Lets start with yesterday. Got up early and of course it was raining. Angel, being the smart woman she is, had hired a car. He came all the way into the complex and helped us with our clothes. Now of course I overpacked. But I have been having to shower at least 2 times a day. It has been so terribly hot and humid. I will drench a shirt in about 5 minutes. It seems the humidity has been about 90%. Anway, we get to the airportone hour and 15 minutes early. With all of the delays we never stopped between sections and just made the plane. Now here we are all packed in, full flight. I am drenched in sweat. On comes the pilot, we are being delayed due to the weather, please sit tight and we will inform you when we can take off. He shuts down the plane. No air conditioning. I feel awful. Stuffy, no air and in the middle seat. I am just about ready to say the hell with it and get off after 45 minutes when the engines start and he says we are now 4th in line for takeoff. At least the air comes on. Finally we take off, no problems. 2 hours later we land in Wuhan. My “Secret Police” is going to pick us up. Ok, the story of the Secret Police. I kept wondering why it wasn’t a big Secret. It turns out that “Secret police is that he is a Detective. True a highly placed one, but still a detective. He has a car and a driver assigned to him. The driver sucks, really. He kept stalling out the car, it is a stick shift and actually hit a guy on a motorcycle. But not bad enough to cause problem. No one said anything. I kept the smiles to myself. He took us to the hotel. A howard Johnsons 5 star. Really nice even has an inside pool. We got to our room and Angel did not like it. It had two double beds instead of a King size like she wanted. The bell boy called downstairs. No more rooms available, there is a conference going on. By the way brother inlaws name is jimbao. Easy for me to remember. So Jimbao got on the phone in 5 minutes the desk called and had us an upgraded room at the same discounted price as the other one. This had a king size bed and a sitting room with a sofa and three chairs. It is still who you know. We had a pleasant day, he took us to a very nice lunch and paid for it. Wow. We went back to the hotel and took a nap. It is about 100 degrees in Wuhan. Then we took a taxi to Mamas house for dinner. She made two huge platters of dumplings. Plus the other items. Eat your hearts out Dinger and Bonk. These were absolutely the best dumplings I have had. She kept filling my plate up with them until I had them coming out of my ears. Then we sat around and talked. LanLan, Angels best friend arranged for an interpreter for us. Now the girl is not a good one but at least she could speak both languages. Brother in law started talking politics with me. So I guess I am family after all. He talked rather frankly and asked me the same. Interesting conversation. Then it was time to go. They walked us down to the taxi. I grabbed Mama and gave her a big hug. She hugged me back and started crying. She said when I get rich, I want you to buy a house in Wuhan. I said I would do my best. What else could I say. We got back to the hotel. It is on the Yangtze river. Beautiful view. Then Angel said we had to get up early. I said wny, and she said we are going to registerour marriage tomorrow. I said what happened to the 21st. She just said we are too busy so it will be tomorrow. I said ok.
Today.
We got up around 7:30 took our showers and ate breakfast in the hotel. Then the interpreter shows up and off we go. I had paid Vistaright a total of about $165 to get the paperwork done for my single certificate. They told me everything was fine. I get to the office. The woman behind the desk says it is a no go. What? She says it needs to be interpreted into Chinese. I said I thought it was. She said no it wasn’t. Christ. She gives us a card to take to another place about 5 miles away. Into a cab and off we go. I am cussing most of the way. Of course under my breath. I am going to have it out with them when I get back. Trust me. I am telling anyone else right now. Stop doing business with them until it gets cleared up. They have supposedly done this correctly for a very long time. Anyway we go and get it done, wait 2 hours. Get back to the government office at 11:am. The woman said she did not know if we had time to get it done today. They close at 11:30 and wont be back until Friday. I did not want to try a bribe because you never know what kind of heat that might bring down. I just smiled and asked nicely if she could please try, it was very important to us as we had to get back to Beijing before Friday. She was a nice kid and said OK. Now here comes the funny part. On the application it asks what is the highest education do you have. I said a BS degree. She asked what that was. I said of Bachelor of Science degree. She said you are no longer going to be a bachelor. I thought she was kidding so I laughed. She did not. She asked again. What is the highest education do you have? I said a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice. She said that is no longer good as you will be married. All I could think of was Who’s on first. It was all I could do to not crack up. I finally got it through to her that that was what it was called, not my marital status. She said OK, but I hope they let it through. We finally get it all done. We are now married. We exchange the rings and get our red books. Angel has decided to take my name. So she is now Burk Shi Yunxiang. She does not want to be called Angel. She does not feel right. Her English name is Gina Burk. Ok whatever she wants. So tomorrow we will have the dinner. We were going to have it at the hotel. But they wanted a minimum of 10,000 Yuan. Plus. So we head to the fancy restaurant down the street.
Now Qingqing calls her mama. She wants to come to Wuhan when her competition is done. She wants us to buy her plane ticket so she can come see her boyfriend. I can no longer hold my tongue. This is the last straw. I tell Angel, there is no way in the world I will buy a ticket for her. If she wants to come to Wuhan. She needs to do whatever she has to do to earn the money. She could not come to our wedding buy she can come to see her boyfriend. BS, no frickin way. Angel turns to me and says OK. She tells Qingqing, so she hangs up on her Mama. This kid has some serious issues.
Tonight we go to dinner with my Secret Police brother in law his wife and daughter. We then take a walk along the Yangtze river. People in the park doing exercises, old people doing their Kata. That is what I would like to start doing. So we are back in the room. I am going to take another shower. Then hit the sack. Well, I am a married man again. It feels good.
