My husband’s excuse not to drink? “I have a foreign wife!”

While the other men in the background imbibe way too much alcohol, my husband is off the hook -- because of me.
While the other men in the background have to drink up their baijiu, my husband (front and left) is off the hook — because of me.

During Chinese New Year, the alcohol flows as freely as the conversation — and sometimes a little too much so. On the second day of the new year, a lunch packed with mostly male relatives and well-lubricated with baijiu — the vodka-like hard liquor of choice — actually landed two of the men in the hospital for alcohol poisoning.

It works like this. The elder male relatives at the table insist their younger male relatives drink in a gesture of respect. Of course, nobody in Chinese history ever said filial piety involved imbibing the alcohol for your elders — but such reasoning is pointless at the table, where peer pressure and the expectation that “real men” can handle their alcohol rules.

Yet my husband John survived the entire holiday without a single drunken incident and ultimately only enjoying a few sips of red wine by choice. And when I asked him why, he cited me, his foreign wife, as the reason.

“I have a yangxifu,” he said. “You’re a good excuse not to drink.” In other words, because I’m a foreigner here, John’s relatives assume he needs to care for me more than if I was just Chinese (despite my fluent Chinese and years of living in this country). So if he was stupid drunk, he couldn’t fulfill his so-called “responsibility” to me.

We both laughed at this comical idea — that my being John’s wife actually shielded him from the pressure to drink in China.

Still, given John’s low alcohol tolerance, drinking among relatives will always be a dangerous pursuit. So as bizarre as it is, if my presence might save him from a drunken stupor — or worse, a trip to the hospital — I’ll take it. 😉

Photo Essay: The First Days of Chinese New Year with the Family

So long snake and hello horse! We’ve all been busy welcoming the new year these past few days. Much like the firecrackers and fireworks that boom across the village in the evenings, the holiday has been both exciting and overwhelming.

I’ve already attended four huge dinners with family, where the dining tables often become a cacophony of laughing and shouting (often because of those drinking games involving baijiu). I’ve learned to steel myself for the inevitable topic of children — which used to be a question (“When will you have kids?”) and has now become a command (“This year, you must have a kid!”). And strangest of all, I actually witnessed a grown man slumped unconscious in a bamboo chair before our doorway because he drank too much baijiu (sorry guys, no photo of that!).

Still, amidst all of the drama of these past days, I can’t help but feel incredibly loved and appreciated by our family here. Just this evening, the mother of one of John’s cousins stroked my arm lovingly, saying how much she liked us and how she hoped we would return for another dinner soon.

While I relax and recover during those few and precious quiet moments in the day, I’m offering you a peek into the start of our year of the horse through photographs. Again, wishing you a successful horse year! 马到成功!

My father-in-law opens the gates to the family home just before midnight when the new year comes.
The family sets off firecrackers and fireworks just outside the gate to welcome the new year.
According to the tradition, we always start the new year off with new clothes! Here, John and I have laid out our never-before-worn outfits for the first day of the year.
IMG_2145
John and I show off our new outfits for the new year outside the front door of the family home.
During Chinese New Year, you can always be sure to have lots of visitors at your home! Some of our first visitors in the new year include a cousin and grandparents.
The number one activity during Chinese New Year? Eating! These past few days have felt like a dining marathon with one huge meal after another. We ate… (lunch at the grandparents’ home prepared by John’s oldest brother — it’s tradition for the men to do the cooking on the first day of the new year).
…and ate… (dinner at little uncle’s home just next door)
…and ate…(a huge and raucous lunch at our home which led to at least two people becoming so drunk they had to go to the hospital)
…and ate! (dinner at an aunt’s home)
But most of all, we felt so loved and appreciated! Here, John poses with an aunt and cousin — this was the aunt who couldn’t stop doting on both of us. It’s so nice to be back home.

On Invitations and the Dinner We Never Expected

IMG_1979“Time for dinner! Go to big uncle’s home!”

When my mother-in-law shouted the news up the stairwell a few weeks ago, I was dumbfounded. It was 4:30pm and we never ate dinner until at least 5:30pm. But more importantly, nobody told John and me we were having dinner out this evening. And we weren’t the only ones surprised, as we learned when we met my mother-in-law downstairs.

