Back in the first year with Guo Jian, when my Chinese was so remedial, he and I would sometimes spend long chunks of time in silence. We would walk together without words or enjoy a meal with only exchanged smiles between us and the occasional “hhm” or “ah-ha” about the food.

Back then, we often used music to communicate. We would “jam” our conversations out with our instruments. Thankfully, we were both fluent in music, and I do consider it a language, so-to-speak!

All that was before there were decent dictionaries on cell phones—not so long ago, really—so flipping through the little red dictionary could get seriously exhausting sometimes. And, since it was a full-time crash course in my third language nine long years after having studied it formally, I sometimes felt like my brain was going to explode from over exertion! The silence was a mental respite.

As time went on, though, I got more able to express my daily thoughts and our conversations became less quiet, let’s just say.

The worst part of this language acquisition process, though, was not its impact on my relationship, but its impact on the way I developed my identity in his community.

In China, various girlfriends of his male friends would often attend a group dinner and, as though following the Chinese gender rules for ideal conduct, would sit demurely behind the volume of their male partners’ voices.  Several times, I witnessed a woman get her boyfriend’s attention, lean in and whisper something into his ear. Sometimes he would then voice her opinion with the crowd, but conveyed through his voice. Other times, this whispering was for their ears only. Interesting to me was not only the fact that these women had chosen to take a backseat conversationally, but also the fact that this was not considered strange or abnormal, let alone that their whispering wasn’t thought of as rude.

I was raised in a family that had spirited debates over the dinner table. All opinions were heard, young and old, male and female. So, naturally, when I came to China, I wanted to be myself—that person who spoke up and had ideas and beliefs to share.

Of course, my third language was my handicap. Sometimes I was listening so intently in order to comprehend the content of the conversation that I found myself muted by sheer concentration. Other times, I would have to tune it out to give my brain a rest and then someone would direct a question at me and I’d feel my cheeks get hot to have no idea what was being discussed and therefore have no way to respond.

Often I’d think of a great thing to add and spend a moment formulating it in my head for the right grammatical structure and tones only to find that the conversation had moved on. More than once, I’d try to add something and realize too late that the conversation was actually about something slightly different and that my comment was out of place if not seemingly unintelligent.

A friend of mine pointed out that, “Even rocket scientists sound like idiots when they’re learning a new language.”

Truthfully, I wasn’t as worried about being perceived as unintelligent as I was worried about being perceived as deferential to my male partner. To date, my whole identity had been carved around my communication skills as a performer, an activist, a lyricist, a writer. Who was I in this new context but just a foreign face and form with no voice?  A meek woman in the background while her man did all the talking? Was this what I was re-inventing myself as?

As you can imagine, these thoughts drove me slightly mental.

Guo Jian was really great about introducing me to people in the context of my life’s work and accomplishments. He’d say, “This is Ember. She’s a musician from Canada. She’s released lots of CDs and has her own label and has toured all over the world.” (etc.)

I was at once grateful for his mini bios and incredibly shy about them.

The shyness came from feeling like there was a spotlight on me that then could not be backed up by a spotlight-worthy verbal performance. It also felt a bit strange to be bragged about while I was right there, for fear my lack of apparent modesty would be judged harshly in a culture that prizes the “modest maiden.”

Of course any gratitude was about having even a moment of visibility, even if it was thanks to the words of my male partner.

About three years after meeting each other, Guo Jian turned to me harshly in an argument and spurted these words: “You used to be so sweet and quiet. What happened? You never shut up now!”

“That’s because I didn’t know how to talk then!” I yelled back, angrily, “And besides, sometimes you need a talking to!”

This response sounds a bit more fun in Chinese: “当时我不会说！另外有时你真需要别人说你!”

But, now that I’ve been in China for a while, I’ve come to understand the power of silence. Listening in on a conversation can be a great way to truly understand the dynamics of a social group and to “read” the subtext that has nothing to do with words. As the partner who is often not initially connected with the people we dine with, for instance, I’ve come to appreciate the option to just sit back and not engage as fervently, if this is my choice.

There’s so much power in choice. Now that I can speak the language, it’s nice to choose not to speak sometimes.

I’ve also now learned that it’s often the demure, whispering women who are calling the shots. Unlike those women, though, I don’t need the superficial demonstration of meekness in order to bolster my strength. When I want to speak, I do. When I want to bow out of the conversation, I do that too. When I have an opinion, I can share or omit.

Dou keyi 都可以 (both are fine!)

I guess what’s changed is me. I have a place here. I don’t need to prove myself to anyone, least of all myself.

No matter who I’m with.

And that also means that sometimes Guo Jian and I spend long chunks of time in silence again, just holding hands or smiling. Proof that knowing and loving isn’t about words at all. It wasn’t then. It isn’t now.

Love is wordless, after all.

It was weddings.

I had seen friends and family members go through the inevitable flurry of weddings and come out the other side with torn hems in their familial relationships and dents in the steel of their friendships. “Wedding weary” is a look I’ve seen on people’s faces and I suddenly began to dread mine.

The in-laws chose the date of our main event: October 4^th. Apparently that was “吉利 jili” or “auspicious” according to the lunar calendar, yet it seems here that all dates and numbers are considered to be oracles of sorts. There was no question that they were the ones to choose the date either. I didn’t mind either way. We then chose the 10^th of October, a week later, to host a smaller event in Beijing where Guo Jian had been living for over a decade.

My parents started to make arrangements for coming to China for the first time. I hadn’t expected it but when they said they wouldn’t miss the event, I cried tears of relief that I didn’t even know I’d needed. What followed was a scuttle of messages and Skype calls and the back and forth between the in-laws and my folks regarding the timing of everything like their arrival, travel between cities, some plans for tourism, etc. When it was all sorted out, I had a sense of completion.

Sort of.

I still had this strange anxiety like the nagging feeling of having forgotten to do something important, like turn off the stove before leaving the house.

As the nights started to get cooler and autumn was closing in on me. I realized that the wedding was a month away and we had done nothing but organize my parents’ arrival and book a space for our Beijing event. I didn’t even have a dress!

Guo Jian, on the other hand, was completely at ease. “What are you worried about?” he asked me, irritated by my tight energy about it all. “My Mother has it under control. This is their wedding, not ours!”

Even in another language, the meaning of this sentence shocked me. It took me awhile to let it sink in. Shouldn’t I be indignant? It seemed we were having a wedding for his parents and his extended family, not to mention a series of demanding cultural expectations. While the marriage is about us, the wedding is about them, he explained. “Isn’t that the way it is in the West?” he asked innocently.

Apparently, all the arrangements had long been underway by his mother and I was just expected to show up on the 4^th of October. She was heading into Beijing to see us that week, as well, and I admit feeling great relief to know that part of her task was to get me fitted for a 旗袍 qipao, or a traditional Chinese wedding dress, my preference as opposed to a fluffy white gown. She was also coming into town to do a regular maintenance visit as her son’s primary caregiver, as per Chinese tradition. (See this blog for that story!)

All of this was a bit much for me. I started to fear I was walking into a circus without having signed up to be the tamed tiger leaping through hoops of fire. His mother was the ringleader. Was this what I was to look forward to in our marriage—that his mother would organize everything, sweep into town to do her son’s laundry, and I was just the 养媳妇 yangxifu （foreign wife) whose abdomen everyone would be monitoring for impending growth?

Yuck.

Somehow I felt that the absence of control may result in more “wedding weariness” for me than having to do it all would…

He assured me that this was how weddings in China were done, punctuated with an exasperated, “Relax!” Even he would barely know the order of things, the invitees, the plans (etc.) And, wasn’t it better that it wasn’t my job? It didn’t have to be a big deal, he said. Our job was to show up. Period.

I felt a bit relieved by this too, I must admit, not unlike the way I feel when his mother does his laundry. At least I don’t have to do it, I thought. But that relief was a sticky, guilty, anxious one. Was I burning the house down? Shouldn’t I go back to check on the stove?

I assured myself that I knew that the wedding would stand for and represent something important, but that I really didn’t care about the event itself. At least, I didn’t think I did. It’s a marriage I’ve agreed to, in the end, the wedding would be just one day, right?

