. Yet there are many people who can’t get biological children, for a multitude of reasons, and isn’t it also very meaningful to raise a child together?”
“You’re right. But… could we do a maternity photoshoot?”
“You bet! What about boudoir?”
“Yes! For Hanjun as a honeymoon gift! ”
Anne rubbed her hands together excitedly, and so the besties started planning shoots.
—
Over that summer’s recess, with the wedding still a year ahead, Li Ying visited Shanghai for a couple of weeks.
He and Hanjun met with the wedding planner at Hanjun’s home and went over how they wanted to arrange everything in more detail, from the tea ceremony to the wedding reception.
“I know it’s a Western tradition,” Li Ying said, “but I wanna say ‘I do’ before the family and guests.”
The actual Chinese marriage happened when the couple got their marriage certificate from their municipal office, which Li Ying knew to be a very secular, very unceremonious occasion.
They had already begun preparing the paperwork for this. With Li Ying being a foreigner, there was much more bureaucracy involved.
The wedding itself would be a separate affair from this legal procedure, usually held months later, as in their case.
Since he’d been raised amidst American culture, certain traditions had become the standard for a romantic, perfect wedding in Li Ying’s mind, and so he wanted to add some things to the otherwise traditional ceremony:
“I want to cut the cake and feed it to each other with my husband.”
Li Ying looked at Hanjun, who was just sitting there, smiling.
He was happy to see Li Ying finally get more excited about the wedding.
Hanjun had been worried when Li Ying had dismissed it earlier as something for ‘Wu Yiheng and his planner to worry about,’ thinking Li Ying was having second thoughts.
With Wu Yiheng having made it all sound so unromantic, maybe Li Ying had just felt excluded from his own wedding plans.
“This is about us,” Hanjun said, “we can do whatever we want. ”
“Are you sure?” Li Ying asked. “Your uncle seemed to have an opinion on how we should be wed.”
“It’s not his wedding.”
“Okay, then I want a white dress, but there will be a staged fight in the middle of the ceremony where someone will throw fake blood on me so that the dress turns red.”
“That is…” The wedding planner had been taught to never say ‘no’ to a client. “What does the groom think of that?”
There was a hint of a smile on Hanjun’s lips, as if he were secretly enjoying this.
“Whatever his bride wants.”
“I was joking, silly melon!” Li Ying gently pinched Hanjun’s ear. He then realized Hanjun probably knew that and was just playing ‘Shanghai husband.’
“But I want to say the vows, and I definitely want a cake. Huge cake.”
“Those can absolutely be arranged!” The planner said in relief and wrote it all down in her notes.
“Actually, should I pop out of the cake?”
This is my toughest gig yet, the planner thought.
—
So, before the couple could be wedded they needed to be married.
Li Ying and Hanjun had most of the paperwork ready, what was left was the premarital medical examination.
The one thing that could have ruined it all, to a disastrous effect, if the doctor found out Li Ying was a man. However, if they couldn’t produce the certificate issued by a doctor, they had no way of getting their marriage papers—no way of getting married.
Hanjun was driving them to the appointed doctor’s office. Li Ying was a nervous wreck.
“Don’t worry, I have arranged everything,” Hanjun said.
“There will be a doctor who will only ask you questions. He will also take some blood, you will be asked to give a urine sample, and your height, weight, and blood pressure will be taken. He won’t touch you besides that. If he tries, refuse, and leave.”
Li Ying had read about the contents of the examination: normally the woman would also receive a pelvic examination, and that’s where he would have been screwed.
“What did you do? Did you really bribe the doctor? Threaten him with pig heads?”
Hanjun nodded.
“What, which one?!”
“I gave him a generous sum and told him that Li Ying is an American woman, for whom to be examined in an intimate manner against her will is inappropriate. I warned him that I’m very concerned with your comfort and won’t tolerate your privacy being breached. And that I’m a very jealous man.”
The way Hanjun said that last one made Li Ying shiver. He could imagine the poor doctor shivering too, less pleasantly.
They arrived at a small clinic downtown.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Hanjun asked. He had already gotten his checkup done days earlier.
“No need. It’s just in and out, right?”
Hanjun nodded. “It shouldn’t take too long. I’ll wait in the car then. Don’t worry.”
Hanjun gave Li Ying a kiss before he needed to ask, and Li Ying headed into the clinic.
It was a small, dinghy clinic. There was a reception booth opposite the entrance, and seats were lined along the long corridor.
Some people were sitting there, waiting, and the cold overhead lighting made them all look tired.
There were doors on either side of the corridor, leading to doctors’ offices and utility rooms. A palm tree struggled for its life in the corner, and there were dated magazines on a rack.
Li Ying walked to the receptionist and gave her his name .
“Yes, I found you in the system. Please sit down, you will be called by name.”
Li Ying sat down and was oddly nostalgic for when he was waiting to go to the nurse’s office at school; the purgatory vibe was similar. He had been an accident-prone child, so he was there often.
Li Ying didn’t have to wait for long.
“Li Ying?” called a young female doctor from one door. Li Ying got up and briskly walked to the office. Inside, the doctor had already withdrawn to her computer when Li Ying came and closed the door.
“Please sit.” She was not smiling, her tone minimally polite.
Li Ying thought she was too young and pretty to be such a prickly doctoress. The doctor regarded Li Ying after he had sat.
“I’m doctor Wang Yan.”
Li Ying’s smile didn’t waver. He took her offered hand in a firm shake.
There were many Wangs across the country, so it was a long-shot to assume she would be related the the Wang cousins, but still, the coincidence didn’t sit well with Li Ying.
I don’t recognize her face nor her first name, but then again, there are members of the Wang family I haven’t met.
I think both Wang Guosheng and Grandfather Wang had daughters as well, all married off, so they wouldn’t necessarily have come to the reunion.
Li Ying’s thoughts were scalpel-sharp, quick.
Perhaps a granddaughter who’s inherited her mother’s name?
“Are you by chance related to the Wangs of Wang Guosheng?” Li Ying asked conversationally. He tried to peer at her ID card to see what character the family name was written in: it was the same ‘Wang.’
“Distantly,” the doctor said.
“I see.” Should I leave? I doubt Hanjun would have gotten a Wang for the job, or at least he would have warned me if he did.
“Can I see a photo identification?” Doctor Wang asked.
Li Ying handed over his new passport with his changed gender marker, and Wang Yan checked his identity before handing it back .
“I’m just going to ask you a few questions, take a few basic measurements, and urine and blood samples.” Wang Yan said and read from a check-list of questions, “Do you have a family history of any of the following diseases…”
She didn’t say anything about a pelvic examination… Could it be that she’s really going to do just as Hanjun has ordered?
Li Ying answered all of her questions, none of them unexpected. She then took his blood pressure.
“It’s rather elevated. Are you nervous, Miss Li?”
Li Ying chuckled, nervously indeed. “I guess I am a little, haha…”
“It’s perfectly normal.” Wang Yan said matter-of-factly and removed the cuff from Li Ying’s arm. “Please remove your shoes and step on the scale.”
Li Ying’s weight and height were measured, and then Wang Yan held out a white little plastic cup for him.
“Next, I would ask you to go to that toilet,” she pointed across the room to a small restroom, “and fill this cup with your urine.”
“Alright.” Li Ying took the cup.