Holding hands - what an awkward thing to do!

We saw each each other with Jinlin first time, live, face to face, on 16th July 2012 at 1 pm at Zhengzhou airport in Henan prefecture of China. I tried to stay relaxed when the moment was approaching and reminded myself that it's just one moment along a long path and it will be okay if the interaction is clumsy. Still it is obvious that a mind-boggling expectation and brain-exploding thrill of this first meeting had been building up in the preceding months of writing, video chatting, exchange of pictures, sending presents and dreaming at night and day. I was already very excited when there was only one week to the travel and she was as well in her writing:

See you, I was so excited, and nearly 10 days we will see, this is a long wait, blossom time! Good! I want to you!

I was even more thrilled when there was only one day and I was packing my bags. Even more so when I was stepping to the plane... Stepping to the flight to Henan in Beijing... Waiting for my bags to arrive to the conveyor belt in Zhengzhou airport... Walking through the doors...

It is a rare and precious moment, even weird and somehow surreal, dreamlike, to have your love from so many letters and pictures, so many hours on computer screen and dreams to be standing in front of you in flesh and blood. A kind of moment that not all people ever experience. Brain has different parts for different kinds of interaction and it takes some processing to realize on deep levels of the mind that the person you are seeing here and now is the same person you have been writing and talking and loving for a long time.

Culture of modesty

For many times I had been imagining in my minds eye our first meeting, the lovely hugging, the passionate kissing, the looking at each others eyes and smiling. In our writing we had been talking of all this. But still there was a surprise to come.

We met and she did not want to kiss. She did not want to hug. She did not even want to hold my hand. I was surprised and a hint of sadness was mixing to my explosion of joy of being with her - what was wrong?

Only on the bus trip to the town we managed to get some light of understanding to the matter with our limited language skills. It turns out that in the traditional Chinese culture it is not okay for lovers to hold hands, hug, kiss or show other signs of affection in the public. That is simply not considered proper or appropriate. It is difficult for me to imagine what kind of negative emotions such habits invoke in people of traditional Chinese upbringing, but I would imagine it would be similar kind of disapproval that a completely naked couple on the street would receive in the western world.

It is peculiar that despite of our 300+ pages of discussion in the preceding months, such obvious and important cultural difference had gone completely unnoticed. Perhaps these kind of habits - or lack of them - is taken to be so obvious in any culture that it does not even cross ones mind that in a different culture it can be different.

Of course, it's not quite so black and white. The influence of western culture, though Hollywood movies, western people living in China and the internet, is leading to public signs of affection becoming slowly more acceptable in China. My company has a branch office in Shanghai and my colleagues visiting that bustling metropolis tell me that holding hands on the street is commonplace there. So the influence is creeping in, starting from the largest cities and flowing inland. But in Henan, in Zhengzhou, it is indeed rare. When we were walking in the streets, the people holding hands were almost always parents holding hands of their children. (With that in mind, I fully understand that Jinlin does not want to give the impression me being her father ;-) ) But even in Zhengzhou I saw some rare cases, less than one percent of all couples, holding hands in some way. Although these young pioneers of public affection were usually not holding hands with their fingers touching but rather the woman holding on with her hand to the arm of the man.

Even more subtle things like admiring the beauty of your loved one seems to connect to some awkward feelings in the traditional China. Of course even in the western world it is considered rude to stare long time at strangers, but for lovers the prolonged gazing to each other is the Hollywood norm. Not necessarily so in China. If I was looking at Jinlin for a long time, she might ask "What?" as if there was some problem or weird thing I was staring at. Although she continued to feel awkward about it, she quite soon understood that my occasional staring was completely benign and she even developed humorous way of staring back at me and pointing her finger at me in funny exaggerated ways :-)

We did "practice" occasionally holding hands in the street and in privacy the closeness we had was just like we had been talking and dreaming in the preceding months. It will be interesting to see how she will adjust to the more publicly open culture on her forthcoming stay in Finland. Will the influence of the external culture take precedence over childhood upbringing or other way round? How quick are such changes in feelings of proper and improper behavior? I am happy she does have strong will to understand and adjust, expressed in a lovely email after our trip:

"I can also understand the cultural differences, so I didn't in the street hug and kiss you, I'm sorry, because I never did, our culture is not the same, but I will learn your culture, I will at any time, any place, as long as I see you. I'll kiss you. Because of you and me together to understand the love of."

With such love, holding hands in public places does not seem so critical requirement after all :-)