Jenny and I sat at the lunch table in the refectory area of the university in China where I worked as an English teacher. Our conversation together was rather stilted, as neither of us understood the other person’s language. But we did a lot of grinning and gesticulating, that seemed to have the desired effect. Two pairs of impassioned eyes meeting, staring poignantly into eachother's soul, are arguably all that's needed for the most indepth conversation of all time. I sensed there was something special about this enigmatic lady. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, even as the hairs on my arms bristled.  Where would it lead?

My eyes flicker open. I awake in a bed that I have never slept in before. A young Chinese woman is above me. Where am I?

Inside was cool, quiet, and fuggy. Perhaps too quiet and too fuggy. But what did I expect? It was a nursing home, not a nursery school. No one was supposed to run around, tug your coat, and make funny faces at you.

After the publication of my previous blog,(So You Wanna Learn English), I was asked what was the point of writing it?

My first haircut in China

After learning about my upcoming trip to Hungary, someone asked me if I could take some money to her mother. The bank fees were too high, she told me, and the amount in question wasn’t enough to pay a hefty fee on.

I first met Jenny whilst working as an English teacher in Leshan in Sichuan Province, China in 2016.  She was a dance leader, that is, several evenings per week, she and a group of followers would street dance for one to two hours, a wonderful tradition within much of China. Western countries are much the worse for not having such a unique, charming practise.

I was in a strange, nay weird state on the second trip to China, having worked for a company taken over and being dismembered.  I had sat at a desk on double pay for two months, doing absolutely nothing under strict instructions to do nothing, and then released in October, after guo qing jie, went to China.  I had consulted lawyers, immigration experts self-proclaimed and they had advised me that I would lose my queue place if I married in China - the queue for my fiancee to come to Australia, but it didn't make sense to me, so I went to China planning to proceed nevertheless.

We've all heard the phrase "Words, are swords."

My very first bus-trip in China was the ghastly trip from Ningbo to Huangshan that I mentioned in my previous blog - tedious, boring, exceedingly uncomfortable and otherwise to be forgotten, although Huangshan itself was indeed memorable.  We must have been married by then because no-one objected to us staying together in a twin room!  The marriage, the hospital inspection, the civil ceremony and celebration is another story for another time.