A story about a photo of my wife
Two jobs ago we got a lot of parts from China and I had to make visits over there to inspect the factories and make sure everything was being done right.
The normal day for those visits is the local team would pick me up at my hotel around 6 or 7 in the morning and drop me off at the end of the day about 12 hours later.
I’d spend most of the time between that in factories, cars between factories or at a hosted lunch by one of the suppliers.
One day we got back earlier than normal and I got into a conversation with my translator over I just wanted to write my progress report to my boss, have dinner, call my wife and go to sleep.
She had trouble believing this as most folks from the US she had met wanted to go out, drink and pick up local women.
“You’re wife is lucky you don’t want to do that,” she said.
“I can show you a picture of her if you want,” I said, taking out my wallet and holding out the photo of my wife.
“YOU HAVE A PHOTO OF YOUR WIFE IN YOUR WALLET?” She asked. Everyone else in the car was also looking at me in shock.
“Yes.”
“No Chinese man would do this.”
“Why not?”
“It is not done.”
“What is done here.”
“Not that.”
The next day we were at one of the lunches hosted by a supplier as they always had when I was there. They always asked me all kinds of questions about my life in the US.
But, this time, the head of the company said something to his translator, who looked across the table at me.
“May Mr. Chin as you a personal question?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. They had already asked about my home, family, car, the school I attended, and all sorts of other things I already thought of as personal.
“Do you really have a photo of your wife in your wallet?” he asked.
Everyone at the table was staring right at me.
“Yes.”
They all looked at Mr. Chin who said something to the translator.
“May we see it?”
I took it out of my wallet and passed it across to Mr. Chin.
He stared at it for a while and passed it to his employees who all looked at it like it was some strange artifact from another time.
One of them said something in Chinese and everyone laughed.
Mr Chin looked up at me with a worried look and said something quick to the translator.
“WE ARE NOT LAUGHING AT YOUR WIFE!” he very quickly said.
“That’s good.”
They never managed to explain why this was so strange to them.
But, clearly it was something out of the ordinary for them…
It’s been 17 years since that happened, and the photo was 8 years old at that point. But, I still have it and still keep it with me. It normally lives in my phone case now as I have switched to a smaller wallet that does’t hold much.
