Articles | Speaking of China

Coming Up: My Shocking Reveal + A Call For Help

It’s no exaggeration when I say that this week is the most important week in my nearly seven years of blogging.

I am preparing to reveal a very shocking behind-the-scenes story in my personal life that has been going on for over three years. Yes, you read that right. Three years.

As excited as I am to come forward with our story, I’m also incredibly nervous because I’m going to be asking for your help.

Asking for help is such a vulnerable experience. But imagine asking others for help with what could quite possibly be the most important challenge you’ve ever faced in your life. So yes, I’m a total ball of nerves right now!

You’ll have to wait until later this week for the full reveal. The photo I’ve included in this post is the only clue I’ll provide you:

In the next few weeks, note that I also may be posting more off schedule. You can always count on posts from me every week; I just might be posting on different days other than Monday/Friday and I might post only once or several times.

Let me end this by sharing with you my extraordinary gratitude for your readership. You’ve made this blog possible. You presence has inspired me in so many ways — including to reach out to you and share one of the most important stories of my life. Thank you for reading, commenting, subscribing, sharing and just being there for me. It means so much.

Stay tuned for the big reveal and thank you.

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Photo Essay: OMG, They’ve Torn Down Our Family Home in China!

Okay, so the headline is a little exaggerated…but it’s true. Our family home in the countryside has been torn down.

Still, it’s for a positive reason — the family wants to rebuild the home. Fair enough.

I never expected to have such an up close and personal experience with home renovations — to actually witness the destruction of a house while I was walking out the door. (Yes, true story — I had to dodge old wooden planks raining down from the roof the very morning they began tearing down the house.)

So here’s a behind-the-scenes look into what it takes to tear down a countryside home in China. Or at least, in the China I know:

The morning when it all began, bright and early.

OMG, the roof is almost gone!

Once they razed the home to the ground, all that remained was this motley assortment of rocks. Whoa.

And this is all that’s left of the home I once knew.

Good thing we spend most of our time in Hangzhou, because the renovations will get messy and noisy in the next few weeks.

I’ll keep you posted. 🙂

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Remembering My Mother, Who Never Knew Me After China, and My Grandma (From the Archives)

If you follow me on Facebook, then you already know my grandma passed away recently. The funeral services took place during this past weekend — but I couldn’t leave China to attend. I was incredibly close to my grandma growing up. Now that she’s gone, it’s like the end of an era in my life. A truly bittersweet time.

It’s always hard when you choose to move abroad and end up missing things like this. I had hoped I could have returned to the US and seen her at least one last time before she left this world.

Sigh.

When I think of my grandma, I can’t help but think of my mother too. I lost her when I was only 17 — which means my mother never had a chance to know the person I became after coming to China.

As mother’s day draws to a close for many of you in the West, I thought I’d share this essay I penned for the Wall Street Journal, titled Mom, If Only You Could Have Known the Expat I’ve Become. Here’s an excerpt:

My heart aches as I stare down at my old Dr. Seuss Cat-in-the-Hat doll, now covered in splotches of mold. I chastise myself for burying it in the closet: How had I forgotten about the ferocious humidity of Hangzhou, the Chinese city I once called my home and whose climate ultimately claimed this most precious of childhood relics from my late mother. She never imagined this doll would follow me to China.

I was only 17 years old when she died of cancer. At the time, there was nothing to suggest I would end up in China, though China would eventually become a part of me, giving me a home, a career, and a husband.

It has been a busy and mournful time for me. But I’ll be back next week with fresh content.

In the meantime, hold your loved ones a little closer and cherish their presence in your life. You never know when they’ll be gone.

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Saluting Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month

(Photograph by Williams + Hirakawa, via http://www.lamag.com)

It’s May and that means it’s Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month once again!

Since I’ve had an exceptionally eventful past week (one that unfortunately included me throwing up the other night…yikes!), I thought I’d take this time to dig into the archives and instead honor some of the fine Asian-Pacific American writers who have contributed to this blog over the past year.

That 4th of July When I Met My White Girlfriend’s Racist Grandpa. A smashing post from the fab blogger Big Asian Package with one of my favorite quotes (“You’re Chinese, I know you are,” he says quietly, triumphantly, like he’s got me checkmated.)