Here’s what I had already learned that would make it so different from a Western wedding:

• The guests at the main event in his home city wouldn’t be ours to choose, with the exception of a few of Guo Jian’s friends that were still living there.
• The event wasn’t ours to pay for. As there would be no wedding gifts, the guests would bring money in a red envelope or “红包 hong bao,” which would then be collected by his parents and not us. The money would go into paying for the event and any extra would go back to them, presumably for raising and supporting their son all those years.
• The menu wasn’t ours to determine. It was going to be standard wedding fare as per Chinese custom: 8 courses as 8 is another auspicious number. It would not be vegetarian.
• They would hire an MC and there’d be lights, almost like a stage show, but there was no religion involved and so no vows needed to be pre-written. The legal part was already over. The MC would learn a bit about us, but that was it. He was strictly there to direct the “entertainment.”

And then, suddenly, I did care. I wanted to have some say. I wanted some of my Western traditions to be included in the event.

So, when his Mother arrived in early September, after having done some research about Chinese weddings, I started asking questions. For instance, there are two possible ceremonies and often people don’t do the morning one anymore, but it sounded like the most interesting component. Over lunch, I asked if we could do add that part and a surprised soon-to-be mother-in-law and her son both looked at me with the identical expression of curiosity on their faces. “Sure,” they said, “But we didn’t think you’d want to do the traditional stuff.”

“Your cultural traditions interest me,” I explained, “I’d just like to understand each element first” (so that I’m in the loop (of fire?), otherwise, this wedding would be reduced to just a banquet with an MC and some spotlights, wouldn’t it?)

They agreed.

Ever since I came out, the discussion of butch/femme has been a common one in the queer community. It seems to have lessened over the years as a central identity point, meaning: people don’t seem as hung up about it as they used to be. Then again, that could just be my particular perspective.

In the fifties, the gay community (not then yet called “queer,” at least not from within) was positively locked into these binaries. It was required to identify as one or the other as the heterosexual simulation of couples was the norm, with one partner being the “woman” and the other being the “man” regardless of their biological sex.

There was a loosening of these expectations in the late 60’s and 70’s (I’m not really sure about the 80’s—was there anything happening then except consumerism and Rubik’s Cube?) but then when I came out in the mid-90’s it seemed to be back in full force.

This was different than it was in the 50′s, though. When I encountered the expectation of butch/femme as a young queer, it wasn’t an imposed expectation from the greater society to somehow “fit in” or emulate the straight majority; it was more of an expectation from within the community as though the binary reinforced the strength of your identity or belonging…. or something.

As foggy as it was to pin down, I felt pressured to choose.

Of course, I have always looked the way I look, but when I had just come out at 19 and was hanging out in the Ottawa and Hull gay scene, I was committed to being as “butch” as possible. I mistakenly associated “femme” with weakness and a capitulation to society’s expectations. I donned big boots, lumber jacket, shaved my head and refused to wear make-up in protest. I felt tough.

These were just trappings, I know, and I recall a conversation in a restaurant one day, sharing brunch after a night of partying, when a gay male friend of mine commented on my natural femininity. He said, flippantly, that I could hardly claim the “butch” title.

I was horrified. I remember gesticulating wildly about my contrary opinion when he cut me off pointing to my dancing hands and said, “Men in my community who use those kinds of hand gestures are automatically ‘femmes.’”

My hands immediately found my lap. What was I so afraid of?

I came to accept that I was (and am) naturally feminine, but I still kept myself guarded. I spent the next decade finding the word “pretty” rather insulting, for instance, and went out of my way not to be seen as such, especially by men. I resented the objectification and implied dismissal of my inner strength and value.

And as a result, I have always been attracted to the androgyny that I wasn’t born with but secretly craved. My partners, looking back, all tended to be “pretty tomboys” or queer women who were more on the “butch” side. They all had beautiful, feminine features if you looked closely but were the type to sometimes be mistakenly ushered out of the women’s room and pointed to the urinals–especially in small towns.

This led others to see me, by default, as “the femme.” Yet, I never really fit into the full-scale femme culture either. I felt misunderstood most of the time and completely confused by this need to choose. Let’s just say I could pull off a skirt once in awhile but I always had dirt under my nails.

So, when I first came to China, I was surprised to feel my own brand of gender liberation here, especially in a society where gender is, for the most part, so clearly defined. Perhaps it was the fact that I was somewhere completely new, where no one knew me, where I was not on stage as the “queer poster girl,” and where I would never be remembered among the millions.

At first, I enjoyed wearing skirts more regularly. I got my nails done for fun and then enjoyed the way they looked (although that habit quickly waned, I admit!). For the first time, I felt less defensive when I received a “漂亮 piaoliang” or “美丽 meili” compliment about my appearance. I guess hearing “pretty” or “beautiful” in another language felt disassociated with the sociological power struggles imprinted from my Western upbringing. For the first time in my life, I tried out what being “femme” could be like.

This was short-lived but significant. I see it now as the final swinging of my gender identity pendulum to the opposite extreme before returning, finally, to the real me: someone who fits somewhere in between on the spectrum of gender expression and is free to swing one way or the other at any time she pleases. Quite simply, China helped me be myself unapologetically.

And then I met Guo Jian. To me, he embodied everything about the androgyny that I’m attracted to, just in a mirror image: biologically male but beautifully feminine. And, as the obvious genetic female here, it’s ironic that for the first time in any of my relationships, my “butchness” is not in question.

In our early relationship, Guo Jian commented that I walk like a man. I laughed and said, “Is that a problem?” He just smiled.

Later, I learned through his loud complaining and whining that he hates carrying heavy things. So, I haul the heavy stuff up and down the stairs while sometimes chiding him for being a wimp. The truth is that I like the workout and he’d much rather “supervise” by clearing the path ahead of me.

He’s also addicted to shopping and buys clothes and shoes far too regularly, to the point where he’s come to sometimes hide new acquisitions to his wardrobe from me for fear of reprisal.

I also do most of the driving and can parallel park far better than he can. In fact, he’s even boasted of this fact within his group of friends as the kudos he gets from having a female partner who can parallel park outweighs the loss of face he might feel for not being able to do it very well himself.

Guo Jian has far more “purses” than I’ve ever seen, let alone used. He calls them “bags,” as this is the term for them here rather than having a gendered term like we do in English. Guo Jian even changes them to match his outfit!

He also hates scary movies and has never been into organized sports. He really can’t throw a ball very far. He doesn’t like having dirty fingernails. He likes necklaces and rings but could never get his ear(s) pierced because he didn’t want to go through the pain. He’s very proud of his clear and soft skin.

These are just a few examples.

When we were first together, I remember one day noticing from behind how feminine Guo Jian’s body was. He was lying on his side on the bed with his back to me, in his underwear. The small amount of extra weight he has in his waist area against his otherwise lean frame gave him the appearance of having womanly hips, a bit like a renaissance painting before my eyes.

Later on in our relationship, he complained about his “hips,” saying that he’s always had them and has learned to wear his clothes in such a way as to disguise them. I smiled and reminded him that I used to only date bodies with accentuated hips and so I especially love his. If I can get close enough to sneak a pinch in once in awhile, he’s sure to squeal with a mixture of delight and disdain. He’s so ticklish, it’s hilarious.

About a year into our relationship, he said to me, “You know, sometimes I’m a bit like a girl and sometimes you’re a bit like a boy. We really balance each other out. It’s like Tai Chi—the black and white swirl; we are meant to be together, you know.”

He punctuated this statement with a wink and I realized it was the first time he had acknowledged his “not-so-masculine” ways, verbally. I took my cue to not make a big deal out of it and just nodded my agreement with a smile. Even now, I wonder if I even could make a big deal out of it. Guo Jian is so comfortable in his skin, it’s inspiring.

So, I guess what I’m getting at is that my whole notion of “butch” and “femme” has now been fully explored thanks to my current (and hopefully final) relationship. I am aware of my own feminine and masculine qualities as they exist naturally in me and I finally don’t need to identify as either extreme.

