How it all started

"I am a little. Would you mind?"

The first contact from Jinlin toward me come on friday 7th October 2011. I had spent the previous week in an army training camp near town of Tammisaari, sleeping outside in tent with my comrades. During the long night hours we took turns to keep fire in the fireplace to keep the coming winter cold away. Sitting in front of the fire on my turn, desperately sleepy, I kept myself awake by surfing the net with my laptop and 3G-modem. Among other sites, I entertained myself by browsing various dating sites I had active profiles at, including ChineseLoveLinks where I had been setting up a profile few weeks before.

The internet dating scene has never been very symmetric when it comes to gender. In any dating site, including the international ones, women can easily get dozens of interested messages from men per day by just setting up a profile. Men, on the other hand, usually need to send dozens of messages to different women to have hope of a single occasional reply. Women are definitely in position of power and choice here and I am fine with that and play along the rules. Given this status quo, I was quite surprised when in the early morning hours of Friday I saw in the twilight of the tent my inbox containing a message of interest. And my surprise grew to stunned awe when I opened the profile and found an amazingly cute-looking girl, a student with artistic interests and only 18 years of age. I wrote to her:

Thank you for your interest! You look so sweet that I wish I can convince you of my sincere intentions and get to write letters with you and know you better. 

I am from Finland and have been using ChineseLoveLinks for about two weeks now. I have been travelling in China many times and find Chinese women good in looks and character. So after my previous relationship ended I though I would include China in my search for a new direction, true love and marriage. 

Please tell me more about youself! What kind of Artistic / Creative occupation do you have? Which subject are you studying? How did you decide to search for companion in  ChineseLoveLinks? What do you have for hobbies?
 
If we would become in the end man and wife, I would take good care of you and be your best friend and lover and try my best to make you happy. I am 100% honest and sincire man, I would be very happy to get a reply from you :-)

My army training ended and since my summer cottage is located in Tammisaari near the army barracks, I decoded to drive directly there to spend the weekend doing some forest work. When I got online again I was delighted to see a reply:

October 7, 2011 7:35 PM.   I am drawing design. My hobby is very broad. Like many of the art. I'm pleased do meet you. I am a little. Would you mind? I am quiet girl just chineselovelinks.com few days. I am waiting for you reply.

Jinlin was still online when I read this reply so I sent her hello with the chat tool of ChineseLoveLinks and we had a brief but friendly exchange there. She was asking for my QQ number and I had no idea what that meant (later we would use QQ messenger to write hundreds of pages of text and pictures to each other in video chat sessions). She gave me her QQ number and I promised to find out what it means, search and install the QQ tool and send her QQ message the next day.

"You have not lost, because I feel good to you"

Next I of course lost her QQ number. How stereotypical! I did find out about the QQ messenger software, managed to install it, create a QQ number for myself... and could not contact her. She had given the number in ChineseLoveLinks chat and apparently the chat history was not saved anywhere at the site. I had no other possibility than to send her another message in ChineseLoveLinks, hoping she would still be reading here inbox there as well and not only wait for my message in QQ. I wrote her message apologizing losing her number Friday evening. Her reply next morning had some of the sweetest sentences I had ever read in cute clumsy English:

October 8, 2011 5:03 AM. To: Robert
My QQ number is [...]
You have not lost, because I feel good to you.
I was feeling. Do you understand?
Although I am young, psychological maturity.
My English is not good. I will try my best to learn.
I am very glad to know you. Waiting for you my number.
I with you. I look to you.

I think atmosphere, minds and hearts in both Tammisaari Finland and Xinxiang China were prepared for the imminent great falling in love :-)

Love at first (3 hour) chat

In our society it is typically considered very romantic and ideal to experience "love at first sight", with the gaze of a man and a woman somehow magically meeting in a crowded room, time slowing down and special visual connection forming. I find it peculiar that at the same time with this ideal, there exists other completely opposite ideal: to love each other more for aspects of personality and character than outer appearance. Both of these ideals are considered morally proper and romantic, yet they are in quite obvious contradiction to each other.

While it is clear that Jinlin and I liked each others profile pictures, it definitely was words, words and words that hit the home-run to hearts when we had our first QQ chat on Saturday evening 8th October 2012. It was a one-way video chat. I was at my summer cottage, with bad network connection and no microphone or webcam. I could see her via her webcam but she could not see me. That did not seem to matter at all in the end.

