Straight Through to China (1)

I haven’t seen the new romantic comedy featuring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, Going the Distance, and I probably won’t for awhile. I don’t go to movie theaters nowadays; even with the senior-citizen discount the price is too high, they play the soundtracks way too loud, and everyone else in the multiplex acts as if they’re at home in their living rooms. So I’ll wait to catch it on an airplane flight, or get it from the public library when it comes out on DVD.

However, I’m intrigued by the fact that the plot premise — the viability of long-distance romance — has demonstrated its enduring (or recurring) appeal to the movie-watching public. (Think The Time Traveler’s Wife, Sleepless in Seattle, Casablanca, etc., etc.) As it happens, I’ve spent some time working on the treatment of a script that’s even more far-fetched, so to speak, hoping that Hollywood’s ready for it.

It starts when a divorced Chinese mother raising her teenaged son in Shenzhen, the first of mainland China’s Special Economic Zones, right across the border from Hong Kong in the southeast corner of the People’s Republic of China, responds to the profile that a native New Yorker living in one of the Big Apple’s outer boroughs posts at an internet dating site. He’s a writer, just turned 60, and — after two failed marriages and numerous affairs — has come perilously close to throwing in the towel and accepting defeat in his search for a life partner. She’s 35, born on the mainland, now a Hong Kong citizen, the CFO of a small company, teaching conversational English to children on the side, coming out of a series of unsuccessful post-marriage relationships that have soured her on Chinese men in general and haven’t encouraged her about westerners.

Mainly, she’s looking for a pen pal with whom to practice her English, because she imagines herself a writer in the future. Something about his straightforward, humorful online profile strikes her fancy, especially its headline: “Accomplice wanted.” So, two days before Christmas 2003, she writes to him, “Have you found your ‘Accomplice’ yet?” And they’re off.

Fast forward (calendar pages flickering by, close-up pixellated fragments of emails and chats on their monitors, fingers on their keyboards, etc.) through 18 months of increasingly intense communication, all written on computers using emails and iChat, all transmitted via the web, as they move from enjoyable correspondence into serious friendship and from there to budding romance.

Now the narrative arc demands that they meet in person. Is the chemistry there? She’s traveled outside China, but never to the States. He’s traveled widely in the west, but never to China. Finally he books a ticket for late June 2005. (Scene here in a local restaurant with several of his writer friends wishing him bon voyage. “How do you know she’s not a 500-pound sumo wrestler?”) Brief shots of him checking in, boarding, getting out of his seat again and again during the 14-hour flight, restless, anxious, unable to sleep.

They meet for the first time in Hong Kong International Airport. They click instantly. She gets him through customs, across the border, to her apartment in Shenzhen. Her son’s staying with his grandparents in another city. They spend the night in each other’s arms. Quick flashes of a magical month: caught in a rainstorm in the nearby park, kissing under the dripping eaves of a teahouse as “The Butterfly Lovers” plays from inside; getting molds of their hands made on the promenade of Hong Kong’s harborfront; shopping in a modern Shenzhen supermarket, everything familiar yet strange; sitting on her balcony looking out at the city at night; back to HKG for departure, making an image of themselves on his digicam right before he passes through security.

They resume their emailing and chats. He knows he’s going to marry her. She’s not so sure. Everything else aside, how would they work out the logistics? She thinks it’ll end up as “We’ll always have Shenzhen.” But he persists. In October he comes back for another month. Meets her son. More talk about building a partnership. Their first fight (she doesn’t truly believe he’ll marry her). They get past it and move forward.

Then, in November, when she tells him that her father is dying of lung cancer, he proposes to her in the middle of an online chat. We see the cursor blinking in the blank response field. Then the phone rings; he picks it up, and, laughing and crying at the same time, she accepts.

He insists on meeting her father, to ask his blessing on the marriage. The father’s a party cadre in the agricultural sector and a self-taught doctor of traditional Chinese medicine who gave his services away — a good Communist. My protagonist respects that lifelong commitment. So there’s another month-long trip to China in January. Shots of him and his fiancée on an overnight sleeper bus to Liuzhou. Meeting her extended family (five siblings, their spouses and offspring). Visit to her father on his deathbed in the hospital, where he earns the old man’s approval. Her mother makes him promise to take care of her daughter and grandson. Scene at dinner with the family; they tell him that his chopstick skills impress them.

Her father dies in February 2006. Without asking permission from either of our protagonists, her family puts the New Yorker’s name in the doctor’s newspaper death notice — as his daughter’s husband. Then they put his name on the doctor’s headstone, in the same role. Clearly they’ve accepted him as part of the family. She’s pissed at their presumption; he’s charmed, and honored.

In April 2006 they rendezvous in Canberra, Australia, where he has professional commitments. They spend an exciting four weeks down under, a great adventure, mixing business and pleasure. Shots of them at Anzac Day in Canberra, hand in hand at Sydney Harbor, on the beach in Brisbane. They part for the next four months. Finally, in September 2006, they get married in Hong Kong.