I’m now partnered with someone who simply is who he is without any socialized stigma of having to be a certain way either. He’s the type who has never apologized or felt pressured to be anything but himself, even if it’s the kind of man who sucks at parallel parking or who is more willing to carry the baby than the baby stroller down the stairs. It’s refreshing to witness.

And, considering this is a heterosexual partnership in which I’m always going to be seen as the woman (by extension, “femme”), you’d think I’d be especially irritated by the gender assumptions I have to deal with, but in fact the opposite has happened. I’ve come into a sense of peace about it all that I hadn’t ever thought possible.

When he turns to me and says, “你怎么那么漂亮？ni zenme name piaoliang?” or “How’d you get so pretty?” and gives me a hug, I now have no guards up and can just melt into the compliment. He also sometimes tells me that I look “帅 shuai” or “handsome,” especially if I’m decked out in the “rock” look all dressed in black with big boots and shades. I like that both adjectives are applicable to me in this language. I may be the woman here, with a womanly physique and natural femininity, but I still have the right to be handsome in Mandarin. That’s liberating.

Likewise, when I tell him he looks handsome, he struts like a rooster. And, equally, when I tell him he’s my pretty man, he beams.

It works for me.

Pic by Spencer Tunick

On my second trip back to Guo Jian’s hometown, the family announced one night that we should all go to the bathhouse. I had experienced a Chinese spa before and so I imagined a similar environment of whirlpools and various scented hot tubs. Basically, a collective bathing experience between men and women—in swimsuits.

When we arrived at the place, there was a chandelier in the hallway the size of my living room, glittering from the 30-foot ceilings. The place looked like a palace and the wait staff greeted us at the doorway and then led us to the counter that was equally glitzy with gold corners and marble tops. They all wore fancy telephone headseats, carried clipboards, and looked as though they’d all stepped out of a beauty salon just before starting their shifts.

This was only my second encounter with his parents and my 山东话 Shandonghua (the dialect of his family’s region) was rusty to say the least. I was starting to catch a few of the phrases and his parents were trying their best to speak to me with an accented Mandarin, but I have to admit that the communication level between me and his parents was still low. It often required a direct translation into Mandarin (or 普通话 Putonghua) by Guo Jian. Let’s just say that some basic conversation took longer than humanly necessary.

So, when we were given locker keys, towels and then whisked on our way, I panicked when I saw Gou Jian and his Father head towards one side of the building and felt his Mother tugging my elbow towards the other. I calmed myself when I assumed that we were just going to change into our swimsuits and then we’d emerge into an inner spa world of hot tubs, reunited.

It never worked that way.

We got into the women’s side and were given lockers. There, we were instructed to remove all of our clothing and jewelry and to change into their plastic flip-flops before entering into the bathing area.

I turned to see an unabashed collection of Chinese women and young female children naked and milling about the lockers in nothing but sky blue plastic shoes. I looked up to see Guo Jian’s mother already fully naked. She was chirping at me to hurry up and get my clothes off. I lifted my swimsuit out of the bag and she waved her hand in that Chinese way that means, “No need for that here!” or simply just “No” but actually looks like someone waving hello in our culture.

I remember glancing behind me and wondering if she had seen someone she knew and was waving to them. When I turned back around I found her reaching for my swimsuit and its bag. She took them out of my hands and placed them in the locker. I was instructed to strip.

What?!

I’m fairly modest, I must admit. As much as I support activism for legal toplessness for women, for instance, I’ve never been one to want to bare my breasts in public. I remember being nine years old and freaking out about sharing a bath with my female school friend because I was too shy to show my body to her. I got through that experience and I’ve since grown up and into a comfort with my body that I’m proud of. Still… naked in front of my new boyfriend’s mother?? I wasn’t sure I was ready for this.

Add to this equation that I was the only foreigner in the place. There were about fifty women bathing on that particular evening and my foreignness was a source of great curiosity. The kids especially kept poking their cute little heads around the corners of the walls to see this strange “老外 laowai” who was among them.

淄博 Zibo (his home city) is definitely not Beijing. Foreigners are few and far between.

I decided to just relax and go with it, as I have generally done with everything here in China. As soon as I decided to be okay with the nakedness, too, I really was okay with it. I’m really good at making a decision to be comfortable and just letting the comfort, and the comedy, follow. And it did.

I have a huge back tattoo. It’s invisible when I’m clothed, but when I am naked, it’s there for the world to see. Women don’t often have tattoos in this culture and his mother didn’t know about mine until that day. The entire population of that bathhouse that evening—at least on the women’s side—was tittering about it.

And it wasn’t just the tattoo they were looking at. Like with any culture that is generally racially sheltered, the naked body of someone who is from elsewhere and doesn’t look like the others is an intriguing thing. I’m sure there were faint questions in their minds like “What do white women look like down there?” or “What are white women’s breasts like?” The stares proved it. I felt like I was modeling for a racial profiling x-rated photo shoot; the cameras were the eyes of all those around me.

When his mother called me over to her so that she could wash my back, I knew it was to examine my tattoo. She scrubbed and rubbed and washed fiercely and I joked with her that no amount of scrubbing was going to remove it. She didn’t laugh. She just kept scrubbing and talking about getting rid of the “灰 hui” (which is like the word for dust, ash or the colour grey) and telling me to scrub my front. I did as I was told, but felt a little grossed out to later realize that this is the Chinese way of expressing “dead skin.”

While we were there—me sitting on a shower stool and his mother leaning over me to scrub me down in an open shower—a mother and her daughters came over to do their own washing and they began to speak about me as though I weren’t there. They remarked on the whiteness of my skin, the largeness of my eyes, etc. (Thankfully they refrained from commenting on my nether regions!) My partner’s Mother inserted her own commentaries about me and they soon struck up a conversation about this naked foreigner between them, exposed for all to see.

My (now) MIL explained that I was her son’s girlfriend and she reported on her son’s age and profession and that he lived in Beijing and had met me there. When the woman asked my age, she responded that it was “pretty much the same as [her] son’s.” This is very funny because I am seven years older than her son and she knows this fact very well. Later, and privately, I asked her directly why she didn’t share my real age with them and she evaded the question. I didn’t push it but Guo Jian eventually explained that there’s still a stigma about men being with older women, especially in his mother’s generation.

As I left the showers to rinse off in the bath tubs, again by express direction by the matriarch whose command I had chosen to follow that evening (despite believing that the rinsing off should happen in the shower after bathing and not the other way around－hhm?), I turned to one of the kids who was hanging around and said loud enough for everyone to hear that the showers were so nice and wasn’t it fun to be here? (洗澡太舒服了，这里不是很好玩吗？）She stared at me with huge eyes as though I was some sort of talking elephant. Her Mother gasped that I spoke the language and the tittering resumed with a higher pitch about me being “so smart” and “not like other foreigners” (etc.) I slipped away and into one of the baths at the far end of the room that was mercifully out of earshot.

Ten minutes later, Guo Jian’s mother was waving a towel in my direction and urging me to get moving. I rose out of the water (snuck a rinse in again at the showers) and then joined her to dry off.  Two hours had gone by in this naked display without my partner, struggling with the accented Chinese and different dialect. I was absolutely exhausted, mentally and physically, and just wanted to go.

Then, the staff gave us disposal toothbrushes and toothpaste packages. I initially refused one with a smile. I mean, I brush my teeth regularly and don’t need to waste a disposable set just because it’s standard to brush your teeth in the bathhouse! My refusal was interpreted as a language misunderstanding and Guo Jian’s mother stepped in and accepted the package on my behalf. I had no energy left to fight. I obediently brushed my teeth with the others and then held onto the toothbrush. I couldn’t bear to chuck it into the trash. No one contested my “souvenir.”

Just as we returned to the lockers, his mother marched me onto the scale. Now, in my culture, weight is a personal thing, but there she was, at my elbow in her typical, urging way, and suddenly I was standing on the scale in my nakedness and she was peering around my shoulder at the weight being displayed. She was pleased. She told me that my weight was “很好，很好 very good, very good” and I fumbled my feet off the scale and focused my flight on the lockers, feeling slightly violated and woozy from the humidity of the room.

Maybe I was a talking animal after all!  Being stripped, cleaned, weighed and appraised truly gave me the feeling that being a prized potential daughter-in-law was not unlike being a piece of livestock paraded at the fair.

