This is my girlfriend. We have only been together for ten years and in that time I have bought her an expensive necklace and a handbag. She doesn’t need these gifts as her father owns a gas company and has a string of massage parlors across China. Her personal wealth comes, not from her father but her own hard work in the aromatherapy business. She is very particular about the car she drives as she doesn’t want to appear ostentatious or be kidnapped for ransom. I quite like her Skoda. It’s comfortable and very economical.

She could have had a very handsome and rich Chinese boyfriend as one of her girlfriends told me at the cocktail party where we sampled Long Island Ice Tea. This friend is always wondering why I was the chosen one, being a foreigner, so on one occasion I dropped my pants and said “Well, there is this.”

She is cute, a curvy size 10 and is very easy to get along with and there are many like her in China.

Well, I am about the only one on the site who maintains that ordinary Chinese girls are loyal and make good girlfriends or wives for FT's without character problems. I see nothing in your e-mail which supports my sincerely held point of view. Once again, I am not impressed with bars, cars or Long Island tea. Before my girlfriend became my wife we would go to street barbecues and drink 2.5 yuan beer. We'd climb mountains and both travel by hard-seat.

I gather that 'massage parlours' is a euphemistic term for whore houses?