Kevin&Leilei

My Chinese wife and I have been married for over five years. We live in the US, and my wife became a US citizen over a year ago. Our relationship is great; everyone says we still act like newlyweds. Before we married, we both agreed to wait at least five years before deciding anything about having children. This was before I realized that for many Chinese, marriage seems to be ONLY for having children. In less than a year, she started being pressured by her parents (mostly her mother) about having a baby. At first, she got away with it by just avoiding the subject. Then came the arguments. Her parents still live in China, and speak no English. My Chinese, is, well, pretty bad. This means my wife has to handle all of this on her own. There have been times when she actually dreaded calling home, and ended up in tears by the end of the conversation. For several years this seemed to happen every so often, then they'd calm down about it, and everything would be fine for a while. They even visited us twice, once for three months, and again two years later, for four months. Everything was fine. Then they'd start up again. Meanwhile, any idea of the two of us actually wanting kids just went down the crapper. Are we seriously supposed to bring a life into this world only to satisfy her parents, who live 7000 miles away? So anyway, we recently celebrated our fifth anniversary. We took a nice trip to Costa Rica, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Then her parents started cracking down, and now they've even got her extended family involved. She didn't even want to call her relatives for Chinese New Year. They tell her stuff like she ruined their new year, and they regret allowing her to move to the US. They act like they don't want to talk to her when she calls. I guess it's just a cultural difference, but from my point of view, they are acting like little kids who can't get their way. They don't seem to realize (or care) that they are hurting her. Everyone around us here in the US doesn't see a problem. They say, hey, if you don't want kids, don't have kids. My wife loves the concept of being able to make your own decisions. But apparently for Chinese, you must obey your parents, no matter how old you are, or you're a horrible person. My wife is not a horrible person, and it really kills me to see her parents treat her like this. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Any ideas or advice would be appreciated.

crazy drivers stopping optional traffic accidents sidewalk driving street spitting sidewalk peeing bike carts donkey carts stray dogs house slippers good food cheap food McDonald's delivers?! KFCs everywhere dog meat "Look, foreigner!!" bad English pushy salesmen

Overall impression of the GUZ experience: No complaints about the VO. He was nice, and very helpful in answering my questions at ACH, and again a week later when I enquired about the delay in delivery of her visa. My lao po said he was very nice, and spoke very clearly, so she had no problem understanding him. It was a little frustrating just sitting around waiting from her Thursday interview until delivery on Wednesday, but all things considered, we had it pretty easy. Really, the only thing I can complain about, is having to fly all the way to Guangzhou for this. (And Guangzhou is too hot.) I'm just glad we had a positive experience, rather than a negative one.

Leilei and I just got back to Shenyang last night. We didn't have a computer in GUZ. Her interview was on July 16th, and she came down from the 5th floor around 11:30 with a pink slip. She said the interview was super easy, just a few questions, and she was asked what nicknames we called each other when we talked online. She said her answer made the VO laugh. She said he didn't bother to read our EOR letter (maybe he read it before the interview?), and he very quickly flipped through our pictures. From her description, I think she got the same VO I talked to at ACH the preceeding Monday. A 30-ish guy with short brown hair, and glasses. He was very nice to me, and she said he was very nice to her as well. Her visa wasn't at the post office on Saturday, and they told us to check back the following Tuesday (I guess they don't get anything on Mondays). Mr. Yang told me to go to ACH again the following Monday. I went there, and got the same VO, and he even remembered me from the week before. He went in the back and checked on her visa for me, and told me her's got stuck in a pile with some from Friday, and that it would be available on Tuesday or Wednesday. We were finally able to pick it up Wednesday morning, then Mr. Yang and his wife helped us to book last minute plane tickets back to Shenyang. Now we're booking everything for a wedding meal here in China, then after that we'll FINALLY fly back to the US together.

I'm starting to get worried... I'm leaving for China again on July 6th, and I've had a cold, mostly coughing and a sore throat. No fever, but I'm worried if it hasn't subsided by then, they'll put me in a precautionary quarantine.

My lao po does it too. It can be very confusing at times. She tends to use "she" more often for males than "he" for females. Didn't she learn that you're supposed to use "he" when gender is unknown? I've been trying to correct her on it (at her request), but she doesn't seem to be improving yet.

I started calling her "lao po" at her request. She says calling each other by our real names is too formal, so we never do that. While it may mean "wife," in Shenyang at least, it's used colloquially to mean something like "serious girlfriend or wife." We've been calling each other "lao po" / "lao gong" since before the topic of marriage ever came up.

We have the same date. See you there! We're also planning a wedding ceremony in her home city, assuming she gets her visa. Who knows, if she gets denied maybe we'll have a legal wedding instead!

Me too! We're going on July 16th.

I haven't seen many people using cloth bags. But people do reuse the plastic bags they already have. My lao po carries plastic bags with her almost all the time, just in case she needs to go to the store to pick something up. Just a week or two ago I saw something that was brilliant... a person on the street handing out advertisements, printed on a plastic bag. Of course people will take a free bag!

Yes, I always carry my passport when I go out. I seem to remember reading somewhere that foreigners are supposed to always carry their passports when in China (or maybe it was that US citizens should always carry them when abroad). I have a nice leather case for it, so it doesn't get beat up in my pocket.

I'm in China now with my lao po. I've always stayed in hotels before, so I never registered. This time I'm staying with her, so we went to the PSB to register. She said I didn't need to, but I insisted, because I didn't want any trouble with getting a visa in the future. The police acted like they didn't know how to do it, and it took probably an hour to find the right person to finally get it done. Then, we took a trip to Thailand, which reset my 30 day visa, and when we got back, we went to register again... they just shrugged us off and said we didn't need to do it again. Ok, whatever. Last year, before the Olympics, we went to Benxi for a couple days. The hotels there wouldn't let foreigners check in, and we had to search for a 4 star hotel to stay in (the worst 4 star hotel in the world). Later, a police officer saw me and started harrassing us. He looked over my passport for a long time, then started telling us that I needed to register, even though I was already registered by the hotel. Eventually he gave up and let us go on our way.

We just sent our P3 back yesterday. The only thing you send is the OF-169 (the checklist), the DS-230, and the EMS label. Save everything else for the interview.

I'd like to know too, because the second birth certificate we just got back is in the same format. We showed them the instructions from Guangzhou, but that is what they gave us. No information about her parents' birthdates or places of birth.

Thanks guys, I think we've got it sorted now. All they needed was her hukou, her ID, and some ID pictures of her. (And payment, of course.) I know it's not needed to send back packet 3, but they want us to have it before sending.