My clothes never felt better.

When we emerged into the chandelier-guarded entrance way, Guo Jian and his Dad were already there, sitting on one of the leather couches that lined the walls, waiting for us. I practically rushed over to him like he was a long-lost lover. He greeted me with a smile and then dumped his freshly washed dreadlocks into my face so that I could smell how clean they were. He had no idea how relieved I was to see him and he’ll never understand why even if I explained. What’s more, even if I tried, it will forever be something normal for him and he can never relate to the culture shock of it all. This is the crux of the cross-cultural disconnect–its constant confounding reality: the brunt of the assimilation lies with the one choosing to live in the foreign land. I understand that and I’ve learned to just move on. I playfully took a whiff of the dreadlocks and then made him smell my hair too. When he hugged me, I got what I needed.

We walked back to their house with me feeling like I had inadvertently passed a test or completed a rite of passage. Getting naked with your future mother-in-law has to be some sort of trial that most people don’t have to go through, don’t you think?

I only wish I had been properly warned.

At least no one could say I wasn’t willing to be seen… exactly as I am!

The first time “Tomb Sweeping Day” arrived in China while I was there, I had no idea what people were talking about. Guo Jian described it as China’s “Hallowe’en” and I was expecting costumes and candy. It was spring of 2009 and we were back to visit his parents in Shandong. As per the translation of the holiday (Qing Ming Jie 清明节), I also imagined a bunch of brooms being taken to a cemetery to sweep the tombstones. In a way, this was closer to the truth.

In 2006, Guo Jian’s maternal grandmother passed away. It is customary, as per thousands of years of tradition, to burn paper money to send deceased relatives in the other dimension any resources they might need. The portal is the fire. I rather like the magic implied in this.

There’s a market for the fake bills that are sent to the other dimension. (Isn’t there a market for everything?) The family had stocked up. Stacks of these “riches” were carried by all the family members, everyone taking what they could fit under their arms as we walked down the road just after dusk to the nearest intersection.

The intersection is key: apparently, if you send goods to your relative on a straight road, there is a chance that he or she won’t receive the message. You need to be at a place that symbolizes all four directions.

When we arrived at what was deemed an appropriate spot, the paper money was flopped in piles to one side, the stacks of plain tissue paper to create more fodder was also loudly thumped to the ground. Another relative had brought a bottle of “baijiu” or white spirits (Chinese alcohol) and another carried small bowls and dishes filled with single portions of the meal we were planning to have that very night. Finally, one of the grandchildren carried incense in stacks all bound together, not unlike those found in a Buddhist temple.

There we were on the edge of the public sidewalk, right there in the middle of town, and the fire was lit. Slowly the money was fed through the portal. The food (that was protected by plastic wrap) was exposed for her to enjoy and then it was thrown into the fire and sent to her in the other world, along with the liqueur and the incense. Everyone stood around kindly and respectfully silent while the flames were being tended by Guo Jian’s uncle and his aunt’s husband. All three of the remaining children of his grandparents (so two aunts and an uncle—the oldest aunt has already passed away) were present with their partners and children.

It was a circle of family and fire on the side of a busy four-lane street corner in a big Chinese city.

Around us in the manicured business shrubbery associated with the office building at the corner, three other groups were burning similar piles of paper money, some also holding bowls of food to send to the departed family members. I looked farther and saw little circles of fire all around this large intersection, on all corners. Little tiny shrines for the absent were being tended by silent moving shadows of family members still present in this dimension. The orange glows reminded me of the sight of pumpkins glowing on porches in Canada. It was the closest it got to Hallowe’en.

I marveled at how impossible such a practice would be in Canada where open fires in cities are prohibited, but apparently it is not even questioned here. They laughed when I asked if it’s actually legal. It’s a cultural norm to pay respects to the passing of elders, on both Tomb Sweeping Day and New Year’s Eve. I’ve since come to expect the sight of these black ash circles around this time of year, leftover remnants of filial piety left on the sidewalk and roadsides. Perfectly legal. Perfectly Chinese.

Cigarettes were also thrown into the fire and sizzled as they burned.

“Does your Grandmother smoke?” I asked in a whisper into Guo Jian’s ear. He nodded. Feeding her habit in the afterlife was clearly not life-threatening! (I’ve since learned that she loved smoking but she apparently passed away from heart complications.)

Then the family collectively bowed towards the direction of the cemetery in which Guo Jian’s grandmother and aunt are buried. I joined in, as well. I felt honored to be invited to do so.

And when it was over, I felt moved by this ritual. I trailed the family back home feeling a reverence and gentleness lingering in my step. It was really beautiful.

Again, moved by this culture and taken in.

In a warm circle of family light.

Getting married in China is not officially the fanfare and the ceremony; first you have to “dengji登记.” This is the act of getting your marriage certificate and, often, is all people do to signify their union. The next stage—a wedding—is a choice. In Chinese the expression is to “ban shi 颁示” or “make it public.” Some people get married but never “ban shi” because, let’s face it, weddings are a particular brand of crazy!

I liken the act of “dengji”(ing!) to getting your marriage certificate at a city hall. The thing is, it’s really more like signing the marriage license that happens at most Western weddings some point between the “I do” and the cake cutting. In my country, the certificate is generally issued on the day of the wedding. People don’t consider themselves married until someone is sweeping up the confetti.

Before this step could even be taken, however, I had to prove to the Chinese government that I’m not a polygamist. In other words, that I don’t have husbands in other countries or that I’m not already married. I found this fact ironic considering China changed its laws regarding men being allowed to have concubines less than a century ago. The only comforting thought is that foreign men and women poised to marry Chinese nationals have to prove their “eligibility” as bachelors/bachelorettes equally.

I went back to Canada that March and asked in the Toronto Chinese embassy what I would require for the process. They gave me the name of several Chinese-speaking lawyers in the city. The woman at the counter passed me a pre-photocopied list without a word through the glass window that separated us. She whisked the next person in line forward to take my place and dismissed me. It seemed that my inquiry was not unusual.

I phoned the office most conveniently located near to where I was staying and made an appointment. A few days later, I was sitting in front of a large oak desk and across from a Chinese lawyer who asked me about my partnership, my marriage history, and then peppered his questions with interest in my reasons for being in China in the first place. I instinctively responded to his questions in Chinese while he persisted in asking me additional questions in English. We did this language dance for a few minutes before I apologized in English and explained that I was just back from Beijing after six months and my brain was wired for Mandarin. He laughed.

A week later, after his having had the authority to search the national marriage records (or something like that), I was back at his office to pick up my stamped paper reporting that I was indeed a bachelorette (!). It was preceded with a translation in Chinese, the key to my ability to proceed with the “dengji” process in China.

After paying the fees (lawyers aren’t cheap), I distinctly remember looking down at the manila envelope in my hands as I walked back to the car that day and thinking, “This is so mafan 麻烦!” One of my favourite words in Mandarin, it has a combined meaning of “pain in the butt,” “needlessly wearisome,” “requiring too much energy” and “irritating” (but as a result of its wearisome nature).

But, I was also proud of myself for dealing with this issue in advance rather than waiting for my intended summer journey back to Canada when I knew I would rather be lounging on a dock somewhere rather than stuck in a city dealing with paperwork. Little did I know how necessary that pre-planning would be.

Back in China with documents luckily still tucked in my suitcase’s outside flat pocket where I’d put them in March, we were back in Shandong province for the May holidays when Guo Jian reminded me that it would be best to get our marriage certificates sorted out earlier than later. His rationale was that since I was going back to Canada in the summer, I could renew my visa before coming back, but this time I could apply with a marriage license rather than just as a tourist. As you know, the lure of an easier visa process for China was part of the draw to get married in the first place, so I eagerly agreed to get the certificate whenever it was possible.

Again, I was completely unaware that the process is so “mafan.” He suggested this while we were back in his hometown because that’s the only place that he can get this paperwork done! Without a Beijing “hukou 户口” (more info about hukous here), he would be unable to go to the marriage office in the city in which we were living together.

