Hello brothers,
Sorry for my late reply, as Shaun analyzed correctly, resurfacing is tricky when things go well! And they did, although not entirely as expected at first, but I left expecting nothing and was prepared for everything :fi_lone_ranger:
Second sorry: I won't post any pictures of "Us" or me because we both want to keep our privacy protected, concerns me more than her actually, my personal internet presence is just too strong and I can't afford any more, you know big brother and all that... so deep apologies about that, I hope you can understand.
To tell you how it went, ... first meeting was a few hours off the plane, it went well but she was quite different from what I imagined from the EMF's, although we had some intensive QQ sessions before meeting up so the surprise factor was not that high either. Her English is a lot better than expected (agency downplayed this a lot to get EMF money) so communication was easy once I learned to slow down.
Photoshop? Yes !!! Lots of ... I am not sure I would have recognized her in the street without some help, but why? ... but hey this is how it's done in China, so don't complain, accept it.
We were supposed to meet a few days after my arrival initially, I hopped to Chengdu the next day after arrival in SZ to meet a friend there over the weekend, turns out she couldn't wait (me neither
) so we organized a dinner on the fly. My initial impressions were very mixed, she was not at all as I pictured her through the EMFs. As a result I never got to meet our translator as planned ... no biggie I guess. Her body language was not very favorable towards me, I could have thought that she didn't like me but knew better than that, I have a little experience after all and it turns out she was just shy. I remembered the 24 hour rule as well. After the dinner we QQed a bit and well.
First lesson learned: EMFs are mostly a waste of time, I learned more about her during some QQing and of course during dinner than during the many hours of EMFing. Two reasons to that: my letters were always too long, took too much time to read, and since her English is pretty good they were not translated. She wrote back in Chinese or over the phone giving some general directions for the content to the translator, the latter then packed this into a letter ... I QQ sometimes with her too now and recognize well her sunny and friendly style that I liked so much... hehe translator romance ... So instead of spending so much on EMF, I should have forced a direct contact much earlier as we already discussed in another topic here. The damage is limited to a total of 40 EMFs over 2.5 months so OK I guess, the fact that she is so busy helped there, I would have written daily if she had replied that fast. From this perspective the agency was quite honest. However, translator fees requested were stellar, I managed to negotiate them down and didn't need the service in the end, but they will charge through the roof without hesitating. I think the initial quote was 1200 RMB per 8 hours. I brought it down to 400 for a half day.
Meeting number 2 took place when I arrived back from Chengdu, quite late again for some dinner, this time my hotel was around the corner from her place, she helped me on the location and we QQ'ed a lot while I was in Chengdu, Ctrip was my second helper. We were both more relaxed and had a friendly conversation although things still seemed unclear, again she was quite reserved although I was attracted like crazy at that stage. We met on QQ again before going to sleep and were able to identify that we both liked what we had seen so far, QQ makes it a lot easier to talk about deeper things than face to face. We spent the next day together and did some shopping around Shenzhen, I bought her some things but she would not let me spend a lot on her, so I spent a lot on myself instead
. Still no holding hands or anything similar... :huh:
Unfortunately she had to work the next two days and not in the same city, so I spent some solitary time visiting different places, ordering food in restaurants with menus without pictures which proved very funny. Overall people were always very friendly and helpful, writing away on my Besta when I asked them to, and I often got help from people with a little English.
Lesson two: Try to meet women locally. It's really so easy, do some shopping, go to eat, take public transportation, you meet plenty of people especially if they speak English. I was not in the market anymore as I was waiting for my lady to be back, but there were plenty of opportunities had I been willing. One example was in the main Luohu shopping center, I got some sunglasses and once selected the seller tries to sell me another pair for my female partner. So I explain that I'm single, well divorced ... and eventually that I was looking for my future bride in China. Another sales guy says he has several sisters I could meet, friends as well, no problem at all if I wanted to ... I had been out of the hotel for just a couple of hours and this kind of thing happened several times, not counting the smiles or other clearly interested looks in the subway or even in Starbucks ... Now I think I met the one I was looking for on Chnlove, but there are other quicker ways if you're easy going. I spent about the price of a plane ticket to China on EMFs, think about it ...
I then messed up our next meeting :angel: I guess jet lag killed my sense of time, so she was rightfully upset and me very sorry. All the same we met again the next day after a million deserved apologies, watched some TV together ...
I hope you will forgive me the lack of detail and the total absence of photos, but it would just be unfair to her and as I said before, my net visibility is just too great as it is, I can't afford any more.
If you like I can write up a little travel advisory on Shenzhen, I learned a few things although I don't know it all of course.
