Much in the vein of Zoe's recent blog series which captivated us all, we now bring you a similar series about a relationship that has developed between a Western man and a Chinese woman, but this time through the eyes of the man. We offer to you Imi, and his brilliant biographical blog series entitled simply "My Love for Lily". And in the spirit of her own blog offering the men a chance to experience the thoughts and feelings of a Chinese woman, in order to ensure that the Chinese ladies can use this opportunity to experience the thoughts and feelings of a Western man, Zoe has generously agreed to translate Imi's story for the Chinese ladies. Any member who doesn't follow this series really doesn't understand what a fabulous learning tool she or he is missing.  Please welcome Imi and enjoy!

My Love for Lily

Today is a beautiful day here in Vancouver, it's late September, the summer has just finished a week ago, but the sun is still in full power showing me one last time what I am going to miss during the fall and winter. I still can see fluffy white clouds over my head in the blue sky as the sunlight caressing my face and makes me feel lazy and sleepy. Even the geese and ducks in the near by pond seem to enjoy this quite, perfect day. I closed my eyes as I was sitting on the park bench and enjoyed this wonderful day, remembering the road that has led me here to this park, to this beautiful day.

As a child I grew up in Europe, Hungary. I moved to Canada in 1995 to search for a better life. I was 26 years old at that time and started my adventure in Toronto, the biggest city in Canada. I went through the “usual” immigration process, including preparing my papers for Canadian citizenship, going to school at daytime to learn a new language and going to restaurants at nighttime, working as a dishwasher, just to make some extra money to be able to pay my lawyer. It had been hard, but eventually, I'd got my Canadian documents and became a Canadian citizen.

After a while I'd got a good job in hardwood floor business and I was full of hopes for my future. As I was growing financially, I was glad helping my mother and sister, who lived back home, in my original country. Years were passing by too fast and one day, I realized I still lived alone without any family on my own.

Throughout my Canadian years I had met and dated girls, but I felt that I had no real connection with them mentally.  I decided to go back to Europe to visit my mother and might be able to find a nice woman from my home country.

To make a long story short, I found someone during visiting my mother, brought her to Canada, she got her Canadian papers and then left me for another man. She had taken 4 years out of my life and in return for her papers, she had cheated on me twice. I had to sleep numerous times in my car in the garage because I wasn't able to listen to her lies.

The only good thing that happened during our time together was moving to Vancouver together because we both liked mountains and nature.

I love Vancouver with all of its beauty and flaws. There is too much rain in the winter, but when spring comes I literally feel like I am in “Paradise”. Since, I moved here I had found myself to be attracted to Asian women. No wonder I like Chinese and Asian women when they are so different from the women in North America. Not just in appearance, but in the way they think about relationships.

After my failed relationship with the woman from my country the word, “faithful”, became very important to me and I knew that if I wanted to have a woman in my life who would give me respect, as long as I respected her, I needed to go all the way to China.

At age 42, I had registered to an Asian and Chinese dating site for the first time in my life hoping to find my love.

It was early August and I had been on the site for two weeks. I was just getting familiar with it, but I noticed that there were a lot of beautiful Chinese women searching for their potential life partners. I was looking for a natural beauty who wasn't afraid of showing her real face in her photos. I didn't really like the photos that were made in photo shops. They looked fake to me. Of course, I like when a woman puts a little bit of make-up on just to make herself more beautiful, but I don't like the airbrushed photos with too much make-up on the woman's face.

One day, I was checking the profiles and photos quickly, page by page and as I clicked the arrow for the next page, something had caught my eyes. The page had already turned so I needed to go back to the previous page to see, what that was. I went back and there it was, a pair of beautiful eyes that belonged to a nice face with silky long hair. She was a very attractive Chinese woman. The photo was an airbrushed head shot, but at that moment I didn't really care, I was captivated by her eyes and felt butterflies in my stomach just to look at them.

I studied her profile and found out that she was 35 and had a son and they lived in Shenzhen.

