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For the last two decades international marriages have been growing across China’s major cities, rural areas and borderlands. In this article, we examine public representations and experiences of marriage migrants from Russia and Vietnam in the context of a demographic shortage of marriageable women in the PRC. Both Chinese media and Chinese immigration regulations promote traditional family roles for migrant women. Migrant and undocumented statuses of foreign spouses in our examples tie them prominently to family caring responsibilities. This precludes migrant women from legal working rights or entrepreneurial activities, and leaves them in the precarious position of a temporary ‘visitor’ in their own family. Furthermore, we show how the realities of international married life in China interfere with personal agendas and how the women negotiate their unforeseen new statuses in Chinese society.