C'est la visa!

In February Jean got the letter of approval for her visa to come back with me to the states, which left only the "simple" matter of collecting the visa.

As it turns out this is not as simple as it seems. She had her interview at the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou back in January. To get an idea of the geography here, if Huzhou is a town about 60 miles north of Atlanta, and if Hangzhou is Atlanta (large city with an airport), then Guangzhou would be Miami. Not exceedingly far, but requires one to fly.

Anyhow, the consulate "can" mail the visa to the visa applicant IF you live in select large cities (like Shanghai or Beijing), but if not you have to go down to Guangzhou to collect it yourself. Neither Huzhou nor Hangzhou can receive these visas, but Jean DOES have a cousin who lives in Shanghai who could receive it.

HOWEVER

Even if you have it mailed to you, you must FIRST go down to the consulate in Guangzhou in person to fill out the forms to have it sent to you. Then why, you might ask, would you ever choose to have it mailed to you? Well I'll tell you why. It's because after you go down to Guangzhou there is still some processing and then they mail it to a local post office, so you'd have to stay for at least 4 business days in total.

That being the case, since we'd have to go down to Guangzhou anyway, we decided just to get it all done in one fell swoop, and have a nice long weekend vacationing in Guangzhou to boot.

Jean actually left before I did, because the consulate is only open Monday through Thursday. That Monday was actually a Chinese holiday (Tomb Sweeping Festival) and so was only open three days that week. She left early so that she could get the processing started as soon as possible. I left a day later because I had to work, and was already taking off two days for the long weekend anyway.

On a side note, my flight to Guangzhou was scheduled to leave Hangzhou at 3pm and arrive two hours later on Wednesday the 7th. Because I was starting out in Huzhou, not in Hangzhou, and because I was dependent on buses and bus schedules, I had to leave my house around 8am to be there in time. When I arrived at the airport, I was about 3 hours early, so I had to kill some time. As the time got closer I found that my flight was delayed to 4:30pm. No big deal, just more time I had to wait. We finally began boarding the airplane at 4:30, which would've put us in line for a 5pm departure, but unfortunately, even after everyone had boarded the plane, we were told that due to inclement weather in Guangzhou, we hadn't yet been given landing clearance in Guangzhou, and so would wait to take off.

Flash forward to 8:10pm and we were finally taking off. Oh yes, about 3 and a half hours sitting waiting ON the airplane. You know it seems to me that nearly every, and I'd have to say all but maybe one domestic flight I've had in China has been delayed by some time. Maybe as little as 20 minutes to as much as 2 or even in this case 5 hours. The only flights that I haven't had this problem with are the international ones I've had going home. Then again, those were American air lines, not Chinese ones.

Eventually I arrived in Guangzhou and Jean and I went back to the hotel.

Getting back on track from that diversion, Friday the 9th, Jean and I headed to the particular post office where the consulate sends the visa packets are sent. We weren't sure if it would have arrived yet, but it would've been possible. To our delight, it was there! It'd actually arrived the day before according to the mail stamp.

So finally, Jean has her visa and we'll be flying back stateside this summer!

Let's Go Fly a Kite!

A couple weekends ago Jean and I went to the grocery store for a few things and as we left we sawr a park across the street where some people were selling and flying kites.

Having been in China this long (almost a year and a half now) and having not flown a kite here yet, I figured no time like the present, so we bought one, went home to put the groceries away and then went out to the school's field to have a go.

One normally annoying thing about Huzhou is that it's often quite windy. If it's cold outside the wind makes it colder, and if you're riding a bike and can add quite a resistance to your ride. But for flying a kite it makes for pretty agreeable conditions.

Here are a few pics and a low-quality video taken with my phone of our gusty goofiness:







If the above video doesn't load correctly, you can also see the clip at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DFyXp2XYFk

Harbin, at Last

For those that have been following my blog, it has been awhile since I’ve posted an update. I got back from Harbin a little over a month ago, and that week after returning I did have some time, but just got lazy about posting and updating. The following week however, the new semester started and since then I have been fairly busy.

But I do need to update this before I forget. On a side note, I never did finish posting about last summer’s travels with my uncle, aunt, and cousins. The difference between that and this, however, is that at that time I did Write the posts, I just didn’t take the time to edit them and upload and insert the pictures. BUT, those writings are saved, not merely lost to the abyss that is my memory. The Harbin trip however, is now a month gone, and I need to get it on paper, or on disk as it were, before the memories finally blend together into an ambiguous memory blob.

