The Sanshi’erli Scare: Over Thirty and Still A Student?

A desk with a textbook open with a pen and ruler on it.
"Won't you graduate already?" That's the pressure my Chinese husband felt from family and friends, wondering why he was over thirty, with no career or children. (photo by shno)

My Chinese husband John shot me his weary, it’s-way-too-late-on-Sunday look. I expected him to vent about his PhD studies the way he always did when he appeared tired — the homework, the papers, the feeling that you’re always, despite your best efforts, just a little behind. Behind it all, though, I always felt his passion, his love for the path he’d chosen — to become a clinical psychologist.

But not tonight. “I’m tired of being a student,” he sighed.

I dashed into the living room, as if his words signaled some emergency, that his lifelong passion needed life support. “What do you mean?” I asked, staring into his eyes for signs of something, anything, that could tell me what was wrong.

He hid himself behind a generic smile, the kind that doesn’t really mean he’s happy. “My cousin is my age. He is settled down and has a family.”

“So? Your cousin also will never be able to do what you can do after graduating.”

He grinned, and with just one glance I had a feeling this problem went far beyond his cousin. “I’m too old,” he said. Continue reading “The Sanshi’erli Scare: Over Thirty and Still A Student?”

Ask the Yangxifu: Language Barriers in Love

An English Dictionary
Sara Jaaksola offers insight from her own relationship with a Chinese man on what to do when language barriers get in the way of your love.

Over a month ago, Jin Feng asked me if I could share some advice on a special kind of relationship between Chinese men and Western women — where language poses a problem. 

I said “sure, I’ll do it.” But then faced a problem of my own. How could I write about this? After all, the closest I came to this happened in my relationship with Frank — but even then, I spoke decent enough Chinese that communication didn’t really get in the way.

So I decided to turn to Sara Jaaksola at Living a Dream in China, who you might call an “expert” in this — she and her Chinese boyfriend literally have trouble speaking the same language. Many thanks to Sara for stepping in to help out! Read on for her advice. Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Language Barriers in Love”

Finding Friends With Married Chinese Women

A Chinese girl sitting next to a Western girl
A birthday dinner in August reminded me of the value of friendships with Chinese women. (photo by ophelia cherry)

In early August, my Chinese husband and I invited five of our closest Chinese friends to celebrate my birthday a week late. We met at a Thai restaurant in Hangzhou. And while I longed for the piquant curries, I never realized I longed for something else even more until that evening.We happened to discuss the wedding between Min and Lao Da, who just married at the end of May. I really wanted to know about what they did to plan their ceremony. I had asked Lao Da about this almost two months earlier, but he dismissed the subject by saying his wife handled most of this.

When I approached Min about the process, she started dressing down Lao Da before she even got to the topic of dresses.“He did almost nothing to help!” she moaned, her eyebrows furrowed behind her geek-chic black frames. “I kept on trying to get him involved, but he didn’t. He always told me not to worry, that it wasn’t a problem. But we had all of these details to take care of and it was hard not to worry!” Continue reading “Finding Friends With Married Chinese Women”

Ask the Yangxifu: Six Western Women of the Past who Married Chinese Men

Louise Van Arnam Huie, with husband Huie Kin
Louise Van Arnam Huie, with husband Huie Kin (photo from http://www.huiekin.org)

mali asks:

I just came across this book Grace an American in China with a foreign woman marrying a Chinese man in the 1930s and going to China. I thought it was pretty cool that they had their relationship then…wow that must have been so hard!! So I wondered if you knew about other actual women like her that married Chinese in the past?

I sure do. You might call them our “yangxifu grandmothers,” the Western women who paved the way for the rest of us to love and marry Chinese men (and often at great cost to their own lives). Here’s a list of six prominent women I know of — including Grace: Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Six Western Women of the Past who Married Chinese Men”

Ask the Yangxifu: My Chinese Boyfriend is Too Critical

A close up of a network monitoring program with a critical alarm displayed.
When her Chinese boyfriend gets very critical with her, a Western woman wonders, is this normal, and what should I do? (photo by Rob Rosenhamer)

Anna asks:

I came to China about six months ago with the intention of staying for four years to study at University. Three months ago, I met my current boyfriend — Chinese, 24, owns his own hair salon — although we’ve only been “officially together” for roughly two weeks.