Unfortunately, the profile also said that she was not sure about moving to another country.  Generally, in this situation I would have moved on, but I wasn't able to give up on her just yet. I might be able to convince her about moving to another country.

“I can't lose anything by asking her about it” I thought to myself.

I wrote a short message to her and started hoping that she would answer me one day.

我对百合的爱

九月末，温哥华，今天是个好天气。

夏天在一周前已经结束，但明亮亮的太阳依然劲头十足，似乎想最后一次提醒我，在已将到来的秋冬，阳光将不再灿烂，我将心有所憾。湛蓝的天空，白云丝丝缕缕，附近水塘里，大鹅和胖鸭静静嬉水，明媚的阳光温暖着我的脸颊，使我慵懒欲睡。在公园的长椅上坐下来，环顾眼前美景，我心恬静，不禁轻觑双眼，望向远方，回忆来时的路，那条路通往这个公园，引我走到今天，这个美丽的日子。

我出生在欧洲，在匈牙利的一个小镇上长大。1995年来到加拿大，那时我26岁，梦想着一个美好的未来，开始在加拿大最大的城市 – 多伦多打拼。我准备了所有材料，通过了移民所必须的程序，这期间，白天在学校学语言，晚上在餐馆打工，只为能支付的起我的律师费。过程很艰难，也很苦，但最终我成为了加拿大公民。

后来我得到一份在木材店的工作，对未来我信心满满。收入也在增加，我已经能给在家乡的母亲和妹妹在经济上给以帮助。日子过的飞快，有一天，我好像突然意识到，自己还是孑然一身，我想有个自己的家。

来到加拿大的这些年，也曾有跟当地的女孩子拍拖，总是觉得什么地方不对劲，好吧，通俗一点说，不是一路人。 我决定回匈牙利，我的根在那里，也许在家乡能找到一个跟我相通的女孩。

我回去了，也找到了一个她，并把她带到了加拿大，她也成了加拿大公民。最后是她离开了我，为了另一个男人。她在我的生命中占据了四年，并拿到了绿卡。我被欺骗两次，无数次睡在车里，只因不愿听她的谎言。

我跟她在一起唯一的收获就是一起搬到了温哥华，因为我们都喜欢这里的山，这里的景。

我爱温哥华，爱她的所有。冬季多雨湿冷，但春天一到，她就是我的天堂。而且，我发现自己被这里的亚洲女人所吸引，她们跟北美女人很不同，不光是外表，对感情和婚姻的态度也不同。

上一段感情的失败，让我对“忠诚”很看重，我需要我的女人给我以尊重，我知道我会爱她，呵护她，我知道如果要找到这样一个女人，我需要去中国，去找到我的女人。

在我42岁的某一天，此生第一次，我注册了一个亚洲婚恋交友网站，希望能找到我的女人。

那是8月初，注册这个网站已经两周了。我看到这里有很多中国女人，很多漂亮的中国女人，在寻找另一半。但是我不喜欢里面很多浓妆艳抹，或者用软件处理过的照片，我希望找到一个简单，自然，有勇气展示真实自己的女人。当然，我赞同女人略施粉黛，让自己更有自信和女人味。

一天，我在浏览上面的资料和照片，一页一页地快速翻过。突然，我的眼前亮了一下，但那一页已经翻过去，我又点了返回键。是的，就是她，一双美丽的大眼睛，一张姣好的面庞，一头如丝般的长发，一位美丽的中国女人。她的照片也是经过处理的写真照，但无所谓，我不在乎，我已经被她那双美丽的眼睛深深吸引，我的胸口好像藏着一只小兔，怦怦直跳。

她的资料显示，35岁，住在深圳，离异，有个儿子。但有一点让我挺失望，资料上说“她不确定是否愿意到另一个国家生活”。

一般遇到这种情况，我会直接跳过，但是，我没法跳过她，至少现在我做不到。我想，也许我可以说服她改变心意。

“打个招呼，问一问她，应该也无妨吧”，我自言自语道。

于是，我给她发了一个消息，但愿能收到她的回复。

(本博客中文翻译者：Zoe  非常感谢伟大的工作！)