So the flight was scheduled for Saturday, February 13 to go to Harbin. That day was actually itself Chinese New Year’s Eve, so we’d be arriving just in time. We bought the plane tickets well in advance, back at the end of November in fact, so that we’d have it squared away. Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year as many of you may know it, is the largest movement of people on the planet. Some millions of Chinese people head home for Spring Festival. It’s their BIG holiday, like Christmas to us in the West. The tickets to Harbin from Hangzhou ran a little on the expensive side for domestic flights in China, 3800 RMB for two tickets (about $560), but it was what it was and in buying them nearly 3 months early, we wouldn't have to worry about it later.

Flash forward to February 9, four days before our scheduled flight, and Jean suggested to check and confirm the flight. After a discovering that our tickets were for a flight two days later, we scrambled to call the airline and find out what happened. As it turns out, that Saturday flight had been canceled and we were bumped to a Monday flight. What's more, this had happened back in the middle of January and no one had ever contacted us, either by e-mail or phone (the two contact methods available). The airline wouldn't refund the tickets because they weren't bought directly through them, so we contacted the online vendor through whom we purchased the tickets. The woman that Jean talked to said that if the flight had indeed been cancelled without notifying us that they would refund our tickets. The only problem was that the seller said their accountant had already taken leave and wouldn't be able to process the refund until after the holiday. In the meantime we searched for some other tickets to fly up to Harbin on the 13th. We did find some tickets, and despite the time being so short, the tickets were actually a great deal cheaper, 2800 RMB (about $415) for the pair. This was actually good news provided we could get the refund on the first set of tickets, because we'd save money. Fortunately, the return flight tickets had no such problems.

So Friday, February 12 I left for Hangzhou and the next morning Jean and I made our way to the Hangzhou airport. We arrived that afternoon in Harbin without incident. We hitched a cab to Jean's parents and arrived some 45 or so minutes later. I met her mom for the second time and her father for the first. Her mother had bought some pajamas for both Jean and I so we could wear something warm and comfortable around the apartment.

That night we all ate dinner together. Her father and I were the first ones to sit down and he offered me a glass of bai jiu (literally “white liquor”, pronounced “bye joe”). There are other variants of this stuff with SUPER high percentages of alcohol (70%), but luckily this variety was only 35%, not dissimilar to the alcohol content in vodka or rum. As it was served in a shot glass, I mistakenly thought that we were to begin with a shot, so I downed it one gulp, as did her father right after me. Walking into the dining room at that moment, Jean scoldingly informed me that it was to be sipped at, not shot. She asked her dad why he drank it like that, and he said he did it because I did it. I was actually kind of relieved to hear that it was to be sipped, especially seeing how quickly her father refilled our glasses. After that I sipped at it, drinking when her father drank. Near the end of dinner I had finished off my third glass and her father went to re-fill it yet again, at which point I had to decline. In all our subsequent meals (except breakfast) I drank with her father, but had to limit myself to only one or two shot glasses of the stuff, while he usually drank a little bit more. Bai jiu isn't the harshest or most terrible liquor in the world, but I'm not a big drinker to begin with, so it was something I had to adjust to. The Chinese, however, are generally big drinkers.

On a side note, Jean's mother was such a generous cook; she had prepared so much food, and Jean and I ate so much at every meal that at no point during this trip did we ever feel even remotely hungry. Whenever the next meal time would approach, both Jean and I still were still kind of full, didn't really feel like eating, but did anyway. I think finally the 5th or 6th day we were there we (Jean and I) finally ended up skipping one meal, because we both had no room for food, and were fairly tired.

After dinner the first night I hooked up the Wii to their TV, and we all played it for a little while. Jean's mom seemed to enjoy it, but I'm not sure her father has as good a time. After that we tuned to the TV to the “Spring Festival Celebration Gala,” an event held and televised every New Year's Eve, and is also a sort of modern tradition in China. It's a show where they hold skits, sing songs, and put on dances, and is watched by almost all the Chinese on New Year's Eve. As a result, the live viewing audience for this program is higher than for any other event on television in the world, including the Super Bowl. As the time grew later, we all made dumplings to be cooked and eaten. Eating dumplings (also known in the states as pot stickers) on Chinese New Year's is a tradition, meant to bring good fortune, and are eaten often throughout the holiday. At about 11:30 Jean's parents said they were tired and were going to turn in. Jean asked me what I wanted to do, and although I was tired, I felt we were too close to midnight to go to sleep. So, we stayed up and rang in the new year, followed by a steady cacophony of fireworks going off (maybe at least 15 minutes straight).

