A young couple from Hebei Province celebrated their wedding at the South Pole, following a 36,000-nautical-mile journey around the world.
Zhang Xinyu and his wife Liang Hong held their wedding ceremony on Feb. 25 at the Great Wall research station. They webcast the event live, allowing their parents and others to join in remotely.
Zhang is one year older than Liang, and they have known each other for 28 years. The two met at primary school, after Zhang failed his end-of-year exams and had to stay back a year, the Beijing Morning Post reported.
Zhang promised that one day they would get engaged in the Arctic, and get married in the Antarctic. He worked hard after retiring from the military in 1998, and had an ambitious, comfortable lifestyle as a trader. However, his life was changed after he organized a rescue team to assist in the aftermath of the magnitude-8 earthquake that struck Sichuan Province in 2008, and he decided to follow his dreams.
The pair started their voyage with four friends in Hong Kong in July last year, and got registered to marry on Oct. 15 in Las Vegas. They passed through more than 30 cities in 24 countries. To get to the South Pole, they piloted a sailboat across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
The couple has received blessings from several political leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said, “Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction,” quoting the French novel Wind, Sand, and Stars.
They plan to continue their world tour after the wedding.
Research by Sophia Fang.
