Shenzhen and Hong Kong, which are only 50 kilometers away in a straight line, have been the place where various "Shenzhen-Hong Kong long-distance relationship" stories have taken place.
The economically developed Greater Bay Area has made many people have all kinds of fantasies about cross-regional love, but the reality is much more complicated than we imagined:
I am currently living in Shenzhen with my children, and it has been a year since I divorced (to be precise, separated), and various formalities are still being processed. I have a 6-year married life with my ex-husband, and I want to change the track of my life when I get married, and my thoughts are very immature at that time. I also think that when I go to Hong Kong with him, my life will improve, and I may even move out.
In 2017, we met through a friend's introduction, he was three years older than me, and he worked as a manager in a company in Shenzhen. We are not the kind of "old husband and young wife" in a typical mainland Hong Kong marriage, there is usually no communication barrier, I know Cantonese, he also speaks Mandarin well, and there is no big difference in living habits, but this does not prevent some people from saying that I am a "fishing girl" behind my back, I don't care about this statement.
We lived in Shenzhen for a year, and after we got married, he went back for work, and we agreed to live in Hong Kong together, because his parents wanted to see me more often and if they had children, they could also get an education in Hong Kong. But I didn't expect the housing conditions to be so ordinary, although it is not a "subdivided unit", and the space is not large, even the house in my hometown is not as good.
During that time, I was in a bad mood because I was pregnant, and I had a lot of problems, so I had to rent a house and move out. I wanted to go back to Shenzhen or Guangzhou to rent a bigger house, so that the child could not be born a "subdivided unit child", he didn't agree at first, but finally reluctantly agreed.
So, we became a Shenzhen-Hong Kong couple from the second year of marriage, at that time, because of the identity problem, I was anxious, and I was alone to raise a baby, and he would often come to see the children at first, but then it was less, especially during the epidemic, the life between husband and wife has existed in name only, the difference is that I am alone with a child. I filed for divorce at the beginning of this year, because he found another woman in Hong Kong, and I didn't even want to know what that woman looked like, and we even skipped the stage of quarrels and disputes, and the divorce just opened the door for the two of us to live in the future.
The biggest problem now is to deal with the property after marriage, the money and assets add up to about 5 million, the children belong to me in the end, and the child support is paid by him, I go back and forth between Shenzhen and Hong Kong every week, and the law firms go in and out. Life is really hard, but as long as you persevere, it should get better.
I worked for a Chinese-funded agency in Central, and when I arrived in Hong Kong, I talked to three girlfriends. I usually don't talk much with local girls in Hong Kong, and there is a gap in cultural and daily communication, and I usually meet through social apps in the process of going to Shenzhen for reverse shopping on weekends.
"Shenzhen-Hong Kong couples" is a very special phenomenon. The closest thing is the distance, which is only two hours by car, and what makes people feel far away is the difference between Hong Kong and Shenzhen in terms of prices and lifestyles. After living in Hong Kong for four years, I was really tired.
My first girlfriend was a master's student in Shenzhen. The first time we met, it was when she came to Hong Kong for a tour, and I drove her shopping, hiking, and outings, and went to many places. Most of the intimate moments happen in the WeChat chat box and the midnight ** connection. After falling in love for half a year, it became a week to live in each other's cities, because she did not have a Shenzhen hukou and could not go back and forth many times, most of the time I went to Shenzhen to find her for the weekend.
A colleague who was transferred to Hong Kong with me, his wife lives in Shenzhen with her children, and uses her Hong Kong salary to pay off the Shenzhen mortgage. For the first month, I commuted to and from Central to Lo Wu every day. He got up at 7 o'clock in the morning, arrived at the company at 9 o'clock, and later lived in the company dormitory under the persuasion of the leader, and because he could only go back home in a week or two, his wife made several awkward times, and even went back to his hometown in Hunan directly.
Whether the love between Shenzhen and Hong Kong can continue depends on whether the two parties have enough emotional foundation, and after 50 kilometers, couples who are more affectionate than Jin Jian will have an impatient day.
My three relationships ended up in the end, and after the epidemic, I didn't even want to fall in love. It's okay to chat on the dating app, but as soon as the other party said that he wanted to show up, I refused for various reasons, and I was scolded by the other party as a "Hong Kong scumbag".
I think that in the end, Shenzhen-Hong Kong love is "in the shortest distance, talk about the most cold-blooded feelings", and the solution is money, such as buying a suite in Hong Kong, but I really can't afford it.
My husband and I got married in 2019, and before that, we had been in love for 6 years.
We were middle school classmates, and we decided to have a relationship in our freshman year, when he was studying in Beijing, I was in Tianjin, 50 minutes intercity, and the feeling of "long-distance relationship" was not strong. After graduating from the bachelor's degree, we applied for a postgraduate degree in Hong Kong together and successfully got the offer, because we were studying in different schools and the distance was relatively far away, and we also rented separate houses at that time.
The real cohabitation is the two years of staying in Hong Kong to work after graduating from the master's degree, and it is also the run-in during that period that allows us to confirm each other that we are life teammates who can go on hand in hand. But looking back now, we still underestimated the challenges of the epidemic and the different places in Shenzhen and Hong Kong to this relationship.
I ended my job in Hong Kong at the end of 2019 and went to an education company in Shenzhen, and my husband continued to stay in Hong Kong to develop.
In 2020, we had to quarantine in a hotel for 14 days when we returned to the mainland from Hong Kong, and we didn't want to waste our annual leave on this kind of thing, so my husband only came back once during the Spring Festival to reunite with the families of both parties. At that time, every once in a while, there would be news of the customs clearance between Hong Kong and the mainland, and he always told me to stay up and wait for the customs clearance......
Around 2021, some Shenzhen-Hong Kong couples around me who couldn't hold on broke up one after another, and everyone couldn't see hope, and every time they felt that the dawn was in front of them and was snuffed out by reality.
Once my husband was quarantined in a hotel in our hometown, I waved in the direction of his window downstairs in the hotel, and took a picture of each other's **, in which I could only vaguely see each other's heads, small, but full of desire to reunite as soon as possible.
Later, we put these two low-pixel ** together, washed them out and put them in the frame, which is a kind of commemoration of surviving the epidemic for three years.
Fast forward to 2022, a year that was even more torturous than the previous two years, and several big quarrels broke out between us. People are such creatures, they can often take care of themselves when everything is going well, but when life changes dramatically, they will want their loved ones to be by their side.
We're all held hostage by a sense of powerlessness from a distance, and if we weren't married, we might have ended the relationship. WeChat text and *** can no longer convey spiritual support, but more like the ...... of spreading disappointmentThe longest time we were, we didn't talk for a week, and my husband said he was overloaded with negative emotions and couldn't pick up anyone anymore.
This year, because he has lived in Hong Kong for 7 years, my husband has obtained Hong Kong permanent residence status, but the problem of "different places" in front of us has not been solved. Am I going to go back to Hong Kong and join him?That means facing high housing prices and a cramped living space, and he has no plans to return to ......the mainland for the time beingFortunately, the transportation between the two places has been restored, and we can at least maintain the life of a "weekend couple".
Interview and editor: MK, Sebastian