Fair to Say Asian Men Prefer White Women? This compelling post from Big Asian Package was one of the top guest posts for 2015, and is it any wonder with a topic like that?

How I Came to Write Gay (Asian Male/Western Male) Romance Novels. Author Atom Yang‘s pathway to publication “took a lot of heartbreak, time, and eventually meeting the man of [his] dreams.”

On Sex Education in China’s Tang Dynasty Era. Sex is always a hot topic, and this post from author Weina Dai Randel — complete with a few blush-worthy moments — doesn’t disappoint.

I’ll be back next week with a fresh new post!

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Why I Don’t Like Going to Wedding Banquets in China

In China, there’s nothing that strikes fear into my heart quite like the phrase, “Let’s attend a wedding.”

I should know. A little over a week ago, I was worried when my husband’s old classmate was about to have a wedding banquet – and kept insisting that I simply had to come.

My palms started to sweat and visions of wedding banquets from hell in China flashed through my mind.

(Sadly, almost every wedding banquet I’ve experienced was pretty hellish in one way or another…)

The classmate tried really, really hard to persuade me to come. He offered to take care of everything that worried me about weddings, promising things would be different this time.

As much as I knew he was a nice guy, and as much as my husband trusted him so much he called him a “brother”, I wasn’t exactly buying it.

It’s not that I didn’t believe in his hospitality. It’s just that I know better about weddings in China. I know the drill. I’ve been there and done that. And I never, ever, want to go again if I can help it.

Here are my 3 reasons why I really dislike going to weddings and wedding banquets in China:

#1: I’m a vegetarian, which means I won’t have anything to eat

Wedding banquets in China are renowned for being extravagant feasts, with more dishes than everyone could humanly consume.

In theory, nobody should leave the table hungry.

But I, on the other hand, have left most wedding banquets in various states of hunger. At best, slightly hungry and requiring an additional snack; or at worst, so famished I ended up leaving the banquet hall before the affair was over.

That’s because wedding banquets almost exclusively serve up the finest meat and seafood dishes, while I’m a vegetarian (vegan actually) pining for something that’s not on the menu.

In China, people assume everyone eats meat, seafood and even eggs – and can’t imagine that there are people like me with special dietary needs. It’s such a problem that even dishes that technically ought to be vegetarian – like Chinese kale or tofu – end up being prepared with non-vegetarian ingredients like lard, ground pork or oyster sauce.

It’s bad enough to come for dinner and find there’s nothing for you to eat. But it’s pure torture to watch everyone else at the table blissfully devour their dinner while your stomach grumbles in vain.

Unfortunately, I’ve had this experience a few too many times at weddings in China. It’s enough for me to mentally link the occasion with “starvation” in my mind – and want nothing to do with wedding banquets in China.

Now, my husband’s friend did promise he would have commissioned the kitchen to prepare all the vegetarian dishes my heart desired. That was incredibly generous of him to offer. Still, that wasn’t enough to tempt me, because it’s not just the food that makes weddings in China so aversive to me…

#2: People usually smoke at wedding banquets in China, and I hate secondhand smoke

My husband and I are both fervent nonsmokers. We detest secondhand smoke and don’t want it crapping up the dining table – including when we eat out.

Well, it’s common practice at weddings in China to pass out cigarettes, guaranteeing most of the people there will light up. (And guaranteeing that if I were there, I would be coughing and hacking in agony.)

True to form, they distributed the Zhonghua brand smokes at my husband’s classmate’s wedding. My husband reported that the banquet hall was mired in a noxious cloud of smoke. Yuck!

#3: Weddings in China can be huge, overwhelming events — and I prefer small, quiet affairs

I’m an introverted, quiet kind of gal. I prefer long hikes in the mountains, lazy afternoons writing articles on my own, or reading a fantastic book all morning. I’m not a big party person, but when I do go I usually end up in the most low-key place with a handful of people to talk with – generally the kitchen. Loud noises unsettle me and crowds make me nervous.

