America | Speaking of China

3 Ideas for Reducing Arguments in Your Cross-cultural Relationship

If you’ve ever thought that John and I had this perfect marriage where nothing ever goes wrong, well, I’m here to burst your bubble.

7673749600_070c70d55d_z — This picture may look perfect, but my marriage with John is not — and we’ve had our share of arguments!

You should have seen us a decade ago when we lived in Shanghai and had our share of arguments (including some explosive ones, with yours truly losing her temper and doing lots of yelling). I’m pretty certain I must have given some of our neighbors quite a “show” at times.

Arguments aren’t fun in any relationship, but they can get really ugly when you’re dealing with a cross-cultural relationship. Why? Because sometimes the ways in which we argue – and the things that get us irritated – relate back to culture.

After 10 years of marriage, we’ve learned a thing or two about each other and how to maintain a harmonious cross-cultural relationship – with a lot more happiness and a lot less arguing. Here are three things that have helped us get over arguments:

1. How you manage anger and even argue can be a cultural thing – and sometimes the differences can set you off unexpectedly

In my husband’s home, his family has always valued a certain emotional restraint and don’t really show their anger that much. But I’ve seen his family angry – specifically, his brother – and guess how he responded initially? He was silent. Didn’t say a word. (I can tell you, it was a pretty painful silence!)

On the other hand, in the family I grew up in, when you’re angry, you show it – which means you might raise your voice, yell and even go red in the face. I come from a long line of fiery women. We’re an expressive bunch and, when something bad happens, it needs to be hashed out immediately – even if it gets a little emotional.

So you’ve got one emotionally restrained guy who goes silent when he’s upset, with an emotionally expressive woman who vents her anger and wants to talk it out. Put us together and you’ve got the potential for a disastrous argument to happen. How do I know? Because John and I have had plenty of them.

They used to go something like this: I would start out with some anger, and because John wouldn’t respond to me, my anger would escalate until I suddenly turned into a mad tiger on the prowl (which made John even more likely to clam up and avoid me).

It took us a while to realize that part of the problem was our totally different styles of handling anger.

So, John has learned that it’s important to acknowledge and respond to me when I’m upset.

I’ve also learned that it’s important to manage my own anger. Sometimes when I let my temper loose, things can go a little overboard. John’s a great model and reminder that you don’t always have to be like that when you’re angry.

2. Recognize that living in a different culture can be stressful — so it’s important to provide some “compensations” to the person who left their culture

When John and I lived in America, I started noticing that he was much more irritable than he used to be back in China. And it didn’t take much to set him off and start another argument. It was so unlike John, who had always been so easy-going, always ready to greet me with a smile. What had happened?

Then one day, it hit me – he was stressed out because of living in America, a different country and culture from his own. And adding to all of that stress, he was forced to navigate this new and stressful world in English, his second language.

Of course, this didn’t occur to me for a long time. Because I felt so comfortable to be back in America, the country and culture that I grew up in, I took it for granted that John would feel as comfortable as I did.

So, eventually, I realized what I needed to do: make room for some things that John missed from his own culture. In other words, provide some “cultural compensations” if you will.

Naturally, it started with food. You know how they say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? Well, I figured that the way to quiet a man’s heart – especially when he’s stressed over living in another culture — is through his stomach too. I started cooking up his favorite Chinese foods and putting rice on the menu more often.

But then I moved on to other things that he missed from China. We rented Chinese movies and streamed Chinese TV shows on the Internet. I even let John teach me how to play some soccer (a sport that, while not Chinese, is so popular in China it might as well be the national sport).

All of it made John a much happier guy – and, by extension, ours a much happier marriage. And if I had only figured it out sooner, I might have prevented a lot of unhappy moments we had together.

3. Practice reciprocity

When I tell people that I make my husband red-braised pork, yet I’m still a devoted vegan, they look at me like I’m insane.

Well, believe me, it wasn’t easy to pick up that raw meat one afternoon and turn it into one of my husband’s most favorite comfort dishes from China. A part of me (the part that knows I was definitely made to be vegan) still recoils whenever I see any kind of raw animal flesh in the kitchen.

