Shenyang in my life

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I am an occasional visitor to China.

When I first landed in Shenyang airport in the year 2000, I was a mere 22 years old. I was naive and knew little of the nation that would change my life in more ways than I ever could have guessed.

Shenyang was big, my home city of Adelaide is only 1.3 million people, Shenyang was something like 8 million. Every person I asked had a different number, and I am still not sure what was right. It was also crowded, cold and the first ice was beginning to bite the air.

I spent a mere three months in Shenyang, teaching in a position I still tell people about to this day. Learning about the daily life of the people of China, eating noodles in corner shops, learning to ice skate on a soccer pitch covered in frozen water. Eating foods that are the stuff of legend in the town I grew up in.

The buildings in Shenyang then were getting old, the biting cold ate away at the paint and the roads were filled with little blue trucks, bicycles and rusting red cabs. I loved its vibrancy, the chill of the air, the kiss of snow on my cheeks. I dined and danced with the students from Russia and Denmark, ate banquets with the Chinese teachers and staff, learned about the city with my students who were only a couple of years younger than me. I learned that I could teach others and learn from them, and I wanted to know more.

I returned to Australia and went back to university, I studied teaching this time, China had given me a passion for it that nothing in Australia ever could. I had first thought I would teach in Australia, but I drifted again and did other things. In 2004, I felt a yearning for the country that had given me so much. A friend agreed to travel with me. We starting looking for work. Hundreds of jobs were there, all over China, grand Beijing, icy Harbin, sophisticated Shanghai, I could have gone anywhere.

Fate brought me back to Shenyang.

I did not know why I decided to go back, I did not know what drove me to visit the only place in China I had already been when so many other adventures awaited, but I am glad I did.

Shenyang had changed, new, shining buildings were springing up on the outskirts of the city. Audis and BMWs were taking their place on the roads as China's prosperity increased. Western fast food had reared its head in Tai Yuan street. I felt a pang of regret as I saw the noodle shop I used to eat lunch at had been replaced by a KFC. I saw that the clothes people wore had changed, fewer blue suits, more Adidas track pants and Nike hooded jumpers. Again, I felt a pang as if something had changed for the worse......but the people were still the same.

Warm, friendly, eager to say hello to a tall, pale foreigner. Happy to point me in the right direction when I tried out my incredibly awful Mandarin. I felt at home.....halfway across the world.

It was only two weeks into my stay when I had gone to a "Foreigners Bar", called "Sophie's." When I met her. A young woman, beautiful black hair and pale skin, large luminous eyes and full lips.

September 24....9:43pm, I laid eyes on my wife for the first time. We chatted briefly, she made me smile, I gazed adoringly at her.

She left to see friends. I broke into a million pieces.

I put myself together again. This was ridiculous, there is no such thing as love at first sight.

I didn't even like Chinese girls. What was I thinking?

She had left and I would never see her again so get over it! I thought.

But half an hour later, she returned. Her friends had gone home and her KTV plans had been canceled.

"I will sing with you," I said.

My wife-to-be, this beautiful young woman, smiled like sun breaking at dawn.

We sang all night, we shared breakfast, we talked, laughed and when morning came we went our separate ways.

Every free moment I had after that I tried to be with her. I took the half-hour taxi trip into town, wandered with her through the shops, markets and food courts. Listened to her sweet voice as she told me about the city she had lived in all her life. I was smitten, enraptured and falling so far in love that I seemed swallowed whole by its warm embrace.

But time flew by, days, weeks, months and we knew that something must be done if we were to stay together. I could not stay for more than a year and she could not come to Australia as a student. It was too soon, too expensive, too difficult.

We decided we would be married.

I felt immeasurable guilt as I realized that this beautiful young woman would leave the home, family and city she loved so much for me, a simple man with simple dreams. I did not deserve to be so lucky, to have such fortune to meet her, let alone the chance to be with her for all my life. My heart ached in sympathy for her family, knowing what she had traveled home to tell them.

In the middle of the night my phone rang. I awoke, fearing the worst, it was my lady. What could be wrong?