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China's first marriage registration office inside a bank opens in Tianjin as couples increasingly say 'I do' at scenic spots, theme parks and music festivals_我的网站

初恋日记

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    An inside view of the bank hall, decorated for marriage registration with balloons, flowers and a ceremonial oath podium. Photo: CCTV NewsChina's very first marriage registration office located inside a bank has opened in North China's Tianjin Municipality, offering couples yet another unconventional place to tie the knot as marriage registration across the country becomes more convenient, flexible and increasingly tailored to younger generations.
Tianjin's Hexi District civil affairs authority and the Hexi branch of Postal Savings Bank of China on August 6 jointly launched the Donghai Marriage Registration Office, making it Tianjin's first marriage registration site inside a bank and the first of its kind in the country, CCTV News reported on Thursday.
Unlike the usual image of couples heading to a government service hall to tie the knot, newlyweds can now walk into a bank branch and walk out with a marriage certificate. According to an early notice posted by the Hexi civil affairs authority on its official WeChat account, the service is currently available only for marriage registrations between Chinese mainland residents.
The new site welcomed its first couples on its opening day, with two pairs registering their marriages there. One newlywed couple said that the setting was "romantic and warm," adding that the experience gave the occasion a stronger sense of ceremony, CCTV News reported.
Marriage registration has become increasingly convenient across China. On May 10, 2025, newly revised marriage registration regulations took effect, allowing mainland residents to register their marriages nationwide rather than only in places tied to their household registration. The change has made the process convenient particularly for people who live and work for long periods away from their registered hometowns, according to the CCTV report.
Tianjin's bank-based registration office is only one example of how marriage registration is moving beyond traditional government service halls in China. Since nationwide marriage registration was introduced, cities and tourist attractions across China have been creating new "landmarks" for couples to obtain their marriage certificates, combining registration with travel, sightseeing and even music festivals.
At a marriage registration office in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, couples can stroll past small bridges and waterways, explore a romance-themed garden and a corridor highlighting different wedding anniversaries, according to the report.
At Sayram Lake in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, couples can often be seen lining up for their marriage certificates against a backdrop of turquoise water and snow-capped mountains. Over the past year or so, the Sayram Lake marriage registration center has handled registrations for more than 10,000 couples, most of them visitors from outside the region, per CCTV News.
On July 11, an even more unusual marriage registration site opened at Discoveryland Theme Park in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning Province. Couples can board the "Eye of Dalian" Ferris wheel and receive their marriage certificates about 100 meters above the ground.
Marriage registration has even found its way into music festivals.
According to Ningbo Evening News, 10 couples took to the stage at the 2025 Eastsea city Music Festival to hold a collective wedding ceremony surrounded by cheering festivalgoers.
Data released by China's Ministry of Civil Affairs on Wednesday showed that 3.275 million couples registered their marriages nationwide in the first half of 2026.
Global Times
。    What better way to figure out a mystery of the ancients than to try it out yourself? That’s what one sailing aficionado from Israel did when confronted with a puzzle from the Christian Bible.,David Gal, a doctoral student in the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa, says he has figured out why the Christian Apostle Paul sailed from Judea to Rome along the southern coast of Anatolia in 60 CE - a route that, to him, wasn’t the most obvious one, since most winds in the Mediterranean are westerlies and Paul was going west.,That year, Paul was sent to the imperial capital to answer to Jewish authorities for preaching the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to have been the Jewish messiah. Most Jews did not accept Jesus’ teachings, and he was tried and executed by crucifixion for blasphemy and subversion in either 30 or 33 CE.,Paul’s journey is recounted in unusual detail in the New Testament book of Acts. The preacher zigzagged his way across the sea, swinging north of Cyprus before heading to the city of Myra (modern Demre) in southern Anatolia. From there, he went west past Rhodes, to Knidos, then south to the southern coast of Crete and west across the southernmost parts of the Ionian Sea. However, he was shipwrecked in Malta and his journey took much longer than anticipated.,“Until recently, we didn’t understand why the Alexandrian grain ship that Paul joined in southern Anatolia, bound for Rome, chose that particular route,” Gal told Haaretz.,The boat, Ma’agan Mikhael II, is a replica of a ship found in 1985 about 2 meters underneath the seabed off the coast of Kibbutz Ma’agan Mikhael in northern Israel, not far from Caesarea. In ancient times, the city was known as Caesarea Maritima or Caesarea Palestine, named after the Roman emperor Augustus Caesar. The replica boat was finished in 2016 and is just one of two ships in the world that simulates a merchant sailing vessel from Before the Common Era (BCE).,By coincidence, Caesarea also happens to be the port from which Paul left on his trip to Rome.,In part, Gal’s study was based on computer modeling, which combined vast amounts of weather data and conducted 5,479 virtual sailing trips along 224 different possible routes from Caesarea to Rome, for a total of 1.2 million virtual sailing trips. However, that wasn’t enough: Gal also took a crew of 10 volunteer sailors out in the Ma’agan Mikhael II to explore the intangible human element of the journey. With just one sail, the ship moves along at a brisk 3.9 miles per hour.,“Only when we sailed on Ma’agan Mikhael II did we understand the real limitations of the ship and the sailors,” Gal told Haaretz. “We found that in many sections of the coast, the breeze doesn’t support this type of movement.”,“They didn’t sail counter to the prevailing wind, but waited for days with a favorable wind in the opposite direction,” Gal concluded. “We found there were such days in a large meteorological sampling. Until now, scholars didn’t examine that but used low-resolution meteorological averages that erase the variance in the wind.”,Gal said he has taken the ship out more than 80 times, sailing as far as Cyprus, and found that the daily wind patterns, in which breezes can blow westward from the Levantine coast, have remained strong after 3,000 years. By navigating those patterns, ancient sailors could have crept up the coast until they found more favorable winds.,“We have data about its performance in all wind conditions and how various currents affect it, and that enables us to conduct a reliable simulation of sailing. With its help, we acquired insights into the way such a ship is operated; we had a better understanding of how four people can sail from Greece to here and back,” he said.。