In "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner," the Monsignor cites the effort put into interracial relationships as a reason they work out more. But a reader's e-mail cited that extra effort as a reason to proceed with caution -- or not at all. (Image from ticketstubz.blogspot.com)

Last night, I saw the movie Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. I expected a relaxing evening with some of my favorite actors of all time — Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier — but ended up with more than I bargained. Especially when I heard these words from Monsignor Ryan:

I’ve known a good many cases of marriages between the races in my time, and strangely enough, they usually work out quite well. I don’t know why. Maybe because it requires some special quality of effort, more consideration and compassion than most marriages seem to generate these days, could that be it?

I just wanted to hug the Monsignor after he said this, and couldn’t help but agree with the character Christina Drayton, that they were “beautiful thoughts.”

But the more I thought about this, the more I was reminded of an e-mail I received in January, which read:

I’m an Caucasian woman married to a Chinese immigrant. We will be celebrating our 36th anniversary. We were married before it was “acceptable” to marry another race, and have endured a lot of flack because of this.  To be very honest, it hasn’t been easy and I wouldn’t recommend it to the faint of heart. Unless a woman has a strong sense of self, don’t go there.

Her words echoed much of Monsignor Ryan’s, the idea that a marriage like mine might involve more effort, consideration, compassion — minus the beautiful feeling. Still, I had to give this woman and her husband credit, because they’ve stayed through it, all 36 years of it.

If some interracial and intercultural/cross-cultural marriages really demand more out of a couple, and they get through it together, does that make it all worth it? Is it the beautiful adventure the Monsignor described? Or more like a gut-busting theme park ride that comes with a warning?

When I thought about it, my recent experiences with John sure felt like riding a roller coaster sometimes. We’ve both had to stand up to a lot. But I’d never ask for a refund, and never discourage anyone from lining up for the ride.

Maybe I’m too much of a “love conquers all” kind of a gal (not much of a shocker since I watched Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, eh?). But who can blame me? My love with John conquered my heart entirely, and it’s been worth every effort.

What do you think?

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A “Guess Who’s” Perspective on My Marriage, Effort, and What It’s Worth | Speaking of China - One Western woman with a Chinese husband writes about love, family and relationships in China 洋媳妇看中国

(photo by Johanna Ljungblom)

When you’re facing hard times as a couple, people say all kinds of things. “Hope it gets better.” “Stay strong.” “You’ll be okay.”

And then, there’s what my so-call friend told me back in December, after I told her about the discrimination against John, and how I supported him.

“So you’re standing by him? Wow, you’re so loyal.”

You’re so rude, I wanted to tell her. I also wanted to slap her across the table, but it was a holiday party and that sort of thing doesn’t go well with gingerbread and hot apple cider.

“Why wouldn’t I be? He’s my husband and I love him,” I finally said as I glowered at her.

From her perspective, “for better or for worse” just didn’t apply to us. She might as well have said, “You should have married a white man,” because that’s exactly what I heard hidden within her words — that when a white woman chooses to marry someone outside her race, in my case a Chinese man, she should throw in the towel when she faces something she’d never face with a white husband.

Please.

Maybe my marriage meant I’d know different hardships than the average white woman with a white husband. But I never sat around calculating these things like a cold statistician, or treating marriage like a business deal. So what if John is Chinese, and that exposes him to discrimination? Love just happened with John, and it’s a love that means more to me than anything in the world, a love that sustains me in the face of our challenges.

Then again, maybe she was just jealous to see that hardship wouldn’t break us apart. After all, she already divorced her first white husband, and was now on white husband number two. Too bad I didn’t tell her this: “I guess marrying white is no guarantee.”

Have people ever suggested you shouldn’t have gone into an interracial and/or cross-cultural marriage?

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I Stand By My Man, And Yes, He’s Chinese | Speaking of China - One Western woman with a Chinese husband writes about love, family and relationships in China 洋媳妇看中国

My Chinese father-in-law was surprised to hear we had no time off -- but he's never known a world without Chinese New Year, like I have.

