It’s widely accepted that Chinese born in the 1980s and 1990s are more open-minded than their parents, especially when it comes to relationships. After all, most of those parents grew up during a much more repressive period of China’s history, closed off from the rest of the world and subjected to harsher moral judgment. By contrast, their children grew up on a diet of Japanese cartoons and American movies, with infinitely more choices at the grocery store and more chances to study, travel, and broaden their horizons. Until recently, the older generation was still calling most of the shots, but their influence is now waning.Until recently, the older generation was still calling most of the shots, but their influence is now waning.

Divorce on the rise, and when people do get married, they’re waiting longer to do it. Yet this is not a sign of the death of romance, but its birth: Chinese are increasingly rejecting “good enough” marriages for the chance to date more before they settle down. “In sharp contrast to the country’s older generation, who always put their family’s interests ahead of everything, their offspring choose to stay in or leave a relationship largely of their own free will and feelings,” wrote the government-sponsored Women’s Studies Institute of China in an article about changing views of love and marriage. “Fewer young Chinese would compromise their own happiness for an unsatisfactory marriage simply to avoid losing face or embarrassing their parents.”

Other studies back this up. A recent survey by 2RedBeans, the largest dating site for Chinese living abroad, asked over 2,500 Chinese singles about their expectations for love and dating. The results showed that respondents had more liberal views than previous generations on issues like gender roles and dating norms. Q Zhao, the founder of 2RedBeans, believes the more progressive attitudes are a positive sign.  “In mainland China, at 27 or 28, you’re already a ‘leftover woman.’ If you’re that age and you come to the US or Canada, you realize you’re so young … so you don’t worry as much,” she said in an interview. “I think it’s a very good thing, they find out more about themselves, and they find people who actually match them very well to form a family. I think it’s the same for men.”

This trend towards waiting is especially pronounced among Chinese abroad, but it is not limited to that small percentage of China’s population. Young people there, especially in urban centers like Beijing and Shanghai, are dating more before they settle down. Apps like Momo – which is similar in function to Tinder – and other social media tools make it easier than ever for people to meet and explore their options. In the US, many have decried this trend – Vanity Fair recently ran a piece entitled “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse,'” exploring the costs associated with a culture of convenience. But Q of 2RedBeans said that new forms of dating played a more positive role in China. “Most Chinese are on the very conservative side of the spectrum, so I think they need to go toward the more open side,” she argued. “In general there needs to be a balance.”

In addition to waiting longer and dating more, Chinese young people are also looking for different traits in potential partners than their parents did. Increasingly, women are paying more attention to their partners’ looks, as evidenced by the rise of the slang term xiaoxianrou, which literally translates to “little fresh meat” and is a generally positive term for an attractive young man. The 2RedBeans survey showed that female respondents showed a stronger preference than in the past for more considerate, domestic partners, known as nuannan or “heating men,” as opposed to the professionally successful and aloof. Sisi, a Chinese journalist living in the US, also felt that her peers simply wanted more from a potential partner. “We already have at least master’s degrees, and we can feed ourselves,” she said. “So we are looking for more than a breadwinner of the family. I think being independent financially and psychologically gives us the luxury of waiting and picking the right one.”

It’s still no walk in the park for many Chinese young people. “The sad story is there are still a lot of pressure from families and society for women who are not married when they reach some certain age,” said Ming, a Chinese woman who moved to the US for graduate school in 2008 and has remained there, adding, “The good news is, I think this situation will change significantly when we assume our parents’ roles.”

“I think my generation is the transition generation,” Sisi agreed. “I’m very excited to see what the next generation does with more liberty and less judgment.”

The post Evolution of Dating in China: Trading Pressure for Preference appeared first on The Nanfang.

Tudou released the video of the New Jersey rocker performing the song today as Bon Jovi prepares for a Asian tour this fall that will see stops in Beijing, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Seoul. This will be the band’s first performance in China.

Here is Bon Jovi singing his version of the Teresa Teng classic, The Moon Represents my Heart:

As it is, Bon Jovi isn’t the first non-Chinese performer to perform The Moon Represents My Heart, a song that always gets applause from a Chinese audience from the first moment it is sung.