“They’ve already made dinner,” she said. She was wearing her favorite blue-and-yellow felt apron, evidence that she had probably been working on dinner for us when someone from big uncle’s home came over with the news. “It’s bad not to go. Just go over there and eat a little.”

A little, however, was not what big uncle had in mind — as John and I discovered when we walked into the dining room. Eight people were already huddled around a dining room table filled with more than 10 different dishes, a delicious assortment of stir-fried meats and vegetables that would have rivaled some of the most lavish banquets I’ve ever attended in China.

I couldn’t help thinking how my family back in the US would never pull off such a huge spread at the last minute. People would need days if not weeks of notice, and even then some people might not be available. Yet here, it just happened one afternoon, all because big uncle wanted to share his generosity with us.

Even though I still equate the word “invitation” with advance notification, I’m also learning to understand that invitations don’t always work like that — especially out here in my husband’s village. Sometimes it’s not an easy thing to accept when, like me, you’re so used to setting your own schedule and being told well in advance of upcoming dinners, meetings or other events. But there’s also beauty in living spontaneously, in not always having every moment and every second planned out…especially when, like big uncle’s dinner, it turns out to be a tasty surprise.

Why “white loser laowai & Chinese women” is a thorny topic

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(photo by Daniel R. Blume via Flickr.com)

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from a friend who urged me to read an essay by Virginia Proud of Tales of Expatria. She dubbed the essay “controversial” but then again, as she put it “blogs thrive on controversy” and encouraged me to introduce the topic. Well, she said the magic word — “controversy” — so of course, I immediately clicked on the link and dove into the first paragraph.

But when I finished the essay, a feeling of dread settled over me…which had nothing to do with Virginia’s essay per se.

First off, let me say that I thoroughly enjoyed the essay. The writing was exceptional — humorous, thoughtful and self-reflective — and you could clearly tell that Virginia has, as you might say, “been around the global block” in her own experiences as an expat.

No, my dread stemmed from the subject itself, which I’ll let Virginia describe for you:

If you spend enough time in Expatria you’ll meet this chap, we affectionately call him the LBH. The Loser Back Home. Best described as someone you wouldn’t normally touch with a barge pole, but transplanted to foreign soil, is suddenly hot property, especially with attractive, young local women….

The LBH has always been with us and probably always will be. I remember my first LBH encounters as a teenager, when my family lived in Hong Kong. I couldn’t understand these corpulent old buggers with their gorgeous Chinese wives, until my mother pointed out their diamonds. It was the glory days of British rule and massive salaries and no one cared if the men were boring, ugly, stupid, or even mean. But then again, money and power has always been enough to make men wildly attractive, even back home….

Yes, the LBH — or, as people call him here in China, the Loser Laowai. Or for the purposes of this blog, the white Loser Laowai who only dates local Chinese women.

To me, this topic feels like the “skeleton in the closet” in the realm of cross-cultural and interracial dating in China — a topic so icky I’ve wanted to stay far, far away from it. And in the few times I’ve gathered the gumption to attempt a blog post on it in the past, invariably I abandoned my drafts and turned my attention to other topics.

Yet Virginia was able to produce a splendid essay that, to an extent, dealt with this topic, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s a matter of perspective. After all, Virginia, who is originally from Australia, currently calls Budapest, Hungary home and referred to this LBH in a more universal sense. She doesn’t have to address the proverbial “panda in the room” that immediately comes to mind once you move the topic to China — yellow fever. And for the purposes of this blog post, I’m referring to those white Laowai men who prefer Asians and potentially have highly racialized notions about Asian women.

See what I mean? Loaded stuff.

In my opinion the majority of white men with Chinese women do NOT fall into this “Loser Laowai” category. But still, we all know there are white loser laowai out there hooking up with Chinese women. And like the yellow fever phenomenon, their existence does have ramifications for couples of white men and Chinese women around the world. As Christine Tan of Shanghai Shiok wrote:

The problem, to me, is that shallow, superficial relationships between white men and Asian women vastly outnumber the same sort of suspicious pairings between Asian men and white women. And sadly, these types of WM/AF pairings are the most visible ones, because they often create spectacles of themselves….They are the Douchebags, the Jerks, and the Ambitious who think dating a white man or Asian woman betters them, financially or socially….those are the types of WM/AF pairings we remember, because they were too in-your-face to forget.