Now, every city has a government office specifically designed for completing the dengji process but, if you’re a Chinese national (Guo Jian) marrying a non-Chinese citizen (me), you have to go to a different office yet again. In his home city of Zibo where there are five million people living and working, this specific office gets about twenty applications a year.

We arrived one morning just after the national May holidays had ended and we poked our heads in the doorway to the “marry-a-foreigner” office only to see the clerks gathered around a short coffee table, two on the sofa and one on a small stool, the room ensconced in cigarette smoke, with a lively poker game in process. They looked up at us, startled. This has got to be the easiest government job ever! Imagine only having to process paperwork twenty times a year!

They hastily shoved the cards and the overflowing ashtrays aside and we walked into the cloud of smoke with our marriage photos in hand, ready to fill in the paperwork. We had already posed for our photos at a camera center that week. In China, small passport-sized photos are essential components to almost every official application. These “marriage photos” featured both of us in the frame. Standard issue.

I, of course, had to have my passport as well and it was taken from my hands immediately. The paperwork was begun. I sat on the couch and watched it all like a bad television show. The exchange was all in Shandong hua 山东话 (the dialect of the province) and so I admit to only catching some of it, but it basically began with questions for Guo Jian and his parents (who had accompanied us) about where he had met me, how long I had been in China, how long we’d been dating, etc. I found it quite invasive, but I’m not exactly sure if it’s standard to ask or if they were just curious. Sometimes these lines are blurry.

The paperwork was filled in and I only had to sign it. No one asked me to fill in my portions. In fact, no one said a single word to me. I was just the foreigner on the couch, perched for all to see, and soon I had a small little red book in my hands (not unlike a thin, red passport) that was my ticket to an easy Visa application for the rest of time.

We were in and out within half an hour.

Guo Jian and I turned to each other as we exited the room, leaving the men and the smoky poker parlour behind us with the click of a doornob, and I asked him, “Do you feel any different?” “No,” he replied and we both laughed awkwardly.

We were married.

It felt so surreal to me that I didn’t even register its reality. I forgot to mention it to friends when I returned in the summer. Even when I got a fancy new Chinese visa that was good for a whole year, I still didn’t register myself as a “married woman.” I continued to imagine the wedding—scheduled for October—to be the “real” moment of marriage. In my head, it could still be called off if necessary. I still had time to change my mind if our relationship became too “mafan.”

In other words, I didn’t feel married. Not in the least.

Well, after all, there was no sign of confetti.

I had no idea how important wearing rings would be to me until Guo Jian resisted the idea.

After our engagement in his hometown that New Year’s, 2009, I bought him a ring from the jewelry department in a fancy local mall. It was a simple gold band with some silver inlay that he really liked and that suited his skin colouring. He was present to pick it out, of course. He’s way too picky otherwise. It wasn’t cheap either—about $500 Canadian—and so it felt like a really important gesture for me to dig into my small cache of cash and buy it for him to represent our engagement, especially after he had so elaborately proposed.

(Someone told me later that women aren’t supposed to return the engagement ring gesture. Really? How unfair to guys!)

We both agreed that we didn’t need separate, additional wedding rings. I felt it would be a crazy extravagance and, since it’s not a Chinese custom to exchange rings, he hadn’t even considered that there might be two rings required! Needless to say, he was relieved to hear that I was fine with the one.

After we got back to Beijing and the reality of our engagement was present, though, these rings became the target of any as-of-yet-un-dealt-with issues, quite probably stemming from fears of entrapment or judgment error, or of our both soon being officially “taken” and without “freedom” etc., or so the theories of pre-wedding stress profess.

The fighting began when he stopped wearing it all the time. He thought wearing the same ring every day was boring and uncool, in a fashion sense. I mean, he had a ring and wasn’t that enough? He couldn’t understand why the consistent wearing of it was so important to me as a symbol of our love (and impending nuptials) and I couldn’t seem to explain it to him in a way that made him understand. No, I should re-phrase that: I couldn’t seem to explain it to him in a way that made him agree with me.

Every time I saw his naked left hand, I was mad.

The truth is, I didn’t realize it was important to me until he didn’t regard it as important. I guess I latched onto the tradition as something that represented my culture in this plan of ours to get married. And, once latched, I couldn’t release. You see, everything else was about his culture—even the need to marry in the first place—and I just wanted something that was representative of my own.

The Chinese expression “铁心 tiexin” means “determined” or “resolved.” Literally, it’s a compound of two characters: “iron 铁” +  “heart 心.” I like that. Every time I use it, I picture my heart solidifying into fierce metal. If you put “铁了心 tie le xin” before a verb, like  “我铁了心想让他戴他的戒指 wo tie le xin xiang rang ta dai ta de jiezhi,” it can be translated as, “I was determined to make him wear his ring.”

Yes. My heart had an iron-grip ring of determination around it labelled “imperative ring-wearing” and the more swollen with irritation my heart became, the less I was going to allow that ring to ever come off!

Besides, if I just accepted that we wouldn’t wear rings, it seemed like yet another part of me was being worn down like a stone in this ocean called China. Eventually, I would become sand and slip through my own fingers. Wouldn’t I?

Cultural Erosion.

Thus, it became a “deal breaker” for me. For him, it became a constant irritant. What’s more, he seemed to enjoy removing his ring regularly, especially dramatically, and witnessing the impact this had on me.

Once, he tore his ring off his finger while we were arguing about something else in the car. He chucked the ring behind him while driving and it just missed the open back window as it pinged off the glass. Later, he found it in the back seat.

Another time, while in the midst of stressful renovations in our apartment, (which was his parents’ gift to us as a pre-wedding present,) he angrily ripped his ring off his finger and whipped it across the room—a room that was strewn with stacked furniture, renovations materials, plastic sheeting and copious amounts of dust. My heart ached to watch it arc in the air as if in slow motion and then disappear. I heard its gentle tinkle when it landed (or hit debris) but I pictured it lost for good amidst a life in chaos.

That chaos was really us. We were remodeling our love into a marriage and it was messy.

(And, by the way, his Mother eventually found it for him the next day, the symbolism of his needing his mother’s help to locate his wedding ring was not lost on me, either.)

Eventually, he offered a compromise that he would wear his ring whenever he was in a Western country, but that he shouldn’t have to wear it all the time in China—a country that didn’t care about wedding rings.

I refused.

Again, I was as solid as iron about it. “No ring, no wedding,” I said. Besides, there are lots of Westerners in China, I reminded him, and I wanted him to show others he was proud of his decision to spend his life with me. Without the ring, people might think he was trying to have a double life. He balked at this. I stood my ground.

Eventually, he argued that he didn’t really like the ring that I’d bought him (and he’d picked out.) This pissed me off too, but I told him that if he got a new ring, he’d have to buy it himself but that he’d still have to wear it all the time. “If I find one I really like, I’ll consider it,” he replied.

It was a possible compromise.

We went to a Tibetan jewelry store in the tourist area of the downtown core and he found a more clunky, tougher-looking silver ring with a big, flat white stone that he really liked. It was about $50 but he bought it for himself and I picked out a super cheap equivalent ($5) that was made of stainless steel and a cheap stone but almost matched his. I had previously explained that having matching styles was also part to the Western tradition. If he was replacing his simple band with this clunky, flashing ring with a stone, so should I! He hadn’t noticed me buying that cheap equivalent ring, however.

When I got home, I switched my ring too, showing him my new acquisition, saying I’d switch it according to his switching habits because I personally didn’t care which ring I wore. I remember looking down and admiring my cheap find with a sense of satisfaction and then calmly turning to leave the room.

Well, little did I know his double standards were so stacked upon themselves. He was so angry that I wasn’t wearing the original ring he had “gotten down on one knee to give me” that he came up behind me, physically wrenched the cheap ring off my finger, walked over to our fifth story window, and threw it out into the early summer night. He punctuated this unbelievable act with the statement: “It’s too cheap and doesn’t look like a wedding ring anyway. No one will believe you’re married if you wear that piece of shit.”

Now….

…. there’s not much you can do to me that will anger me more than disposing of something that is mine without my permission. I HATE THAT. It wasn’t the first time he’d jealously or angrily thrown something of mine away, either. It was the second time. The first time had come with a “if-you-ever-do-that-again-you-will-regret-it” warning.