Here is the Vienna Boys Choir with their rendition:

Hayley Westenra performed the song in Beijing during her 2011 tour with Andrea Bocelli:

Here is Malaysian songstress Siti Nurhaliza (aka Voice of Asia) from 2009:

And to smooth things out, here’s Kenny G’s version from his 2006 album:

The post Bon Jovi Sings Completely in Chinese to Serenade Lovers on Qixi appeared first on The Nanfang.

But that’s not the toughest part. That would be going on xiangqin (相亲 “xiāngqīn”), something that is similar to the Western notion of “dating”, except you’re under pressure by your family to quickly find the partner of your dreams to start a family. Given the tremendous responsibility involved, some Chinese eschew their xiangqin duties even though they represent a massive break from traditional times when most marriages were arranged.

So what’s a single guy in China to do these days? Thousands are enrolling in a school to learn how to properly date a girl. Business is booming for schools like the one profiled in the report. Here, single men are taught the proper etiquette and skills that will help transform them from bumbling bachelors into happily married men.

With courses like “Love Diagnosis”, “How to Find a Boy/Girlfriend”, “How to Find a Wife/Husband”, “Love Retrieval”, and “How to Build Your Appearance”, tuition costs anywhere from several hundred yuan to RMB 20,000. One of the courses that runs for seven days costs RMB 7,000.

Instructors at the unnamed school have lots of advice when dealing with Chinese women. A teacher named Fan Chen explained to students that getting a girlfriend is not about chasing after them, but providing a personal framework and manner to which they will be attracted on their own accord. Another teacher known as “Wander” said, “Unrelenting efforts towards a girl for which you give her medicine when she is sick and food when she is hungry will only ever award you by getting into her ‘friendzone’.”

How to use social media

One of the lessons deals with the importance of how your portrait is seen on social media, two things that serve as the first impression for a woman.

For this reason, teachers at the school emphasize that your social media circle should be made to look very busy, and that particular attention should be paid to your portrait. To help give the impression of having high value, Students at the school should use a photograph of themselves with a classy background featuring a 5-star hotel or a yacht.students at the school should use a photograph of themselves with a classy background featuring a 5-star hotel or a yacht.

As explained by an instructor, “A women’s intuition is much stronger than a man’s when it comes to social interaction. Her judgement of you will come from these few details.”

The “hot water” trick

The school doesn’t divulge many details of its curriculum, but the report does explain one way of impressing a Chinese girl from an anecdote given by a teacher.

Called the “hot water” trick, the idea is to walk into an upscale nightclub or bar and immediately ask for two cups of hot water the moment you walk in. Later, after finding a girl to speak with, the waiter will come with your hot water. This will impress the new girl you just met because she will have seen you walk in and receive hot water without asking This will impress the new girl you just met because she will have seen you walk in and receive hot water without asking, making it appear like you a regular customer at the club. Upon leaving, you should take the waiter aside for a few private words, again making it look like you are on good terms with the wait staff at the establishment.

It may be that the entire course at the dating school is full of little techniques like this one, making dating a breeze. However, as Wander explains, his students have their own personal reasons for coming to the dating school, and it’s not necessarily for dating:

90 percent of the men who come here don’t do it in order to meet more women. Instead, they are here to give themselves another skill. They want to learn a secret technique, but not to use it in order to hurt someone else, but to protect themselves.

Wander knows the type of student that comes to his school:

They don’t like themselves. The vast majority of them are inarticulate, and don’t know what they want. Whatever you tell them will be answered with a “sure sure sure” and many nods. They feel very inferior.

And Wander knows he has his work cut out for him:

Some of our students dress poorly. They don’t have any original thoughts, no prior experience with girls. Upon reaching the age of 30, they are still muddleheaded, and still haven’t yet gotten serious over their own career. This is the average man of China.

That’s a stinging indictment, but it’s clear that these men need to make a change. As the teachers at the school directly tell the students:

Chinese girls like men with money and looks, but here you are holding a stack of cash and photographing yourself holding onto a steering wheel. Will they like you? Of course not!

