IN JANUARY last year, he proposed to his girlfriend. A month later, they headed to the Registry of Marriages to say 'I do'. In June this year, they pooled their savings together and bought a resale three-room Housing Board flat in Serangoon Avenue 2 for $256,000. A month later, they moved in. They are both 26, in love and raring to start a family. In sum, they are like most Singaporean newly-weds.

Except that Mr Lu Yifei is a budding artist from Jinan in Shandong province, China, and his wife Kong Wei, also an artist, hails from Beijing.

Mr Lu arrived here in 2001 to study graphic design at LaSalle College of the Arts, graduating with a diploma in 2004. He then earned a degree through distance learning with the Open University in the United Kingdom.

Read Leong Weng Kam's full story in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times.