You’re just as likely to hear “Ni Hao” as “Hello” in my home. After living in China for five and a half years, I returned to the US with a Chinese husband, the fluency to be a freelance Chinese translator, and a heaping rice bowl of expressions in Mandarin.
If you’re traveling to China and looking to dig your own linguistic chopsticks into Chinese culture, I recommend these 10 extraordinarily useful phrases.
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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. (photo by Jenny Rollo)
My husband tells me “I love you” all the time. When I’m dashing out the door to the library. Just before we hang up our phone conversation. As we tell each other goodnight under the covers. There’s nothing really strange about it — except that he’s Chinese, and the Chinese don’t usually express love in words.
For the longest time, I figured he had learned to say “I love you” for me — just as he learned to love so many of my favorite things, from aromatic cups of peppermint herbal tea to vegetarian pizzas with soft, focaccia crust.
But sometimes, it’s not what you say, but the language in which you say it.
“Sweetie, it’s not right to suggest a phrase with ‘ài’ in it, right?” I conferred with him the other day while brainstorming an article about the Chinese language, and realizing that ‘ài’ — the word for love — seemed to pack more punch than necessary. “People don’t really say ‘ai’ in everyday life, as I can remember.”
John nodded. “Definitely not. It’s too strong.”
Suddenly, I thought about how often John said ài in English, to me. “But you tell me ‘I love you’ all the time,” I teased him, nudging his arm. I watched my husband’s face wrinkle into an embarrassed laugh, as he shrunk his his chair.
“I’ll bet it’s because you’re saying ‘I love you’ in English, isn’t it?” I continued, pulling playfully at his shoulder.
John kept giggling until he finally gave me one of those “you’ve got me” looks.
All these years, he had hidden his feelings behind English, a language where saying “I love you” just didn’t seem so forbidden. I still welcome “I love you” in my native tongue. But I have a feeling I’ll be waiting some time for a Wǒ’àinǐ (我爱你) from my sweetheart.
Does your Chinese lover or spouse prefer saying “I love you” in English? Or, if you’re Chinese, do you prefer using a foreign language to express your love?
My Chinese husband thinks pain killers are no good. And I think his arguments are just a pain. (photo by Aleksandra P.)
Last Monday night, I tossed and turned half the night from a painful skin infection. By 4:17am, I still hadn’t fallen asleep, and I could feel it throbbing all the way down my thigh. I slipped out of bed and into the living room, knowing exactly what I wanted to do — and why my Chinese husband would be so angry for it the following day. I decided to take a pain killer.
Sure enough, the pain subsided and I finally fell asleep. But when I told my Chinese husband about it the next day, he looked as red as the inflammation on my body.
“Why did you do that?” he admonished me while hovering over the sink, cleaning up the leftover dishes.
“I just couldn’t get to sleep. It was past 4am,” I explained.
From my Chinese husband's perspective, my period meant rest -- even if I felt restless about it! (photo by julian leandro irusta)
Yesterday, I heard that once-monthly command from my Chinese husband. “Think of it as a forced vacation. It’s time for you to xiuxi,” he soothed me, putting a pillow on the couch and coaxing me over to sit down and put my feet up.
“But I have all of these things I haven’t done yet!” I pleaded.
John shook his head. “You need to rest,” he urged me, pointing to the couch.
Eventually, I did go to couch, settling into my usual spot, even as my mind was anything but settled about the idea of resting. You should be writing. You should be answering all of those e-mails. You should be…
If there’s anything I should be, it’s used to this whole routine. John and I have been together through years — and therefore, many, many months of me doing what every woman naturally does once a month. I get the kind of cramps that could drive perfectly normal women to light up their tampons and smoke them, so I should be thinking period equals rest. But right on schedule, just as I begin, so my mind begins the once-monthly protest every time John mentions “rest.”
Tissue anyone? My Chinese husband has sneezing fits in the US, I have them in his family home in China. And our only explanation is shuitu bufu.
Atchoo! Atchoo! Atchoo!
There was my Chinese husband, having a sneezing fit right over our sink. I gave him the usual “bless you” and worried stares of a wife, wondering if this was the harbinger of a bad allergy day for him. And he gave me his usual prognosis on why he had this sneezing problem in the first place.
“In Zhejiang, I never used to sneeze like this,” John lamented, blowing his nose. “I miss the warm, humid air of Jiangnan,” that south of the Yangtze River region, the land of fish, rice and moist air that included his own beloved province.