Which unfortunately could lead to the wrong assumptions when you see a white man and an Chinese woman walking down the street. Again, as Christine wrote:

I know that the white male/Asian female pairing has numerous negative associations attached to it. Words that immediately come to mind: Opportunistic. Gold-digger. Fetish. Sexualization. White-worship. Money. Exploitation. Lust. Pinkerton Syndrome. ‘Sarong Party Girl’ behavior was something I was warned against growing up.

I think a lot about why those associations exist. There are poorer women in China and the rest of Asia who view a foreign man as a meal ticket. There are Asian women who only date white men because most of the men they meet are white, and/or they find them more culturally/sexually appealing. There are white men who only date Asian women because of the society they live in — where the women are mostly Asian — or yes, they do find Asian women more culturally/sexually appealing. There are white men who come to Asia to hook up with local women in certain seedier places. There are local women who go to these places to hook up with the white men who come to Asia.

But then there are cases like mine — a mutual friend introduces a man and a woman and they get along, they like each other, they both like eating, and books, and the Barbie store. And oh, by the way, they happen to be white and Asian, respectively.

Enough said.

There’s another side to this topic of white Loser Laowai who only date Chinese women — when the men justify their dating choices by insulting the women back home, which Virginia alludes to in her essay. I’ve addressed this before and find it abhorrent that anyone would defend their relationship in such a hateful way. But it happens, most often in anonymous online forums. And because the expat gender balance is so skewed — far more expat men, who are overwhelming white, than women — well, let’s say if you’re a woman like me, you need a lot of courage to speak up about it in public.

Additionally, let’s not forget what Virginia mentioned near the end of the post: “And the fall out of all this, of course, lands on the head of the single expat women, who need to keep adjusting their ideas of ‘attractive’ as their dating pool starts to feel more like a puddle.” Or in other words, it’s the China Daily article published a few years back titled Foreign women label [China] a dating wasteland. This is also thorny territory…because then the question comes, why aren’t they interested in dating Chinese men? Some women have understandable reservations (for example, they’re not interested in marriage or getting too serious in a relationship) but others exclude locals for completely superficial reasons, often based on stereotypes.

Ugh.

In the end, I’ll never be able to write something like Virginia, not with all the baggage that accompanies this idea of white Laowai Losers with Chinese women. Still, I believe the subject deserves a conclusion. So, as someone who writes about relationships, perhaps it’s fitting that I sum this up with a phrase used on dating sites around the world: it’s complicated.

P.S.: For further reading on this “thorny topic”, I recommend They’re So Beautiful, the companion website to the compelling documentary Seeking Asian Female.

How rare are Chinese men/Western women? Enough to be “nonsense”

One villager in John's hometown in China couldn't believe we were married
One villager in John’s hometown in China couldn’t believe we were married

As the wife of a Chinese man, I’m used to attracting attention when I’m out and about in China. The stares, the questions about where I’m from, the way cars slow down to gawk at us — it’s all par for the course.

So during one of our evening walks in the village, I wasn’t surprised when an elderly woman walking in the opposite direction suddenly began asking my husband questions.

“Where are you from?” she inquired in the local dialect.

John mentioned the name of his village, nestled right in the heart of the valley.

“Where is she from?”

“America. She’s my wife.”

The woman grimaced at him in disbelief. “That’s nonsense!” Yes, she refused to believe that someone from John’s little mountain village could have possibly married a woman from America. And she walked away, not to be bamboozled by us.

When John translated the whole conversation for me (I’m still working on my local dialect) I nearly doubled over in laughter. “Are you kidding? She thought you were lying about me?”

Hiking the mountains in John’s hometown

It was the first time anyone in China doubted the authenticity of our relationship. But as strange as it sounded, I could understand why. In John’s hometown, it’s not uncommon to meet people who have spent their entire lives, knowing little else beyond these mountains thick with hardy bamboo and fragrant Chinese red pines, and the rice paddies and terraced gardens sculpted into the hillsides. Who could imagine that one of their hometown sons would meet and marry a foreigner, let alone spend years in her country? As rare as it is to find Chinese men and Western women together in China’s urban playgrounds, out here in the Zhejiang countryside such a coupling sounds impossible and even ridiculous.