“Will you have time off for Chinese New Year?” Even though my father-in-law had retired more than 10 years before, he asked this question to us this past Saturday night with all of the wonder of a young child during the holidays.

“No, the semester already started,” John said.

“They gave us vacation for Christmas, not for Chinese New Year,” I added. “Christmas is the big holiday in America.”

“Oh,” my father-in-law said, with a voice that dropped off in surprise.

But he’s not alone. Every time we’ve called our Chinese friends back in Hangzhou, the “vacation during Chinese New Year” idea invariably sneaks into the conversation. And every time we tell them, no, there is no such thing in the US, they answer with astonishment.

Why wouldn’t they? My father-in-law and my husband’s friends in China all grew up in a world where everyone celebrated Chinese New Year. For them, the holidays meant tables stacked with all of the stir-fried delicacies they dreamed of all year long, family, red envelopes for the kids, and a blitzkrieg of fireworks all over town.

When I finally experienced Chinese New Year for the first time in 2002, even I was taken aback by its fire and ferocity. Where was this festival and why had I missed it my entire life?

So now here we are in the Mountain West, in a world where Chinese New Year is nothing more than a flicker, where everyone is far more worried about the big American football championship at the end of the month. Still, I made a dinner of spring rolls, eight-treasures rice, red-braised pork, homestyle tofu, and bok choy with shiitake mushrooms. We toasted to an auspicious year of the dragon as “Descendants of the Dragon,” sung by Wang Lee Hom, echoed in the background.

Now, if only we had a little vacation for Chinese New Year.

(Happy Year of the Dragon!)

For those of you growing up with Chinese New Year, were you surprised when you discovered it wasn’t celebrated everywhere? For those of you who discovered Chinese New Year later on, were you surprised you never delighted in in this holiday before?

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There’s No Vacation for Chinese New Year in America | Speaking of China - One Western woman with a Chinese husband writes about love, family and relationships in China 洋媳妇看中国

At Watson's in China, a little personal shopping got too personal when I decided to stock up on condoms. (photo by Calvin Teo from wikimedia.org)

“Your Personal Store.” That’s the tagline for Watson’s, the most popular pharmacy/drugstore shop in Asia and my go-to in China for so many health and beauty items I need. But after my experience this summer, I began to wonder if Watson’s wasn’t becoming “Your A Little Too Personal Store.”

Last summer, I lived mostly with my in-laws and visited Hangzhou or Shanghai only a few times. For me, that meant no Watson’s conveniently just around the corner or a short bus, subway or taxi ride away. So when I saw a Watson’s, I would sometimes kick into “storage mode.” That meant buying some extra peppermint hand wipes, another bottle of Johnson’s Baby Wash (for my sensitive skin), and, say, some more Durex condoms.

I’m a married woman, and yes, I wanted to replenish my condom stash. I sure couldn’t do it in my Chinese husband’s rural village, which probably sold those dodgy ones with what always looked like adult movie stills printed on the package. On this day in question, I still stayed with him in his rented room in Shanghai for a few more days, we’d have a few weeks or so together at the end of the summer before returning to the US, and what we didn’t use, we could always take home. Yes, condoms would definitely come in handy.

But I’d have to go alone on this one. “It’s easier for you,” John said. “They expect foreigners to buy these things.”

I couldn’t deny the truth in what he said — that many Chinese believed foreigners, especially foreign women, were so much more “open” about sex. Sure, I liked sleeping with my husband, and wasn’t afraid to say so. But that didn’t make me some foreign Jezebel ready to screw on the spot. Besides, I couldn’t hide in China — people noticed me everywhere as a foreigner, and that meant they might even notice my purchase even more.

“But people will stare at me, it will be so embarrassing,” I said.

He flashed me one of those “go-get-’em” smiles, and said, “You have self-efficacy, you can do this.” Then he patted me on the shoulder. That was all his way of saying, there’s no way in hell I will buy the condoms.

Okay, then.

