HONG KONG: April-May, 2004 (Part 20)

I ended up waiting seven years to introduce William to my mother.

We visited my hometown of Vancouver and attended a family gathering at a restaurant. My mother chatted to my brother and his wife and their teenage son. My dad, now divorced from my mother and sinking into Alzheimer's, was also there. He was hunched over the table and focused on his food.

I asked my mother about her recent travels. Over the previous ten years my mom had started dating another man and taken to sightseeing the world. I was relieved she had found a life in which she could blossom. She answered my questions about her impressions of autumn in the Maritimes and the coastal views of Spain.

And the conversation sputtered to an end.

My mother sat across the table from William and me. She asked a single question of my husband: How do you like Vancouver?

I like it a lot, he answered. It's scenic, it's diverse and you have a great minor-league baseball field.

The only other comment she made to us that evening was: Good night.

Perhaps now that her suspicions on the question of height had been confirmed, there was little else she needed. Perhaps she was angry it had taken seven years for me to include her in this part of my life. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

When we tucked into bed that night, William held me tight.

What? What is it?

I get it now, Mel. Everything you've told me about her makes sense.

Thank you. Thank you for saying that.

As we lay in the guest room that night, I knew the primary reason for us not wanting children was because of what we missed in our childhoods. William grew up in a home of high expectations and low risks. He wasn't allowed to play baseball or ride a bike to school because his parents feared he would get hurt.

I grew up in a home steeped in anger between my parents. I was expected to side with my mother, listen to her grievances and relive her painful life.

William was expected to achieve greatness and I was taught greatness was beyond my reach.

I took William's hand in the dark. Finally I had a partner, someone on my side.

Marriage.

HONG KONG: April-May, 2004 (Part 19)

As for my side of the family, I felt no urgency to introduce William to my parents. They had already criticized many of my past choices and I wanted to protect William from that gauntlet.

During our first year together, my father had a layover in Los Angeles on his way to Mexico and I agreed that the three of us could have dinner together.

Robbing the cradle, are ya? Dad quipped after I told him our age difference.

Fortunately he limited his wisecracks to that single comment. Dad was pleasant and interested because he tends to be an open fellow and easy-going. William walked Dad through the editing suite where he was working and I was surprised to hear my father say, Oh yeah, takes me back.

What do you mean, Dad?

I used to patch up film in Winnipeg....You know, they'd send us those movies with Tallulah Bunkhead and I had a job at a theatre splicing them together.

You mean Tallulah Bankhead?

Yeah, her.

You never told me this.

Look at this, William said, steering Dad to a metal bin with strips of film hanging above it.

I followed them, still confused. You mean you worked in a movie theatre, Dad?

William held up his hand, stopping my progress.

Sorry, Mel. This is a private discussion for film editors only.

I smiled. In a single sweet gesture William won over my father, and me all over again.

My mother's curiosity about my boyfriend was piqued over the years, and she's never been able to resist editorializing about my life. She asked my sister-in-law: Is he short? Is he shorter than Mel?

Look at us, William said. We were dreading the race card and the age card but we didn't see the height card coming.

HONG KONG: April-May, 2004 (Part 18)

At the meeting's end I thanked Bryan and discovered he had maybe four English phrases in his vocabulary. Fortunately, the written material told me where we'd meet at the airport and the basics of what I would need, including my visa. As I started to leave, the young man I'd seen earlier touched my shoulder and asked, in perfect English, if I needed help.

This was Helpful Young Man Number Three on my tour adventure. Leonard, a nineteen-year-old taking the tour with his mom. Leonard, as it turned out, lived in Hong Kong but had attended high school in my hometown of Vancouver, Canada. Now he was attending a university in Ontario.

Eureka, what luck. My own personal translator.

Hey, Leonard, I said. Nobody was listening. What was Bryan talking about?

Oh, just junk about medical insurance and stuff, not important.

Got it. That's what I thought.

Now I'd be a proper tourist running around Beijing, following a flag carried by a tour leader. And I was going to see the real China, with real Chinese people, in Chinese. Pretty good chance we'd have some Chinese food too. No promises, of course, but I was hopeful.

*****

William and I dated for over a year before I met his parents. I needed to be somewhat certain we were steadily steady. Believe me, I told him, I am not what your mother has in mind.

Meeting the folks over dinner seemed risky. I changed my outfit three times, as if going on a first date. My warning rang in my head. Our racial difference was not the foremost concern. His brother was engaged to a white woman; those waters had been forged.

My unease lay in our age difference and my being twice divorced. And that we did not wish to have children — William was even more adamant about this than I was. We didn't disclose any of these tidbits in my first encounter with his mom and dad. Or the second, or the third....

His parents and I got along well. They appeared pleased their son had a girlfriend and sent flowers on my birthday along with generous presents like spa gift certificates. In those early years the sun shone on us.

However, the day William confessed to them we weren't having children, then followed that with our age difference and my marital history, they were not pleased. When we eloped, William called his parents and his mother wept on the phone to me.

William is precious to us, she said. Take care of him.

