Chinese Souvenirs: Novelty Pencil Holders
Of all the things I packed home from China, this was the one souvenir that didn’t make it unharmed. His head broke off. My brother bought one, too, that didn’t survive the suitcase trip, either. I’m not sure if the airline’s treatment of our luggage is to blame or if it was the poor craftsmanship of Chinese toys. Probably both.
I know this isn’t a very Chinese-looking souvenir, but I wanted to mention it, because it highlights a popular trend in shopping in China: the novelty junk store. These little shops are everywhere and sell a strange assortment of jewelry, stuffed animals, cell phone toys, anime figurines, keychains, stickers, cutesy notebooks, and gag gifts. In other words, they’re a godsend to every Chinese girl and a bane to every Chinese boyfriend.
K-1 Visa Process: Step 1 Complete
Today, I feel a lot of anxiety and relief. I mailed in the application for my fiancee’s visa. That’s definitely a good thing, but it also marks the beginning of a lot of waiting and hoping for a pass instead of a fail. I’m glad the I-129F packet is done, though. What a stressful endeavor. Every time I looked at what I needed to do for this initial application, my heart sank. The list was always so long! But then this site finally spelled it out pretty clearly. There are actually only a few forms to fill out and a $455 check to write while the meat of the I-129F is compiling proof that you have met in the last two years and that you have an ongoing relationship.
Alas, these are things you don’t really think about while you are dating. No normal couple needs to document everything they do. We didn’t. Fortunately, my girlfriend saved some of our old tickets as a memento, so we at least have a bus ticket dated October 5, 2009. We have no solid evidence of our time together in 2008, though, aside from a few pictures of us in winter clothes. I’m assuming the visa officers will realize our relationship has spanned multiple seasons and that we didn’t just stage all these photos during the summer. In the end, I submitted about 18 pictures of us, copies of letters Sarah wrote to me, a history of our e-mails and Skype calls, receipts for the engagement ring, and letters from third parties acknowledging our relationship. I’ll let you know if it was enough.
The next step from here is to wait for a letter saying the USCIS received the application, then another letter saying they’ve approved it. Once I get that, it’s on to Step 2.
The Long Road to Marrying a Chinese Woman
Sarah and I met two years ago at a training school in Changzhou. I was a teacher there. She was the receptionist. We dated for 15 months before I returned to the US. Now, I am visiting China again so I can see her… again. Well, everyone knew what the real purpose of this trip was, Sarah included. I came to propose so we could get the ball rolling for her to eventually come to the US to marry me. I proposed. She said yes. The ball is rolling!
There are some misconceptions about marrying someone from another country that I’d like to clear up, though. All of my friends in the US thought this trip to China meant I’d be bringing my girlfriend back home with me, but it is not that easy. For the longest time, I thought China was the bad guy in making it difficult for its citizens to leave. As I read up on the process, I realized it is the US that doesn’t like to play nice with other countries.
Tourist visas are not handed out willy-nilly. One has to prove that they will return to their native country, not stay in the US. This is a tough case for a young, single Chinese girl to make and has such a high failure rate, it’s not even worth the effort to try. Marrying on a tourist visa is an easy way to get deported, too, so even if she could get one, we’d still have to do this the right way.
The proper avenue is to apply for a fiancee visa, the notorious K-1. This requires a ton of paperwork, however, and the timeframe can take anywhere from four months (if you are extremely lucky) to over 12. The biggest hurdle is the interview the Chinese person has to attend in Guangzhou. This is the point where, after all their hard work, many people are still denied on a daily basis.
To be fair, a lot of the applications are from couples that met online. The government doesn’t like giving the K-1 visa to these kinds of couples, because the relationship could easily fall apart once in the US, or the Chinese person could very well be a green card digger. Applicants have to submit proof of their relationship to show that, hey, this is the real deal, we’ve met in real life, and we really do want to get married. They must also show that they earn enough money to support this person to prevent the immigrant from going straight to welfare.
When my girlfriend and I first started dating, I hadn’t thought about any of this and wasn’t keeping records of everything we did together or taking a lot of pictures of us. I didn’t even save my plane tickets. The purpose of this current trip, then, wasn’t just about proposing but also gathering more proof to submit with our application. Train tickets. Restaurant receipts. A letter from our old boss at the training school. It all helps.
My friends who married domestically should feel damn lucky they got to do it the easy way. After my proposal, there is still a lot of work to do, work beyond just planning a wedding. The visa process, which we haven’t even begun yet, is confusing and scary, but many other people have successfully made the same journey, and I’ll be documenting my own steps right here. It’ll be worth it in the end, I know it.
Technology and Long-Distance Relationships
If you had asked me about long-distance relationships a few years ago, I would have said, “Never. Too hard.” But when you find yourself in a position where you have to do a long-distance relationship, and you recognize that the girl is totally worth it, you change your mind. Besides, technology has gotten to a point where many of the misgivings we have about LDRs no longer apply.