While John stayed with our shopping bags, I marched through the mall until I found that Watson’s logo lit up in white lights over that teal signage, the bright pastel lights around the periphery, and the pink tags in the aisles. Well, if his objections had to do with the store itself — which looked like it could emasculate any man who dared to shop alone in its borders — I could understand.

I darted through the aisles, to the back of the store, and sure enough, I found an entire wall of shelves stuffed with every kind of Durex condom imaginable. I saw all of these varieties they didn’t even sell in the US — all sorts of flavors, colors, textures. I reached for two, three boxes of them. Maybe I should buy more, maybe eight for good luck?

But then I saw a woman standing nearby who looked as old as my mother-in-law, smiling right at me and wearing a Watson’s name tag.

If you’ve never shopped at Watson’s, you should know that the store crawls with these assistants who help you find anything you’re looking for. I’ve always been an “I’m just looking” kind of shopper. I’d rather find it on my own than have someone tell me what to buy, and then wonder why I chose something else or decided not to buy after all. But these assistants seemed to have “lady laowai” magnets, because every time I went into a Watson’s I couldn’t avoid them — certainly not today.

“Here, you should try this one,” the woman said as she pulled a large red box of condoms off the shelf.

It was called “Pleasure Pack,” and it even had a flame on the packaging — not the sort of thing I imagined getting from a woman with the same dyed black hair and polyester pants like my mother-in-law. She’s not my mother-in-law, she’s not my mother-in-law. At least, that’s what I told myself.

I nodded at her, put the box in my basket, and tried hard to keep my gaze on the merchandise, instead of her curious eyes.

But she pulled another box of condoms off the shelf, something called “Jeans.” Then she said, “This one, it’s good.”

At least she kept her comments simple. I’d have hated for her to tell me, “That one has nice latex,” or, “The apple tastes better than the strawberry.”

She hovered over me the entire time I stood there choosing my condoms, so I picked the rest of my boxes fast (which came to eight), grabbed that extra toothbrush I needed, and dashed over to the register to pay.

I pushed my basket over to the girl behind the cash register. She swiped each box one after another and loaded them quickly into a Watson’s plastic bag. Maybe too quickly? She looked at the register again, wrinkled her brow, and said, “Sorry, I have to recount these.”

So she dumped the condoms out and tried swiping them again. But she still wasn’t satisfied, and tossed them on the counter, and swiped them a third time.

By then, two or three other store assistants migrated over to the register and hovered around to see what was going on — including my condom-pushing mother-in-law lookalike. With every moment, my face started to resemble all the red on that “Pleasure Pack,” with none of the fun.

Finally, the store manager, a young thirtysomething man in a shirt and tie, walked over and shooed the girl away from the register. He then emptied the bag on the counter for everyone to see again. Well, thank god he swiped them right the first time. He took my cash and then handed my receipt and change with my bag.

As for me, I never walked out of a Watson’s faster.

“What a scene,” I said to my husband long after we left that mall. “Recounting the condoms, all the people staring at me. It’s like they kept messing up on purpose.”

“I think they were so embarrassed, they couldn’t focus, so they had to count the condoms over.”

“So it’s not because they were curious about the foreign woman buying so many condoms?”

“No, not really.”

Well, good to know I wasn’t the only embarrassed one.

Have you ever bought condoms at Watson’s or somewhere in China? What’s been your experience?

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Getting Personal When Buying Condoms at Watson’s China | Speaking of China - One Western woman with a Chinese husband writes about love, family and relationships in China 洋媳妇看中国

I'm finally on Sina Weibo/新浪微博, so what are you waiting for? Follow me.

Okay, it’s taken me long enough — and a little prodding from fans — but I did it. I now have an active account on the microblogging site Sina Weibo, also known as 新浪微博 （xīnlàngwēibó). My username is speakingofchina, and you’re welcome to follow me here. Besides content from this site, I also hope to share Chinese-language news related to love, family and relationships.

I’m a complete newbie here, so I welcome any suggestions too. See you on Sina!

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Follow Me On Sina Weibo | Speaking of China - One Western woman with a Chinese husband writes about love, family and relationships in China 洋媳妇看中国

I'm featured in Beijing Today, and nominated for a Lotus Blossom Award this week.