The next day Jean and I went to downtown Harbin, saw the completely frozen solid river, did a bit of shopping, and ate some “bing tang hu lu”, something lik candied apples except there are a variety of fruits (grapes, bananas, strawberries, or most traditionally, Chinese hawthorn), and they are cut into small pieces and skewered. Also, they're not coated with caramel, but some other sugar-based liquid that hardens around the fruits shortly (like 10 seconds) after being heated and poured.

Here with a strawberry and a banana "Bing Tang Hu Lu"

We walked along one of Harbin's most famous (and touristy) streets, Zhong Yang Avenue, and saw some ice carvings there, as well as a “hedge” maze made using blocks of ice instead of hedges.




I was fascinated by the ice blocks since they were so clear and so hard and so DRY. It's not as if I've never seen ice before, but whenever I see ice it has already begun melting, so at least the exterior is already or beginning to get wet. So, call me a bumpkin, but seeing such dry ice was a little unusual to me, as if it was just the solid form of any chemical we'd use in a chemistry lab.



While out Jean and I also made our way to a Wal-Mart so that I could get supplies to make spaghetti as Jean had suggested to her parents previously. I didn't make it that night, but we wanted to have the stuff ready.

When we got home we got we ended up watching the beginnings of the Winter Olympics, something we did quite a lot of during our stay, because it happened to coincide.

The next day we spent most of the day warm inside at home, but that evening Jean and I left to go see the Harbin Snow and Ice World, a park where they had dozens of enormous and elaborate ice buildings, ice sculptures, and snow sculptures. It was quite impressive and my words will do it no justice, so here are some of the pictures. There would've been more pictures but both Jean's camera's battery and mine ended up dying on us while there.

The structure behind me here is made entirely of ice blocks.

An ice terra cotta warrior

An ice sphinx and a beautiful girl.

These were two GIGANTIC snow sculptures

On the giant icy chess board

Mutual Photos through a Block of Ice

This one we saw on the side of the road in downtown Harbin.

The day after that the four of us went out to a restaurant for lunch as we were going to meet with some of Jean's mother's aunts. All total there were 9 people, Jean's mom, Jean's father, Jean's mother's eldest aunt (on her father's side) with her daughter (40s) and granddaughter (perhaps 13), another of Jean's mother's aunts (again on her father's side) with her husband, and then Jean and I.

An interesting point to note about Chinese is that while it is slightly complicated to explain these relationships in English (due to the ambiguity of the words “aunt” and “uncle”), in Chinese there is a different word to describe a variety of different relationships. There's a word for aunt who is your father's sister (gugu), a different word for an aunt who is your father's younger brother's wife (shenshen), and yet a different word for an aunt who is your father's OLDest brother's wife (dama), let alone the terms for your mother's sisters (ayi). While difficult to learn all these different terms, the nature of one's familial relationships is far clearer based on their addresses alone.

At the meal, I of course had to use Chinese to try and communicate (with Jean translating when things got hairy), but I have to say it was so much more difficult for me to communicate then than even just at home with Jean's parents. Part of it could've been I was not as sharp that day, part of it could've been the vocabulary they were using, and part still could have been their accents and pronunciation. I have found that in China I have a FAR easier time speaking with younger people, under the age of about 40, than those over, especially so in the South (where I live). There are exceptions of course, Jean's mother thankfully being a notable one, and I am NOT saying that it is because they are older, but the fact remains that by and large pronunciation of the younger generations is a great deal more uniform and proper than the older generations. If I had to hypothesize as to why, I'd most likely go with the availability of television from childhood. It would make sense that uniform national programming serves not only to homogenize a nation's culture, but also a nation's speech.

During the meal Jean mentioned that she and I were considering going skiing, and as it turned out, Jean's mother's cousin (the 40-something year old woman) was a tour guide. It so happened that she was arranging a group to go skiing the next day, and it was easy enough for us to join them. Jean also invited her best friend (a middle school classmate of hers) and her friend's friend.