When technology works, that is.
Skype (or MSN, when Skype is broken) doesn’t always give us a clear connection, but at least we can see and hear each other every day. If I had to do this solely through written letter, I would have a much harder time making it through. Because we can use the Internet, though, we are even able play games together. My favorite outlet is to use a site called It’s Your Turn that doesn’t require us to be logged in at the same time to play chess or checkers.
Everything you do in a long-distance relationship, however, never feels like enough. You’re always trying to find some new way to keep things fresh, since there is only so much you can say over Skype. Packages and letters are nice, albeit expensive and untimely. But I can order something online. Deal Extreme has a bunch of cute, little gifts under $2 with free worldwide shipping. And she can use Net10’s online SMS form to send me free text messages when I’m away from the computer. (Skype lets me text her for five cents a message.)
Don’t get me wrong. LDRs are still challenging. I miss my girlfriend and wish I could see her for more than just 1-2 hours of Skype a day. Support has been iffy, too. People in China always replied to our situation uneasily, “Oh… good luck…” in a way that meant, “This will never work.” But when I look at all of the avenues that are available for us to stay in touch, the distance doesn’t feel so far. I know we can do it. And if you’re in a similar boat, I’m sure you can do it, too.
Flying a Long-Distance Relationship
A few days before I left China, my girlfriend and I went to the park to fly kites. We had two, one for her and one for me. When the wind picked up, I got a little too excited and let all of the string on my kite unravel. The end of the string wasn’t tied to the handle, though, so the kite flew away, crashed into the lake, and disappeared forever. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
But I didn’t leave China with the intent to disappear forever. We are still together and are willing to brave a long-distance relationship. My friends and family have been supportive of this decision and have usually just said, “That’s cool.” The support on my girlfriend’s end, however, has been much more sinister. If people don’t bluntly say, “So what can you do,” they offer negative advice like, “Long-distance relationships are too hard. They never work out. Why don’t you just find a Chinese boyfriend? You don’t want to go to the US. You won’t like it there.”
Sometimes, I wish I was still in China so I could tell these people to shut the hell up.
Last Train to Nanjing
Tomb Sweeping Day is a festival where people honor their dead ancestors by going shopping and visiting nearby attractions. I had a three-day weekend due to this celebration, but I’ve reached a point where the things I still want to see are too far away to do (or at least do comfortably) in just three days. Plus, since my Harbin trip, I’ve had no enthusiasm for traveling alone.
Fortunately, I know this girl (who you could call my girlfriend) who makes for a great travel buddy. Unfortunately, she runs a busy schedule down at the sweatshop training school and doesn’t have a lot of free time. I guess that’s the biggest problem with foreigner teachers trying to have local friends and local friends with benefits. Foreign teachers have so much time to kill while their Chinese friends work nine hours six days a week.
I wasn’t going to spend my three days watching TV, despite how much you guys love the TV roundups, so Sarah and I headed to Nanjing on Sunday. I should have realized trying to do Nanjing in one day was a bad idea, considering my ILP group tried the very same thing in 2005, and all we were able to see was this obstacle course with hilariously dangerous safety nets. Warning, old photo:
It took me half the day to realize we had gone to the same mountainous scenic area I was at four years ago. Everything about my ILP experience is such a haze now. But rather than attempt the obstacle course in a body four years older, we checked out Sun Yat-sen’s mausoleum and the Linggu pagoda:
And then it was already time to go. We took a different bus back into the city, knowing it didn’t go to the train station but thinking it would, at the very least, take us to a good transfer point. It didn’t. We hopped in a taxi at 6:25 and told the driver to go to the train station. He asked when our train left. 6:58. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but it was clear he was dumbfounded that we were so far away yet expected to get there in 30 minutes. In fact, he didn’t even take us. He said we’d have better luck with the subway. We didn’t.
I’d like to think we would have made it had we not gotten stuck at the subway’s exit gate. Their stupid token system picked the worst possible time to start rejecting random people. The guard wouldn’t let us duck under the gate, either. We had to go wait in the line of shame and be let through manually. By the time we got to our train’s terminal, it was 7:01. Of course, the only thing you can count on in China just happens to be that the trains always leave on time. Damn it, damn it, damn it! We had to pocket a 40-yuan train ticket and wait five hours so we could take the next available train back to Changzhou at 12:30 at night.
Man, you get tired of standing in these lines:
I didn’t arrive at my school until 3:00 in the morning. There’s supposed to be a guard stationed at the front at all times, but it was so late, he had already called it a day, turned off the lights in the guard house, and built a little bed on the floor. The sound of a taxi pulling up and the door slamming wasn’t enough to wake him. I decided to let him be and found a nice, dark, quiet place where I could climb over the fence. It was so easy for me to get in, it makes me wonder how secure these places really are.