So, maturely, I scooped up his new ring that was sitting undefended on the coffee table, rushed to the window closest to me, and chucked it out. “If I can’t wear mine then you can’t wear yours!” I screamed. (It was not my finest moment.)

He immediately disappeared out the door but came back 10 minutes later silently fuming. It was nighttime. It’s hard to find anything in the dark. Especially hastily hurled compromises.

Sleeping in separate rooms, my anger pulsed through me for several hours until I calmed to the realization that two wrongs really didn’t make it right. By the first light of dawn, I went down to look for his ring and actually found it. Turned out he had found mine the night before as well.

It was about this point in my relationship with Guo Jian that I realized he would go to ridiculous lengths to not be controlled. He wanted to get married, but losing his autonomy was not an option. For him, it wasn’t about the ring; it was about my setting an imperative.

So, I backed off. I let him buy me a nicer ring that “matched” (silver + white stone) and I pointedly chose to say nothing when I noticed his naked finger. Before long, it stopped being naked. One day shortly afterwards, he came to me, excited, and said, “You know, it feels really weird not to have a ring on this finger now! I can’t imagine not wearing it!” Then he flashed me a mischievous, dimpled smile.

You see, it has to be his idea.

I just smiled back and nodded. We both knew that the ring war was over.

To this day, he has no idea that I had had to borrow a ladder and climb up on the downstairs store’s rooftop to get his ring back. Funny enough, I don’t need him to know. That morning, I had felt like a superhero for finding it and that was enough for me. I knew then and there that I didn’t need anything from him—not even his wearing of a ring—to be strong enough to get through the hard times.

That didn’t mean that I didn’t want him to wear one as a form of respect for my culture and person; it just meant that I didn’t need him to wear one so that I would feel strong and represented in the partnership. When I reconfirmed to myself that I could hold my ground and also right my own wrongs through action, well, it was enough for me.

And I guess it was enough for him too. We both caved into the other’s demands. I now have two rings, as per his request, and they’re both quality pieces. I mostly wear the original and, funny enough, so does he. Our silver rings with white stones sit in jewelry boxes as memories of that crazy night more than anything else.

White flags of truce.

There are certain words in the English language that, in Western culture, are fairly important for peaceful relations between people. They are “thank-you,” “sorry,” “excuse me” and other less important but equally pleasant additions like “good morning,” “good night,” “How was your day?” etc. Between lovers, the most important one is, “I love you.”

In Chinese culture, words like the first three (thank you, sorry, excuse me) are words reserved for strangers. They imply distance in their very use, a distance between the two speakers in terms of social connection. So, when I say “thank you” to his parents, for instance, for buying us a new contraption for our kitchen or for taking us out to dinner, they sweep it aside with an embarrassed gesture signaling slight impatience and say “no need for ‘thank you’—we’re family!”

They think it’s a bit cute, though, and chalk it up to our cultural differences. At least they’re smart enough to realize this is indeed the case and not take offense. Other Chinese people get offended when you thank them as this is the equivalent of pushing them away from you and placing them in the role of stranger or business associate as opposed to friend.

In our early stages of relationship, Guo Jian and I had regular arguments about these words. I found it unbearable that I would make a big dinner (and remember that I don’t love to cook) and he would sit down and tell me it tasted great but never thank me for making it!

What’s more, the absence of a thank-you after I’d prepared that big meal, for instance, would tweak the feminist hairs on the back of my neck. No woman that I’d ever been with would have failed to thank me for my culinary efforts! Was his lack of thank you rooted in an expectation that a woman should be in the kitchen, I wondered, skeptically?

Once again, I wasn’t sure whether I was simplifying things by suggesting this was purely a cultural difference. After all, when you’re irritated, you look around for more places to blanket bomb your blame. So, in addition, I focused in on his gender with fierce, narrowed eyes.

But, there were those other absent words too…

When we fought and he said something unforgivably mean, it would ring in my ears and be just that—unforgivable—because he never seemed to realize the need for me to hear his apology. And, even though he may have felt sorry and demonstrated this, I figured his inability to say sorry was tantamount to his actually believing the words he had said were true.

When I woke up and said, “Good morning!” in his language and he laughed awkwardly and dismissively, never returning the greeting, I would invariably start the day feeling dismissed and lonely.

When he bumped me in the kitchen or told me to ‘move out of his way’ rather than saying “excuse me” or asking me to move, I felt ordered around and that my physical presence was a nuisance rather than a chosen pleasure.

Or when I asked him why he never asked me how my day went and he said that if I wanted to tell him, I should just tell him, but that it wasn’t his job to ask me such a silly question, I felt rebuked for my simply wanting to hear his interest in my life.

(I’ve since learned that this latter example is not just cultural; men all over the world fail to ask the women in their lives how their day went. I tell you, sisters, dating women really rocks for this. It’s lovely to come home from a day and find someone interested in hearing how it went! Who knew this would be one of the things I’d miss the most!?)

But, “I love you” was the worst of all. When I said it to him, he would look around the space and hope no one had heard. He was vocal at home with his professions of love, but if we were anywhere else, he acted like a scared kid afraid of being ridiculed. My moment of verbal affection would hang listless between us like a limp flag and then my face would fall.

It was the “I love you’s” that started a shift in him. He would see my face fall and return the words back in English to me in a whisper and at least take my hand. He saw that it helped a little, using those words, even it was just in English.

And it did.

Our fights would go like this:

(Me) “Why don’t you thank me? Don’t you appreciate that I cooked this meal when you were in a rush and had to go? Otherwise you wouldn’t have eaten. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

(Him) “Chinese people don’t have to thank their family. You are my family. If I thank you, I treat you like a stranger. Do you want that?”

(Me) “But in my culture, if you don’t thank me, you’re treating me worse than a stranger. You’re treating me like you don’t care about me. Like you don’t respect me!

(Him) “You’re in China now. You should do as the Chinese do. Try to get used to it. It’s weird for me to thank you. It feels wrong. I don’t want to make you into someone I’m not close to. If I thank you, it’s like I don’t think of you as my loved one.”

(Me) “I may be in China, but I’ll never be Chinese! You have to honour some of my culture too!

(Him) “But if I do that, I’m ignoring my own culture. Is that fair?”

(Me) “If I live here, I’m not living IN my own culture. Is THAT fair? Why should I have to abandon everything in my culture to be with you and you can’t even adjust your language to be with me?”

(Him) “That’s your choice. You like China. You chose to come here. I didn’t force you to. You want to study this culture but I don’t have the same interest in yours. This is part of what you have to learn.”

(Me) “But you obviously have an interest in ME and this is part of ME. <insert vigorous English cursing here!> Just say ‘Thank you”!!  And don’t tell me what I have to learn or not to learn. You’re not my teacher; society is!”

(Him) “They’re only words. Why are words so important to you and every other Westerner! You all talk too much anyway. Actions are more important. You Westerners put too much emphasis on words in the first place!”

(Me) “You don’t know anything about Westerners! This is all generalizations and racism! We have different words that are important and you have different words that are important. Stop being so narrow-minded and prejudiced.”

This is when the English swearing takes over and irritation erases all of my Chinese language abilities… Logic fails and frustration usurps all.

Of course, this is when he also counters with swearing in Chinese, which sucks because I understand its meanings, unlike his inability to understand what I mean when I’m swearing in English, (except that I’m just swearing.) So some of his cursing hurts my feelings and then we’re back at square one because I want an apology for those mean words, let alone a “thank you” for the meal in the first place.

I storm off and don’t say good-bye when he leaves the house.

He leaves the house, frustrated, and doesn’t register anything strange to not hear a “good-bye,” yet another unnecessary pleasantry between family.

When we next see each other, he acts as though nothing has happened. In Chinese culture, this is also fairly common. Problems that have occurred even in the recent past like that morning are 过去了 guo qu le (over and done with, in the past) and it’s supposed to be kinder to move on from them, not reference them, and seek peace.

To me, I often feel like this is a “covering up” or a willful ignorance of the bad energy between us. To his credit, I’ve started to also see that moving on from bad energy is healthy rather than drawing it out over many days or weeks through over-processing. (Yes, something common in relationships with women!) This new way is actually a quicker way to heal.