As the report says, a Chinese man born during the 90s has a 1 in 6 chance of remaining single his entire life, a rate that falls to 1 in 7 for Chinese men born during the 00s.

The post Clueless Chinese Men Learn the “Hot Water Trick” to Win Girls at Dating School appeared first on The Nanfang.

Qixi Festival is a big deal until you realize “Chinese Valentine’s Day” has to compete with the other numerous Valentine’s Days that are celebrated throughout the year in China.

First is the regular Valentine’s Day that happens world-wide on February 14. Then, a month later on March 14, China joins other Asian countries like Japan and South Korea in celebrating White Day, the day upon which  women have an opportunity to give presents to the men who have gifted them a month before.

And then at the end of the year is Singles’ Day on November 11, so-called due to the prevalence of ones when written out digitally (11/11). This version of Valentine’s Day is notable because it appears the purpose was co-opted from its original meaning, which was for Chinese bachelors to celebrate their bachelorhood instead of being ashamed of it. To boot, Single’s Day has since become the most important online sales day for the entire year in China.

Modern urban Chinese may consider Qixi Festival to be “Chinese Valentine’s Day”, but historically this festival has nothing to do with couples and romance, and everything to do with helping a girl become a woman.

For hundreds of years during China’s feudal era, Qixi festival was called “Girl’s Day”. It was on this day that unmarried girls celebrated their upcoming nuptials. Chinese girls of the time would congregate and compete in games that displayed the skills they would use when they became women and took on the role of mother and wife. Girls also made sacrificial offerings and performed ceremonies in the name of wisdom and beauty.

The story of the Qixi festival concerns two characters: the cowherd and the weaver girl, the latter to whom Chinese girls prayed to during the festival. These characters form a deeply, romantic story that has been told and re-told over thousands of years with several variations, although the tragic ending is always the same.

The cowherd and the weaver girl

The cowherd and the weaver girl are two star-crossed lovers destined to never be together. The Heavenly Empress was incensed that a mortal and a celestial could fall in love, so she sent the cowherd to be reincarnated on Earth while the weaver girl was forced to weave clouds in the sky.

Once, when the Heavenly Empress was in a good mood, she permitted the weaver girl to descend to Earth along with six of her sisters to play in a lake. The cowherd, who was poor and only had an oxen for company, was shocked when the cow suddenly spoke to him, saying that he should go to the lake and steal the dress of one of the sisters. The cowherd did so, and the dress he stole happened to be the one belonging to the weaver girl. Upon seeing the cowherd, the rest of the sisters abandoned the weaver girl, and flew back to the sky.

Steeled by a force greater than heaven, the cowherd told the weaver girl that he would only give back the dress if she agreed to marry him. Recognizing him as her love from before he was reincarnated, the weaver girl agreed. The two lived happily, and bore two children. However, the Heavenly Empress eventually found out, and again incensed, came to Earth and snatched away the weaver girl, forbidding her to ever love the cowherd again.

The cowherd has devastated at the loss of his wife, and was again surprised when his cow spoke to him again. It begged the cowherd to use its skin to chase after the fleeing Heavenly Empress who had taken the weaver girl. Crying, the cowherd slaughtered the oxen and used its hide. He grabbed his two children and chased after the Heavenly Empress.

So near, yet so far

The Heavenly Empress was impressed by the ability of this mortal, but was infuriated at his tenacity. Wherever the Empress ran, the cowherd would follow, the love for the weaver girl continuing to burn in him, inspiring him to continually give chase. But, it turned out the Heavenly Empress was just as stubborn as the cowherd who refused to give up. Instead of handing over the weaver girl, the Heavenly Empress took her pin and scratched the sky, forever marking the sky and trapping the cowherd from pursuing them.

The cowherd could only gaze from the other side, seeing his beloved taken away from him. He cried, just as his two children cried, and their wailing could be heard throughout the universe just as their tears dropped throughout the land. All gods and creatures pitied these star-crossed lovers, for there was no pitiful story to tell. And since even the Heavenly Empress has pity, she eventually gave in. She allowed for the cowherd and the weaver girl to meet once and only once a year.

