(photo from hanneorla's Flickr)
Sometime in April, I watched in horror as my husband pulled his shirt up. Sure enough, the rash had migrated across his chest up into his armpits, and even his shoulder.
“Oh, Sweetie,” I said to him. “I’m so sorry to see you this way.” I rubbed lotion all over the rash to soothe it, though I knew that as long as the pressure remained, the rash would only move once again.
In Chinese, he always called his condition shénjīngxìngpíyán (神经性皮炎), sensory neurodermatitis. Over the years, I came to know this — along with those sudden stomach aches John would get before a challenging day at school, and even his allergies — as a sure sign of my husband’s stress or anxiety.
I can count on one hand the times I’ve seen John cry, an emotional response that I pull out at least once a month — and sometimes, in the past months as we faced pressure from the discrimination, at least once a week. The strongest emotion I’ve seen from John would be what I might call frustration, but even that’s nothing compared to the anger I’ve flashed before him in the past. Instead, I read how John really feels through things like his spreading rash, or his stomach aches — things he referred to as somatization, the channeling of emotions into physical symptoms. Continue reading Speaking of China »
. Pearl married twice, both white American men, but some allege she was a secret lover of the famous Chinese poet Xu Chimo. Maybe her supposed affair inspired some of those on-the-page Chinese man-Western woman romances? Who knows, but she’ll always be the ultimate honorary yangxifu in my book. 
AMWW Magazine
by Diane Farr.
