2002-12-22 - 7:21 p.m.

The Ring

Beijing, Nov. 16

Continuing the story of our trip to China

After we picked up the coin set at the big post office near our hotel, we had a more important errand to run. We caught a cab and headed to a jewelry store in the heart of the shopping district. Our goal: to buy an engagement ring. Yes, that's right, an engagement ring. Surprise!

This little trip had a curious beginning. A couple months ago, while Lily was in China and I was still in the states we had a little relationship crisis. I didn't write about it here because I didn't feel that anything would be made better by airing it here. As it turns out I was right not to voice my worries aloud since Lily's unhappiness was mainly caused by her being ill and homesick in a country that seemed not very friendly, and not really by me.

Still, it gave us both a fright and it made us take a look at our relationship in a different light. For my part, I think I was suffering what can only be described as a degenerative spiritual disease - I was letting our relationship be defined by negatives rather than positives. Before she left I kept finding myself obsessing about problems on the horizon: the fact that she seems to want children and I don't, and the reality that almost certainly she is going to have to go somewhere far away to complete her education. I felt that our relationship was under a stay of execution, and it was oppressing me. Being reminded of these things made me unexpectedly quiet and morose, something I'm sure Lily noticed.

But Lily had a simple epiphany, and she shared it with me. Of course looking at a relationship in terms of its problems is going to be a bummer, because that is setting everything on its head. What defines a relationship is the attraction between the two people, their desire to be together and share their lives, not random external factors that can change day to day. Problems and challenges don't look so huge once you have decided that you are going to stay together, no matter what.

That sounds awful long-winded, doesn't it? This is translating what Lily said into hamster-ese. Anyway, the upshot of it was Lily wrote me a long letter, asking me to marry her. This unusual proposal was sort of a shocker considering our recent problems, but what else do you call it when two people want to spend their lives together? She was just calling a spade a spade.

Lily's friend S. knew of a great jewelry store in Beijing, so it was decided that would go there and look for an engagement ring.

When the cabdriver let us off in front of the building, it looked kind of run-down and spooky, but as I found out later we were looking at the back of the building. The door leading in was not terribly inviting, mainly because it was covered with sheets of clear latex that looked like vertical blinds. The point of this was to keep some of the heat in, but it's an unpleasant experience to have these not-terribly-clean plastic strips rubbed all over you. Anyone with the least bit of germ-phobia would probably flat-out refuse to go near them.

The ground floor of the building seemed to be a massive flea market with all the floor space broken up into small booths. There were a couple of jewelers there, but they didn't seem to be what we were looking for. Eventually we made our way to the third floor were we found a large, modern jewelry showroom - THIS was what we were looking for.

The place seemed more like a jewelry warehouse than the stores that we are used to in the U.S., but this didn't mean that it was a low-class place. Photos on the wall showed the owner talking to famous customers, like Dame Margaret Thatcher or conductor Zubin Mehta.

There was a large selection of rings, but nothing that looked terribly like a traditional wedding or engagement ring. It occurred to us that exchanging rings was not really part of Chinese culture, so why stock them? The obnoxious DeBeers ads about "Forever being worth three months' salary" are falling on deaf ears here. Good!

However, who says that our engagement ring had to be a traditional one? There were lots of pretty rings there.

It's a shame that Lily is born in August, because her birthstone is Peridot, a not terribly attractive chartreuse-colored gem. We eventually decided that the rings with my birthstone, rubies, were most attractive. Lily's not a big fan of diamonds, but we finally settled on a ruby and diamond ring with the stones arranged in the shape of a flower. Of course it looked somewhat like a lily.

Since I haven't actually given the ring to Lily yet we aren't technically engaged. I'm looking for a suitably romantic way to give it to her, but it certainly isn't going to be a surprise since she picked it herself. Well, at least we know it fits!

After we left the jewelry store we made our way back to Oriental Square to shop for more gifts and souvenirs. For some reason I didn't find the incredibly attentive help at these places as daunting as previously. Maybe they were getting the hint that I'd be more likely to buy if they weren't humping my leg every second I was in their store.

We returned to the hotel laden with bags, but content. We had dinner at the OTHER Chinese restaurant in the hotel, the one with the less terrifying cuisine. We went to bed fairly soon after dinner because tomorrow we were leaving for Xi'an, and whatever awaited us there.

continued...