One Western woman with a Chinese husband makes sense of China 洋媳妇谈中国
Posted in Memoirs of a Yangxifu in China on Mar 11th, 2010
What happens when your company in China forgets you? They had forgotten my Ayi, forgotten the contracts of many current workers. And then, they forgot me and my contract.
Posted in Memoirs of a Yangxifu in China on Mar 9th, 2010
When you live as a foreigner in China, sometimes you can’t help but feel like a child. Maybe it’s because you can’t speak the language — or stumble through it, like a toddler playing with sounds and words. Maybe it’s because you don’t read the signs, and feel as lost as a little kid, abandoned [...]
Posted in Memoirs of a Yangxifu in China on Mar 3rd, 2010
My Chinese boyfriend, John, faced a seemster of dormitory despair — while I helplessly looked on.
Posted in Memoirs of a Yangxifu in China on Mar 2nd, 2010
By December 2002, I had seen a lot of things at the Chinese Internet company in Hangzhou, where I worked. But spamming wasn’t one of them — until, in mid-December, when my supervisor, Mr. Fang, had a talk with me.
I was already worried when Mr. Fang asked me to follow him to the conference room. [...]
Posted in Memoirs of a Yangxifu in China on Mar 1st, 2010
As a foreigner in China, sometimes you touch people in ways you never realized. Something you say or do in a moment — a small, forgettable thing to you — becomes a lasting impression to someone else.
I didn’t think much about swimming at the Chenjinglun pool in Hangzhou. I’d been going there since September. By [...]
Posted in Memoirs of a Yangxifu in China on Feb 24th, 2010
When you’re a foreigner in China, the most common phrase you might hear is: “Can you teach me English?” Your foreign face is like a walking advertisement that new friends or friends of friends can’t help but answer — because they live in a world where English could determine their future, or change their destiny.
Chinese [...]
Posted in Memoirs of a Yangxifu in China on Feb 23rd, 2010
In Chinese traditional medicine, there is a saying: anger hurts your liver, melancholy hurts your lungs, thinking hurts your spleen, happiness hurts your heart. The thing is, we are all angry, melancholy, happy, or just thinking at different times in life. What hurts is when we do it too much, without balance.
John, my Chinese boyfriend, [...]
Posted in Memoirs of a Yangxifu in China on Feb 22nd, 2010
Tang, the famous calligrapher and painter, and his wife, Zhang — my next door neighbors — lived a world as intentional as the eccentric style of Tang’s calligraphy scrolls that decorated the walls of their apartment. Tang painted and wrote calligraphy, often for dignitaries, officials, the elite — and they reciprocated lavishly. How did I [...]
Posted in Memoirs of a Yangxifu in China on Feb 18th, 2010
As October 2002 went on, I fell deeper in love with my Chinese boyfriend, John, and found a new sense of belonging through lunches with Zhang Bin.
Yet, was I just fooling myself, to think I could masquerade as a local? I am a foreign woman. My face, hair and larger, curvier body made me a [...]
Posted in Memoirs of a Yangxifu in China on Feb 17th, 2010
When you have a Chinese boyfriend, you have a strange sensation, perhaps the first since your arrival to China — that maybe you’re not so foreign, or so different. The way John spoke to me, and cared for me, made me feel — if only for a moment here and there — that we were [...]
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One Western woman with a Chinese husband makes sense of China 洋媳妇谈中国
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