Before Valentine's Day, a number of media outlets in the United States reported that 40-year-old chemist Li Tianle was suspected of using thallium to poison her husband Wang Xiaoye. Li and Wang graduated from two of China's top universities, Beijing University and Tsinghua University, a fact that set the Internet abuzz.

Two persons in a tragedy aren't enough samples for such a generalization, yet they are enough to get people talking about marriages in the invisible community of Chinese living abroad. The case of Li and Wang brought marital issues of overseas Chinese out of family closets. Chinese families living overseas, mine included, often impress people as being, let's put it this way, interesting. To their extended Chinese families, they are successful people living abroad with houses, cars and two or even three kids who often win prizes thanks to the battle hymns of "tiger moms". To their American neighbors, they are anywhere between eccentric and insane, folks who are more obsessed with vegetables in their backyards than with weeds in their lawns. Few people know what is going on in these people's lives. Much, I would say, just like everybody else.

Being constantly exposed to fellow middle-aged couples, I know that many Chinese couples are riddled with marital problems of one sort or another. I don't need to list them. Leo Tolstoy has summarized it all: all unhappy families are different.