Still, I wanted my words. Even though it sounds ridiculous to need to hear words, especially when the sentiment couldn’t be heartfelt because it was culturally unintelligible to him, I still wanted to hear them. I didn’t care that he didn’t want to say them or, more, didn’t believe in saying them. Hearing them meant he was hearing me and he was giving me something from my culture that, while surrounded by his culture, I desperately needed and believed that I deserved. Hadn’t I sacrificed a lot, I’d ask? He was right to point out that this had been my choice and he wasn’t responsible for it. I know that. Still, I pushed.

Eventually, without any verbal acknowledgement to the cultural significance for me, the English phrase, “Thank you baby” started to pepper his sentences when I had done things for him or was willing to. At first, he would put the phrase into the request itself, snuggled around the Chinese like, “Ember, 你可以开我朋友的车送我到修车的地方吗—thank you baby—因为他们修车的时候我就有办法回家？” (“Can you drive with me to the garage in my friend’s car—thank you baby—so that we can drop off my car to get fixed and then come home?”) The sudden presence of the English insert sounded ridiculous and made me laugh, but…

I liked it.

The next one that emerged was, “Excuse me, sweetie,” thankfully inspired by my family and my Canadian friends who noticed his frequency of rude interruptions, by Western standards. He had an obnoxious tendency to barge into my conversations with others or interrupt my work on the computer without any kind of “excuse me” preceding his torrent of words and his demand for my attention. My parents and friends versed him on the “Excuse me, sweetie” that could make life so much easier for his relationship with me. Because, as it does, it would soften me to his interruptions and ensure that I didn’t snap at him or yell at him for being so rude or disrespectful to my existing conversation or work. It’s like primer for the listener’s ears.

When he started to say this before talking to me when I was working, pronouncing ever syllable perfectly, especially the “t” in “sweetie,” I simply couldn’t be mad at him and would turn in my chair with a smile and be willing to hear whatever it was he wanted to say.

He noticed the difference immediately. He began to say it constantly. I will never tire of hearing it. When my friends hear it, especially those who don’t speak Chinese and have no idea what he says to me after these opening words, they smile and love him for his sweetness. He sees that and it fills him with a pride and glow that can’t be denied. His reveling in their response to it, something I never would have expected, makes him all the cuter. He looks like a kid who has just discovered a new talent—every time.

And overdone or not, hearing these kinds of words in my language as opposed to his is enough for me. He discovered a way to get around his own cultural awkwardness by using these phrases in English. In fact, it’s better that way. That’s how I heard them in my cultural upbringing. That’s what I wanted to hear in my world surrounded by his culture—a bit of my own culture. It was a bit of my own brand of verbal kindness.

It worked beautifully.

Soon, a sing-song “Good morning, baby!” danced from his lips the minute he opened his eyes and “good-night” was exchanged before we fell asleep, with or without my prompting. He started to say “I love you baby” on the phone at the end of conversations even if his friends were around—again, always in English and usually as the only English words in the conversation—but I didn’t care. I just wanted to hear them. It made me feel better. It all made me feel more loved.

Because, they’re not only words; they’re cultural signifiers. They embody respect. They are part of who I am. Now, they’re part of our relationship.

And last but not least, “Sorry baby” started to find its way into our post-fight conversations. He learned that not acknowledging the fight was not going to end it for me. Even though I often silently went along with his “moving on” methods, I couldn’t release the sad grip on my heart or the film of anger from my eyes. He learned that calling me on the phone before he came home and starting off with, “I was too worked up and stressed out. I had an extreme reaction. Sorry baby!” was enough to trigger the loosening of those grips and the clearing of that film. I did accept the apology. I heard that he meant it, even if he was awkward in saying so. And letting go of my sadness or anger may not happen immediately, but those words—“Sorry, baby”—were enough to start the process.

Tonic for my ears.

Salve for my heart.

Band-aids for our relationship.

Like all real relationships, it had passed from the perfection of the honeymoon stage and into the reality of its gaps and bruises, its imperfections and realities. No relationship is perfect. I have learned to love and accept him regardless of the things that drive me crazy about him. He has learned to do the same.

And to that, I say, “谢谢宝贝，我爱你!” （Thank you, baby. I love you.）

One of the first people I shared the news of my engagement with (after my family, that is) was my ex-partner. I wanted her to know before the news found her along the grapevine. Grapevines can strangle trust. Besides, we had been best friends for over twelve years (our relationship plus our earlier friendship) and I wanted such an important person in my life to know my important news.

It had only been a year and a half (not even) since our break-up and I knew she was still very resentful and bitter, but I also knew that it was her choice to be those things. I had just as much right to them and reason for them as she did. Our breakup was hard—on both of us.

But, I was pushing myself (and her, I admit) for peace at every juncture. Reaching out and sharing this news with her was another attempt at letting her know that she was important to me. I wanted our friendship. I wanted it to be intact.

And, I admit that I wanted her blessing.

In retrospect, it didn’t really matter how she found out, I imagine, or whether she would give me her blessing or not. She was writing her own story about our break-up and I had nothing to do with its composition.

After that conversation, however, (during which she was incredulous but then congratulated me and wished us well,) she didn’t speak directly to me for another year and eight months.

Not that I was counting.

After almost a year and a half of negotiations through mediation, in early spring 2009 just shortly after Guo Jian and I got engaged, she and I finally disentangled the many years of financial merging that had happened between us.

When money suddenly comes between two people who have spent over a decade at financial peace with each other, it gets ugly. I truly believe money is the grease on that valve of bitterness. Once it opens, it flows freely. And, for what? What’s it worth?

Nothing. Truly nothing.

And the stories that get told about break-ups are sadly truncated, incomplete, not to mention unfair. They make good stories that way, though. More compelling. More pathos.

I was cast in the role of the leaver.  She played the role of the one who was left behind. In being left behind, she was the victim of the leaver’s decision to leave. In the leaving, I was the perpetrator of the crime. That was how it went down in most people’s eyes. I heard it confirmed time and time again.

And yes, in one main way, I was the leaver.  I moved out of the house. I went back to China. I left.

Did I leave her? No more than she left me. Hearts depart. That’s what happens.

And leaving that relationship was truly the hardest and bravest thing I have ever done. Having hurt each other for too many years, having spent almost three of those final years trying to negotiate my bitterness and anger and broken heart about her other lover while still stubbornly remaining in the relationship, and then having found a place that helped me heal from all that (China) were all chapters of the same story. Then her unwillingness to allow me that healing or another love of my own (Guo Jian) was also part of that story. Without these chapters, the story is incomplete.

The worst was that I began to hear that I had “left her to marry a man in China.” The injustice and inherent judgment in that summary made me want to spit.

But there was nothing I could do about those limited views except just wait for it all to no longer be important to people anymore, for it to no longer be relevant. Because, really, no one was going to truly understand it except the both of us. And even between the two experts on the inside—me and her—our two stories were never going to align. They had started to grow apart the minute we had split apart. They were both accurate. They were both true. They were both incomplete.

And where was Guo Jian in all of this?

Throughout my year and half of recovery from this break-up, throughout all the mediation and negotiations, throughout all the heartache of it, Guo Jian was in my life. You’d think that his presence would be like a balm to a broken heart, but it didn’t work like that. He and I occupied a particular frequency together that didn’t cross wires with the frequency of grief and recovery that I had to go through with my ex-partner. They were parallel signals on a radio dial that simply didn’t cross one another. I also couldn’t shut one off to experience the airwaves of another. They were simultaneous. Simultaneously separate.

Early on, he said to me that even though he knew I was struggling, he couldn’t be there for me. He said, “If you need a hug, I’ll give you one. But, I can’t help you with this. It’s yours. It has nothing to do with me.”

One day I had been crying at the computer screen and he came up and hugged me from behind. In typical Chinese style, he wanted me to stop crying, “行了，行了，别哭了！xing le, xing le, bie ku le! （alright, alright, don’t cry!)” but he also didn’t want to know why I was crying. It was irrelevant he said, sweeping his hand at my suggestion that I share with him the reason for my tears. The reason wasn’t important. “The more you tell me, the more you’ll cry,” he said. Then he led me away from the computer screen into another room and changed the subject.