In other words, I’m not at all suited for the kind of atmosphere you’ll find at most wedding banquets in China. You know, packed with at least 100 (and often more) people and often so noisy it’s difficult to carry on a conversation at the table.

Indeed, I’ve left more than a few wedding banquets in China wishing I’d just spent that time reading a good book instead.

How do you feel about wedding banquets in China?

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3 Fun Things About Learning Your Partner’s Obscure Language or Dialect

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about deciding whether or not to learn the dialect when your family doesn’t speak Mandarin Chinese.

Well, I chose to learn my husband’s local dialect, and now I can proudly say I’m proficient in many of the common conversational phrases. It’s amazing to finally connect with my husband’s family and friends in the local dialect.

But more than that, learning your partner’s obscure language or dialect can also be a LOT of fun, as I’ve discovered.

Here are 3 reasons why:

#1: Being able to talk privately when you travel with your partner

My husband’s entire home county has a population of only 400,000 people. Most folks there are also homebodies, preferring to stay close to family.

So when we travel outside the county, the chances of actually running into someone from there – especially if we go abroad – are practically nil.

That makes speaking my husband’s local dialect our go-to language to express anything we’d rather keep private. You know, like the fact that I find my husband’s butt very sexy… 😉

#2: Making the family laugh, because they never expected to hear you say THAT in their language

There’s nothing quite like watching my mother-in-law giggle when she hears me say “I’m going to wash clothes” or “I can’t eat this” in the local dialect.

Yes, plain, everyday phrases like that suddenly become hilarious whenever I speak them in front of family (even my husband). And it’s all because it’s so odd to see me – a white American woman – using the local dialect.

(I have to admit, sometimes even I have to laugh when I speak in it. Never in a million years did I imagine myself learning this language, one that had once seemed impossible and completely unintelligible to me!)

#3: Finally being able to follow conversations around the family dinner table

One of the reasons I used to dread visiting my husband’s family was the fact that I got really, really bored sitting around the table at dinner. After all, everyone would fall into the local dialect – the preferred language – and I couldn’t understand a single word.

Not so anymore.

Nowadays, I understand more than 60 percent of the conversations in local dialect – and whatever I don’t understand, I can usually figure out by the context. (I still can’t believe how much I’ve learned!)

Although, this can sometimes qualify as “not so fun after all” when the conversations happen to involve something intensely personal (like, say, how the family is wondering aloud when you’re finally going to have kids – which happens more than you might think!).

Ah well. Better to hear it firsthand than filtered through someone else, right?

What do you think?

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More on Weathering Those Cross-Cultural Differences in Your Relationship

I’ve been happily married for over a decade to someone from another country and culture. And like many folks in my shoes, sometimes I forget how far I’ve come from the early days in my relationship…from those arguments, misunderstandings, and stumbles to where John and I are now.

I was reminded of this after seeing the following comment:

I took the chance to read once more your post on cultural differences in intercultural relationships, especially today since I am back to South France after a week spent in Tokyo; I was there for work, commuting everyday from my boyfriend’s place (he is from Inner Mongolia, now living and working in Japan).

It was a hard week, under many aspects. I will quit my present job and move to Japan in August this year, and we already made plans for the future, everything is almost set, but last week we often discussed over each other’s “domestic” habits.

I wanted to ask if you, or your husband, ever felt that the other, sometimes, does not think/understand that there is always “another side of the coin” speaking of how things should be done or viewed. I feel this way, now, but also believe some time together, only the two of us, and at a normal rhythm, is what we need.

Oh, believe me, I’ve been there.

When my husband and I first started living with each other full time in Shanghai, we definitely had our share of ups and downs:

Like the weather, relationships have their own rapid fluctuations — as I have discovered in this month. In only a few minutes, your congenial conversation might end with the thundering echo of a slamming door, just as ours did a few weeks ago, when John and I were sitting on the bed after eating dinner. I bolted down the street to my yoga class, hoping the asanas would help to cloud over the events of the evening. But in the end my eyes let out a deluge of tears. And, to my surprise, when I came out of the gym, there was John sitting on the steps, ready to clear the skies with an apologetic embrace.

