My name is Jocelyn Eikenburg and I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. This summer, I’ll be celebrating 10 years of marriage with my husband John, who is a Chinese national. Sure, we’ve weathered our share of misunderstandings over the years and had to learn to adapt to each other, both culturally and personally. But I still love him just as much as the day when I said “Wo yuanyi!” (I do) to him in the Shanghai Marriage Registry Office. And over the years, I’ve discovered a lot to cherish about our relationship. 1. Loving him in more than one language You’re just as likely to hear “Ni Hao” as “Hello” in our conversations. When my husband and I started seeing each other, we established a bilingual relationship from the start, with equal helpings of English and Mandarin Chinese. I believe that the “wordplay” we’ve shared over the years has brought us closer together. And we still love each other in two different languages to this day, something that’s been a pleasure in our relationship. Even better, I’ve begun picking up the local dialect here in my husband’s rural hometown, which invariably makes my husband bust out laughing. He never [...]
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