A couple of quick things I wanted to share with you.

First, the weekly Beijing Today featured me in an article last Friday. I’m late to mention it — this week has been killer — but it’s a nice one and I appreciate the coverage (note, though, I need to ask for a few corrections. For the record, I’m 34 and that older man in one of those photos, he’s my husband’s godfather, not actual father). Here’s a snippet of the article, When an American Girl Meets a Chinese Man:

“Are Jewish women more likely to marry Chinese men? How my anti-Japanese Chinese husband changed his mind about Japan …”

These are among the topics from Jocelyn Eikenburg’s blog Speaking of China, a personal account of how an American woman found love in the Chinese countryside – and the things that happened next in the cross-cultural relationship.

She writes about how she met her husband, a Chinese man from rural Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province with the English name John, in 2002 at an online company in Hangzhou when working.

They met through a mutual friend’s arrangement. Eikenburg fell in love during the summer of that year after John took her out for her birthday.

Check out the full article.

Second, Speaking of China was nominated for a Lotus Blossom Award from My New Chinese Love. If you have a moment and you really dig this blog, show your support — vote for Speaking of China here. And thanks for reading.

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Featured in Beijing Today, Nominated for a Lotus Blossom Award | Speaking of China - One Western woman with a Chinese husband writes about love, family and relationships in China 洋媳妇看中国

if my experience means anything, many Chinese still turn to someone to play matchmaker -- even if that someone is just your coworker. (photo by DHSAM from wikimedia.org)

Last summer, I attended the Hangzhou wedding of my good friend Lao Da at the end of May. But it wasn’t until two weeks later — when we met over Dragonwell tea and snacks at a local teahouse — that I learned exactly how he met his new wife.

“We met through a colleague. He happened to be going out to dinner with a group of women who worked at the bank across the street from our office and didn’t want to go alone. So he asked me to come with him.”

“So, it was love at first sight?”

He shook his head. “No. I didn’t actually contact her until a few weeks later.”

“You didn’t have any special feeling for her then?”

“I had some. But later, my colleague said she had mentioned me, and he wondered if maybe we should date. You know me, I am not so outgoing. So I said I would meet her.”

Of course, Lao Da’s how-we-met story remained uniquely his — just like his geek-chic glasses, ocean-blue Chuck Taylors and funky stonewashed jeans. But I couldn’t help but notice that their story came down to the actions of one person: his colleague. He actually introduced them in a sense, and even encouraged them to get together. When I thought about it, Lao Da’s story felt hardly unique at all — but just another example of informal matchmaking in modern China.

I’ve heard so many stories in China like Lao Da’s. My brother-in-law, Cheng, met his wife Wenjuan through a cousin. Pi Yongjun, a close friend from Henan, found his wife through a colleague. My in-laws got together through the work of their parents. Heck, John and I might not have even dated without the help of our friend Caroline, who schemed to get us together.

Of course, this isn’t matchmaking like John’s ancestors used to know it — the old feudal China where older Yente-like go-betweens made their living on knowing everyone in the village, and staking their reputations on brokering good matches for families. Today, marriages in China don’t need a third party interfering to move forward. But if my experience means anything, many people still turn to someone to find their match — even if that someone is just the guy you share an office with at work.

My question is, how have you experienced informal matchmaking in China? Have your friends ever tried setting you up? Have you set someone up? What do you think of this?

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Matchmaker, Informal Matchmaker | Speaking of China - One Western woman with a Chinese husband writes about love, family and relationships in China 洋媳妇看中国

What questions would you like me to ask Anna Sophie Loewenberg? (photo from http://news.ucsc.edu/)

Anna Sophie Loewenberg, who most of you know from Sexy Beijing, agreed to do an interview with me for Asian Jewish Life. We plan to discuss her current project — a documentary on gay themes — and anything else she’s working on with Goldmines Film. I’d also like to ask about her upcoming marriage to a man from Venezuela, as well as some questions related to being Jewish and living in China.

