A Diary From China

By Anders Karlsson

Diary from China is about two weeks I spent in south of China when i got married. It is about how it works when getting married the chinese way. Chinese food and of course my big love in life, beside my wife, beer. In this case Tsingtao beer. It is a funny and witty book about the things that happened there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anders Karlsson
• Release date: Apr 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9789197512282

Anders Karlsson

Anders have two daughters. He lives in the middle of Sweden. He works with advertising and model photography.He likes scuba diving although he has to little time for that.

Book preview

Prologue

Through a Swedish dating site, I found my future wife to be. Her sister was already living in Sweden and had put the ad there. We decided to meet in her hometown, Shenzhen in China for the first time. Little did I know then, that I would go back and forth several times before she moved to Sweden to live with me.

This diary is about the time I went there to get married the Chinese way. During two weeks we had a wonderful time. At the same time, I was planning to start up some business related to China. So during the same time, we had some business meetings with potential business partners. During my earlier travels to China I had become a big lover of Chinese food, so you will be learning about different dishes you can get there. I am also a beer lover, that will be in the book. Especially Tsingtao, a beer from the same city as the name. German settlers moved from Europe and in the year 1903, they started to brew beer in the town Qingdao in Shandong province.

These two weeks I wrote a diary about my staying on day by day basis. Welcome to take part with me at my visit in China, Shenzhen.

Shenzhen is a very young city, formally founded by Deng Xiaoping in the year of 1979. It was formed as an economical tax-free zone for doing business like Hong Kong. Before it was just a small fishermen’s village with about 3000 people living there. In the small remains, today is a Pizza Hut restaurant. I have been there, the place is almost sacred for the Shenzhen people. It has small remains from the old time.

My journey started in Sweden, the landscape was snowy and my two cats followed me and were sitting at the bus stop like they where waiving me away to wish me good luck.

This small book starts with the day I got married.

Friday, February 13th

According to all proven science and superstition, one should not do anything important on Friday 13th. But in China, they have another calendar! According to this and all available tables including Feng shui, this is a very good day to get married! But I’m Swedish! On the other hand, I have arrived in China!

Friday is the day after I have arrived in China, and it could not start worse. We have set the alarm clock to 7.30 and nobody wakes up! At 9.17 I look at the clock and get panic. We have slept too long and almost certainly will miss the whole day. I hurry into the shower, Lanlans mother (Lanlan is my wife to be) hastily makes some breakfast that we can eat when we hurry out in the warm weather. Forget about tie and jacket, nobody cares about this in the south of China, it is to warm here. In Sweden, you could not get married without it.

We hurry away, the office closes at 11.30 and we also need to pick up our pictures for the wedding book before we go there. We catch a taxi and arrive at the office just before 11.00. We made it and not so many people before us! Good, I think by myself.

We take a queue ticket and get a form to fill in. We wait for a while and then it gets our turn. The women behind the counter ask for our documents and we hand them over. And it is now I understand that this is Friday 13th.

These are not the right documents the woman says. They have to be in Chinese. You need to have them translated into