The next day we woke up early to meet Jean's mom's cousin's tour group. We met them at a hotel, boarded a large van (or small bus?), and set off. The ride was three and a half hours to the mountainside and the first place we stopped was a restaurant, as it was lunchtime, and it was included in the tour fare.

After that we were taken to a ski resort where we didn't actually go skiing, but instead rode a cart down a metal track. They called it a luge, but really... if Uncle Jack or Aunt Mary are reading this, it was essentially exactly the same thing we rode to come down from the great wall except longer.

After that diversion the tour group finally headed to a different place to go skiing. Jean, despite having grown up in the far North had never actually gone skiing, so it was her first time. The slope we were on was quite a gentle grade, but despite this, poor Jean, she was quite nervous and once she started sliding, she didn't know how to stop, save for simply falling... which is what she did... quite often. This was before she finally decided to give up entirely.


As for me, the slope was too gentle. I didn't fall one time. And believe me, I'm not saying I'm just so good that I didn't fall. I've only ever been skiing twice before in my life, so I'm no pro... which is in fact how I know that it was too easy. Unfortunately, the place we were at, there was only this slope to play on. Additionally, we were only there for about two hours before we had to leave, at which time we hopped back into the van/bus and spent the next four hours going back to Harbin.

(The next week after we returned, Jean's company went on a ski trip to a mountain town in Zhejiang province, the province where we live. This time, I'm told, she did much better.)

Jean skiing in Anji

The next day we rested a bit, mostly stayed home watching the Olympics, playing cards or mahjong, and playing Wii.

The following day Jean and I decided to go skating and so Jean's mom went with us to show us where a park was where we could skate. The park was along the river and the ice-skating circle was actually on the river itself! We arrived there at maybe 10 o'clock and we were the only ones there, and skated for about 30 minutes before heading home.

The next day Jean went out shopping with her best friend, while I stayed home, watched the Olympics with her parents, nursed a slight cold, and, in the late afternoon, began preparing the pasta.

Jean's parents hadn't eaten Italian pasta before, so mine was their first, and they said it was alright, but it didn't really suit their tastes. I've found there're quite a few Chinese for whom this is the case. Luckily Jean likes it :D

The next day we boarded a cab, headed for the Harbin airport and (after a flight delay, which seems to be the norm for me in China) began the journey home.

Overall, my impression of Harbin was that it is culturally quite an interesting city, being both Chinese, but also having architectural influence from neighboring Russia. Quite a few buildings were not Chinese in style, but rather 19th century Russian, which was quite a departure from the rest of China that I've seen.



I have to say, finally, that while it was really fun to visit... I just don't know if I could handle winters like that. With daytime highs between -5 and zero degrees Fahrenheit, and lows even colder, it was always a big todo just to go out and fetch a simple something. Inside the house it was quite comfortable and warm, but after about 2 minutes outside, my face and ears would begin to hurt. I'm a southern kid, and I'm simply not cut out for that kind of weather. It never snowed very heavily while I was there, so I didn't have a chance to build my as yet unbuilt first snowman. Also, Jean's parents were quite inviting and very gracious and hospitable and I hope I'll soon have the chance to return their hospitality.

Oh, and there was some good news both during and after the trip. A few days after we got back we contacted the ticket seller again and they did indeed refund our tickets. But more importantly, while in Harbin, Jean at one point received a phone call saying that she received a packet from the U.S. Embassy; this turned out to be her visa approval! So after we go down to Guangzhou again to fetch and affix her visa, she'll officially be headed stateside!

And FYI for those that don't know yet, the tickets going back are purchased, and we'll be arriving June 29.

Mallrats

Ok, so finally, here is the story of Jean and I's trip to Guangzhou for her visa interview.

This first part is irrelevent, just, the morning of the day I left for Hangzhou to go to Guangzhou, the fog outside was crazy. Again, not relevant to the story, but it was mad thick.


When we arrived in Guangzhou, we first went to the hotel, which had been arranged by a woman who helps people coming to Guangzhou on visa matters. Jean asked her a few questions about it, and the woman answered to the best of her knowledge, and then Jean and I set out for a late lunch/early dinner. We searched online for a buffet and found one called the “Las Vegas Buffet” at a mall not far from where we were staying.