Ultimately I did it out of love – or, more specifically, to reduce arguments in our marriage.

See, at the time all this started, I had subjected my husband to months of vegan dining, thinking that we could eat vegan together in America and live happily ever after.

But there was a huge problem with that.

John grew up in a culture and household where people eat meat. It’s a normal part of life in China. Granted, when he was younger meat wasn’t as prevalent as it is today. But if people had meat, they were going to put it on the table.

So when you try to force a guy who grew up eating meat to go without, he gets grumpy. And it’s not fun to live with a grumpy husband.

So I started making a little meat on the side, just for John. Some red-braised pork. Baked chicken legs and chicken wings. The occasional fish too. Anything his carnivorous side desired.

Suddenly, my husband transformed into a much pleasant guy. It was a miracle for both of us to finally live in a house with a lot less arguing going on.

And since he was happy about his food, he decided to reciprocate. So whenever I went to do shopping at the store, he would encourage me to indulge my crazy vegan cravings and buy what John called a little “rewarding food”. Things like vegan cheese and faux meats and soy yogurt.

Sometimes, we’d end up having meals where the two of us might eat completely different things. At one end, there’s John digging into his red-braised pork. And at the other, there’s me tucking into a vegan Mexican wrap (with my favorite Daiya vegan cheese).

As bizarre as it might seem to be eating two different things at exactly the same time, it has really worked for us. This is reciprocity in action – both of us were happy because we accommodated each other’s personal cravings and needs.

We’ve extended that kind of reciprocity to other things in our life. For example, nowadays when we watch TV here in Hangzhou, I’ll let me husband tune into some of his favorite China news programs. Then he’ll toss me the remote after a while, so I can catch the kind of TV I like (such as romantic comedies and love stories – yeah, I’m a sucker for romance, can’t you tell?).

I think any couple – especially couples who hail from different cultures – would benefit from a little reciprocity in their lives.

What do you think? What strategies have you used in your own relationship to reduce arguments?

Share/Save

“Is he your foreign exchange student?” When you’re a white woman who looks older than her Asian husband

Actually, he's my husband. — Actually, he’s my husband.

I never thought a simple trip to the grocery store with my husband would give me one of the most embarrassing experiences I’ve ever had.

It happened while we were checking out of a grocery store in the US. My husband, as usual, started bagging our stuff while I pulled out my credit card to pay for everything. It was just another typical checkout experience – until the cashier, a white woman in her fifties, started chatting with me.

“Nice to have some help,” she said, referring to my husband who had already bagged everything and placed it neatly in our shopping cart.

“Yeah, he is pretty great.” I couldn’t help but smile with pride. Who doesn’t love it when her husband is the envy of others?

Or so I thought, until the cashier opened her mouth again.

“So, is he your foreign exchange student?”

That’s right – a casher in America actually mistook my own husband for some foreign exchange student I was hosting.

A flush of red mounted my face as I realized exactly what this meant. One, that she had noticed my thirty-something husband was a foreigner and thought he looked old enough to be an undergraduate in college or younger. And two, that she thought I looked too old to be his wife.

She might as well have pointed out every single wrinkle on my thirty-something face, because that’s exactly how embarrassed I felt.

I cleared my throat. “Actually, he’s my husband.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” The cashier seemed genuinely apologetic, right down to the way her own cheeks turned a self-conscious shade of scarlet.

But it was too late for that. She’d already put the idea out there. And let me tell you, I never hurried out of a checkout line faster than that moment.

I never thought a simple trip to the grocery store with my husband would give me one of the most embarrassing experiences I’ve ever had.

Honestly, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Long before this ever happened, relatives and friends doted on John’s youthful appearance. In fact, it seemed like a month never went by in America without my dad saying, “John, you look like you’re still in high school!” They schooled me a reality that had remained hidden to me until I married an Asian man: the popular belief that Asians look younger than white people.

