Baby steps/getting started.

[David5o]

Your Right Jim, most if not all the Chinese were given Western names at the time of Infant School, but i would go back just a little further than 30 yrs, maybe back as much as 40!! Often the children that were given Western names would then give there mothers and fathers Western names, usually those that there best friends at school had been given. According to Lucy, it was part of their introduction into learning English, but few ever really got to learn English properly in those days, and most forgot what they learnt anyway as they had no way to use it. That's changing big time these days, as China is opening up more and more to the Western world along with the opportunities that brings to those that can converse in English....

David.....

[ttwjr32]

David,

thats just it they had no one to speak with back then but today
they look to speak it at any chance they get. i get stopped in Guangzhou
all the time and they start out with   hello how are you  and we usually
chat for 5 or 10 minutes.  its on the list of nice things about living in China
as i enjoy talking to them and have made some great friends this way.  

the conversation would lead to the national pastime here "did you eat"
and so hence the start of a freindship

[trwme]

An update and how the ladies receive their letters. I've received an answer from all three of the ladies I am writing on how they receive/send their letters. Their answers represent a mix, as Vince stated in his response.

My lady friend in Wuhan receives a phone call, and the entire letter is read to her. She then writes down her response, and usually goes to the agency to have it translated and sent, although she says when she is short on time she will call it in after writing it down.

The lady in Tieling gets hers over the phone, and calls in her response to the agency.

The lady in Chendu receives a call letting her know she has a letter, the agency then translates it for her and sends it to her personal email. She then writes a response, sends it via email to her agency, who then translate and send that to me.

Ironically, the one this process works slowest with is the lady in Chengdu, who does hers through her personal email. Hers are also the shortest letters. Perhaps the slowness is an agency issue, or perhaps she's too busy to write quickly-or perhaps she has other fish on the line. She was the one I was most interested in initially, and I sent her the first EMF I wrote. I was several letters into conversation with the other two before I ever received her initial response.

[Voiceroveip]

My experience in this:

My fiancée only got 2 EMFs from me, she was notified, shown some of my pics but the responses were sent by the agency with her agreement but without her input. She did not read my letters. We QQ'ed after 2 EMFs ... I also talked to a second lady in this fashion, no input from her in the letters and she did not read mine.

2 others got notified and got the letters read to them on the phone and/or emailed (they both spoke English although their profile info on Chnlove stated "learning"), one got the agency to respond entirely on her behalf without her input, the other would give some general directions for the reply but the letter was pulled together by the translator.

Another one got my EMFs translated in her email and wrote her replies herself in Chinese, we checked and the translations were very accurate both ways. She was the exception though.

I think a lot of the ladies want to meet the men to see if they are interesting, the letter writing business seems secondary, add to that the amount of fake profiles (I had my share), and you know what I think of the EMF system.

Frank

[odysseus007]

So far I have used 62 EMFs. A handful of the replies were definitely really by the ladies, maybe 5? The number of actual direct contacts? After my blocking, 4 said they would contact me directly... but so far, zilch. I have 20 more EMFs. When that is gone, I will also be gone from CHN. Doing a lot better elsewhere, I got phone chats with close to 20 ladies at another site, it would have been 30-40 if I included those whom I didn't particularly wanted to know.

[trwme]

About the naming of them.  I have seen it both ways.  One is a come on. Ex: give me your English name for me so we can be closer faster type of thing." and that usually follows by I love you. That I have seen really early in the process.  That is "usually" the start of a con.  (Not always but most of the time I have seen.) The other thing is that she truly likes you and wants you to have the honor of naming her.  I named my wife, but not until we had met.  

Well, I wanted to return to this, since my lady in Wuhan has brought this up a couple of times. I've followed what you say here Jim, and said let's wait until we meet before I give her an english name. Now she is telling me to come as soon as I can, lol.

On a related note, this lady is trying to move me along pretty fast. She's not pushy about it, but is gently persistent. She has taken ownership it seems, calling me 'her' Roy. she usually puts things in the context of 'if things go well with us', but it is obvious she is making plans for that to happen. so I've started pushing to get beyond the EMFs, and in my last EMF I queried her about when we could have a webcam meeting, and about other ways we can communicate more directly (personal email, phone, texting, etc.). Waiting on the reply to that presently.

The 'L' word hasn't been used yet-at least, not in the context of 'I love you'. She does tell me often how happy she is and how happy my letters make her, and in her last letter she says how she 'loves' this feeling. Her name means 'happy' and she thanks me for giving her name meaning. It's hard not to respond in kind to that kind of thing, but I can't help but wonder a bit. On the one hand it seems like we've been talking forever, because the emf's have been flying back and forth (daily), and they are all quite long in both directions. On the other hand...it hasn't really been that long. Any of you experienced this with your ladies? I know, probably a dumb question there, lol.

[brett]

Roy - my lady took ownership of me at quite an early stage. I don't think this is anything to worry about!

I do know my lady spoke to a few men before me, but I guess as time got on she was more desparate to get someone to visit her. You have to remember that of the tens of thousands of men on chnlove, very few actually make that trip. Until you make that trip, a lady will keep her options open.

My lady had an English name, but she didn't seem to use it much. Maybe she got it in high school as it was quite old fashioned. Ask her about her Chinese name, they are often given their names for a reason :icon_cheesygrin:.

[trwme]

Roy - my lady took ownership of me at quite an early stage. I don't think this is anything to worry about!....Ask her about her Chinese name, they are often given their names for a reason :icon_cheesygrin:.

Well, I think I am liking being owned by this woman so far...as long as we can get off the emfs and things are the same or close to it. I already asked about her chinese name, it means 'happy' (she told me), and that her mom had given it to her hoping she would always be happy.


I just wanted to add something and ask some help, lol.

She gave me her phone # in the letter I got tonight.

But she didn't give me the prefix for China, so can anyone give me this? Never made an international call before, much less to China.

And what is the proper pronunciation for the name 'Xin'??

[ttwjr32]

i think more like shin  mike

[Neil]

Nina's name was pronounced more like Seen.  I think you better ask her yourself...

[Willy The Londoner]

My wife tells me that it is more like 'cin'  the same sound as the start of Xinnian Kuaile (Happy New Year)

I guess our British, Canadian and American accents are giving us different sounds!!

Willy

[trwme]

lol, well, I guess I'll just have to ask her when we talk. She says she speaks a little english, and I have a very limited chinese vocabulary-one word, lol. But ya gotta start somewhere I quess. Appropriate I guess, since the name of this thread is baby steps!

[ttwjr32]

Roy

thats the spirit you have to start somewere
why not here  right?

Willy,
I think your right but i also have had discusions
with people here and they seem to all have a
different take on pronounciation at times. and
then you have the different cities dialog

[mustfocus]

Mike's right... Xin is pronounced sin as in sinfully...

[maxx]

Mike and mustfocus have got it right.