I know a number of you are fans of her work. So before I interview her (I plan to set something up for the following week), I thought I’d put this question to you — what would you like me to ask Anna Sophie Loewenberg?

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What Would You Like Me To Ask Anna Sophie Loewenberg of Sexy Beijing? | Speaking of China - One Western woman with a Chinese husband writes about love, family and relationships in China 洋媳妇看中国

My Chinese husband told me I've become more superstitious since I married him. (photo by zettmedia)

Cíjiù yíngxīn (辞旧迎新,  farewell to the old, welcome the new). That’s what my Chinese husband said to me as we gathered the last of the dirty laundry to throw in the washing machines last night. We already scrubbed our entire apartment clean — I dusted, he vacuumed and washed all of the dishes. Now we wanted clean clothes too.

“You did this before?” he asked me as we walked to the laundry room.

“Nope, I never used to clean house for the New Year. Not before I met you.”

He smiled. “You’ve become more superstitious since you married me,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

I answered with ambivalence, but my actions spoke loud and clear. I was the one who suggested the laundry — John would have probably stopped after cleaning house. I wanted to make the eight-treasures rice for dessert on New Year’s Eve, because the words “eight” and “treasures” would promise us a more prosperous 2012. I bought the pork for the red-braised pork I cooked for John because it cost $8.08, an auspicious number. I even resolved to wear red, China’s most auspicious color, every single day from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day (I wear a red shirt as I type this).

Maybe I cared even more for superstition because of our recent challenges. In 2012, John and I will still have to fight against the discrimination. There’s no guarantee John will get an internship next year — something he needs to graduate, something we both want because it means we can finally move away from here to a more diverse metropolitan area. I almost never pray, but I’ve caught myself in meditation towards the skies, asking a higher power to deliver us into a better life. So I couldn’t help but turn to superstitions like some extra insurance, just in case, even if that rational part of me knew better.

Will this improve our fortunes in 2012? Who knows? But every time I mention something else superstitious I’ve done, John busts out laughing and flashes me a huge smile. Which makes me think, maybe that’s the real magic in superstition — to make your husband a little happier during hard times.

Has your relationship or your marriage made you more superstitious? If so, how?

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Has My Marriage Made Me More Superstitious? | Speaking of China - One Western woman with a Chinese husband writes about love, family and relationships in China 洋媳妇看中国

My post about the Jewish women-Chinese men connection topped the list for 2011 for Monday posts. (photo by Simon Cataudo)

As the year draws to a close, I’m taking a break during this holiday season to reflect on the past year — and gear up for 2012. In the meantime, I’d like to share with you the top five posts for the year — not just to give me a breather, but to revisit the best of 2011 by views (especially for all of you new readers out there).

1. Are Jewish Women More Likely to Marry Chinese Men? This post first exploring the Jewish women-Chinese men connection got more of your attention than anything else in 2011. But if you love this one, you really should read my expanded version, an article for Asian Jewish Life titled “Chosen Women Choosing Chinese Men: A Tradition of Love?”
2. On Discrimination and Marriage to a Chinese Man. When things fell apart for John and I in early November, I couldn’t help but write about it on this site. Thanks to everyone who commented or shared this — you all made me feel a little less alone during some tough times (which, sadly, haven’t ended quite yet).
3. Marriage in China is Home, Car, Money? My take on one side of modern marriage in China really got you reading and talking about it.
4. How My Anti-Japanese Husband Changed His Mind About Japan. The March 11 tsunami in Japan also ushered in a sea change for my husband, along with a wave of comments.
5. I Love You, Just Not in Chinese. All these years, my Chinese husband had told me “I love you” in English but could never bring himself to say the same in Mandarin Chinese.

Happy holidays and Happy 2012 to all!

P.S.: Don’t forget to check out my Favorites page, with my own hand-picked list of the best posts on Speaking of China.

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Speaking of China’s Top 5 Monday Posts for 2011 | Speaking of China - One Western woman with a Chinese husband writes about love, family and relationships in China 洋媳妇看中国