Fiction

Description:
Extract from a novella

Title:           
A Suitable Chinese Wife: My Choice Or Yours?

Objective:   
To create a culturally focused novella about East/West relationships in China

Source:        
Research and experience of living in China

Length:        
35,000 words (expected)

Status:        
Work in progress

Wei had just turned twenty when he fell in love with Li – daughter of his mentor. It was an innocent romance, but in his imagination the lips he kissed were already those of his future wife, so her family’s sudden relocation from Beijing to Shenzhen hit him like an earthquake. The home and happy family life he’d envisaged so clearly lay in ruins. He couldn’t think, couldn’t sleep or eat. Tightness in his chest consumed him. The only answer was to follow her to Shenzhen. He’d just completed his degree and was sure he could get a job there. He told his parents and packed his bags. His mother was so shocked at the thought of her eldest child leaving their province that she’d collapsed on the street and had her purse, carrying a month’s salary, stolen while she lay on the sidewalk. His father, equally distressed after learning of his son’s imminent departure, had a serious car accident. Convinced these were omens, Wei suppressed his feelings, and for the sake of traditional filial piety – expected not only by his parents but the entire extended family – he withdrew into himself, stayed at home and robotically played the dutiful son.

He didn’t know it then, but that decision would weigh him down for years – a cloak of melancholy that choked him and repelled any would-be bride his parents tried tirelessly to arrange. Amid what he saw as farcical attempts, all that sustained him within his shattered dreams were shards of memories – images of innocent kisses under a cherry blossom tree.

The years passed. News had arrived of Li’s arranged marriage and two years later the birth of a son was announced, a child Wei felt should have been his. That was the final blow. Numb to all emotions, Wei continued to work in meaningless jobs, lost any concept of happiness, walked a lot and found sleep a welcome relief. He gave away the guitar he’d enjoyed playing for Li, and stopped challenging friends as the best Go player in town; he no longer connected and they had begun finding his company depressing. On his fiftieth birthday, on impulse, he’d booked a flight to Thailand.

Enjoying Pad Thai in a crowded restaurant in Bangkok at a table set for two, he was caught unaware – when a blue-eyed woman approached asking if the chair opposite was taken – that his life was about to turn on its head. Had he known, he might have fled. It would soon bemuse him that culture shock which penetrated one’s soul could be distilled into physical form – a woman’s sky-blue eyes that threatened chaos.