But until that moment in that checkout line, I was blissfully unaware that some Americans might actually think I was old enough to, say, be a guardian to a foreign exchange student. And might mistake my Asian husband for said student.

Of course, I’m not the only white woman in an AMWF relationship who has had an embarrassingly personal reminder of how Asians look younger than white people, as Constance of Foreign Sanctuary reminds me in her post My Taiwanese Husband & His Most Amazing Moment in Vegas!!:

While dining in Las Vegas a couple of years ago, my 30-something year old husband (who, might I add, is two years older than me) heard the most magical words from a waitress when he tried to order a beer.

‘May I see your ID, please?’

Smiling from ear to ear, his dimples as defined as ever, like a kid in a candy store, he turned to me and asked me for his passport which I was holding for safe keeping in my bag.

He passed her his passport and she began to examine it. She looked at his passport photo, she looked at him, and then back at the photo. She continued by checking the edges, clearly thinking that it must have been a fake one.

Then, she said ‘Oh my God! You are in your 30’s!!’

Talk about inflating someone’s ego with one sentence!

Trying to salvage some dignity, even just a little, I casually asked the following question.

‘Would you like to see mine as well?’

And to add more salt to the wound, to drive the dagger further into my heart, she made the following reply:.

‘No, that’s fine! You’re OK.’

Oh, the humiliation! The embarrassment!

Ouch.

I’ll be honest – for the longest time, I swore I would never go public with this encounter in the grocery store. I wanted it to be like the diary I used to hide under my mattress in grade school, forever safe from scrutiny. Who wants to admit before the world that, in fact, people think she looks old?

Yet, the older I get, the more I realize the importance of accepting myself, warts and all. After all, aging is a reality for everyone. Maybe some of us are lucky enough to look younger (ahem, John), while others are not so lucky (ahem, me!). But in the end, we’re all headed in the same direction.

And honestly, who hasn’t seen the person with the dyed hair that’s obviously there to hide the gray and isn’t fooling anyone? Or someone like the late Joan Rivers, with so much plastic surgery and botox she doesn’t even look real anymore?

I cringe over the extremes we turn to just to hide our real age, when the treatment we really need is simple — accepting ourselves exactly as we are.

I also recognize that looking younger isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be, as Mabel Kwong points out in her post “Asians’ Youthful Looks: A Blessing or A Curse In Disguise?”

Besides, my husband still thinks I’m the sexiest woman in the world. He can’t keep his hands off me – wrinkles and stretch marks and hidden gray hairs and all. He loves me just as passionately as that night over 12 years ago when we first kissed beside the West Lake.

So what if he doesn’t “look” like he matches me in age to some folks? I know he’s my perfect match and that’s all I’ll ever need to know.

Have you ever had an experience where someone mistook you or your boyfriend/girlfriend or spouse for a different age? How did it make you feel?

P.S.: This post was inspired by Constance’s post My Taiwanese Husband & His Most Amazing Moment in Vegas!! Head over to Constance’s blog Foreign Sanctuary and read her post, as well as the comment section, which is packed with examples of other people who have had embarrassing experiences of their own!

Share/Save

7 Challenges after Moving from China to America with your Chinese Spouse

Many years ago, when my husband first received clearance in China his US Green Card, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Now the greatest challenges are finally over,” I thought.

Oh, how wrong I was.

It was only after I moved to America with my Chinese husband that I finally learned the truth — that the most challenging things happen after you set foot in American soil.

Here are 7 major challenges we faced after we moved together from China to America:

1. Nobody really cares about what you did in China

That amazing Winter Solstice dinner you had at the family home in China? Nobody gives a damn about it.

Returning to the US with a new spouse after years in China is like coming home from the greatest world adventure ever. You’ve both seen and experienced incredible things you’re dying to share with everyone you meet, from old family and to new friends. You want to enlighten your fellow Americans about the “real” China.

Except, there’s just one problem — nobody really cares!