The mall was called Zheng Jia Guang Chang (正佳广场) and was rather large. You could enter on the ground floor or outside they had an escalator that would take you directly to the 4th floor.


There was even an ice-skating rink inside the mall.


When we entered the mall we passed by an electronics store and walked by a 103” Plasma TV. The price tag was something like $100,000. Here's a picture of me standing next to it for some scale.


We went to the Las Vegas Buffet for a late lunch (3:05pm) only to find that they were open for lunch from 10am to 3pm and open for dinner from 6pm till 10pm. We had just missed the lunch session. As we left, I grumpily made the comment “This isn't like Las Vegas. Las Vegas would be open 24 hours.”

We decided to grab a small lunch, try and kill 3 hours there at the mall, and then go back for dinner.

On the 7th floor of the mall we found a video arcade. We played a few games. They had “Drummania,” a Japanese drum game I had played before, but I kept failing because the machine's bass pedal was messed up.


There was also a Mario Kart arcade machine, and the game would take your picture while you were sitting there so you could see you as a Super Mario character. This is what I would look like if I were Super Mario's brother Luigi:



When 6 o'clock came around we went back to the buffet. It was a little bit expensive, but it was a pretty decent buffet too, so it evens out. Overall the food was above average for a buffet, but not uber-fantastic. The pizza was your typical Chinese style fare: bread with an inkling of tomato sauce, topped with onions, carrots, peas, corn, mushrooms, and a sprinkling of cheese. Yeah, not the most appetizing pizza. They did, however, have these excellent chicken filets that they made right in front of you.

After we ate, we were over-stuffed and we left the mall to return the hotel room. We turned in early because we would need to show up at the embassy at 7am the next morning. There were a lot of people already waiting there and they finally let people start to filter in around 7:30. The embassy was inside an office building, but you could only enter the embassy part with a letter showing that you have an appointment. As such I waited for Jean in a coffee shop in the office building, right outside the embassy, passing the time by talking with a guy from Nevada whose fiancee was also there that day for a fiancee visa interview.

A few hours later, I guess it was about 11, Jean called me, said she was done, and asked me to meet her out at the front of the building. She told me the interview actually went really well. Her interviewer was a young woman, she guessed perhaps late 20s to early 30s. Near the end of the interview the woman said to her, "Well, everything seems in order, you don't have any problems with you case." Then she said, "Now, let's talk about your party membership."

For those that don't know, by U.S. immigration law, if you are a member of the Chinese Communist Party, that is an automatic bar against immigration. When Jean was in her junior year at college she was invited to be a party member. Now, for some context, for a Chinese citizen, membership in the Chinese Communist Party is somewhat of an honor, only about 5% of the population is actually a member, so membership offers are generally only made to the best students. And not only that, but it can be advantageous in finding a good job, especially the stable and coveted government jobs, a fact not lost on imminently graduating college students. As such Jean accepted membership in 2007.

Now, for immigration to the U.S., if you are or ever were a member of the Communist Party of China, waivers can be, and are often, granted. In those cases it is beneficial to both quit the party, and prove that your involvement with the party was relatively inconsequential. This was essentially the case for Jean; she merely did the minimum required which was basically to pay the monthly dues (about $1 a month). All she had to do was quit the party (which was easier than she had initially anticipated), provide proof of her resignation, and prepare a statement explaining her involvment with the party. And she could claim that it did indeed help her find a job, as she does have a government job (she works as a clerk at the Hangzhou city Uptown district Financial Office).

Since she had these documents prepared and ready, they were able to immediately take them to be used in processing. Because of the fact that she had been a party member, it is policy that she could not get approval for the visa that day. However, the interviewer insinuated to Jean (I say insinuated because I don't remember exactly what Jean said she said to her) that it wouldn't be a problem and that we would be contacted by the embassy in a month.

So, the interview was about 5 minutes total and it was finally done. Jean was relieved a bit because of how stressed she was leading up to the interview, but still felt a bit disappointed that she couldn't succeed that day. I told her not to worry about that, that the interview went as well as it could, and that there was nothing she could have said or done differently (short of lying about Party involvement) that would've resulted in approval that day.

