Home. Car. Money. I first heard these words strung together — fangzi, chezi, piaozi — around 1am in July 2007, while loitering on the stairs outside a Holiday karaoke bar in Hangzhou with my Chinese husband and his friends.
The friend who spoke these words, a guy named Jiang, sighed almost immediately afterwards, before forcing up a grin to hide the frustration he felt about it. “That’s married life in China,” he shrugged.
I had just married John — for the second time, if you consider our ceremony at the Shanghai Marriage Registration Bureau a sort of wedding — and suddenly Jiang’s words seemed to be the fluorescent lights in the reception hall after hours, making an otherwise beautiful thing look cheap and ugly.
Jiedi lian (China’s version of Cougar love) is rare — but it can happen, such as when Vic Zhou and Barbie Hsu, stars of Meteor Garden, dated. (photo from www.asianbite.com)
Jie Jie asks:
How much does age difference matter for Chinese people? I’m in my late twenties and I happen to like a Chinese guy who is in his early twenties. He mentioned the term 姐弟恋 the other day. He asked me if I know what that means. I don’t know if I should be worried about his question. Could that mean that he regards me as a craddle-robber or a cougar?
However, he has literally told me that he likes me.
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.
Head on over to Matador to read the entire article. And as always, if you love it, share it. Thanks!
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?
Are Chinese men with tattoos bad people? Should they be branded forever out of your social circle?
D asks:
Hi I have a Chinese classmate and he has always been very friendly with me, and he talks to me and sends me texts almost everyday. When he heard I was interested in learning Chinese, (even though I am still at the beginner stage.) He straight away offered to give me his skype address so that we could practice together online because he is also interested in improving his English pronunciation. He also invited me to go to a bbq at his house so that he could introduce me to his friends. Things seem to be going quite well.
However even though that all sounds great, there is one problem, he has a tattoo on his arm. I know normally this isn’t a big deal in European countries and USA lots of men have a tattoos. When I introduced him to some other Chinese friends of mine. They were shocked and told me don’t get to close to him, this type of man is not normal. Have you had any experience dealing with Chinese men or women with tattoos?Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Are Chinese Men with Tattoos Bad?”
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.
Get answers to your most popular questions on dating Chinese men and Western women at my Ask the Yangxifu FAQ section. (photo by Henk L)
Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of the same questions in the Ask the Yangxifu mailbag — and often sending my fans links to this or that article I’ve written before. I love getting questions, and love answering. But as Friday started looming, I realized I had no good, new questions to feature on the blog. I thought, shoot, what I am going to write about for the Friday column?
But in the midst of my emerging content crisis, it suddenly came to me. When you get repeat questions, it means just one thing — you need a frequently asked questions page.
P.S. to all of the Chinese men out there: I really, really wish your section wasn’t so painfully short. Only a fraction of my e-mails come from Chinese men wanting to know about dating Western women. Want to help me expand the knowledge base? Send me more good questions to answer. Thanks! 😉
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Do you have a question about life, dating, marriage and family in China/Chinese culture (or Western culture)? Every Friday, I answer questions on my blog. Send me your question today.
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.”
When I first started dating John, my future Chinese husband, everything seemed as perfect as our first kiss by the lake.
We could have entire conversations with just a glance. Our chemistry was so good that, for weeks, I came to work every morning, beaming from bedroom bliss. And within weeks of getting together, we had taken two romantic dates together, and planned a third trip to Beijing.
So finally, after a little over a month together, John decided to go home and tell his Asian parents all about me. His report?
“My father said I can be friends with you, but not date you.”
Gulp. Not exactly what you’d call, uh, “perfect.”
So if you have a white girlfriend or fiancee, what do you do when your Asian family gets in the way of happily ever after?
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.
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