As Marissa of Xiananigans noted:

Those closest do care, and job interviewers take a keen interest in my unconventional background, but for the most part I feel it’s a polite interest, not a deeply profound one. I’m a lone wolf in the sense that I don’t really know too many people, acquaintances or otherwise, interested in China. Many have a hard time placing Xi’an, even when I mention the Terracotta Warriors.

But is this really surprising for a country that often treats international headlines as an afterthought to Kim Kardashian’s bod and the popular reality show du jour? A country where a cable TV news show actually ran a map locating Hong Kong on the East Coast of South America?

John and I felt like the odd-couple-out at hundreds of social gatherings in the US, surrounded by Americans who would rather talk about TV shows neither of us had ever heard of.

It was a sad reversal of what we experienced in China, where friends and family would remain rapt with attention when we spoke of America. They were always hungry to hear about what things were really like in my home country, and excited to discuss the latest news headlines, movies and even TV shows.

Ultimately, the few people who actually wanted to talk China were usually from the country, former expats, or traveled there once upon a time. And sadly, there were never enough of them to go around.

2. Americans are incredibly judgmental towards non-native English speakers

Growing up, I often gravitated towards foreigners in the US who didn’t speak native English. When a young girl from Belgrade joined our high school orchestra for a period of time, I loved hanging out with her in the hallway and hearing her spin stories of the former Yugoslavia through her splendidly imperfect English. In college, I used to enjoy green tea with a couple of Japanese guys who sometimes paused in the middle of a sentence, and once helped put together a party to welcome a gaggle of Brazilian girls who spoke English with heavy accents.

None of these imperfections in their English bothered me in the least. After all, we could communicate and in the end, that’s all that mattered. Right?

Then I returned to the US with my Chinese husband who speaks English as a second language – and discovered the shocking truth. Most Americans were not like me at all.

Americans are extremely judgmental towards non-native English speakers – even when they speak outstanding English (as my husband does).

They’re even judgmental when they haven’t met your foreign spouse. People who had never even heard my husband speak a single word automatically assumed his English must be poor because he’s Chinese. (Sadly, in the hierarchy of non-native English speakers, Chinese place somewhere at the bottom.)

Whether you like it or not, language discrimination is a reality in the US – and it’s going to make life for you and your spouse that much harder. But that leads me to the next challenge you’ll face:

3. Discrimination

If you’re a white American like me, get ready to experience a new kind of education through your Chinese spouse: discrimination.

As I’ve written before in this piece published in Hippo Reads, discrimination is real for Asians of all stripes in the US (including those born and raised on American soil). But it’s going to be that much harder for your spouse because they’re not used to it – and, if you’re white, neither are you.

Even worse, if you’re like the vast majority of white people (who have no people of color as friends), you’re going to feel incredibly isolated when your spouse finally experiences the worst. Most whites don’t believe discrimination still happens in America today. Suddenly, the friends you thought would always be there for you just don’t get it. If you’re anything like me, you’ll grow tired of trying to convince them of the fact that it’s a real thing – and will be forced to move on and forge completely new friendships.

My advice? Be prepared. Read about how modern discrimination and racism in America really works (Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s Racism Without Racists is my favorite, but it’s not the last word on this). Make more friends with people of color – they can share their experiences with you and will become your allies when the worst hits your spouse.

4. Deep cravings for authentic Chinese food that are tough to satisfy

102_2242 — If we wanted the real, authentic taste of John’s hometown in the US, we had to make it ourselves.

Call it the American Chinese food conundrum. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Chinese restaurants that cover the US – and only a small fraction of them can deliver anything close to the ambrosial delights that you fell in love with in China.

It’s a nightmare for your Chinese partner, accustomed to the incredible diversity of Chinese food you can find in most urban areas in China.

On the streets right beside our apartment, we can dine on cross-the-bridge noodles from Yunnan, spicy BBQ from Chongqing and Hunan, Lanzhou-style pulled noodles, and at least four or five different specialties from cities in Zhejiang province you’ve probably never even heard of.