It sure didn’t help that, in 2008, we moved to a high desert area in the Mountain West of the United States — what you might term a land of tumbleweeds, dust and dry volcanic mountains. But even when we lived in Cleveland, Ohio, right on Lake Erie, my Chinese husband’s nose seemed to ignore the humidity and moisture, and just sneeze away in defiance. Even worse, his skin became so dry and itchy that he scratched out two pear-sized welts on both of his upper thighs. It took an entire year for those welts to disappear.
How was it that my Chinese husband and I seemed to run on entirely different clocks?
We held tickets for a performance at 7pm Wednesday. By 6pm, the table had everything we needed for dinner — fried tofu, spring rolls, stir-fried vegetables. Everything, that is, except for my Chinese husband.
Where is he? I wondered, pacing as I peered out the window, scouring the landscape for any sign of him as the notice on those tickets flashed over and over again in my mind: attendees must be in their seats by 6:45pm, or the unfilled seats will be filled with people in the waiting area.
Suddenly, I spotted someone walking down the street in a rather familiar maroon down jacket, with an even more familiar gait. John. He strolled along with one of his soccer buddies, chatting with all of the leisure of a Sunday afternoon tea time — and not the Wednesday “we have to eat and get the performance ASAP” anxiety coursing through my veins.
Since he stood within shouting distance of our place, I did what any worried wife would do. “Sweetie, it’s dinnertime! Come on!”
When he finally trotted in the door, I gave him the chopsticks and a stern glance. “Where have you been? Did you completely forget about the performance this evening?”
“I was delayed at work. But I figured that 45 minutes is more than enough time for us to head over there.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You really like to live on the edge, don’t you?”
“It’s not on the edge,” he said, shaking his head. “See, we still have enough time to eat dinner and get over there.”
I never thought my staunchly anti-Japanese Chinese husband would ever call anyone from Japan a friend.
When my Chinese husband awoke on Friday to news of the tsunami in Japan, he did something that, even a year ago, I could never have imagined. He wrote to one of his friends…in Japan. “I heard about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I hope you and your family are well.”
Hours later, he felt relieved to read her response: “Thanks for your contact. Now, I’m standing by in my hospital. But I’m fine. And my family are well when I called.”
“She is okay,” he reassured me, after reading her e-mail.
But years ago, when I first mentioned Japan to him, “reassured” is not even close to how I would have described him.
“One of these days, we’ll have to visit Japan,” I mused, just having returned from a trip home to the US, where I passed through the Tokyo Narita Airport.
My 2011 update of all the blogs by Western women who love Chinese men.
March 8 — International Women’s Day — is just around the corner, so it’s time for my homage to other fabulous Western women out in the blogosphere who love Chinese men.
If this update is any measure, the state of the community — that is, the community of Western women who love Chinese men — is strong and growing. Last year, I featured only 16 blogs. This year, it’s over 30. Either there are more of you out there speaking up on the internet, or I’m just getting better at finding you. 😉
So, in alphabetical order according to title, here they are:
I had only met Arnold a few times, but I felt he was as familiar as the soy cafe au lait I held in my hands. He and I bonded over China one evening at the gym, and pretty soon we went from lifting weights to lifting coffee cups over at the Starbucks just down the street from me. I liked Arnold because he was this huge espresso shot of an African-American, the kind of guy who wasn’t afraid to say — or ask — anything.
“Are you Jewish?” he asked me, after I sat down.
“No, I’m not, actually. I was raised Catholic. Why do you ask?”
“Because you have a Chinese husband. You usually see Jewish women married to Chinese men.”
“Really? How would you know?”
I was so stunned, I still I can’t remember what he said. Maybe it was because he had lived in this city (which I like to think of as Jewish as Woody Allen) his whole life. Or maybe he heard it growing up.
But later, when I left Starbucks, I wondered if I really was out of the mainstream, as a shiksa with a Chinese husband, Was it true? Were Jewish women more likely to marry Chinese men?
When my friend Peter already announced a baby boy, within a year of getting married, it made me wonder about the rush to have babies sooner in China (Photo by Erik Araujo)
This evening, I was so excited to find an e-mail from Peter, one of my closest Chinese friends. I expected to hear something about his work life, or perhaps his wife. But instead, I read this:
“We have some happy news to share with you. My wife just had a baby boy on February 15, 7 jin 3 liang. The mother is fine.”
Of course I was happy for him too, and I couldn’t wait to tell my Chinese husband about it. But then it hit me. Peter had only been married to his wife for about a year. And within that year, he and his wife had already turned double happiness into triple happiness. Fast. Continue reading “The China Baby Race”
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