Gretna Green the marriage ceremony. The blacksmiths in Gretna became known as "anvil priests", culminating with Richard Rennison, who performed 5,147 ceremonies. The local blacksmith and his anvil became lasting symbols of Gretna Green weddings. Two in particular, The Old Blacksmith's Shop, built around 1712, and Gretna Hall Blacksmith's Shop (1710) became, in popular folklore at least, the focal tourist points for the marriage trade. The Old Blacksmith's Shop opened to the public as a visitor attraction as early as 1887. Victorian chronicler Robert Smith Surtees described Gretna Green at length in his 1848 "New Monthly Magazine" serial, "The Richest Commoner in
Chinese-foreign marriages in mainland China Chinese-foreign marriages in mainland China Chinese-foreign marriages in mainland China are a recent phenomenon. From the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 until the early 1990s, Chinese-foreign marriages were seen as outside the norm. While data from the PRC’s Ministry of Civil Affairs indicates that the number of couples registering a Chinese-foreign marriage in mainland China was almost ten times greater in 2010 than in 1979, the figures for registered Chinese-foreign marriages are still relatively small compared to couples registered in a domestic marriage. The data also suggests that most Chinese-foreign marriages are intra-national rather than