I was waiting for my train to go home when a man sidled up to me and said, “Nihao.” Nihao is “Hello” in Mandarin Chinese. I was quite surprised. I had never seen him before. He was a portly, balding Australian man in his fifties.

He smiled in an intensely friendly way. “Is that how you say it? Nihao?”

“Erm. Yes. Nihao,” I said cautiously. Should I be worried here? He seemed to be keeping a polite distance.

“So how long have you been in Australia?” he asked.

“Oh, a long time now.”

He looked a bit disappointed as I added, “19 years, in fact.”

“You must have come over when you were a baby.”

“Yes.”

“My name is John. I worked in China for a while.”

“Hello John.”

He handed me a pamphlet. “I’d like to invite you to join our church at Melbourne University.”

Then he talked about the wonderful people I could meet and activities I could do at this church. He talked for about two minutes and I kept nodding. I didn’t really mind being evangalised to. It would have been a boring 10 minute wait for my train, otherwise.

“So please do come,” he concluded earnestly. “Is that your train? No? Okay, let me give you my phone number.” He scribbled it almost illegibly on the back of my phamplet.

I thought, “Hey, this isn’t bad. He’s nice enough, only a little bit pushy. I suppose you have to be, when you’re recruiting for your church.”

But then things got a bit weird. “Let me give you some advice just because I know,” he inserted, just as I thought he was going to leave me alone. “Even if he’s a millionaire, don’t marry an Australian man. Marry your own, a Chinese man. It will save you a lot of trouble. You’ll have the same food, the same culture…”

I gaped at him.

“Zaijian!” he nodded, waved and wandered off to look for his next victim.