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26.
And: “We got married and went on a honeymoon in China. We were both PhD students at the time. I was from the working class, and her family was middle class. Her father gave her $10k for the honeymoon. So we went to China to celebrate, AND she wanted to do some light pre-dissertation research while there for a month or two. Fine. Well, I spent the entire two months alone in tiny hostels while she did research. I only spoke a few words of Mandarin, and I was a broke graduate student, so I couldn’t afford to get to an airport to fly back home easily. I also had no family support back home, even if I did manage to make it home. I felt trapped. I talked to her about how the trip felt like a research trip, not like a honeymoon, and how I was alone almost every day.”
“We were sharing a laptop while on the trip (I was too poor to own a laptop, despite being in grad school). I opened the laptop one morning before she left to survey a field site without me. Her email was open. She left a message up on the laptop screen. It was to her father, stating she wished I wasn’t there on the trip — our honeymoon. Again, I was told this would be a honeymoon with maybe a slight detour for research. It turned out to be a research trip where I was a burden. She apologized. We stayed together for a few more years after she got sick and I became a caretaker. I wish, in hindsight, I had left China after reading that email.”