The Chinese government advises foreigners to carry their passports with them at all times in China. I have to wonder, should I also carry around my Chinese marriage license so I’m prepared for the next time someone calls my marriage “nonsense”?

My Chinese Grandma, Frying Up Rice Noodles — And Lots of Love

11776026213_2e785c1720_nThe other day, John’s grandma invited the two us over all of a sudden for dinner at her house. When I say “all of a sudden”, I mean that she interrupted us in the midst of preparing handmade dumplings and told John and me we were dining on fried rice noodles instead.

As much as I love fried rice noodles, her invitation arrived on an evening when I had been craving the very handmade dumplings we were preparing with John’s father. But what could we do? Here was grandma, who had been hospitalized for two months in fall of 2013, standing at the door and asking us to dine on the noodles she had already finished preparing. It was the kind of situation with “just go with it” written all over it. Besides, my mother-in-law said we only had to eat a little, just to be polite. So I hid my dumpling disappointment behind a smile, hooked my arm in grandma’s arm, and strolled out the door with John beside us.

Once at grandma’s home, she immediately plunked heaping bowls of rice noodles in front of us — each bowl easily three times larger than her own. When she said dinner, boy did she mean it.

“Aiya, too much!” John said in protest, which I repeated in turn. What happened to just eat a “little bit”, like my mother-in-law said?

“Not too much!” Grandma said in a gruff voice, followed by nagging us to “Eat, eat!” as if we had to finish our bowls of rice…or else.

So we tucked into the rice noodles with our chopsticks and discovered that, if this was indeed a “responsibility”, it was the most delicious kind. I couldn’t help savoring the baby bok choy perfectly seasoned with garlic and dark aged soy sauce. It wasn’t too salty or overdone, and arguably it was the finest rice noodles she had ever fried up for us. So as I cleared the last of the noodles in my bowl, I couldn’t help but tell her, “So delicious!”

For grandma, that wasn’t praise but rather a cue to provide seconds. Before we could utter “bu yao!” grandma was on her feet, trying to shovel more rice noodles into our bowls. We each shielded the bowls with our hands, pleading to her not to add more. And when that failed, we simply rose from our stools and headed for the door itself.

Grandma chased after us with mandarin oranges, trying to press the fruits into our hands with far more strength than you might expect from a recently hospitalized woman over 80. But we pushed them back into her hands and then trotted outside, saying “Save them for next visit!”

Grandma, interrupting our “regularly scheduled” dumplings for a spot of fried rice noodles at her place.

“You know, she shouldn’t have made us those rice noodles,” I said to John on the way back home, shaking my head. “She’s still recovering from her heart condition.”

John shrugged and smiled. “That’s how she shows her love for us.” His words echoed what my mother-in-law would say after we returned home: “She shouldn’t do it, but she wants to do it because she likes you.” You could say the same about the black striped polyester pants I never asked her to buy for me (and which I could barely squeeze into) or the hulking bag of puffed rice sweets she delivered to us one afternoon.

Grandma has never hugged or kissed me, nor told me she loves me. But these days — and especially after this impromptu dinner — I’ve never felt closer to her.

Speaking of China’s Top 5 Monday Posts of 2013

I8377808435_90a952db4e_nt’s the last Monday of 2013, nearly New Year’s Eve, and time for me to announce the top 5 Monday posts for 2013!

Before I unveil them, don’t forget…if you like the site, you can also follow me on FacebookTwitterWeibo and Pinterest (at the latter, I maintain a growing board of photos of couples of Chinese men and Western women).

Here they are, starting with number five:

#5: We’re Going Home — To China

This announcement of our homecoming to China attracted your attention — and quite a few pageviews!

#4: “Why Us?”: More on Discrimination and Marriage to a Chinese Man

John and I faced some challenges this year, and in an attempt to find meaning in our circumstances, I asked myself a certain question.

#3: Love or Fetish? On “Yellow Fever” and Creepy/Sketchy Attractions

An online discussion about the idea of “yellow fever” ultimately inspired this post — and a lot of comments from readers like you!