And so, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, all the the magpies throughout the world flew together and formed a bridge that allowed the cowherd and his family to cross over and finally see the weaver girl. It’s also on that day when the stars Altair and Vega meet over the Milky Way, the same time as they do every year.

The tale of the cowherd is a sad, tragic one. The terrible longing of being separated from your beloved is just what unmarried Chinese girls would feel towards their future husband; it also describes the uncertainty that goes along with joining another family and leaving your own, which is what happens whenever a daughter marries. But this type of longing doesn’t seem compatible for a married couple who live together, or a boyfriend and girlfriend that spend all their free time together.

And yet, that’s what Qixi festival has become as “Chinese Valentine’s Day”. A romantic candlelight dinner and a dozen roses have come to symbolize the annual meeting of the cowherd and the weaver girl, but it seems couples celebrating their love on this day don’t have much else in common with the star-crossed couple.

Still, peer pressure is enormous. If one guy gives flowers to his girl on one of China’s Valentine’s Days, other people are going to expect the same, leading to repeated behavior no matter the reasoning. This may be modern times, but that heart-rendering longing that the cowherd feels for weaver girl is still with us, a void that no amount of chocolate can fill.

The post Let’s Get Things Straight: Today, Qixi Festival, Should *Not* Be “Chinese Valentine’s Day” appeared first on The Nanfang.

China Daily tells us that Hong Kong women are choosing to marry more men from mainland China because they are simply better than their Hong Kong counterparts. Chung Kim Wah, director of Centre for Social Policy Studies at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, told China Daily that Hong Kong women have a better opinion of men in the Chinese mainland due to economic development, better education and more communication.

China Daily quotes an unidentified head of an unnamed matchmaking service who points out the superior abilities of mainland Chinese men, saying that “Hong Kong women are glad to work or marry and live in the Chinese mainland, especially as there are much better men in the mainland.”

Other unidentified sources quoted by China Daily include Hong Kong marriage counselors who are quoted as saying many Hong Kong women think Hong Kong men don’t have much ambition compared with the successful and affluent men in the Chinese mainland.Hong Kong women think Hong Kong men don’t have much ambition compared with the successful and affluent men in the Chinese mainland.

Hong Xuelian, associate professor with Department of Social Work in Hong Kong Baptist University, says cultural differences between the Hong Kong women and men in the Chinese mainland are breaking down. This is seen in the example of Mary, a university student in Guangzhou who says that there is no cultural difference between Hong Kong and the mainland when it comes to love.

“My boyfriend and I don’t feel any cultural difference as we listen to the same music, watch the same movies and know the same information, though I was born in Hong Kong and he was born in Guangzhou,” says Mary. And eschewing any ideological differences they may have between them, Mary emphasizes that the big difference is all about money: “I will choose to reside in Guangzhou or Shenzhen when we are married, because quality of life in these cities is even better than that in Hong Kong.”

These are all possible reasons that could possibly explain why Hong Kong women are turning to mainland Chinese men for marriage partners. And, there’s also another that can explain this very simply: there are just not enough Hong Kong men, good or otherwise. For every 3.9 million Hong Kong women in the city, there are only 3.3 million Hong Kong men, a disparity that has been plaguing romance in Hong Kong for years.

But even with a deficit, Hong Kong men are still described in the China Daily report as falling short to mainland Chinese men in terms of affluence, ambition, and ability. And yet, if we were to take all of these things into account, it would point to a surprising conclusion as we consider the most-neglected part of the report: that Hong Kong men have long been taking mainland Chinese women for brides.

Even though it dropped from 2013, 15,226 Hong Kong men decided to marry a spouse from the Chinese mainland last year, more than twice the number of Hong Kong women who did the same.

The China Daily report does not explain this ongoing trend, but does assure us that even though Hong Kong men can’t compete with their peers from the mainland, the only reason they marry mainland Chinese women is for love. As the unidentified head of the matchmaking service says, “affluent women in the Chinese mainland are not willing to be married with Hong Kong men,” thus keeping Hong Kong men honest… at least with mainland Chinese women.