When you move to America, you’re trading in that kind of rich culinary heritage for a blandly bastardized version that’s either breaded and deep-fried or drowning in some unnaturally pink glop.

Ugh.

If you’re lucky, one or both of you can actually cook decent Chinese food and satisfy those cravings on a regular basis. Even then, you’ll never cover it all. There are some things that are WAY too complicated to prepare on a regular basis (Beijing duck, anyone?). There are others you’ll struggle to buy or never find at all, such as fresh Spring bamboo roots, tang hulu, and Suzhou-style mooncakes.

(Well, at least it’ll give you something to look forward to when you return to China for visits, right?)

5. Teaching your spouse how to drive a car

Sorry guys, but teaching your spouse how to drive in the US is not lovely like this photo!

Unless you’re one of the fortunate few Americans returning to a city with excellent mass transportation (like New York City) you’ll need a car to get around. So will your spouse, except for one small problem: chances are, he or she doesn’t know how to drive.

Guess who will become their teacher?

This is a dangerous proposition – “dangerous” as in it could seriously wreck your marriage.

Anyone who has ever listened to the popular NPR show Car Talk knows that many a couple gets into an argument over something as simple as how to drive (and we’re talking about two adults who already have their license). There’s nothing more nervewracking than sitting shotgun as your sweetie is swerving in between lanes and on the verge of clipping someone else’s car – and it’s your job to yell at them and get the car under control.

In the end, I helped my husband successfully earn his US driver’s license. But ask me to do it all over again? Please…no!

6. Helping your foreign spouse through the exhausting task of finding work while you’re finding work

We may be smiling in this photo, but we weren't months later when we were both trying to figure out our lives in America. — We may be smiling in this photo, but we weren’t months later when we were both trying to figure out our lives in America.

Anyone who recalls that demanding post-graduation job hunt knows it’s not easy to land on your feet with that perfect job and apartment. Just imagine how much harder that whole process is when you have to do it as you’re guiding a foreigner through the ins and outs of a whole job hunting culture that’s not second nature to them.

If you haven’t already, you’ll soon learn that the process is NOT as universal as you imagined. You’ll also learn that America puts a premium on appearances (aka job interviews) so even if your spouse is wholly qualified for the work, they still might not get the job. Sadly, discrimination (especially language-based discrimination) looms large in subjective situations like interviews, leading to a lot of potential disappointments and frustrations that you never even expected.

Worst case scenario? You’ll give up on ever finding employment for your Chinese spouse.

That might sound easy enough if you’re an American man with a Chinese wife, but it flips the traditional marriage expectation on its head for American women with Chinese husbands. Still, I know of American women who have returned to the US with their families, understanding that their husbands will either be underemployed or become stay-at-home dads.

7. Realizing the American dream isn’t always what you imagined

We've traded in our American dream for a China dream. — We’ve traded in our American dream for a China dream.

So many Chinese remain starstruck with America, believing everything must be better in the “beautiful country” (the literal translation of “America” in Chinese). Their enthusiasm is so infectious that you’ll be dreaming of those Technicolor blue skies, sweet clean air, and the smell of freshly cut green grass on the lawn. Before you know it, you’ll build up your very own country into this perfect American dream that will deliver everything you ever hoped for – and more – to you and your new spouse.

One of the most painful things about moving to America was when the experience shattered all the fantasies I ever had about settling there with my husband. My own country crushed us and let us down in countless ways.

I know of couples who pushed past the imperfect and frustrating reality to eventually build a “good enough” for themselves and their families.

As for us, we’ve had it with the American dream, trading it in for our own China dream instead.

Have you moved from China to America? Are you planning your own move? Weigh in with your thoughts on the challenges of bringing your family to the USA!

Share/Save

Interview with Celeste Ng about “Everything I Never Told You” (Pub’d on Hippo Reads)

Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You (photo credit: Kevin Day Photography)

Hippo Reads just published my interview with Celeste Ng, author of the highly acclaimed novel Everything I Never Told You. This dark story centers on an AMWF family living in 1970s small town America grappling with an unimaginable tragedy, and it’s one of the best books I’ve read all year.