#2: On Dating Chinese Men — Or Why You Shouldn’t Judge After Only One Date

When I discovered a highly ranked post for the search term “dating Chinese men” that was written based on the author’s one and only one date with a fellow, I decided it was time to provide a more balanced view on the Internet and wrote this post with the search term in the title. I also encouraged other bloggers to do the same and they did. I’m now pleased to report that anyone who searches for “dating Chinese men” will find a plethora of positive posts on the subject — and might just change a few minds in the future.

#1: Why Aren’t We Talking More About The Rarity of AMWF?

Also inspired by the online discussion regarding “yellow fever”, one of the commentators posed this provocative question — and led me to blog about it.

How I had mistaken a Winter Solstice family recipe for tangyuan

11496262656_7f543f100c_nAll these years, I had it wrong.

Whenever my husband mentioned the sesame balls they ate for Winter Solstice, I imagined a version of tangyuan, those delicious glutinous rice balls stuffed with sweet sesame or red bean paste traditionally served in parts of Southern China. Except John called them sesame balls or máqiú (麻球), not tangyuan. Maybe máqiú was just another name for tangyuan in the local dialect?

But then Saturday night I watched my mother-in-law prepare máqiú in her kitchen and had a double take. She dropped balls of glutinous rice dough straight into the boiling water without even filling them. Had she lost her mind? Where was the muss and fuss of filling the dough with sesame paste that I had to slog through all these years in the US?

When she fished them out of the boiling water and then rolled them in the black sesame seeds and sugar until every inch of the dough was covered in that sweet, black coating, that’s when I realized it. It was my mistake, not hers.

Sesame balls just fresh from the wok, coated in sesame seeds and sugar.

“Here, eat them while they’re hot,” my mother-in-law said as she pressed a steaming bowl of them into my hands.

“But that’s it?” I said, my face almost flushed with embarrassment. Could she tell that I had mistaken tangyuan for máqiú all along?

“Eh, it’s simpler! You don’t need to worry about all that trouble of filling them.”

Oh, I knew all about the trouble of filling them. All those years in the US, I had slaved hours upon hours to make so-called máqiú — never realizing the actual recipe was so easy and fast.

Sometimes, family traditions get lost in translation when you’ve never experienced them. I only learned about máqiú through long-distance phone conversations with John’s family over the years and through John himself (who definitely missed a few important details in his descriptions!).

Happy holidays from me and the family!

But aren’t you bound to misunderstand when you learn something secondhand? Today during our huge Solstice dinner, I tried explaining some of the foods we used to eat for Christmas — cranberry sauce, turkey and mashed sweet potatoes. How do you explain “cranberry sauce” to them when they’ve never even seen the actual berries at the heart of this sweet-and-tart holiday delight? How you can you describe the aroma of a turkey fresh from the oven when they’ve never eaten turkey and don’t have an oven? Even though sweet potatoes are native to this region, chances are they’ve never tried anything like my creamy, buttery sweet potato and parsnip mash. I wonder what went through their minds when I described Christmas dinners of the past?

Well, you live and learn — especially when you’re living with family. And actually, I’m kind of relieved about what I just learned. Never again will I have to mess around with filling rice dough in the name of tradition. Woo-hoo!

Happy holidays!

Winter Solstice Máqiú Recipe

I think of máqiú as “inside-out tangyuan” or even “tangyuan without the filling fuss”. They’re easy, delicious and a wonderful way to celebrate the holidays. They’re best eaten hot or steaming.

This comes straight from my mother-in-law, who approaches the whole process intuitively — hence, the lack of exact amounts.

Ingredients:

For the sesame coating:
Sugar
Black sesame seeds

For the rice balls:
Glutinous rice flour
Cold water
Oil (to protect your hands)

Toast your sesame seeds, then place them in a bowl. Toss them with sugar of your choice until sweet, and adjust according to your taste preference. Put the bowl of sugar/sesame seeds aside. (Note: this step can be done a day or two in advance).

Mix the glutinous rice flour with just enough cold water so the flour begins to stick together, but not more than that. You don’t want your flour to be too watery, so err on the side of less and then add small amounts of water as needed to clump the dough together.

Rub oil of choice on your hands. Pick up a small amount of dough — just enough to put in the palm of your hand — and squeeze it back and forth between your hands until the dough sticks together. Then, with as little pressure as possible (too much pressure will cause the dough to fall apart), roll the dough between your hands until it becomes a nice ball. Shoot for balls around 1 inch in size, give or take. Repeat until you’ve used up all the dough.

