Yuan Dibao (left) and Danny Li were married last year. Feng Xiao Fei / for China Daily

He had been forced into an arranged marriage shortly before he met Li and did not tell her.

Yuan was born in 1928 to a Protestant family in Fujian province. His father worked as a secretary and Chinese teacher in the British consulate and later became a missionary. Yuan later studied at a religious school and helped in his older brother's clinic.

Yuan was already 25 when he was finally admitted to college in 1953 and was considered well past marriage age, so his family arranged that he marry his sister's friend.

A year went by before Yuan told Li he had a wife - a woman toward whom he felt morally responsible to care for until her death.

Li was shocked and although she still loved Yuan, the couple broke up.

"We couldn't build our happiness on the misfortune of an innocent woman," Li says.

That was the last time they saw one another until their reunion in 2010.

In 1956, Li left with her family for Lyon, France, and wrote to Yuan. To her surprise, she received several letters over the next few days and they kept in touch through mail.

"His letters were a great comfort to me in those hard days of settling in France," Li says.

French society was a foreign world to the Chinese-born woman and educational institutions refused to recognize her diplomas and certificates. Li also struggled to adapt socially.

In her eyes, she saw French relationships as too open and casual.

"These irresponsible relationships were unacceptable to me and I was afraid and refused going out with men," she says.

Li learnt shorthand and typing, and finally became a secretary at an international trade company.

Meanwhile, Yuan graduated and worked in Xiamen.