I went to China in 2010 to meet the woman who would later become my wife—and her family.
We had been introduced by a Chinese colleague of mine, a professor at Loyola Marymount University. After six months of emails and Skype conversations, I decided to travel to China to meet her and her parents, both prominent academics.
It was my first trip to China. I didn’t know a soul. I didn’t speak a word of Mandarin. And almost no one around me spoke English. I found myself in a vast, bewildering world where even the simplest tasks—ordering food, asking for directions, making a basic request—felt like complex negotiations.
Loneliness arrived quickly, and settled in without asking permission.
I remember standing in restaurants, staring helplessly at menus written entirely in Chinese characters, occasionally aided by photographs that only deepened my confusion. Was that chicken? Pork? Something else entirely? After a few unsuccessful attempts at culinary experimentation, I gave up and began ordering the same dish every day—not because I particularly liked it, but because I recognized it. In a foreign land, recognition becomes a form of comfort.
My fiancée’s family, however, had no intention of letting me live a safe, repetitive culinary life. They hosted elaborate banquets in my honor—lavish affairs with a large round table and a rotating glass center. Dish after dish would appear, each more intriguing than the last.
Everything tasted wonderful.
What I was eating, however, was often a mystery.
At one point, I picked up something that looked unusually expressive. I was later told it was a rabbit’s head. On another occasion, something delicately presented turned out to be shark’s lips. And then there were the chicken feet—small, intricate, and impossible to ignore.
I smiled, nodded, and ate everything with great enthusiasm. When in doubt, chew confidently.
It was during one such banquet that I committed my first major cultural blunder.
At the end of the meal, guided by years of American habit, I reached for my wallet and casually suggested that we “split the bill.”
The reaction was immediate.
A silence fell over the table. My fiancée looked at me as though I had said something profoundly inappropriate. Her uncle quickly intervened, insisting that I was the honored guest and that the meal was entirely his responsibility. The idea of “going Dutch” was not just unnecessary—it was unthinkable.
I quietly put my wallet away, having learned my lesson.
Outside of these family gatherings, my daily life depended almost entirely on my fiancée. I was too intimidated to take a bus or even a taxi. What if I couldn’t explain where I wanted to go? What if I got lost? What if the driver asked me something I couldn’t understand?
These were not abstract anxieties; they were very real limitations.
So she, despite having a full-time job, took me everywhere. Without her, I would have been a well-dressed but entirely nonfunctional human being.
Then there were the public toilets.
Nothing—and I mean nothing—had prepared me for the ubiquitous squatting toilets. My first encounter with one was less a practical experience and more a moment of quiet panic. For several days, I planned my outings with careful attention to where I might find a “safe” restroom. Eventually, I discovered that hotels and restaurants catering to foreigners almost always had Western-style toilets. These became my small islands of comfort.
Communication with my fiancée was another ongoing challenge. In 2010, she had very little working knowledge of English. Like many Chinese students, she had studied the language in school but had forgotten most of it due to lack of practice. To bridge the gap, she carried a small portable dictionary with her wherever we went.
Our conversations were slow, tentative, and often unintentionally humorous.
One day, I had lost my voice due to Beijing’s pollution and desperately needed honey. I tried saying the word. Blank stares. I tried describing it. Nothing worked. Finally, out of desperation, I began miming a bee buzzing in the air, followed by an elaborate gesture of pouring honey into my mouth.
There was no response—no recognition, not even confusion. Just polite silence.
In another instance, I asked for soap.
What I received instead was soup.
A full bowl of it.
We looked at each other, each convinced the other had understood perfectly.
Then came what I consider my most ambitious performance.
After a shower one morning, I realized that the bathroom had only small hand towels and no bath towel. Assuming this was an oversight, I tried to ask for one. When that failed, I resorted once again to mime.
I mimed turning on the shower.
I mimed bathing.
Then, with great seriousness, I enacted drying myself with a large imaginary towel—head to toe, with deliberate and careful movements.
I thought I had been quite clear.
They watched attentively, nodded—and handed me another hand towel.
At that point, I accepted the limits of my nonverbal communication skills.
What struck me most, however, was the warmth and curiosity of the people, especially those from the countryside. Many had rarely seen someone who looked like me. They would stare openly, then smile. Some would approach me, gesturing toward their cameras, asking for photographs.
I became, quite unintentionally, a minor attraction.
A few, emboldened by curiosity, asked questions through my fiancée. Was I Black like Barack Obama? Was I from the Middle East? Was I Muslim? The idea of an Indian identity seemed unfamiliar to some.
Then came the personal questions.
“Are you married?”
“Why not?”
“How much money do you make?”
In the United States, such questions would be considered intrusive. Here, they were asked with genuine curiosity and without the slightest hesitation.
And then, in what I thought was a polite and friendly gesture, I made another mistake.
In the United States, it is common to say, “You must visit me sometime,” without any real expectation that the person actually will. It is a social courtesy more than a concrete invitation.
So I said to my fiancée’s uncle, “You should come visit me in India someday.”
He nodded thoughtfully.
A few days later, he asked—quite seriously—when he should come.
It was only then that I realized that, in his world, an invitation was not a polite formality. It was a genuine offer.
I smiled and said, “Anytime,” while silently recalibrating my understanding of hospitality.
And then, one afternoon, came the moment I will never forget.
An elderly woman had been observing me for some time. After a while, she said something to my fiancée, who burst into laughter.
“What did she say?” I asked.
My fiancée hesitated, then translated:
“She says… I am too young and too beautiful for you.”
I looked at the woman.
She looked at me.
And then we both burst out laughing.
In that moment, something shifted.
All the confusion, the miscommunication, the awkwardness, the loneliness—they seemed to dissolve. What remained was something simple and unmistakably human.
I had arrived in China feeling isolated, helpless, and completely out of place.
And yet, in a country where I could not read a menu, could not ask for honey, could not distinguish soap from soup, could not successfully mime a towel, had nearly offended my hosts by offering to split the bill, and had accidentally invited a man to India who fully intended to come…
…I had somehow managed to find laughter, kindness, and—most improbably of all—love.
Which just goes to show: you don’t always need a common language to understand what truly matters.
But it certainly helps if you don’t try to split the bill—and if your invitations come with clearly defined terms and conditions.
(The writer is professor emeritus at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.)