This little “adventure” has also brought to light how much I hate traveling at the whim of public transportation. I am getting particularly annoyed with the train system in China. When I was preparing to go to Harbin, I went to the train station seven days ahead of time to buy my ticket. They said I could only buy tickets five days in advance. I came back two days later, and the train I wanted was sold out.
The five-day rule is enormously inconvenient, as is being required to buy your tickets in person. For those who want to leave a city the same day they arrive, there’s a good chance the only option left is a standing ticket, which is also very, very inconvenient. But there are so many people all trying to ride the train at the same time, allowing people to reserve seats in advance, over the phone or online, would probably mean you won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
A Date with a Chinese Gay
I recently read on a friend’s blog her story of a Chinese man following her to work and relentlessly asking permission to be her friend despite how many times she said no. Situations like this happen a lot. It’s happened to me on several occasions. I’ve even been accosted by a couple of gay Chinese men who wanted to be [more than just] friends and who used the same “I won’t take no for an answer” approach.
The last time this occurred, I initially passed the guy in the supermarket and never expected to see him again. He must have been quite enamored with me, because he waited for me at the exit so we could talk. The first question he asked was, “Do you speak Chinese?” I said I knew a little, so he then asked, “Ni shi gay ma?” This threw me off, because he was mixing Chinese and English in order to ask if I was gay. Oh, that in itself threw me off, too, but I still managed to say, “No, I’m not.”
Now the first rule of dating is that, if the two of you have established you don’t share the same sexual orientation, you stop hitting on each other. The possibility of a relationship is over, and the most you can hope to be is friends. Right? This is common sense, right? But then this guy asked, “Ni keyi ma?” as in, “Could you be gay just this once?” I told him I didn’t think so. Rather than give up, he started telling me he liked me, in Chinese and English, “Wo xihuan ni. I like you. Wo xihuan ni.” Then he said, “I love you.”
And there, he just broke Rule #2: Don’t say, “I love you,” to someone you just met! Again, I told him no. He still wasn’t convinced and started pointing at my crotch, saying, “Money,” like, “What if I paid you…” At this point, I’d had enough, as he was now following me outside the store, so I firmly yelled, “You have got to leave me alone!” He did.
I’m aware that Chinese culture is much more direct, but I was also under the impression that homosexuality is still very taboo in China. So it surprises me that 1) people will admit to strangers they are gay and 2) will try to solicit sex from said strangers. I think some of these guys have a fantasy of making love to a foreigner and, when they see one, don’t want the opportunity to slip by. It’s unfortunate, because incidents like this just make it harder for China’s gay population to garner any respect.
The Five Things I Don’t Like Hearing
When I posted the article Mr. Negative, I should have clarified that it didn’t mark the end of my complaining. Come on, guys, isn’t it as therapeutic for you as it is for me to make a public list of the obnoxious things I have to hear on a regular basis? Maybe we can learn a little something along the way. It’ll be fun! Starting with my favorite:
1. Hello
Of course this one’s going to top of the list. What foreigner doesn’t grow to hate the hello? While there’s nothing wrong with a warm greeting between two passersby, many people have gotten into the habit of heckling foreigners with this one and not letting up until they get some kind of reaction. I’m not talking about a wave or a smile or a return hello, either. That usually doesn’t satiate them, which means I’m still not sure what it is they hope to accomplish.
2. Laowai / Waiguoren
I’ve addressed the issue of being called Laowai instead of Mr. Nielsen enough, but there’s more to the picture than that. I feel like all of China has signed up for a game of I Spy, and when anyone sees a foreigner, they must drop everything they’re doing and blurt out, “Waiguoren!” Seriously, people will stop mid-sentence to make this observation. It’s not so much addressing you, either, as it is just letting those around them know that a foreigner is in the area.
3. May I come in?
You might question why something so polite would be on this list, but it seems that, no matter how many times I ask my students to drop this one, they just won’t let it go. I’m guessing “May I come in?” is a formality their previous EFL teachers introduced, and it drives me crazy. Any student coming into class late stops at the door and bellows, “May I come in?!” even if I’m in the middle of explaining something important. It’s a constant reminder I’m not getting through to these kids as quickly as I had hoped.
4. When will you get married?
I thought I had dodged this question once I left Utah, where your business is everybody’s business, but apparently it’s okay to pressure acquaintances you don’t know very well into marriage here, too. What gets to me, though, is that the people who ask if/when I will marry the girlfriend I’ve only been dating for four months have been dating their significant others for two or three years! Why don’t you get married, huh? Why don’t you get married!
5. Your nose is big.
Nobody is more aware of my big nose than I am, and nobody likes being reminded of it as much as I do. Or, uh… don’t? Since pointing out the obvious seems to be such a celebrated pastime, everyone can join in on the fun of bringing attention to the parts of our bodies we’re most self-conscious about! Fortunately, the only thing they’ve got on me is a big nose. Other people, both foreign and Chinese, aren’t so lucky.
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