It was January 2013 when KK and I crossed paths again. She sat at my table during Michael and Justine’s wedding, and we got to talking. Specifically, talking about my super-nerdy translation of a modern Chinese card game based on the classic historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Perhaps I’ll write more about the game San Guo Sha if the mood strikes me someday.

Anyway, both reading that book (in English, I’ll admit) and translating the game were previous Spring Festival projects of mine, given that I never had anything to do during those weeks of vacation, couldn’t afford to go home twice a year, and had little inclination to try traveling by myself during the time of the largest annual human migration. Fortunately, I was to have someone to talk to this time around – at least in text.

KK sent me a text message after the wedding, interested in talking more about my translation. We soon switched to Skype and regularly typed until we got up the courage to voice chat some weeks later.

Despite living in different cities, we officially started dating just before summer, when I went to visit my parents in the U.S. as usual and we kept on Skyping, but with a time difference. I bought some gifts to give her parents when I went to meet them, but didn’t plan on it being almost a full year before that came to pass.

Her dad had a dim view of foreigners, exacerbated by some less than upright foreign teachers at the college where he worked. He categorically rejected any arguments that KK brought to him about meeting me until the following spring, when he finally decided to give me a chance.

I headed to Yichun with my gifts, delayed on the train 10 hours due to a mudslide somewhere on the tracks, and arriving in the prime of south China’s mid-June weather. Taking a shower after arrival did nothing to help with the humidity, especially when I needed to get my formal clothes back on, but at last I was ready to meet the parents.

I don’t remember much detail at this point, but I always describe it by saying my Chinese was never better before or since. I managed to impress KK’s dad with my conversation skill and knowledge of Chinese history, and he was sold (though I imagine he is now somewhat baffled as to where that skill went in the following years). My gifts went over well, and I managed not to embarrass myself too much, so mission accomplished!

I returned to the U.S. that summer to start my master’s degree, and when the summer term ended, KK flew to Atlanta with her cousin, who was going to do some research at Vanderbilt. After a few days with my parents, KK and I took a road trip to deliver her cousin to Nashville, then returned to spend some time in Georgia and travel to Minnesota to meet the rest of my family.

Once we returned to Georgia, I was ready to propose. Fortuitously enough, a flat tire on the way out of the airport provided an excuse for Dad and me to sneak out to pick up the rings I had ordered before our Minnesota trip. Next time Mom and Dad were off at work, I popped the question in their backyard.

Fortunately, everybody agreed and things went off without a hitch. Neither of us being big on the idea of a long engagement, we planned for the formal family wedding ceremony the coming winter, but went to get our legal marriage certificate in Nanchang once we got back in September. This is not an uncommon arrangement in China, allowing time to make arrangements for the ceremony without delaying the legal marriage.

Still, we consider our ceremony to be our actual wedding, and just need to remember to put the other date as our official date of marriage on legal documents.

It was during this preparation time in the fall and early winter that I visited the old hometown, Anfu, for the first time. This was an experience many foreign travelers are looking for: an old village setting with cows sitting outside and chickens running around, houses where family grew up now made into historical landmarks, the extended family sitting outside chewing fresh sugarcane and spitting it on the ground… one of those traveling-back-in-time experiences.

There were a lot of new relatives to meet, but I only needed to remember their kinship titles rather than their names, and once KK’s parents officially became my parents I would be able to use the same titles for everyone as she did.

I wasn’t exactly expected to talk a lot, anyway, as exchanges were mostly conducted in Anfu dialect (difficult even for KK), which is different from Yichun dialect (which she understands but doesn’t normally speak), both of which are mostly unintelligible to people from other cities in Jiangxi (though Anfu is actually in Ji’an despite only being an hour’s drive from downtown Yichun).

Needless to say, trying to parse any of these with only a lackluster skill in Mandarin (which everyone except the old grandparents can speak, with varying colors of accent) is a bit of a tall order. Still, I know plenty of Americans who would love to have a family reunion where they don’t actually have to talk to anybody, so I couldn’t complain.

As for the rest of that season, it’s important to remember that KK and I were still living in different cities, so one of us had to travel pretty much every weekend. Fortunately, as I was working on some courses for my master’s degree at the time, I always had something to read on the train. It was an interesting start, but we managed to make it work.