They took off my glasses and gave me a gun.

Then, they handed me a wife -- my fifth since coming to China and I've never been divorced.

The ceremony in which I was provided a firearm and a new bride wasn't a serious shotgun wedding-- the weapon was actually a musket -- but rather, a performance for tourists showcasing the marital customs of the Miao people in Guizhou province's Basha village.

The reason I've gotten hitched so many times since coming to this country is that I often find myself at the intersection of two cultural crossroads.

The first is that most ethnic minority villages reenact wedding ceremonies for guests and do so with crowd participation. The second is that many Chinese seem to love watching foreigners make fools of themselves on stage. And when I visit these settlements, I'm usually the only overseas guest.

My most recent nuptial began with my bride-to-be force-feeding me huge globs of mashed rice and ended with me doing the same to audience members.

Just months before that ceremony, I married an ethnic Yi woman in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region's Longji Rice Terraces.

First, I was dressed in the ethnic group's traditional garb-- a red head-wrap and a sash with a bow resembling those worn by beauty pageant contestants.

Next, I had to gulp several goblets of liquor with my arms interlocked with my soon-to-be wife's, while several old women pinched my buttocks -- hard. The goal is not to spill the spirits, even though a gaggle of grannies are kneading your buns like dough. I'm very ticklish, and soon had a damp shirtfront and bride- and a sore derriere.

There's no way I can be sure, but I suspect this longstanding marital custom dates back to the vibrant time in the village's rich history when locals figured out that tourists would think such antics very funny to watch.

Li Min

After getting goosed while tipping back tipple, I had to croon an English-language love song for the crowd.

I froze up.

All I could think of was You Are My Sunshine, and I began serenading my new partner and the spectators with this little ditty. But before long, I realized I only knew four lines of the ballad. The advantage of being about the only native English speaker is that nobody seemed to be any the wiser when I kept repeating the only part that I knew to draw out the performance.

Suddenly, my bride hopped on my back and told me to run around the stadium.

So, I charged around the bleachers wearing the new missus like a backpack until we reached the exit, where several women stood with arms linked to block us.

It took several attempts to break through their barricade Red Rover-style, trying to use the extra momentum provided by my wife's weight combined with mine. Finally, I was backstage.

My actual wife, an American woman whose sense of humor exceeds that of her jealousy, was present for this show, as she was the first time I married an ethnic minority member, a Li girl in Hainan province's Binglanyuan.

That day, I had no idea what was going on when I was whisked into the hut- at least until after they'd dressed me in a red vest and flat cap, and a woman grabbed my hands and placed them on the back of her upper thighs. She instructed me to hoist her toward the roof beams so she could kiss a pair of beetle nuts slung from the rafters. My face turned the color of my crimson vest.

So did my American wife's. And then poor Carol started crying- from laughing so hard, that is.

(selected from 101 Silly Stories from Cheerful China by China Daily, published by China Intercontinental Press in 2010)