At first, I resented what I saw as his lack of support, but then I came to thank him for it. It kept the joy of our love untarnished by the grief of my break-up. The two could co-exist without poisoning each other. The joy couldn’t assuage the pain, but they weren’t meant to. Each was happening equally in my heart and they each got their space.

And, now that I look back on it, the way he chose to deal with it was actually the most supportive way possible. It really did have nothing to do with him. He stayed out of it and that was the right choice. It was brilliant, really.

To this day, I’m not sure if it was conscious brilliance or just his inability to ever relate to the problems that inadvertently placed him in that role. He had never had a long-term relationship (beyond a year and a half) and he had only lived with a partner one time before, when he was 19 years old. As two kids, even he acknowledged that they had no idea how to make it work living together.

So, did he back off out of respect for its separateness, or did he back off because he had no wisdom to impart anyway?

In the end, the answer to that doesn’t matter. The fact that he did back off is key. It was perfect.

When my ex and I finally sat down across a table from one another again in late October of 2010, it had been just two months shy of three years since we had officially split up. Our reconnection itself was nothing special and just consisted of simple chatter and updates about our lives, but the symbolism of her finally being willing to share physical space with me again, even in a public café, was not lost on me.

It finally triggered the closure of the bitterness valve. We had both been through so much since we had been in each other’s lives and there was no doubt we were both different and had moved on; we were both scarred but had survived.

But more importantly, I felt in her a lifting of an emotional embargo that I had wished many times had never been put in place. I could almost see it straining, creaking, and hauling itself up and off her shoulders throughout our conversation.

Maybe that was just the sound of the valve closing?

I left that meeting still wishing her only peace. I will always love her. She will always have a place in my heart and be welcome in my life. I told her so. She heard me.

Stories are ours to write just as I am writing this one. One day, I hope to read hers. Together, they form the full story. Separately, they are only that: separate, two sides, incomplete.

That night after the perfect morning in Beijing in early December of 2007, I dreamed of us on that same bed waking up in the morning light, and then a small child of about three years old running from the other room and bounding into bed with us as though we were the child’s parents. I remember the dream clearly because I woke up panicking.

A small trickle of fear.

A week later, he was driving me to the airport. This was just after our blissful trip to Southern China and then returning to Beijing the day before my flight and staying up all night to savour every last minute together before my return to Canada.

Everything felt like a fantastic dream and I knew I was scheduled to wake up.

In our conversations that night, he told me he trusted his love for me, his own feelings, and our love together. He trusted that I had fallen in love with him too, but the only thing he didn’t trust was whether or not I trusted myself.

Even in Chinese, that sentence stung because of its truth. I was just so unsure of everything then. I lacked clarity in the face of great clarity: intense love. In those final hours, I had started to allow fear to grip its fist around my heart. After all, I was about to leave. Would I ever feel this way again? Would I ever see him again? How would these emotions influence my feelings about being back in Canada with my partner? Could all of this be reconciled?

This is the river that fear-based thinking steers us down, faster and faster until they’re rapids.

Even in that state, I hesitantly told him about the dream on the way to the airport. He gently asked me why I hadn’t told him sooner and I had no answer. He said, “Well, I think that will happen. We will have a child.”

I was silent. His matter of fact response seemed to vacuum the air from my wind pipe. I froze in the passenger seat and we drove the rest of the way like that, my fears and anxieties like cumulonimbus clouds gathering, threateningly. Once again, there were too many feelings (太多感觉 tai duo ganjue).

It was the prelude of calm, pre-storm.

The departure lounge was even worse. We said a stiff goodbye after having exchanged our contact information like work colleagues would. We agreed that if we ever were in the same country again, we would agree to having a coffee together and seeing if the feelings were still there. We agreed to this with a handshake that concealed the pain in our eyes. He even said, “Even if it takes ten years.” There was no expectation and no demands. There were no promises made. We had already acknowledged our amazing love. What more was there?

I left and passed through the departure gates only to find myself deep in line-ups of pre-Christmas travellers. The lines weren’t moving. I was a geyser of emotion ready to explode. I parked my trolley in the line for the Toronto flight and it didn’t move for twenty minutes. The airport was a circus of people and no one I asked seemed to know anything about the status of any flights.

We had agreed that if the flight was delayed or rescheduled that I would re-emerge to find him and it would be a gift to have a bit more time together. So, Guo Jian was still in the departure lounge awaiting word from me one way or the other. I knew he was just beyond the barrier. He was so close in proximity and yet already I had cut him off from me like a limb severed and left to bleed. Dramatic as that sounds, I was filled with an impossible grief that simply was not supposed to accompany such a beautiful thing as the love we had discovered.

I was sinking. Crumbling internally. Losing ground. Winds howling.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I suddenly turned to the person behind me in line and I said, “Please, please watch my luggage and push it along if we move! I must return to say goodbye. I have to go back!” and I realized I was crying then not just with my eyes but with my jawbone and shoulders too.  The stranger agreed warmly and assured me that everything would be okay but I barely heard him finish his sentence because I had already turned to run back, leaving everything behind in that line-up including my computer and guitar. They were just not important at that moment.

Before I knew it, I had pushed my way backwards through the security lines repeating I’d forgotten something, and then I was out in the crowded departure lounge spinning around frantically, looking for him like a lost child.

He emerged from behind a group of people and came rushing towards me. We embraced as though we hadn’t seen each other in years and I sobbed into his leather jacket shoulder and he cried into my hair while stroking the back of my head and mumbling words of comfort.

The storm broke.

I hugged him like he had miraculously come back from the dead for one last goodbye. The stiffness of our first departure was like a bad dream because this was the truth: he had changed my life forever and I was hesitating to admit it. I was breaking down inside to be faced with what could mean the end of what we’d found. I was braced for that end, it seemed, and the grief overtook me.

Because, after all, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure about anything. Even at that last moment, I didn’t trust myself. Even though I knew the love I had for him would never leave me because it was mine, I didn’t trust that it could remain between us, or that he would retain his love for me. I simply wasn’t ready to trust in the love itself. Not yet anyway. And looking back, it was just crazy to feel the strength of that love so acutely in one breath and then to doubt its strength in the next. A complete contradiction.

The tricky grip of fear.

He just said, “没问题 mei wenti” (no problem). Everything would be fine, he insisted. How did he know that?

Later, I read these words: Love is like water. If you want to hold it, you can gently cup it in your hands, but if you try to squeeze it tight, it will slip through your fingers.*

Guo Jian was naturally and matter-of-factly not allowing fear endanger our love.

When I left for real and recovered my luggage (no problems!), I sat in the plane on the tarmac for an extra hour and a half due to airport delays. It was a cruel and bitter joke to have to wait around to leave Beijing when the leaving was already so painful.

He had told me what he wanted. He had no doubts about those wants. I, on the other hand, had a whole established life and partnership to return to. I loved my life in so many ways, even the hard parts like the open relationship. Letting myself love him was as much an exercise in finding acceptance for my partner’s other lover as it was an exercise in stretching the reigns of my heart.

I focused on the small steps and felt gratified to be going back to tell her that I finally understood her. I could finally accept her other love because I had experienced the joy of another love too; I could relate!

Of course, I missed the obvious: relating to her other love by having my own also meant inflicting the same pain on her as I had felt two years earlier. My own myopia about this simply baffles me to this day.

And, after all, he had made his desires very clear. He wanted a life with me. That included a child bounding into bed with us. He had said so. He was waiting for me. He was sure. He told me to go away and figure out what I wanted. He said he would wait for my answer. But, he already had his.

Did he manifest all of this? Did we?

So, going back to Canada with an engagement ring on my finger a year and a half later, dreading the looks on my friends’ faces or the reaction from my community or fans was, well, partly about knowing long before it happened that it would.

I just never said it out loud, even to myself. I put his certainty into a deep recess of my heart and tucked it away for much later when it would all make sense in retrospect.

I guess I was choosing the path of remembering.

He had already chosen to never forget.

*This idea re-worded but borrowed from the book “Beyond The Road” by S.Sean Tretheway