Thank you sir, praise indeed from the master!
David, I overlooked to include my key points and do so now. Some will replicate those of others but I think this in itself is useful, perhaps even important, in showing a concensus of thought. My apologies for being unable to keep to your 12 word maximum.
1) Personal and willing contact of some nature after 10 EMF's. Based on 1 EMF per week each way.
2) Devoted to writing to you only whilst relationship continues.
3) Prompt and willingness to provide ordinary photos.
4) Answers your questions and asks her own questions of you.
5) Hides her profile as relationship progresses or volunteers good, credible reasons for not doing so.
6) Writes more long EMF's than short ones.
7)Find out if she has told her parents about you and what they think.
Be very wary about flowery, passionate language if used by her in early correspondence.
9) Discover after no more than 10 EMF's if she wants you to visit her in China. Based on 1 EMF a week each way.
10) Be open, honest, sincere and gentle - and trusting, until you know otherwise.
I hope this is of some help in the quest for the impossible dream!?
Respect!
Johnboy
greetings brothers,
Ok here we go again hehe. as always Zhen and I seem to be the thorn in the paw of reason and logic, so using Johnboy's list i will show the examples and David E can go from there,
point one, personal contact after 10 emf's. Zhen and I would do at least one full 6000character letter each way per day. We exchanged personal contact info whenever it came up. I do not recall the exact time frame but it was really early in our relationship. SO I agree some form of alternate contact offered is reasonable but remember some of these ladies have been hurt before so may be more reluctant to disclose this info early.
point 2 writing exclusively to you, while I agree in principal I go back to point one whereby some of these ladies have been hurt before and may be reluctant to do that until more comittment is shown. Only the parties writing the letters will be able to judge the best time for this.
point 3 willingness to provide natural photos.. ok here we start to diverge. The first natural unshopped non professional photos i received of Zhen were the ones I took myself when I went to vist her in September. She did send me non chnlove pictures and i still have two of them in my wallet but they are professional photos and therefore shopped. So some ladies may not have pictures they are willing to give you.
point 4 Answer and ask questions... yes Zhen wrote me an admirer letter in which she mentioned specific things about my profile. Every letter since then was a give and take of answers and questions. However keep in mind the translators can do this too so not necessarily a good indication until you can verify it without going through the translator, QQ in person etc.
point 5 hides her profile.. Zhen hid hers as soon as I asked her. Some do some dont. Again it goes back to how often they have been burned in the past.
point 6 writes long letters... well this I agree on heheh Zhen always wrote full length letters sometimes 2 per day, and yes much of them was romance and love and not vital stats, but every topic than we should cover in letters was covered in depth. Everything from politics to kids, where to live to religion all covered.
pont 7 Does the family know.. yes Zhen told all her family and friends about me early in our relationship. I can think of no logical reason for a chinese lady to seek a foreign husband and not tell teh family when it appears she has found one who is serious, unless she is waiting for the flight details to be sure you are serious and committed. Keep in mind they know as well as we do that it may not work out face to face so may be reluctant to tell the parents until they have at least that part out of the way.
pont 8 flowery language used early.. OK here I really disagree. Zhen and I used very flowery romantic luvy duvvy language from about letter 3 or 4 onward and never stopped... wait a sec ... we still havent stopped. Some people just express themselves like this. Read the threads about first letters and the one where i posted excerpts from our letters to get the idea of our language. For Zhen and I it was just a natural thing to do, your mileage may vary.
point 9 wants you to visit.. while I agree with the point I disagree with the timeline. for instance ladies I wrote to before Zhen both wanted me to visit but not before my divorce was final. This took more than 10 emf's to discover. Some ladies may not even discuss this seriously until they are sure of your committment to them.
point 10 be open honest trusting etc... absolutely! This I think is the core point in the whole thing. To often it seems from the posts that we are quick to assume scam and translator misdeeds and mistrust of the lady. While i agree there are bad ladies and traslators and also men if you go looking for the scam or the doubt or the lie you will convince yourself that any irregularty is exactly that.. a scam or a lie. You have to give the benefit of the doubt until you can prove otherwise. If everything looks like a scam then perhaps online long distance dating/retationships are not for you.
Summary: so we can see from Johnboys list and my responses that perhaps Zhen and I are not so much the exception to the rule as we might think. Perhaps we were just lucky in that we were both open and honest and trusting right from the start and we had an excellent agency and translator to work with. So maybe the trust and openess and willingness to bent are the most important thing here instead of looking for discrepancies or reluctance or falsehood try looking for the good and the nice and the love, you may just surprise yourself and find that one special lady. Or if that doesnt work look up the agency from Handan Hebei province ( agency 329) and write to one of their ladies. I know for a fact the agency is excellent and many of the ladies are beautiful since I have seen them with my own eyes.
So there you have it my $2.50 worth of thoughts on this issue. hopefully David E can come up with somethig from this mass of information and opinion. I think a decent guideline will go a long way to reducing the have I been scammed posts and maybe even get people out of their own head long enough to see if what they have is real or not.
The bottom line is only the people involved in the relationship can truly say if its real or not.
Sincerely,
Zhen and Brian
