I met Cupid, you know. He is small, just as you'd imagine, but he travels like you and I do, by domestic and international flights at discount. He was without his quiver of arrows - flight security being what it is these days. Nonetheless, it was he and here's how I know.
I was working in Shenyang, China, a sooty, industrial city parked northeast of Beijing. Even though it's one of China's largest cities, most guidebooks suggest one day as sufficient to see the sights: a smaller-scale Imperial Palace; three emperors' tombs; and a reverse hill where, inexplicably, your bicycle will go uphill without benefit of pedalling.
But delve deeper than the tourist experience and Shenyang can surprise you.
Did I say working? Having come from Canada and escaped its nine-to-five daily grind, I found living in China was like turning back the clock to a simpler, fun time.
Life was good. I was teaching English at the pharmacy college and toiled barely 10 hours a week. I had two six-week holidays a year, a two-bedroom flat paid for, a travel stipend and maids for every waking hour. I felt like a Trump!
Such a breezy schedule gave me the perfect opportunity for trips - weekenders during the school term and extended jaunts during annual holidays. It was on a day trip that Cupid came into my life.
It was late spring in 1992, near the end of my contract, and I found myself in a group of five on a train headed to Huolinguole, Inner Mongolia. Our gang of intrepid travellers included an American, a Brit, a Canadian-born Chinese (me) and two Chinese women, all teachers in Shenyang of various disciplines and tenures.
It was to be a day's outing and really, just for fun. Oh, we had a threadbare mission, almost too embarrassing to note: We were tracking the elusive Mongolian Pie. Now, we were not entirely sure that Mongolian Pie actually existed but the tasty rumour of this concoction of meat and pastry was impetus enough to send us careering about the countryside. Don't judge me. Adventure can come in small doses, too.
Our excursion into the grasslands took an unexpected turn. We were intercepted at our destination by the local gendarmerie, who had the sweetest business going. We were told that Huolinguole was a "restricted" area, not open to foreigners - a sensitive military zone. We must pay a fine of 5,000 yuan ($750, a couple months' wages in China at the time) or be put under "house arrest." Both options were bad, simply ways to siphon our pockets of whatever cash we had.
Ben, the American, phoned the U.S. Consulate branch in Shenyang and outlined our plight. Cupid answered the phone, clearly cocked his bow and coldly said, "Call again if they move you." Click.
That response left us, for the next 48 hours, under detention in the town's "best" hotel. My four-star room had no lights and a backed-up toilet. We were not to leave the yard and our movements were monitored.
But it was in these two days that my relationship with Jun, one of the Chinese women who rode with us on our "military siege," flourished. Jun's cool made her our main negotiator. She eventually whittled our fine down from the astronomical 5,000 yuan to a more palatable 140 yuan ($21).
I had known Jun casually for almost my entire two years in China, but it was there, under house arrest in Inner Mongolia, that her reservoir of calm and her resolve to work us free inspired more. The women were not travelling in a restricted area - only we foreigners were. They were free to go, but chose incarceration for support. Plus, we still had not sampled any Mongolian Pie.
I left for Canada shortly after that incident and for two years, Jun remained in China. We stayed connected by letters and by phone calls carefully timed to accommodate time zones - my night, her day. The paperwork shuffled its way through departments and bureaus until finally, the way cleared and she joined me in Vancouver.
But what of Cupid? Jun and I married in 1994, and two years after her arrival in Canada, we found ourselves visiting pals in Los Angeles. At a party where friends formerly from China gathered, one tiny gentleman pulled me aside and unfolded this tidbit of gossip: "I knew your wife in Shenyang when I was working in the American Consulate. Did you know she was once arrested with some foreigners in Mongolia?"
"Yeah, I was there," I replied.
"You were there?" he asked and paused, thinking. "So you were the one."
"The one what?"
"I took that call from the American that day," he said. "But earlier the police chief of Huolinguole called me and told me there was a group travelling illegally through their area: two foreigners, two Chinese women and another Chinese man pretending to be a Canadian. That must have been you! You must admit, you look more Chinese than Canadian to a Mongolian cop. I told the chief to hold the group for two days because you stubbornly denied being Chinese."
We chatted a while longer but he excused himself as he had an early flight the next morning, to where he did not say.
I met Cupid. Nice man.
Larry Jer lives in Delta, B.C.