As the China Daily implies, it looks like Hong Kong women are looking for more.

The post Now More Than Ever, Hong Kong Women are Marrying Mainland Men appeared first on The Nanfang.

Now there’s one less reason to avoid tying the knot in Guangzhou, as marriage registration will soon become free throughout the city.

Starting this Saturday August 1st, the registration fee of RMB 9 ($1.45) will be waived for all Guangzhou couples applying for a marriage license, said the Guangzhou Civil Affairs Bureau.

Guangzhou lags behind a number of other jurisdiction that abolished marriage registration fees back in 2010 including Beijing, Shanghai, and Jiangsu Province. Moreover, Guangzhou’s own Huangpu District has waived fees for marriage registration since March 2012 in a long-running pilot program.

While many Guangzhou couples are sure to enjoy this welcome news, those who have been married (unhappily) for a while might also like to know that divorce fees, also previously set at RMB 9, are free too.

Last year, 131544 couples registered for marriage in Guangzhou, paying a total of RMB 1.1 million ($177,200) in administrative fees.

The post It’s Now Totally Free to Get Married (and Divorced) in Guangzhou appeared first on The Nanfang.

The 42 year-old actress recently gave an interview where she opened up about her 2011 marriage (seen above) to Canadian Blaine Grunewald, the CEO of Lehman Bush. Usually reticent to talk about her private affairs, Yuan revealed how her marriage to a non-Chinese has both been painful and has served as a valuable lesson. Speaking from her personal experience, Yuan said:

You (can) better appreciate Chinese men after marrying a foreigner.

If that doesn’t sound like an endorsement of foreign husbands, it gets worse. Yuan described her cross-cultural marriage this way:

It was like a stuck gear made of flesh and blood, clacking away, grinding down upon my heart and my soul.

The actress of the 2011 Chinese remake of What Women Want said that she and her husband have come to terms with their marriage after years of tolerance and understanding, but still doesn’t think very highly of their relationship, saying she “can’t say it’s especially good or bad.”

Yuan also admitted that things had gotten so bad that she considered divorcing Grunewald at one time.

Grunewald is Yuan’s third husband after having divorced actor Zhao Ling and her first husband Xu Wei, with whom Yuan shares a son.

The post Chinese Movie Star with Canadian Husband Says Don’t Marry Foreigners appeared first on The Nanfang.

It may boggle the mind to consider a movie star to be ugly, but then, we accept that different cultures have different beauty standards. For example, what a Chinese person may consider to be “beautiful” may get an opposite reaction from a laowai, the common Chinese term for foreigner.

Chinese people have often wondered: why do foreigners tend to marry Chinese women that are ugly? That’s the question posed by iFeng Beauty writer Xu Xiliang, and her answer is as praiseworthy of Western culture as it is dismissive of it.

Xu criticises Chinese society for not marrying for love, but for superficial reasons, and her proof is that Westerners knowingly marry ugly Chinese women because looks aren’t important to them.

Ouch? Or is there some kind of backhanded compliment in there?

Once we deny the idea that different cultures have different beauty standards, Xu gets down to brass tacks in a stinging critique of Chinese society, blasted for being too focused upon the material world:

When finding their (ideal marriage) partner, many foreigners aren’t like we Chinese in being so fixated on things like appearances, money, or power. Instead, they are looking for something compatible with (the other person’s) inner quality. They want to find a real, authentic soul mate.

Chinese have a strong belief in fate, and even have a special term to describe love that is fated by destiny (缘分, yuanfen). However, Xu says Chinese are incapable of understanding the “Western” concept of finding your “soulmate”. Instead, Chinese will be ridiculed for wanting a partner they share similar qualities with, and get labelled “immature” and “impractical”. Xu tears into the facade of Chinese culture that is trapped into making false choices:

If a man has a wife that is ugly, it is generally accepted that he is a loser. No matter which perspective you have, this is how common people with a material view of the world will think: a successful man should be accompanied by a beautiful woman. And what of ‘souls’? This is irrelevant. Everybody is putting on a show, and what Chinese are feeling inside is not taken into consideration.

