It’s the second day of the marriage and family training at the Chuzhou Church. The morning and part of the afternoon have been a fast-track through Erickson’s developmental theory with anecdotes and Chinese fable thrown in as illustrations, and most of the participants - lay leaders and regular members - are still chewing over last night’s session on “empathy”, a term and practice new to almost everyone.

The atmosphere is thick with energy of people coming together to discuss daily-life dilemmas and new ideas. People scribble furiously in their notebooks or gather in small groups for discussion.

I wander around the room taking pictures of the training participants, and I am drawn to this woman flipping through a Bible.

I draw close to admire the worn pages, impressed at the thought of how many times they've been turned. It's strange how the older and dirtier a Bible is, the more beautiful it seems. What wisdom must this woman hold, who seems to have made this book a constant companion? As I approach, she’s searching intently for what I assume must be a certain verse she was reminded of. But I’m wrong.

She’s searching, it turns out, for the word 婚姻 (marriage) . . . because she can’t remember how to write it. Then she looks up and meets my eyes with both hesitation and expectation: she’s asking for help. With an almost childlike innocence, she doesn’t seem to consider that I might not speak her language, that I might not remember how to write the two characters either.

I’m fairly accustomed to seeing Chinese native speakers remind each other how to write an unusual character, or poke fun at someone who can’t remember a somewhat common one. It catches me off-guard, though, to realize this woman can’t write a word as simple as “marriage”.

In fact I can't remember how to write it. But I’m used to semi-literateness – to being unable to write eighty percent of the words that I can read. I'm always using my cell phone as a reference, and I pull it out now, and use the text messaging feature to type out the word. The realization that I can actually help is both exhilarating and sobering.

Strangely, my near-illiteracy in the language connects us. That’s about all the connection we will make, though I can find the word and write it for her in her notebook, in big block characters next to her big block characters. I can return her beaming smile, and shake her hand with both of mine. I can feel my heart being imprinted with the bittersweet moment.