Tomorrow, my daughter and I fly from Melbourne to Wuhan. This will be my third trip to China. On the first trip, in January 2009, I visited Lily in Zhuhai. On the second trip, in September 2009, I visited Lily again and YaYa in Wuhan. And on this third trip, in December 2009, I will visit YaYa in Wuhan.
Three trips in one year! It is no wonder I have not saved any money this year.
I will go over some of my history in this post, since I am writing this as much for myself as for anyone else. I think it is important to work throught the stories of our lives, since it helps us understand and reflect on what has happened, to avoid making the same mistakes over and over.
At the end of the second trip, Lily told me that she was unable to proceed with the relationship. She said to me that her twelve year old son did not wish to move to Australia and that even if he did, it was unlikely that the father of her son would give her permission to take her son with her to Australia. She also told me that it was difficult for us to communicate because her English and my Mandarin were still very poor, and that it was going to be difficult to have her medical qualifications recognised in Australia.
These seem fair enough reasons to me. I am someone for whom family and my work and conversation are very important. I was not prepared to move to China and I know that many Chinese women would not wish to move to Australia for similar reasons.
I have made some mistakes in my relationship with Lily, but on the whole I was happy with the way I acted in this relationship. I always treated her with honour and kindness and respect.
There was very little in this relationship that I regret. As I told her many times, when I am an old man, I will remember the pleasure of seeing her for the first time. She was so late to arrive, and I worried that she would not come at all. This moment when I saw her smiling face was one of the sweet memories I will take to my grave. She was such a beauty, it just took my breath away.
However it was not to be and there will be plenty of time to remember this when I am an old man. At this moment in time, I need to leave this behind and move on.
Sometimes things do not turn out the way we wish. It is not obvious to me that such times are truly “failures”. I think this was the lesson I was meant to receive at this time.
Since the moment Lily told me that she was unable to marry me, I have continued to act properly towards her. I have not spoken to her or written to her. That was something that was really hard for me. But it was the right thing to do, both for happiness of Lily and for YaYa.
Towards the end of my second visit to Zhuhai I decided to visit YaYa, a friend of mine in Wuhan.
I had been writing to YaYa for seven months prior to this. For me, and I thought also for YaYa, I did not think that my relationship with her was anything more than friendship – we shared interests in music, poetry, books, and things like that. We never flirted with each other and it was never anything romantic in what we wrote to each other, so I did not feel the least bit concerned about this conversation. YaYa studied English, and so I imagined that our correspondence was nothing more than an opportunity for her to practice her English and to enjoy a discussion with an overseas friend.
When I told YaYa that I was going to visit Lily, she was very upset about it, to say the least.
So when the relationship with Lily ended, I knew that YaYa was interested in me, and so I thought it would be good to visit her and see what she was really like.
We had a lovely few days together in Wuhan. Her family was there to meet me when I arrived. Her father is a charming and educated man. He speaks fair English, and so a little while after I had a finished my meal he sat down with me and had a “man to man” talk with me.
He said that when YaYa had found out that I was going to visit Lily she had cried for about a week. He said that it broke their heart to see her so upset and so he wanted me to be frank with him about my intentions. He wanted answers to three questions .
Firstly, he wished to know whether my relationship with Lily was over. In answer to the first question I said, yes it was over. It felt strange to be saying this, a few days after asking Lily to marry me, and receiving a refusal. Still, I thought at that moment, I had given the relationship with Lily a good go, and that it was time to leave this behind.
Secondly, he wished to know whether I planned to marry her. In answer to this I said, that she was a fine woman and that any man would be proud to have her as their wife. I thought this was an answer that even a politician would be pleased with, answering a question with the answer to another question. However he wasn’t so impressed with my wit to accept this and so her persisted with it, asking the question half a different ways until I levelled with him, that if I had to make a decision today, then the answer is “no”. But if things work out between us, then I would be prepared to marry her in a short period of time, say within three to six months of time.
Thirdly, I said yes, I was able to support her. I explained that I had a responsible position back here in Melbourne, and had worked continuously for the past twenty years.
These answers satisfied him and I had a lovely time visiting YaYa and her family.
It is strange visiting this place. I know in my head that things are done differently here and that the whole family is involved in making important decisions, like marriage proposals. But it is another thing entirely to be part of that conversation and to be the subject of that discussion *laughs*
So for the past three months, since I got back I have been having a lovely time with my Yaya.
We speak to each other most days for an hour or two on Skype, we send each other about half a dozen emails each day, and we send each other a few mobile phone text messages each day. So I have all the conversation I wish for, and I no longer feel lonely, as I had been before she came along.
She is a good and kind person, gentle and soft hearted, caring and considerate. She always makes an effort for me and she always wishes to please me in everything.
In some relationships, one is led by one’s desire. But in this relationship I do not feel that way at all. She seems to me to be a very good friend, but I still find it difficult to think of her as anything more than this.
I am not too worried about this. I think that this will happen by itself. It has been such a long time since I have been with a woman, that in some ways that part of me seems dead. I just think that I am so used to keeping desire in check, like a dog on a leash, that I think it has given up hope and that it’s not even trying to get away anymore *laughs*
The only other reservation I have with this relationship probably boils down to nothing more than that Groucho Marx line: “Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member”.