And Xu isn’t afraid to confront the institution of marriage tradition in China:

How many beautiful women become brides just to improve the reputation of a man?

So it does not matter that these foreign men may actually find their own wives to be physically attractive — it’s what’s inside that counts. As Xu concluded:

Out of the two choices of being either a “flower vase” to some bigwig with money or an ugly woman brimming with inner quality that becomes the soulmate to a laowai, I believe (it’s the latter) which is the right choice.

It’s simply a shame we apparently can’t have two things at once.

The post Answering the Age Old Question: Why Do Foreigners Marry Ugly Chinese Girls? appeared first on The Nanfang.

In a practice that stretches back to at least 2013, Chinese couples have been divorcing each other as a way to circumvent official regulations or restrictions on home buying. The issue has helped drive Guangzhou’s divorce rate, where the issue seems to be most acute, much higher.

Known in China as a “false divorce” or “technical divorce”, couples temporarily divorce in order to qualify for certain conditions as single adult, and then re-marry after they completed their objectives. According to Guangzhou’s bureau of civil affairs, 11,584 couples divorced in the first half of the year, with 30 percent of them later remarrying.

In most cases, Chinese couples get a technical divorce in order to exploit a loophole that allows them to own more property, or to make school enrolment easier for their children. In Guangzhou, a single family is restricted to owning one house. When a married couple temporarily divorces, one person is free to purchase a new property while the other retains ownership of the house. With two houses owned, the couple can now remarry with more assets.

The unnamed official wouldn’t disclose the specific number of Guangzhou couples that have “technically” divorced over the past few years, but said the number was rising.

“The number of divorce cases exceeded the number of marriages in some months in 2013 when the central government issued strict policies and regulations to limit the purchase of properties by residents,” said the official.

The rate of divorce in Guangzhou is the fourth-highest in China right after Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.

Related:

• More Chinese Couples are Getting Divorced, and They Blame Social Media
• China Considers Making It Harder to Divorce, Especially for Couples with Young Children
• The Land of the Broken-Hearted: Shenzhen’s Divorce Rate Doubles in Six Years

The post Chinese “Technical” Divorces on the Rise to Avoid Home Ownership Restrictions appeared first on The Nanfang.

At 10 am the alarm clock rang. It went on for half an hour until it stopped. I felt as if I couldn’t move, I had neither the energy to get up, nor to perform the simple task of grabbing the bottle of water inside my bag to quench the thirst that made my throat burn. I was aware that I was sleeping too long, but my limbs simply would not obey my brain’s commands.

All of a sudden, I heard a noise, so loud and persistent that I could not ignore it. I slowly came round and realised someone was trying to open the apartment door. Repeated sighs and the nervous tinkling of the key resounded from the staircase, tokens of exasperation at the stubbornness of the door. After a while, the bell rang.

I pushed the blanket aside, sat up and got to my feet. I walked towards the door, opened it and saw an Asian girl standing in front of me. Tiny beads of sweat shone on her forehead, and her cheeks were slightly red. It was unbearably hot and humid outside. “Hi,” I said. “Hi,” she replied. For a few seconds she fixed her eyes on me; perhaps she was embarrassed, or maybe she had expected Kana, my half Japanese, half Chinese host, to open the door, instead of a white guy wearing pyjamas. “Come in, come in,” I urged her. “It’s really hot outside.”

“Yes,” she said, and pushed a small pink suitcase into the flat.

She had large, slightly round eyes and long black hair. Her features were regular and well proportioned, with faintly protruding cheeks, thick arched brows, and a small nose. Her skin was nearly as fair as mine, but as smooth as a child’s.

There are times in life when you like a person at first sight. It is hard to explain why.There are times in life when you like a person at first sight. It is hard to explain why. Surely it is not just a matter of appearance. There are a myriad of things that make up one’s charm; voice, attitude, manners, outfit, etc. As soon as I saw her, my weariness receded, and I was glad that, of all apartments available in Macau, she had chosen that one.