I suspected those were not entirely tears of joy. It didn't matter that William made clear his resolve to not have children. I think his mother was convinced he would change his mind if he just married the right girl. His father told him there was no reason to marry if we weren't planning on having children.

It was a daunting situation, but William took my hand and we climbed inside our bubble. Me, him, a cat and a dog.

HONG KONG: April-May, 2004 (Part 17)

My plucky, intrepid self now wanted to get to Beijing. I visited three travel agencies in Hong Kong, but they quoted me rather expensive rates for a five-day English-language tour.

How about a Chinese-language tour? I asked.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

Why not? I pursued.

You might be misplaced and make very much trouble for us.

No, I wouldn't. Really, I'd be good and not get misplaced, I promise.

No, sorry, no.

Then I found Leo.

Dejected after my initial inquiries, I popped into one last travel office on my way back to our apartment. There he was, all alone at a desk. Leo.

He was in maybe his early twenties and greeted me with a handshake. Leo had mastered a few English phrases and acted like he wanted to be the world's best travel agent. He dug into his notes, pulled out brochures and tapped on his computer keyboard.

Leo found a Chinese tour that would take me. A promotional offer, he said. Four nights, five days, return flight from Hong Kong, meals, hotel and the big sites (Forbidden City, Great Wall, Tiananmen, and so on) for $353.

The English tours were all well over a thousand. Sold.

There would be a meeting with my tour mates in a restaurant. Leo promised an English version of the agenda for me. At the meeting I would receive an itinerary and a tour bag. I'd never been on an organized tour and was jazzed about the bag.

A few days later at the restaurant, I met the rest of the tour group: a pair of older ladies; a young man, perhaps with his mother; and three middle-aged married couples. All Chinese. Our tour director, Bryan, stepped forward and began to speak in Cantonese. Bryan, I later found out, was all of twenty years of age and this was his second tour ever.

From a brown leather briefcase he pulled out reams of paper and handed sheets to everyone. When he came to me, he paused, ran back to his briefcase and returned with the English material and a big smile.

As Bryan continued his delivery I was disturbed to see the audience otherwise engaged. Some watched the televisions on the wall, a few read newspapers or worked on crosswords, and others openly chatted. All while Bryan talked.

My heart went out to the guy and I found myself picking up the slack for the entire group by giving him my undivided attention. I leaned forward, nodded and diligently referred to my papers. In turn, he played his entire speech to me. In Chinese.

We continued this charade for a good ten minutes, to the point where I was ready to raise my hand and ask questions. Wait a second. I don't speak Chinese.

SHENZEN, April-May, 2004 (Part 2)

The thirty-five-minute train ride to Shenzhen was swift and smooth. From my window I saw the opposite of the sparkling superstructures I'd become accustomed to in Kowloon and Victoria Harbor. It was here that many of Hong Kong's poor lived in shantytowns built on steep mountainsides

Shacks, hundreds of them, packed in tight. Tarpaulins rippled in the wind and smoke curled from cooking fires. The government of Hong Kong has made a concerted effort to clean up its urban streets by nudging certain elements of its population into this district with the promising name of New Territories.

I looked at the tiny abodes and thought, And here I am, going shopping. That kind of fraudulence to sightseeing irks me. The notion that every day's another happy-go-lucky experience and we see nice things and we eat nice food and everything's nice. Certainly Hong Kong isn't alone in carefully preserving its friendly, welcoming exterior. There's Egypt and then there's Egypt. New York and New York. Mumbai and Mumbai.

The train carried me into the Wild West (East?) of shopping and all I could do was wonder about the people on the hill.

I arrived at the Shenzhen station, got off the train, walked over a bridge and entered a big box of a structure with many levels of open rooms filled with goods and sellers. Another mall.

For the first half of the day I was so scared at the idea of getting MURDERED or WORSE that I didn't buy a thing. I rode up and down the escalators. Floor after floor after floor. Five floors. No A/C. The air was oppressive and my name was now Missy.

Missy, manicure?

Missy, DVD?

Missy, Gucci?

Missy, Vuitton?

I steadied myself by adopting a kind of zoned-out aspect. I tried to let the sounds hum instead of rankle. The constant hue and cry of the sellers was daunting. For professional shoppers, Shenzhen is small potatoes compared to Beijing or Shanghai, but after Hong Kong I eventually did find some real bargains.

There were rooms of jewelry and shoes, shoes, shoes.... I got a pair of red Converse-type sneakers for four dollars. They lasted for years. I had a manicure/pedicure more as an opportunity to sit down and get my bearings. Everyone there was doing this. Husbands and wives sat side by side and enjoyed the treatments.

There were rooms stacked with bolts of fabric and next to them rows of people at sewing machines. You could pick your silk, have your measurements taken and, after a nice massage, return to pick up a new dress or jacket or pair of trousers. So I had some curtains made, ordering up a beautiful set of sheers at a fraction of the U.S. cost.

At the end of the day I returned to Kowloon grubby and tired, but quite ALIVE, carrying bags with my sneakers and curtains. I never experienced WORSE because I never, ever left the mall.