In particular, I loved the way that Celeste captured the true dynamics of discrimination in America in this book (incidentally, practically all the race-based discrimination she wrote about either happened to her or to someone she knew).

I’m excited to introduce you to Everything I Never Told You and Celeste Ng through this interview on Hippo Reads. Here’s a snippet explaining my own connection to the novel:

From interviewer Jocelyn Eikenburg: Everything I Never Told You touched me on a personal level. Naturally, I was drawn to the family at the heart of the story. I write about Asian interracial relationships and am married to a Chinese national, so it was refreshing to read a book featuring an Asian father and a white mother raising mixed-race children. More importantly, Everything I Never Told You perfectly captures the insidious nature of race-based discrimination in America and reminds us that Asian Americans are not in any way exempt (despite the pervasive “model minority” stereotype about Asians which I previously debunked on Hippo Reads). While Celeste Ng set her novel in the 1970s, my husband (who lived with me in the US for nearly eight years) also faced discrimination similar to what the novel’s father, James Lee, suffered in the story. When I was reading Everything I Never Told You, I felt as if the Lee family’s sorrows could easily have been my own. It was an incredibly cathartic experience.

Read the full interview at Hippo Reads to learn more about this fascinating novel. A big thanks to Kaitlin Solimine for suggesting this collaboration!

Share/Save

4 Really Bad Reasons for Marrying Western Women in China

As I’ve written before, people in China are just crazy about yangxifu (the foreign wives of Chinese men). We’ve inspired two popular forums on Baidu devoted to discussing yangxifu (Yangxifu Ba and Waiguoxifu Ba), while yangxifu regularly make headlines in China news.

So of course, many Chinese men would love to marry a Western woman just like me. For some, it’s even their life’s dream.

But just because a guy would love to marry us doesn’t mean he’s always doing it with love in mind. Unfortunately, some Chinese men approach us with the wrong ideas altogether — things that would surprise and totally shock you.

If you really want to wed a Western woman in China, please – PLEASE — don’t do it for one of these four incredibly bad reasons:

1. To show off

In today’s China, everyone yearns for status symbols like BMWs, Louis Vuitton purses and Burberry scarves. They want to tell the world they’re powerful, wealthy and successful. But for some men, the ultimate status symbol – the proof that they’ve truly “made it” – is a Western wife.

I’ve got news for you, guys. We don’t take well to being treated as nothing more than your accessory. We’re not just some Coach purse, content to swing around your arm in front of your friends and colleagues. And believe me, we’re usually smart enough to figure out that that’s exactly what you’re doing (especially if you seem intent on parading us in front of as many people as possible every time we go out).

If you really want to show off, do us a favor and get a Porsche or something instead.

(P.S.: for a personal take on this issue, read about how my husband’s cousin wanted a Western wife to brag about.)

2. To immigrate to her Western country

Have you been “California dreaming” or hoping to live out a permanent “Roman holiday” in a Western country? Perhaps you’ve imagined a highly questionable solution to your problem – just marry a Western woman. With her by your side, a coveted foreign passport, the rights to work or study in her country just like a local, and tons of enviable visa-free travel destinations are all yours for the taking, right?

Except…what happens when your wife discovers she’s nothing more than your personal passport machine?

I once knew of an American woman I’ll call “Sally” who was smitten with a Beijinger. For Sally, a plus-sized woman in her forties used to being invisible to the vast majority of men, finding a guy who actually wanted to marry her and come to live with her in the US was nothing short of a miracle. So they tied the knot and then her Beijing husband came to Seattle. That’s also the city where he abandoned Sally by disappearing from her life, just after he nabbed his US green card. It’s not hard to tell who (or rather, what) he was really in love with.

She posted the whole harrowing story on an online forum. While it broke my heart to read it, I can only imagine the state of Sally’s heart when she discovered her so-called husband had essentially punk’d her in the most despicable way.

