While a student, Briton Mark Coyle decided to come to China. Now more than a decade later, he's settled in Suzhou, married to a Chinese woman, is a proud dad ... and directs traffic with a flag in his spare time.
"When I was at university, I wanted to come to China because my brother was living in Dalian, in Liaoning Province. Somehow, I felt that China was calling me," 32-year-old Coyle says.
The English teacher at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University's Suzhou campus, however, chose Dandong, a small city by the border of Democratic People's Republic of Korea in Liaoning Province, as his first stop in China in 2002, after graduating.
Coyle taught English in Dandong for a year, but the freezing weather almost drove him crazy.
"It was really, really cold. In winter, which was long, it would be as cold as minus 25 degrees Celsius. So I decided to move to south China," he says.
But after having experienced the steaming hot summer of Guangzhou in Guangdong Province and Xiamen in Fujian Province, Coyle settled in Suzhou in 2003, attracted by the city's renowned beauty and pleasant climate.
"And I've been here in Suzhou for a whole decade," he says with a smile.
In 2004 and 2005, Coyle taught English in the city. After one course finished, Coyle's students held a dinner party for him. It proved a fateful event, as Coyle met his future wife Wei Wei, from Taizhou in Jiangsu Province, a friend of one of his students. Two years later they married.
"It was quite quick for a foreigner, but since I'm in China, it's also nice for me to adapt a little to Chinese life," Coyle says.
However, the decision to marry a foreigner was a big issue for a traditional Chinese family.
"At first, my wife's parents didn't agree with their daughter marrying a foreigner. It was hard for her to persuade them," Coyle recalls.
"Some families in Shanghai or other big cities could understand it easier, but in a small, traditional city like Taizhou, it was unimaginable."
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