“No, actually I’m a friend of Kana’s,” she said. She opened the door of one of the rooms and put her luggage inside. While she was unpacking her suitcase, we started to talk. Her voice was gentle and calm, and her eyes were full of vitality.

“I thought you were a guest because of your luggage,” I said. She explained that she had just come back from Taiwan, where she had attended a friend’s wedding. I told her I had lived in Taiwan for two years.

And so began one of those conversations that last for hours, in which one effortlessly jumps from one topic to the next, shares views and experiences, enjoys oneself in a natural and relaxed way, without ever feeling bored.

She told me about her life as a student in Macau, her family background, her travel experiences, and impressions of the countries she had visited. She told me about her struggle to find her own identity. As a mainlander who lives outside of Communist China, she is confronted with prejudices and discrimination; but on the mainland, too, she and her family experienced intolerance and bigotry as members of an ethnic minority. I talked about my life in Taiwan, my love for Hong Kong, my experiences in Europe and Asia, and my interest in Chinese language and culture.

It was already past 5 pm, and I hadn’t eaten anything, nor had I taken a shower, yet. I took from my bag a banana I had bought the previous day.

“Go and take a shower first,” she said. “I will go downstairs and buy you something to eat.”

Did she say she’d buy lunch for me? I wondered. I thought I had misunderstood. I just smiled at her and nodded. I went to the bathroom and took a shower. When I returned to the living room she was not there. A couple of minutes later she came back, carrying a white plastic bag. Inside the bag there a polystyrene foam box, chopsticks and a spoon. “It’s for you,” she said, and handed it over to me.

I was really touched and embarrassed. I tried to refuse. “No, no, please, you should eat it. You haven’t had lunch, either. I can go out and buy something later.” She was standing in front of me. For a few seconds her gaze, determined but gentle, remained fixed on my eyes.

“I will have dinner later with my friends. I will just eat some cookies.” She rummaged in her suitcase and took out a pack of Taiwanese cookies, showing them to me. “Do you want some?” she asked. “They’re good.”

I couldn’t possibly allow her to eat cookies while I had a proper lunch. I tried to give her the lunchbox back, but she wouldn’t take it. I went to the kitchen and opened the box: there was rice, two different kinds of meat, and vegetables. She came to the kitchen, too. “Let’s share it,” I said. “It’s enough for both of us.”

She walked up close to me and glanced at the food. She drew a pair of chopsticks from a cutlery stand, took a piece of meat from the box and ate it. “I will just eat this. The rest is for you.” I insisted, but she went back to the living room. I followed her. “Thank you very much. This is really kind of you,” I said, looking at her.

“It’s no big deal,” she said bashfully.

“If you ever come to Italy let me know,” I said. “I will show you around. Or if you come to Hong Kong.”

I ate my lunch while we continued talking. When I finished, I thanked her again, and she smiled. We talked for over five hours, but I felt as if we could have talked much longer. Our chat was interrupted by the arrival of a friend of hers and of Kana’s. The three of them would go to dinner later, she told me. It was already past 6 pm. For a while, she practically ignored her friend and we continued our conversation. But I was worried about taking up too much of her time. She had an exam the next day, and she had told me that she hadn’t studied enough. I said I would go out to do some sightseeing. She sent me a friend request Facebook. Then I said goodbye and left.

I believe there was chemistry between the two of us. A feeling that vanished as quickly as it materialized. A cursory episode in our lives among hundreds of others. But, as long as it lasted, I enjoyed this innocent, spontaneous flirting. Sometimes, while going to the kitchen or one of the rooms, she walked past me, slightly touching my arm with her hand. That’s as daring as it ever got. In its simplicity and genuineness, it was beautiful. If an encounter is brief, as was this one, it is best to keep it pure, so that you can always remember it as a happy moment in your life. Let things happen naturally, do not push them too far, have no regrets.

The post The Brief But Meaningful Connections That Make Traveling Totally Worth It appeared first on The Nanfang.