Every year when Chinese Valentine’s – aka QiXi Festival – rolls around, English-language WeChat accounts publish long articles about the holiday’s origins using the same, boring graphics of a boy and a girl in front of a moon on a bridge of birds. Click here if you really want to learn the story behind QiXi.
This year, instead of retelling that myth, Jingkids is sharing some epic real-life love stories.
Shenyang-born Shu Qi was intrigued by Jacob Wang from the moment she bought wine from a TMall store he and his friends owned. She said his unique sense of humor came through in their online banter. In fact, she was so intrigued that she hopped on a high-speed train to Beijing, Jacob’s hometown, to surprise him in person, a mere 33 days after they first exchanged words and began chatting online via QQ (this was a time before WeChat, if you can imagine it).
“The instant I saw him, I knew I would marry him,” Shu declared. A week later, she met his parents – they were shocked, to say the least – and within a year they were, as she had predicted, married.
That first conversation was so fundamental to their connection that Jacob even saved a screenshot of it and presented it to Shu in a homemade video message when he arrived at the airport in Detroit. He had uprooted his entire life in Beijing to move to Michigan where Shu had just launched her career in education. “If this is not love, I don’t know what is,” Jacob had posted on his WeChat Moments along with a photograph of dozens of suitcases at the Beijing airport before he embarked on the life-changing flight. In 2017, their son Valiant (they call him Val) was born in Oxford, Michigan.
When asked what was the most romantic thing that Shu has ever done for him, Jacob said, “She baked me a cake.” He is quick to explain that though it sounds simple, baking is anything but simple for Shu, as she tends to get distracted by the mess and get caught up cleaning while the meal is burning on the stove. So the fact that she even attempted, and rather successfully baked a cake for Jacob’s birthday, meant the world to him.
Shu’s cake to Jacob says, “I love you berry much”
The last time the family was in the US was before the pandemic swept across the globe. They had returned to China to visit Val’s grandparents when the virus hit, and after seeing how badly it was affecting the US, they made the decision to stay in Beijing. They enrolled Val in an international school, and have since remade their lives in the capital. Shu is currently the president of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), where she leads a weekly book club (they are currently reading How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t with Your Kids) and Jacob has resumed management of his own TMall store.
“My life is richer because she’s in it. Wherever she is, is the most romantic place to me,” Jacob answers, when I ask him where the most romantic place is for them. Almost embarrassingly, Shu answered similarly in our separate interview, “This is a little bit lame but can I say, wherever he is.”
It gets even better. When I asked for the three things they love most about each other, Shu’s first unabashed response was “the sex.” Jacob’s was “She’s kind at heart.”
Their own respective sense of humor was another quality they appreciate about each other. For Shu, Jacob’s handiness around the house is also part of why she loves him.
Though the couple has made the most of their time here in the capital, they expect to return to the States soon, where they are also hoping to expand their family, as well as move to Connecticut for better school choices.
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Images: Shu Qi