Do you want to be that kind of guy? Do you want your immigration rights at the expense of her happiness? Do want to shatter her trust in men forever (including men from China)? We’re talking about a Faustian bargain that could haunt you for the rest of your life (that is, if you actually have morals).

Besides, living abroad isn’t all champagne and English roses. The moment you set foot in a Western country, you’ve just traded in one set of challenges for another. And let me tell you, some of those challenges will surprise and shock you (like discrimination).

Still gotta “Go West”? Just don’t use a Western woman who you never really loved in the first place to do it.

36696358_ea8613ff28_z — (photo by Susan Sermoneta via Flickr.com)

3. To improve your English

“So you only speak English to her!”

God, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this from Chinese people, who wrongly assume my husband only communicates with my in English. Even worse, some jump to the conclusion that his English is so awesome because he married me.

Sometimes, I just want to cringe because of what they’re implying — a Western wife who speaks English equals your own private English teacher.

I want to be appreciated for who I really am, not because I happen to be a native English speaker. Who wouldn’t feel the same?

It’s bad enough that a lot of Western women in China – women just like me – end up teaching English here, an occupation that sometimes makes you feel like an “English machine” when seemingly everyone and their brother demands a piece of you to boost their English studies. We don’t want that kind of exhausting mess in our marriage.

That doesn’t mean we can’t support your language studies at all. Actually, my husband John and I have enjoyed a bilingual relationship from the moment we started flirting years ago. It’s one of the things that makes our marriage a lot of fun.

But if you’re only looking for love with us for English, believe me, we’ll catch on. After all, we’ve probably all taught English at one time or another – and we can tell if you belong in our bedroom or our classroom. And if you’re only looking for “private lessons”, we’ll dump you and your crazy English ideas.

2039738436_1bca285621_b — (photo by bandita via Flickr.com)

4. Because you’re racist

To the Chinese guys who exclude all other women in pursuit of a pale-skinned Western beauty with golden hair, I’m talking to you. You know, someone who thinks that mixed-race kids are so much more “beautiful” and “clever”, and therefore must have, for example, a white Western wife.

I get that people have preferences in the dating world. But if you’re dating a certain group of people because of their race (or characteristics only unique to a certain race) to the exclusion of people from other racial groups…that’s racist. I wouldn’t want a guy who loves me solely for my white skin – or the fact that I could provide him with a mixed-race baby. That’s just creepy!

What do you think of these reasons? What did I miss?

Share/Save

Here in China, my US life feels like a dream

Was that really me? Were we really there?

The thought crossed my mind as I scrolled through the photos of John and me in the US. In one, I crouched before the cream-colored house in the suburbs we once called home. In another, he posed like a triumphant warrior before the rolling hills of Ohio we hiked every evening.

Some two weeks ago, I slept under the roof of that cream-colored house in Ohio and meandered through the trails in those hills. But now that I sleep under the roof of a white-washed home in rural Zhejiang and hike through mountains filled with bamboo and pines, my former life in the US feels like a fantasy — as if someone photoshopped me and John into those photos.

And oddly enough, it’s not the first time I felt this way. Whenever I’ve traveled between China and the US, my life in the country I left behind always seemed more like a long, extended dream to me. Not even artifacts of that previous life — such as those photos — could completely dispel this feeling that it was all just a hallucination.

Maybe that’s what happens when you’re in an international, cross-cultural relationship — where you straddle two different worlds. It’s not just geography that separates China and the US; different cultures and languages only serve to reinforce the separation. Meanwhile, I’m surrounded by people here in China who couldn’t really understand what it was like for John and me to live in the US — while in the US, most people I know don’t understand life in China. Sometimes, I feel as if these two separate worlds of mine will always remain strangers in a sense — where never the two shall meet.

Perhaps that’s also the power of living in foreign countries. Suddenly, you realize that the reality you knew growing up isn’t universal…that reality changes when you cross borders and oceans.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying my new reality in China. And someday, when I return to the US for a visit, perhaps this will all feel like a dream all over again.