He’s from Henan, and his parents are very poor farmers, so he was never able to get a good education and some of our outlooks on life are very different (although we value that about each other). He’s very bright and intelligent, though, and he’s always been the sweetest person to me. He’ll even accompany my classmates and I to the bars and clubs on weekends, and doesn’t mind hanging around the international dorms even though he can’t speak any English. Point is, he’s a great guy.

I’m a digital artist, and a few days ago I showed him some of my artwork. He said he really liked it, and asked if I could do a digital portrait of him. Of course I said okay, and went straight to work that night. I worked really hard, and it turned out really well. I was so excited to show it to him! But… when I did… all he could say was, “You made me look too old. I look 53. I don’t really like it… did you make any others?”

My Chinese is just intermediate, so for a minute I thought he was just joking around and trying to be humorous. But then I realized he was dead serious. Now… I don’t really mind so much that he didn’t like the picture… everyone has their own tastes… and although, to me, he doesn’t look 53 but in fact looks younger, I understand that he might have a different perspective.

What I DON’T understand is why he was so critical about it right off the bat! He often offers me those scolding-words-of-encouragement that I’ve come to appreciate… but he’s never been so directly negative before, especially about a gift. He really hurt my feelings. Is it normal/cultural for Chinese boys to be so harsh about these sort of things? Did we cross into the super-critical-is-okay boundary when we declared ourselves official? He really hurt my feelings… but I don’t want to make a big fuss if it’s jut something normal. The last thing I want is to seem petty to him. What should I think? What should I do? Has anyone else had a similar experience? Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: My Chinese Boyfriend is Too Critical”

My Chinese In-laws’ No-Drama Goodbye

A rubber yellow hand on a stick, as if waving goodbye
The way my Chinese in-laws said goodbye to John and I, it could have been any other morning. But it wasn't -- we were leaving for the US, for another two years. (photo by Alexandre Caliman)

It looked like every other morning when I’d left my Chinese in-laws’ home this summer. My Chinese mother-in-law grumbled about how large our bags were, but then proceeded to push more honey pears and mooncakes into our backpacks. As usual, my Chinese father-in-law paced around the first floor like an expectant father – and only stopped when we climbed into my oldest brother-in-law’s car. Through the window, they appeared with the same calm and content face I remembered every morning, pushing heaping plates of breakfast my way (on this day, I had vegetarian dumplings stuffed with tofu and pickled vegetables and sweet fried rice pancakes) while asking why I’d risen so late from bed.

But this was not just any morning. John and I left his home for the US – which meant we wouldn’t see his family for another two years. When I waved at my Chinese mother-in-law and father-in-law through the window, that was the closest to a “goodbye” that we had.

As I thought about that moment over and over at Shanghai Pudong Airport, I couldn’t help but wonder – is that all there is? Continue reading “My Chinese In-laws’ No-Drama Goodbye”

Featured in Global Times Article: On the Fast Track to Love

Champagne glasses, toasting at the beach
The Global Times featured me in a recent article titled "On the Fast Track to Love." (photo by Roger Kirby)

I’m on the fast track back to the US (I’ll be hopping a plane back there on Tuesday, August 16). That’s why I’m late to tell you about my latest appearance in the news — a Global Times article titled On the Fast Track to Love, a story about cross-cultural speed dating. Here are a few quotes from me in the article:

For some, the attraction comes from an interest in their partner’s culture. “I’ve always felt more comfortable in the company of Chinese men, since their culture is more in tune with who I am,” US born Jocelyn Eikenburg, an English/Chinese translator who married a Chinese man and blogs about intercultural relationships, said, adding that she’s actually “incredibly shy and not so direct with people.”

For many Westerners, saying “I love you” is a big step in a relationship, a sign that you are really serious and invested; while love is usually implied among Chinese couples through actions such as sending you all the way to the door of your apartment, Eikenburg said.