But that’s just the first hurdle overcome. Now what? He’s still in New York; she’s still in Shenzhen. For the next 18 months he flies over whenever he can, for a month at a time, as they try to figure this out. Can he move to China? If he does, what will he do for work? Can he function professionally from there? In what capacities? Scenes of discussions and trial efforts along those lines, intercut with moments of domestic life — getting fitted for a Chinese suit, dim sum brunch in a favorite restaurant, the developing relationship with his new stepson.

By now they’re talking daily via Skype. They decide she needs to test the waters in the U.S. Her Hong Kong passport lets her travel just about anywhere, but will the U.S. let her in? Hesitantly, they apply for a visa for her, fearing difficulty from the State Department — it could look like a green-card marriage, visas are harder to get after 9/11 — but it’s smooth sailing. She arrives in March 2008, when the city and the neighborhood look gray and dingy. Doesn’t care for it much. But they have a fine time together. Scenes arriving at Newark International, meeting his father and brother and friends, shopping in Chinatown, seeing some of the U.S. for the first time.

She returns again in July, enjoys the city summer; New York starts to grow on her. More scenes with his family and friends, their house and neighborhood. In October they rendezvous in Europe for two weeks — Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark, with a short hop to Paris. In November he flies to Shenzhen for a month. The relationship is solid. Their time together is always a delight. But how can they go on this way?

In early 2009 she’s back in the States to experience her first New York winter. Scenes of her first-ever snowstorm, cooking dinner together, romantic moments, funny moments. They decide to apply for her green card and her son’s immigration visa. She goes back to Shenzhen to obtain the necessary documents at that end, while he starts prepping the necessary paperwork at his end. When she comes back to New York in July, they file her son’s application, followed by her own in August. Scenes of stressful miscommunication with an inept Chinatown lawyer, general tension; never easy to have your future in the hands of any government. This time it’s the turn of the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The paperwork moves through channels. Periodic government requests for additional materials, bureaucratic notices of incremental progress. Everything seems too slow. Scenes of serious discussions about options, alternative scenarios in case the applications get turned down. Return to plan A, with him moving to China? All relocate to Canada? Impossible to make any major decisions with this issue unresolved. Scenes of them alternately despairing and encouraging each other, alternating with scenes of them working side by side in their home office. Now he’s publishing a well-received blog in his area of specialization, and she’s publishing her own, in Chinese, drawing a growing audience of notable Chinese cultural figures — the writer in her emerging at last. His father dies; scene of the family scattering his ashes on a beach in Montauk.

Finally, in January, her son has his interview, at the U.S. Embassy in Hong Kong. (Subplot: Over these years he’s transformed himself from a reasonably typical teenage Chinese schoolboy to a tattooed, pierced “death metal” lead guitarist who auditions with a version of the Pachelbel “Canon” that its composer wouldn’t recognize.)

And they have their USCIS interview in lower Manhattan, with a most peculiar functionary. They can’t tell whether they aced it or flunked it. She goes back to Shenzhen in February 2010, to spend time with their son, now almost 21 but still in need of some parental guidance, and take care of her CFO end-of-fiscal-year obligations. He stays in New York, waiting for the news, trying not to jinx it by hoping too hard. Scenes of both of them moping around in their separate spaces.

One day, in March, the Chinatown lawyer calls. Their son’s immigration visa has been approved. The same news reaches wife and son in Shenzhen at the same time. Much rejoicing via Skype. Seems like a good omen — would the State Department let in the son, but not the mother? Sure enough, ten days later the wife’s green card arrives. Scene of the husband making a video of himself ritually opening the letter, reading it, displaying the green card, sending the video via email. More rejoicing via Skype.

In mid-July he flies over. Various professional opportunities have started to open up for him in China, just as things have begun to happen for her in the U.S. Now they have their choice. Perhaps they’ll go back and forth, half a year in the Middle Kingdom, half in the States. But, one way or another, they’ll be together from then on. Scenes of discussion of family matters, another visit to her relatives in Liuzhou, business meetings with new colleagues. She stays in Shenzhen to prepare herself and their son for the trip to new York, while he catches his plane back to get things ready for their arrival. Scenes of anticipatory activity at both ends.

Final scene: Newark Airport, International Arrivals gate, September 15, 2010. Almost seven years since she first emailed him. Almost five years since he proposed to her. Four years plus one week since they got married. He’s found his accomplice. He’s waiting for her, and his stepson. Suddenly there they come, down the ramp, pushing a cart heaped with luggage, a guitar case on top of the pile. He starts crying, holds up a sign: “Honey, you’re home.”

Fade to black, roll credits.

So that’s the treatment. What do I call it? I’ve given it the working title “Straight Through to China.” Because that’s where, as children, we were told we’d find ourselves if we dug straight down through the earth. Not true, technically; we’d actually end up treading water in the Indian Ocean. But it’s where my male protagonist finds himself heading in the narrative arc of this script — it’s where he had to go to find the love of his life.

Wait a minute. That’s not a film script. That’s my life.

And that’s my wife.

Allan and Anna, Hong Kong International Airport, July 25, 2005.

Happy anniversary, Anna.