It seems like ages ago that I hung out with my friend Jean (who I call Janice in GOOD CHINESE WIFE) in her Kowloon apartment, pictured in this photo.
We haven’t seen each other since I remarried on a very cold and blustery Chicago day seven years ago. Now Jean is back, married and a mother herself. It’s been a huge treat to meet her family and to talk about the good (and not so good) old times, first in Washington, DC, but mostly in Hong Kong.
Her son and my kids act as though they’ve been friends for years, not just since Thursday. Jean’s son is trilingual in English, Mandarin, and German. My kids are in complete awe of him.
I never thought when I went over to Jean’s old place in Kowloon that someday our kids would hang out together in a quiet Chicago suburb. We didn’t talk about having kids back then, but rather immediate concerns like where we’d go out for an evening or which part of Hong Kong we’d choose to explore on a weekend day. And I just assumed I would spend the rest of my life in Asia.
Things don’t always work out the way we imagine, but I’m not complaining one bit.
If you call Jean “Janice” in “Good Chinese Wife”, haven’t you just blown her cover by calling her Jean here?
Mind you, it all sounds good.
Oh, it’s okay. We debated about whether to use her real name or not, and she said I should just keep it as Janice. But it’s not a secret.