This wasn’t the only inclement moment this month. Frankly, not a week has gone by without some petty quarrel — and it has brought me into a strange fog of anxiety and depression.

I should have seen it coming. We’ve both been burdened with a potentially explosive combination of ingredients: John with his thesis and test preparation; me with applying for John’s green card and my work. Throw into that your standard communication gaps between men and women plus cultural misunderstandings, and you’ve got a volatile combination that even the sturdiest chemistry lab hood couldn’t protect you from.

Ironically, I least expected cultural differences to get in the way of my relationship with John. When you’re in love with someone from another culture, when you treat them as your equal, it’s easy to forget that you learned different ways to respond to problems, and different ways to communicate.

Whenever people start living together full time, I think there’s always going to be an adjustment period for everyone. You’re seeing more of that person, right down to those everyday home behaviors you didn’t really see before (like how they deal with chores at home). But when you add cultural differences into the mix, you’re dealing with a whole lot more.

As I wrote above, sometimes I didn’t even think about the cultural differences — when I probably should have acknowledged them more. John and I had different expectations for a lot of things we had initially overlooked, such as how to tackle and resolve conflicts. Tempers flared and sometimes we said things we shouldn’t have. (Ouch.)

Honestly, I think it took us a few years to work out those “kinks” in our relationship and really get to a place where we understood each other. Where we were willing to listen and adjust how we responded to each other. Where we could, as the commenter referenced above, acknowledge that there was more than one way to do things. (For example, John learned how I liked to be talked to during an argument, while I learned to tone down my anger and control my temper.)

Getting to that point takes time, patience and a willingness to make things better. And sometimes it doesn’t happen through conversations alone. Early on in our relationship, I remember how watching American movies and TV with John actually deepened his understanding of my own habits. (Like how I love to spontaneously dance around the house whenever I hear a great song. 😉 ).

To all of the cross-cultural and international couples just starting out, I wish you lots of understanding in your journey to marital bliss. John and I weathered those hardships starting out in our marriage…I know you can too. 🙂

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Photo Essay: Making Treats for the Tomb-Sweeping Festival (Qingming Jie)

This weekend it’s a holiday in China — The Tomb-Sweeping Festival (or Qingming Jie). And since I’ve caught the flu, I could use a short holiday from writing! So I’m sharing with you some photos from the holiday — specifically, some pictures of the process of making treats for the Tomb-Sweeping Festival. It’s a tradition here with my family in China. (Note – these pics are from 2014, when I actually helped the family make these turnovers.)

Those are qingming turnovers, which my Chinese mother-in-law makes every year for the holiday. They come in two colors — white and green.

What gives the green ones their color? This common plant, called mugwort:

She boils and pulverizes it, and then mixes the plant together with glutinous rice flour:

It’s amazing how a humble little plant can be transformed into the delicious beginnings of a turnover!

Then we roll them out into dough and start the filling process!

Some of them get filled with black bean paste, and are shaped using this lovely mold:

Some get filled with a savory mix of tofu, bamboo and pickled greens:

Either way, they make for a delicious holiday.

Wishing you all a happy Tomb-Sweeping Festival (Qingming Jie)!

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4 Things I’m Embarrassed to Share About Living with My Chinese In-Laws

The other night, while staying over at my in-laws’ place in the countryside, my husband and I were just about to get ready for bed when it hit us.

Oh crap, we’d left the laundry in the washing machine all afternoon. We’d forgotten to hang it out to dry.

We bounded downstairs to the laundry room with flashlight in hand, and fully expected to spend 10 to 15 minutes doing what we should have done more than six hours ago.

Except, when I ran over to the washing machine, it was empty. Totally empty. And when I turned my head, sure enough, there was our laundry, neatly hung on clothes hangers on a bamboo rack.

As much as I felt relieved that I’d been saved the trouble of doing that laundry this evening, a slight sense of guilt pricked me.

Once again, my mother-in-law had done housework for me. Housework I could have easily done for myself…and should have done, given it was my laundry.

It’s embarrassing to admit that I’m in my thirties and still enjoy laundry assistance from my mother-in-law whenever we stay at her home in the countryside of Zhejiang Province. But it’s true. This sort of thing happens ALL the time.