We were talking of many things. We talked of each others names (with me misunderstanding her family name), of our age, of our families and our homes, of our childhoods and personal histories, of my ex-marriage, my childen and my divorce ("Yes, I have divorced", "I love children! Never mind I don't mind"), of the death of my parents and divorce of her parents, of her relatives at the mountains of Anhui, of differences of China and Finland, of Chinese, English and Finnish languages ("Meet you teach me English, I can teach you Chinese"), of travel and nature, of my previous visit to China, of our common hobby of photography and our cameras, of my travel in Nevada in the summer, of flowers and Chinese temples, of Jinlins paintings and interest in interior design, of my raytracing art, of studies, jobs and career, of our height and weight ("I am 180 cm and weight 75 kg", "Very much!"), of dogs, cats and ferrets (she has one), of my beard ("Remember to have a close shave when you come and see me"), of challenges of relationship with long distance, of the schedule to meet each other (summer 2012), of future life together, of marriage ("Yes, I want to marry you!", "I am very happy") and of our families opinion on international relationships ("Your family mind I am a foreigner?", "No")

The topic of age difference was addressed briefly and has not been returned to ever since:

- How old are you?
- I am 38 years. I hope you don't think I am too old :-(
- Not. I love you! This is the most important. I 18 you feel me? I really want to be with you. Would you mind? :-?
- I know you are 18 and that is wonderful!  <3. I do not mind at all
- Today I am so happy 

There were several funny misunderstandings and non-understandings arising from differences in language and problems in translation. Like the word "sleep" does not seem to have in Chinese language all the subtle connotations is has in English ;-)

Robert:   I want to sleep with you <3
Jinlin:     You want to sleep with me?
Robert:   Yes!
Jinlin:    Why?

Only later in the chat I realized how late it is in China. The time difference from Finland to China is 5 hours in the winter time, so it was getting past 2 AM for Jinlin when it was 9 PM in Finland: 

Jinlin      It's 2:08
robert    Ah! late! Good you don't have school tomorrow!
Jinlin      I fear you are hungry
robert    No, I am not hungry. But I fear you are sleepy
Jinlin      No

It was clear that we ready to fall in love and as the hours passed, the chat drifted more and more from discussing factual topics to expressions love and will to be together. Some selection from the latter half of the chat:

Jinlin: I hope to be with you. I feel like a long time knew. [...]

Robert: Your happiness makes me happy! <3  [...]

Jinlin: Never mind the long distance. Love is to test. I'll wait for you. 
Robert: Long distance, close hearts! [...]

Jinlin: Yes. I want to me and you together  tourism. I will be very happy
Robert: Traveling to great places together with you would be a dream come true!  [...]

Robert: I hope to be your prince and you will be my princess :-)
Jinlin: I am waiting for my prince to come [...]

Jinlin: I wait for you to come! For my darling, I miss you very much!
Robert: I want you to wait for me :-)
Jinlin: I will wait for you!  [...]

Jinlin: I feel very happy with you. Happiness
Robert: You are my dear!  [...]

Jinlin: I  love  you.  I hope you stay in my life
Robert: I love you too Chen! <3 We will be together!  [...]

Afterthoughts

The best beginnings of love are not usually planned in detail. Although we were both definitely looking for love, I was planning to look carefully and investigate possibilities for a long time. In my ChineseLoveLinks profile I had specified several expected criteria for women, including having reasonable English language skill, having some university-level education and willingness and ability to relocate to Finland. In the case of Jinlin these requirements have been getting somewhat compromised. Her English skills still lacking, her university education only now started and although she has will to move to Finland the original plans have been getting postponed to later date.

So the rapid escalation of our love created needs to make compromises in these requirements and I have been willing to make such compromises for our love. The language gap has prompted my very enjoyable studies in Chinese language which is good thing in any case. As for the need to be patient about our life together and her studies, I am hoping and waiting, waiting and hoping.

P.S. The small cute animated pictures in this post are from our various email- and chat-sessions. Jinlin has during the months introduced me to hundreds of such cute and funny "emoticons" that seem to be commonly used in China. The characters in these little pics are much more varied than the few "smileys" of the western world. These little guys and girls have even names and there are dolls and other stuff made about them. They often add nice flavor to our communication.