“When Chinese do verbalize their feelings, they tend to use softer terms than what we are used to, such as ‘I like you’ because the word for love packs quite a punch in Chinese,” she added. “Not surprisingly, many Chinese with foreigners actually feel more comfortable saying ‘I love you’ in a foreign language.”

Check out the full article online. And if you love it, share it. Thanks!

My Chinese Husband’s Cousin, Looking For a Western Wife to Brag About

Wang, my Chinese husband’s cousin, seemed to have it all. A lucrative job as a real estate developer. Two new BMWs. Expensive suits. Nothing about him suggested his countryside roots — the same mountain village as my husband, where people still planted their own rice paddies, used wood-burning stoves, and had free-range chickens scurrying in and out of their houses.

But when he volunteered his silver BMW sedan as our wedding car in 2007 (of course, he couldn’t help but boast “oh, if you had mentioned this sooner, I could have prepared my bigger and better BMW.”), he discovered he was missing the ultimate accessory of all — a Western wife.

“He told me he wanted to find a yangxifu,” my husband recalled. “He asked if we could introduce him to some Western women.”

But we didn’t. Sure, we didn’t know any single Western women in China, since by then we lived in the US for nearly two years. But even if we did, introducing them to Wang had the kind of cheap, mail-order-bride feel to it that no friend would get their friend into. After all, he didn’t really care who she was, so long as she was foreign.

It’s just like I read over a year ago in a study about What Western Women Think of Chinese Men:

Those [Chinese] men with Western girlfriends or wives will brag about them, as if these women were a BMW.

Wang already had two BMWs to show off, but no such Western wife — never thinking, of course, that a wife, any wife, should never become a man’s bling.

“People who think this way have no suzhi,” my husband said as he frowned, using the word that Chinese often use to refer to the quality of people — which, in this case, was not much at all. “They turn their wives into objects, and  try to show they are better than others in such a low way.”

Still, Wang could have gone much lower, as we learned two years ago while visiting the Kaifeng Night Market. After we bought almond tea from a stall run by lanky twentysomething wearing a white kufi — the hat worn by the Muslim Hui minority in China — he nudged my husband. “Hey, do you think you could get me a foreign wife? I could buy her a house and a car.”

John grinned as he shook his head. “It’s not that simple. Western women have different expectations.”

Then the lanky guy leaned over and whispered something in my husband’s ear — which John told me about later. “He said his penis is very strong.”

What do you think about this?

Ask the Yangxifu: Opposite-Sex Friendships in China

An American woman wonders, can people of the opposite sex still be friends in China? (photo by Edwin Pijpe)

Eleanor asks:

I’ve recently befriended a Chinese student here in the US. I lived in China for 2 years and speak Chinese more or less fluently, but my grasp of Chinese friendship/dating culture is still pretty basic. He and I have talked about exploring the possibility of being more than friends, but both of us agreed to take more time to get to know each other just as friends for now and not to rush anything. I think there’s an obvious undercurrent of attraction between us, and I’m worried that if we decided we were unsuitable romantically that he would back off friendship-wise as well. In China, I didn’t see many opposite-sex friendships (besides with high school aged kids), and I worry if we don’t end up dating that I would lose him as a friend too. I like and respect this guy a lot, so I hope you can reassure me that our friendship can continue even if one of us finds someone else. Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Opposite-Sex Friendships in China”

Five Things Taiwanese Idol Dramas Say About Love in China

Down With Love Taiwanese Idol Drama promotional poster
What do Taiwanese Idol Dramas -- such as "Down With Love" -- say about love in China? (image from wikimedia commons)

This year, I’ve enjoyed a summer of love — if, by love, you mean the love portrayed in Taiwanese Idol Dramas. I got hooked sometime in June on Down With Love. Before I knew it, I tuned in for parts of Romantic Princess, Sunshine Angel, Miss No Good, They Kiss Again and even Taiwan’s version of Honey and Clover.

The more I watched, the more I realized these shows have something to say about love in China. Here are five things I noticed. Continue reading “Five Things Taiwanese Idol Dramas Say About Love in China”