“What the hell is your problem?” “I’m not the one with the problem! You are!” >SLAM< >SLAM<   Ever had a fight like that with the person you are supposed to be in love with? I never knew how closely culture was linked to how a person handles verbal conflict. That is, I never knew until I was in a…   …read more.

Last year, I had a fairly significant conflict with a friend of mine (who is also queer) and we proceeded to “talk about it” for what became a torturous couple of months. We’re good friends, so we wanted to make sure the other was understood and that all aspects were discussed. Through in-person conversations and emails and phone calls, we…   …read more.

One of my ex girlfriends had a “thing” about body sounds. By that, I mean she couldn’t stand “loud breathers” or “lip smackers.” If we sat in a restaurant next to anyone who was a “wheezer” or who made any slurping or lip noises while eating, we had to move. I grew up with a sister who was frequently ill…   …read more.

THE NOODLE CEREMONY After the dawn portion of our wedding celebration that I wrote about here, we were scuttled up to Guo Jian’s parent’s apartment and whisked into the “marriage bedroom,” or their spare room that was decorated with our photo above the bed, framed, and a new RED bedspread, the marriage colour. I was told to sit at the…   …read more.

I had never experienced cold the way I have since coming to China. (And that sentence was written by a Canadian.) I have lived through winters where the lows have dropped to more than fifty degrees (Celsius) below zero. I was even once in Whitehorse in February! Many times growing up, I remember my eyelashes freezing together while playing outside…   …read more.

Newsletter Final Thought: October 2012 Thanksgiving has just passed in Canada. I am here in China where Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated. I had to remind my in-laws and partner that the holiday even existed. While that would have made me irritable and homesick before, now I take these moments as an opportunity to just reinforce my culture with them… as I…   …read more.

There were several language foibles between Guo Jian and I in the beginning of our relationship, some of which I have already written about (like in this blog about the “green beans”!) but the “哼” issue seemed to take a ridiculously long time to resolve. We still laugh about it five years later. When we first got together, my Chinese…   …read more.

On my second trip to Shandong (山东), my partner’s home province, his family asked me if I knew how to cook. Truthfully, I’m an average cook and I don’t really enjoy cooking, but I could see an anxious look in my mother-in-law’s expectant eyes. They flickered a warning to tread lightly in my response. I expressed that I’m not bad…   …read more.