Neither of us had eaten breakfast that morning, so stuffed from dinner the night before, so by the time Jean left we were both ready to eat. We found a Southern style hot pot place to eat lunch. The meal was pretty good and Jean commented on how much cheaper it was here than it would've been back in Hangzhou.


Afterward, we wanted to relax for a bit so we walked around the block and found a StarBucks. The vanilla or creme or whatever it is they add to the top of these drinks made a heart shape, so Jean wanted to take a picture. Next to the coffee mugs is the photo album that Jean made in preparation for the interview. It was not required, but was something that would help to prove our relationship. Aside from that it was an extremely heartfelt effort on Jean's part, and I was quite moved the first time she showed it to me.


While in the StarBucks, I did a bit of web surfing, and, knowing that Guangzhou was a fairly international city (not unlike Shanghai), searched to see if I could find a place nearby that sold genuine Wii games. Now I say genuine because, just as the movie and music industry and China are overrun with piracy, the video game industry is equally as copyright unfriendly. The end result is that it is difficult to actually find genuine video game discs anywhere in China because they out numbered by pirated discs by at least tens of thousands to one. With a price differential of $60 to $2, it's not difficult to understand why. In China, however, the video game systems must be modified to be able to play these pirated discs. My Wii was bought in the U.S. and was never modified, and so cannot play pirated games, only genuine discs.

So I started searching and I found a message board of someone mentioning that they thought they had seen some genuine discs in a video game shop at the mall we had gone to the day before. It wasn't a sure thing, but since we had nothing else to do, and had some time to kill (it was then 3 o'clock and our flight back to Hangzhou was scheduled at 10pm), we caught a cab back to the Zheng Jia Guang Chang.

Something we happened to see there that we hadn't noticed the last time we had come was one of those 3D sidewalk art pieces that you sometimes see in e-mails and such, and we took some pictures to share.

From the wrong angles:


From the right angle:

Anyway, we got to the mall, found the video game store, and they did indeed have some genuine Wii games. Three to be exact: Wii Sports Resort, Wii Mario Kart, and The New Super Mario Bros Wii. Luckily, the one I was looking for was the last of those three. The original price they had listed was 478 RMB, about $70, which I was a little hesitant about considering the price in the states is $50 + tax. Jean asked if they could discount it, and they were willing to go so far as to give me the membership price, a 10% discount, and so I did finally buy it for 430 RMB, about $62.

Afterward we perused through the mall a bit more, and found a subsection that was more like a Chinese mall, and less like the American-style mall the rest of the place resembled. The advantage of these Chinese-style shopping centers are that you can often find some real bargains.

After we finished there it was about 5 and we decided to head to the airport. Even though we didn't need to go back at that moment, we didn't really have time to go do anything else, especially not knowing where anything is in Guangzhou. We hunted for a cab for about 30 minutes, at which point we were sweating even without wearing our jackets, a welcome feeling in the dead of winter compared to Huzhou and Hangzhou. After finally getting one, we found our way back to the airport bus, then to the airport, and then to our gate. The plane was already a red-eye, 10 o'clock departure, and actually took off about 40 minutes late. When we landed back in Hangzhou, it was nearly 1 o'clock, we were exhausted and nabbed a cab back home rather than try and find the bus.

Anyway, Spring Festival is coming up, the students here at campus have all already gone home, and this Saturday Jean and I will be flying up to Harbin to visit her family. It's going to be so cold. Harbin is latitudinally equivalent to Minneapolis. It's a city famous for its snow and ice sculptures. It's going to be a lot of fun, but it's going to be very, very cold, with daytime highs in the teens (Fahrenheit) and nighttime lows below zero. I have no idea what that will be like, but I will soon find out. To the Frozen North!

A Decent Proposal

Ok well....

I am QUITE late on this blog post, but here it is. And it is a doozy.

Ok, SO, Jean and I had decided that we wanted to get married last year, and last July we first submitted the paperwork to apply for a K1 Fiance visa to the United States. However, even though it is something we had discussed at length, agreed upon, and both want very much, I hadn't formally proposed to her. Most importantly because I hadn't bought a ring.

I guess it was last August or September, we went to a jewelry store one time to look at some rings. While there they measured her size, but that was all we did. In October Jean finally said to me, "We have so many big expenses coming up, with the visa, and the airplane tickets to Harbin and Guangzhou and back to America, and so many other things, you don't need to buy me a ring now. It's not that big a deal, I'm not that kind of girl, you really don't need to worry about it."