So in the spirit of being honest, I’m sharing 4 embarrassing things that I’ve experienced with my Chinese in-laws. Here they are:

#1: My mother-in-law will still do laundry for us

Yes, it’s true. My mother-in-law has been known to hang up my clothing left in the washing machine…and she’s even done entire loads of laundry for us.

To be sure, though, I generally don’t ask her to do it. Even I know it’s embarrassing to be in your 30s and have your parents or in-laws do your laundry. (I mean, come on, anyone who has seen Legally Blonde would remember how Elle and Brooke howled over the fact that Warner still took his laundry home to get it cleaned.)

Here’s what usually happens. Either I put the clothing in the washing machine, but stupidly forget to hang it up on time (like I mentioned in the introduction). Or, my mother-in-law grabs my dirty clothing without telling me, and does the entire load for me (this happened ALL THE TIME when I stayed with my in-laws during the summer of 2011).

Sometimes, though, I do ask for her help. The other day, we were in a hurry to leave their house and I had just thrown a load of laundry into the washing machine. So I asked her if she could hang it and she said, “No problem” with a smile.

So now you know one of my biggest dirty secrets.

#2: My mother-in-law cooks all our meals

When we stay with my in-laws at their home, there’s one thing we can count on – three square meals, all home-cooked by my mother-in-law. Always.

This is the complete opposite of how things work at my parents’ home back in the US. There, the assumption is we’re on our own and have to make our own meals (or buy them). Unless, of course, my dad or mom specifically asks us to join them for a meal (or invites us out).

The difference totally blew my husband’s mind.

Anyhow, here at my in-laws’ home in China there’s never any concern about cooking. Everyone knows that when it’s lunch and dinner, my mother-in-law’s voice will echo through the corridors – time to eat! – and we’ll all come bounding down the stairs.

It’s a strange place for me. I spent so many years handling all my cooking (and enjoying much of it). Now, when I’m staying with my in-laws, I just show up to eat at the table.

I have spent some time with my mother-in-law in the kitchen, learning how to cook from her. (She taught me how to make vegan Chinese-style flatbread, for example.) But in many ways, I feel foreign in her kitchen, a feeling that has nothing to do with my nationality, actually. After all, she uses a fire-powered wok to do the majority of her cooking, and I honestly have no idea how to manage the fire. Given how clumsy I am, I might just burn down the kitchen if I tried!

Now that I think about it, maybe it is better to leave the cooking to a woman who won’t cause a conflagration in the kitchen.

#3: My in-laws give us money more often than you think

When a friend of mine — also a Western woman with a Chinese husband – posted in a private chat about how guilty she felt because her mother-in-law gave her some cash to buy a new laptop (her old one crashed), oh, how I could sympathize.

I thought about the many Chinese New Years that had passed since John and I returned to China in late 2013, and how his parents always gave us heaping hongbao filled with more money than adults in the family should have.

I remembered how my mother-in-law handed over an additional stack of bills last year because my husband was starting his business (and she wanted him to have some “lucky money”).

I even thought of the numerous times when my mother-in-law spent money on us that she totally shouldn’t have spent. Like buying those new coats for John for Chinese New Year (which prompted me to buy new clothes to make her happy). Or the comforter she bought for me to stay warm during the winter. Or even the way she purchased all of the basic necessities for our apartment in 2014.

Embarrassing? Absolutely.

#4: We’ve lived with my in-laws. A lot.

In America, the ultimate badge of adulthood is having your own place, separate from mom and dad.

Well, the most embarrassing thing I could mention on this list is the fact that we’ve lived in the same house as my in-laws – for long periods of time.

Even now, we divide our time between an apartment in Hangzhou and their home. Heck, they added an entire suite to the house just for my husband and me, which proves how welcoming they are.

It’s worlds away from America. I can guarantee you that if I asked my American friends and classmates, none of them would say that their parents or in-laws renovated their homes so they could live together. It’s just not done there.

As embarrassing as it is to admit this, I have to confess I’m also grateful. This suite they’ve provided us is symbolic of the incredible support they’ve given me and my husband.

