I’m going to write this piece from the present and work my way backwards, unlike the rest of this blog. The moral of the story will appear at the end, as they tend to in stories. It’s July 2012 and we are struggling to get Guo Jian to Canada for his third visit. His Canadian visa is all secure. As…   …read more.

When I came to Beijing in 2007, I still had a partnership back home with my ex-girlfriend. When people asked me questions in Chinese about my life back home, I remember looking around furtively for the gender-neutral expressions of partnership in this language, especially since I had just encountered this culture and was in protective mode. I was afraid of…   …read more.

If there’s a low-hanging light fixture in your home, Guo Jian is sure to bump his head on it. If there’s an uneven step on your stairway, Guo Jian is sure to trip up it ….or down it… or both. If you’re carrying something that’s obviously precarious and you don’t verbally warn him, he is sure to not notice that…   …read more.

As I mentioned in this blog, the morning portion of the Chinese wedding tradition seemed to strike me as the most fun. At least, with a design twist, that is. As I was assembling my psychological armour for this event, I would classify the morning as my helmet: it kept me sane. In traditional Chinese culture, the wedding event starts…   …read more.

As I mentioned in this blog, I started panic when the wedding bobbed its enormous, spinning head on the horizon. I remember also feeling like I was on a collision course with it and I began to look around desperately for crash pads and a helmet and culturally appropriate armour—appropriate to my culture. And what culture is that? I’m Western,…   …read more.

Fumbling in a second language (or third, in my case) often has its moments of hilarity. I wish I could have written them all down. By now, I’m more than functional in Mandarin and the hilariousness has calmed down, but back in the first couple of years of being in China, I must have had cause to laugh at language…   …read more.

The issue of the dress quickly became a mess, one that I liken to knocking over coloured paints onto the floor and watching the cultural collisions swirl into each other, the colours all powerless in the merge. I got fitted for a qipao 旗袍 or Chinese silk gown about a month before the wedding. My mother-in-law and I chose a…   …read more.

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…   …read more.