So, at that point, I didn't mention it to her again. Of course that wasn't the end of it, just that was the last I talked of it with her. Of course I've to get her a ring.

So at that point I began saving up, and then when I began working some regular part-time hours at Web International English, I was able to save up fairly quickly and then, Friday the 15th, the Friday before we would leave to go to Guangzhou for her visa interview, I went and bought the ring. I bought it at a jewelry store in Huzhou, and Apple, my co-worker at Web, went with me to help me look for a ring (my Chinese is ok, but really technical stuff I can't follow). The biggest problem in looking for a ring was not the price or the quality, the biggest limiting factor was finding one where I liked the style of the ring. Finally I found one that I felt suited her the best and bought it. Now, I couldn't remember exactly what Jean's ring size was, and I could tell that the ring was a little bit too big, but the store told me that we could bring the ring back later and have it re-sized at no charge, so it was not a problem. I figured the romantic element of surprise was more important than having it fit perfectly snugly the first time.

Now, I had bought the ring on Friday night and had it sitting out in my apartment. Since I was working, unusually, at Web that weekend (to make up for lost hours while I would be in Guangzhou), Jean had decided not to come to Huzhou, since we'd really only be able to spend Saturday evening together, and we'd see each other Monday anyway.

However, come Saturday morning, I sent Jean a text message telling her, "I love you and I miss you." and Jean replied saying "me too" and then asked if I wanted her to come to Huzhou that day. I said "Of course I do," and then she replied that she would. After that, however, I remembered that I had the ring sitting out in my apartment and I wouldn't be able to hide it before she saw it, since I was already at Web and wouldn't be able to go back home before Jean arrived. So I called Ellis and told her the situation and asked if she could get the key from the door woman of our building downstairs and hide the ring at her place. She said no problem, and she did, crisis averted, surprise kept. Being the shutterbug she is, Ellis couldn't help but to take some pictures of the ring, and so I'll post them here.


Now as part of my plan I also bought a suit, and Sunday night, the 17th, after working at Web, a few people from Web went with me to help me get a good-looking suit. Also, after buying the suit Sunday night, I told Ellis about it and she snapped a couple of me in my suit as well.



So, Jean's interview was on Wednesday, January 20th in Guangzhou, and our flight to Guangzhou was to leave on the morning of the 19th from Hangzhou. So I had planned to meet Jean in Hangzhou the evening of the 18th. So, I packed the suit (as neatly as I could) into my bookbag, along with any other small things I might need for our trip. Then, Monday the 18th, I headed out to Hangzhou, and planned to meet Jean at Eudora, a nice western restaurant in Hangzhou that she and I frequent.

So once there, I had my bookbag, which was not unusual since I had come from Huzhou just earlier that day, and Jean met me there after she finished work. Once they showed us our table, before I had a chance to sit down or set my bag down, I said I needed to use the restroom. Once there I quickly changed into the suit. It took a bit longer than it should've. Since everything was going according to plan, and since this was a big moment, I was a bit nervous, and buttoning the shirt buttons was trickier than it should've been.

Then I came out, and walked back to our table. Jean saw me in the suit and her jaw dropped, she was completely surprised. Once I got to the table, not giving her a chance to say anything or ask any questions I pulled her seat out a bit to face me, got down on one knee, opened up the ring box, and said, "金嵩， 你愿意嫁给我吗？" (Jin Song, Ni yuan yi jia gei wo ma?)

Now, earlier that day I had actually been going back and forth about whether I should propose in English or in Chinese. English was my native language and so it would've been more natural for me to say it, and her English is excellent... but she is Chinese and so maybe she as a little girl had imagined someone saying it to her in Chinese. I finally decided, "When in Rome..."

It actually worked out great, because I proposed to her in Chinese, and then she said to me, in English, "I do!" I slipped it on her ring finger and it was a little too loose, so she then moved it to the middle finger, where it was still a bit loose, but wasn't falling off. (I then mentioned we could get it fitted later.)

Even though because of our history and our plans I knew that she would say yes, this was still a really special moment for both of us.

Ok, so that covers the first bit of big news. The second: Jean's visa interview in Guangzhou.

Actually that could be a long story unto itself, so I think I discuss it in a separate, but imminent, blog post.