Boil water in a large pot or wok over the oven. Add the glutinous rice balls to the boiling water, and boil them until they float to the top.

Once you’re ready to fish them out, bring over the sesame seed/sugar mixture. After you remove the glutinous rice balls from the water, immediately roll them in the sesame seed/sugar mixture until fully coated. (Note: if you’re not sure that you’ve added enough sugar, sample your first one to determine whether it’s too sweet or not sweet enough). Repeat until you’ve coated every ball. Serve immediately.

How to spend Christmas in China with your Chinese family

A Very Chinese Christmas Stocking

What do you do when no one else notices Christmas is coming? That’s what it’s like here in China’s countryside as I spend December with my husband’s family — a family that never had the tradition to celebrate this holiday.

Well, I say — if they can’t bring the holiday to you, you bring the holiday to them. So this year, I’m giving my Chinese family a taste of Christmas…with some inevitable Chinese characteristics.

1. Pull out the old Christmas tree. There’s nothing that says Christmas quite like a tree — and fortunately, they’re easy enough to find in larger cities in China. Back when I first lived in China, I bought a fake Christmas tree from a local supermarket and it followed me through the years…until I left, and it was left at my inlaws’ home. Well, turns out they stored it all these years and it’s still lovely enough to bring me some holiday cheer. I plan to decorate it with the supply of Chinese-style ornaments I’ve acquired over the years, and can’t wait to see it shining brightly on Christmas Eve.

2. Stream holiday music online. One of the best gifts anyone living in China can have is a fully functional Internet connection. Find your favorite online station and stream holiday music, if available (I’m impartial to Folk Alley’s holiday stream myself). And if you’re really ambitious, use it to teach your family a few favorite Christmas carols.

3. Serve your family a Christmas dinner. Isn’t eating half the pleasure of the holidays? And everyone has to eat — so your family in China surely won’t protest if you suggest doing dinner for Christmas or Christmas Eve.

Of course, I can’t make exactly the same dinner my mom or grandma used to make. Here in China, I have a toaster oven and a cupboard full of ingredients completely different from those I used in the US. But I can always improvise. For example, Chinese haw fruit makes a wonderful substitute for cranberries and they’re widely available in China during the winter. Instead of the chocolate cake I hoped to make (sorry, no cocoa powder in the supermarket), I’ll flavor it with the mandarin oranges that are so plentiful nearly everyone in the village gives me a few when I visit. Ham is a traditional Christmas roast not commonly found in China, but I can make something else from pork (my husband insists on ribs, who can blame him?).

But if, say, you can’t live without cranberries at the table, then head to one of China’s online stores. Yes, Virginia, you can buy dried cranberries in China…though it will cost much, much more.

4. Spread some generosity. The Christmas season is all about giving…so why not give a little something back to your family in the form of some gift? It doesn’t have to be expensive either, just something to show your generosity and love. I’m planning on setting up some “Christmas hats” (using the plethora of knitted hats around the house in place of Christmas stockings) and stuffing them with some candies from the local supermarket.

If you’re in China, how are you planning to celebrate Christmas? Or if you’ve spent Christmas in China, what did you do? Share your experiences or ideas in the comments!

UPDATED – From the Archives: On being slow, timing and more

Motorcycle parked in front of a Chinese home in the countryside

UPDATE on 12/15/13: My host finally determined the issue — a server problem! She’s going to move my site to a new server, which will solve the issue. Will keep you updated!

Right now, I know slow. This site is currently experiencing some frustratingly sluggish loading times and I have NO idea why. While I work with my host to diagnose the problem, I’m pulling a few entries on slow times from the archives — and giving my apologies for stepping back temporarily. I’ll return this Monday with some fresh content!

On my Chinese husband’s time. When John showed up late once again one evening, I wondered: How was it that my husband and I seemed to run on entirely different clocks?

My husband, almost switched at birth. Yes, it’s true — the neighbors suggested my husband’s parents swap him for their daughter. Fortunately, the timing didn’t work out for this one!

What if my husband was the only child? My husband is the youngest of three — born at just the right time, before the one-child policy.  But I wondered, what would it be like if he was an only child?