On a steamy summer day in Washington DC, we attended an elegant function at the Kennedy Center. Among a crowded sea of people, we saw each other from afar and locked eyes immediately..... Obviously that's not true. We met on Tinder.
Dan O'Brave went to my hometown Tieling to propose to my family in November 2018. He doesn't speak or understand any Chinese at that point, and still doesn't. But he completed this trip all by himself!! I'm a China girl from a tiny town (with 3m population) in Liaoning Province (northeastern China usually referred to as Manchuria), where people see 1 white person per every 5 years. As the only white person in Shenyang Airport, Dan immediately caused a scene. He was so famous that a media crew followed him throughout the entire 2-day stay in my hometown. He went to my middle school and high school, with the school headmasters' escort on both. My city made a documentary about his proposal. We turned down the offer of publicly showing this to everyone in the city, but I'm sure somewhere in a dark corner, people are watching it. Documentary link is available upon request. Dan became the hot topic for my hometown and will be the topic likely for another 5 years. Dan wrote a heart-felt letter, ALL IN CHINESE, and presented to my mother. At first, my mother was about to reject him, but until she read the letter she decided that Dan wasn't completely hopeless. So she shed some tears and agreed on this proposal. To me, the most precious thing is that he respected my culture and sought my family's approval before mine. Although I would have married him anyway. He respected my sometimes-don't-make-sense traditions =) He then officially proposed to me on the flight from Singapore to London a month later, but that's a much less entertaining story than the Manchurian one. So I'll just keep it short.