—–

Life isn’t always easy for John and me. But knowing that we have a couple of incredibly loving parents behind us – willing to do things that I’m a little embarrassed to talk about – makes the hard times a little more bearable.

If you’re all grown up, is there anything you’re embarrassed that your parents or in-laws still do for you?

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5 Things I’ve Learned About Farm Animals from China’s Countryside

You could easily call my Chinese in-laws’ home a family farm. There’s a garden out back that supplies the majority of our veggies. Chickens and ducks roam around (and, often, beyond) the front yard. And there’s a guard dog keeping it all together, stationed at the door (and, when we’re eating dinner, under the table).

It’s all a far cry from my childhood home in the Cleveland, Ohio suburbs. And over the years, I’ve learned a thing or two about farm animals.

Here are 5 interesting things I’d like to share with – including the real reason why chickens cross the road (ha ha!):

#1: How to feed a dog scraps from the table, instead of dog food

Back in the US, my neighborhood was a world of golden retrievers, terriers and poodles that lived for those daily helpings of dog food from the supermarket. I couldn’t imagine ever feeding dogs anything else…until I started spending time at my in-laws’ home.

Here, dogs are a mainstay in the house, where my mother-in-law loves them for protecting the house. (Whenever the current dog barks, my husband likes to joke the dog is “on duty”.) But when it’s mealtime, there’s no canned or packaged dog food on the menu. Instead, “Bruiser” (yes, that’s the dog’s name) enjoys leftover bones from the table and/or a mixture of leftover rice/veggies and things like lard, fish remnants, and discarded meat.

Isn’t it odd that, to me, anything but store-bought dog food is unusual? When you think about it, this is how people must have traditionally fed their beloved canine friends. Now that I’ve seen another side of how to feed the family dog, I can’t help but wonder if all that canned pet food is such a good idea.

#2: Shushing the chickens will make them run away

I’ll never forget the first time I heard my mother-in-law saying “shhhhh!” around the house. Who did she need to quiet?

Then I noticed that every time she said this, the chickens would high-tail it out of the room with a glint of fear in their eyes. Like they were caught stealing from the rice stores.

What I’ve learned is that “shhhhh!” sounds threatening to their avian ears, and it’s nearly effective enough on its own to banish them from any room or space. (Sometimes you have to add a hand motion, but they usually get the idea.)

It has become so ingrained in me that I swear if I ever heard “shhhhh” in a library, I might still think of panicky chickens dashing out the door.

#3: Hot ashes can dissolve the most stubborn animal droppings

Okay, okay, so this will probably never end up as a tip in your Good Housekeeping magazine. But trust me, if you have free-range animals around your house – especially chickens and ducks – things can get pretty sticky. (Pun seriously intended.)

Thankfully, when your house happens to have a fire-powered wok (like the family house here) hot ashes are plentiful. Just tip them directly on the pile in question, let it sit for a few minutes, then sweep it away with your broom of choice.

I’ve watched my in-laws do this hundreds of times and it’s almost become second nature to me. Can’t believe it either. Who would have thought that this girl born and raised in the Cleveland, Ohio suburbs would become a pro at tackling animal droppings? 😉

#4: Dogs and chickens can coexist…sort of

No, I swear that’s not a typo. While it doesn’t seem intuitive to keep dogs and chickens together, I know it’s possible because it happens here at my in-laws’ home.

But it can’t happen without a little help and oversight from my mother-in-law. She knows you have to train the dogs. Last year, she had to discipline “Bruiser” a number of times for trying to nip at the free-range chickens. (I also could have sworn that I once caught “Bruiser” with some chicken feathers around the mouth.)

#5: Why the chickens really crossed the road

Who hasn’t heard that time-honored joke? You know, “Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.”

Well, I’ve seen the chickens here cross the road. A lot. And honestly, I don’t think that’s the entire answer.

I know why the chickens really crossed the road. There’s lots of grass, bushes and trees over there, so they can forage for their most favorite food of all – insects and worms.

It’s that simple.

Have you ever lived on a farm or a farm-like home? What have you learned about farm animals?

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