Share/Save

Starstruck over the US — just as I once was in China

“Everything is so great here in the US!” said this young woman from Jiangsu. She gushed like a girl talking about her first crush, right down to the blush on her cheeks and the glimmer in her eyes. And in a way, maybe it was a crush to her — a “business-trip-to-the-US” crush.

We met her while waiting for a changing room to open up at an Adidas outlet. Even though the conditions in the store seemed like hell — only three changing rooms and endless customers streaming in through the doors — the conditions outside bordered on heavenly. An azure sky, sunshine, the trees dressed in their finest autumn scarlet and gold and orange, and throngs of happy shoppers. In the beauty of that day, I even began to forget the sadness of the past 24 hours.

But when I heard her praise the US, a part of me shuddered. After all of the hardship that John and I experienced in this country, I just could never endorse the idea that everything was just fabulous here. And given the recent government shutdown — which has locked up the local national park where I once found solace and comfort in daily hikes — I wasn’t alone in my feelings.

Yet, before I brought John to the US, wasn’t I — in a sense — as starstruck as this young Chinese woman? Once upon a time, I spun my own personal fairytale version of a happily ever after with John in the US. The fact that John was once denied a tourist visa to come over to the US only strengthened my conviction that, somehow, if I could just bring him over here, everything would be better. But things unravelled as the years in this country passed and the disappointments piled up — until I had not a single thread of that fairytale left.

What I had left was a lot of guilt. I remembered how John’s father told me, “When you’re far away from us in the US, you’ll have to take care of him.” Even though it was completely and utterly irrational, I felt responsible for every terrible thing that happened to John.

Sometimes life lets you down. But it doesn’t mean that I’m down or John is down. And it also doesn’t mean that I have to bring someone else down because of it.

So when she gushed about the US, I just smiled and nodded. “I’m glad you’re having a good time.”

Who knows if she’ll feel the same way days or even years later? And who knows if I’ll feel the same? But I do know this — her happiness somehow touched me, and reminded me that perhaps my happiness will eventually come in time.

Share/Save

Fenshou: Dreams of a Romantic Fairy Tale Kiss

Longtime readers will recognize the name Sveta, who is one of the most active commenters on this site. She also blogs about her latest reads on her book review blog (where she reviews a variety of books , including titles featuring with Asian men and Western women in love).

She shared with me this story of how she met a young Chinese PhD student via myspace, which eventually led to one extraordinary kiss — and, later, a sudden end to their month-long courtship. Thank you for submitting your story, Sveta! Continue reading “Fenshou: Dreams of a Romantic Fairy Tale Kiss”

Share/Save

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

Once again, discrimination has landed smack in the middle of our lives here in the US. A hard landing, and one with reverberations far beyond anything I ever expected.

As I wrote not that long ago, I never imagined I would come to know discrimination so intimately through my marriage to a Chinese man. Maybe that’s naivete or plain ignorance; either way, it’s clear that I just didn’t realize the extent to which discrimination and racism still remained in this country, and their ability to strike down (and even ruin) a young man in pursuit of his own small patch of happiness.

What I have learned is this Continue reading ““Why Us?”: More on Discrimination and Marriage to a Chinese Man”

Share/Save

Despite the China-America Divide, We’re On The Same Team

The other day, my husband and I were having a conversation in the car about discrimination and racism in America — two things he knew firsthand from his own experiences over here.

“Mean and wicked, that’s what these people were to me,” he said, referring to the Americans who had betrayed him in the past. “They just don’t care, they have no concern for you at all. They think they can just bully you.”

My heart ached to see him this way. “I’m so sorry. It just goes to show how much work in this country is still undone. We Americans have a lot to learn.”

“Don’t say ‘we’! Don’t put yourself in the same category as them, you should be careful of your language!”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to say ‘we’, it just came out by accident. Just a reflex, that’s all.”

But his words haunted me the rest of the way home. I couldn’t believe that the word “we” — a word that normally brings John and I together as one — could divide us into two in a completely different context. Continue reading “Despite the China-America Divide, We’re On The Same Team”

Share/Save