If you asked me in 2002 if I would ever be in China I would have laughed at you. Why would I ever go there? How things change and life takes you on unexpected journeys is amazing sometimes. Soon after I met my wife, and we married and she asked me to come to China with her and visit her parents. This was all new for me, I never had a passport before, nor a visa so many new things to learn. Getting everything in order took a little time and preparation. It was exciting and scary at the same time, I really did not know what to expect. It is one thing to see a place in movies and television shows another to experience it first hand.
July 3, 2003, I left the US on a plane bound for China for the first time. I was unsure what to expect and what I would see. Armed with my wife and a couple words in Chinese like hello and thank you I prepared for the shock and excitement of a new place. I really did not know how it would affect me at that moment in time. It was just another adventure to be had. We landed in Shenyang which is the capital of Liaoning Province in the Northeast of China. Maybe geographically like landing in Hartford Connecticut for the first time after leaving Las Vegas. Landing at night in the rain made it impossible to see much except for some lights shining in the distance. Disembarking from the plane we moved through the airport along with the rest of the passengers, waited for our baggage and then left the arrival gate.
My wife’s family was waiting like a small team of people, mother, father, aunts, uncles and cousins. I smiled, waved, hugged and shook hands all while looking for guidance from my wife. I was not familiar with Chinese culture or customs and did not want to offend anyone. This would be the start of many lessons I would learn in the near future. For now weariness was mixed with excitement and awe at landing in a foreign land for the first time. Certainly I was entering the land of culture shock for the first time. I had met it before in school and also when moving from the east coast to the west coast but this was entirely an alien culture to me.