Although this may not affect you yourself. It affects a whole load of us overseas born Chinese types. Simply how on earth do we respond to the constant questions of how come you aren’t married yet?
Parents go to Chinese weddings, and fiery arguments ensue about getting married.
Fake BFs/GFs are old utilised tricks. But over time they cease to work and to be honest it feels bad tricking parents like this.
In our first generation barely anybody is married these days. But there seems an increasing desperation in the voices of parents wanting you to get married. As if it is a magic bullet or something. They just simply do not seem to realise that getting married isn’t the be all and end all of things. Yet their old fashioned values don’t seem to tie in with single independent people! Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Dealing With “How Come You Aren’t Married Yet?””
My sister-in-law's baby and the mobile that almost got broke
It’s not polite to tell a guest they shouldn’t do something. I learned this rule only hours after I broke it at my Chinese in-laws’ home.
The next-door neighbor happened to come over, a tiny grandmother with short curly hair and a face that reminded me of Squiggy from the sitcom Laverne and Shirley. As usual, she came in holding her 10-month grandson, a kid nearly one-third her size who looked so big, I wondered why he hadn’t walked in on his own. She stood with her grandson in the foyer of our family home with Laoma (what we call my mother-in-law) and Wenjuan, my sister-in-law.
Most evenings, I wouldn’t notice the guests, but this evening was different. She happened to come during dinner. And this dinner happened to be interrupted by Laoba (what I call my father-in-law) when he told me the pair of flip-flops I sunned outside had dried. I put my chopsticks down to take the flip-flops back to my rooms upstairs, and then returned to the dining room.
Forbidden. That’s what someone once called my writing back in 2004 when I started sharing my relationships with Chinese men. It’s not as if I put some adult-store-version of my life out there, complete with salacious descriptions that would have everyone heading for a cold shower. Sex never even came up.
No, I just happened to write about my former Chinese boyfriends.
I broke with Chinese tradition, where you keep your past loves buried away in your heart (to be sure, I never used their actual names and changed some of their details, though everything I shared was essentially true). That comment shook me then — I never realized I crossed a cultural line in my writing. If my old files from that time are any measure — I steered clear of intimate topics for years — the comment impacted me in ways I didn’t even realize. Continue reading “Why I Write About “Forbidden” Love in China”
It's the 2012 list of China blogs by Western women who love Chinese men
It’s March and just days from International Women’s Day — time for an update to my list of blogs by Western women who love Chinese men.
Last year, I had over 30 on my list. This year, it’s over 40. I’m psyched to see the growing number of voices in the community. I also decided to take a stab at grouping the blogs this year — authors, let me know what you think.
Just this weekend, John and I weathered two crises.
One happened with this site — my host decided to turn off his server by the end of this month. I suddenly realized that I couldn’t move things like I expected, my old host wasn’t responsive, and I didn’t know where to find someone who could help me in time (thank you Sorella Design, for the extraordinary hosting and moving help, and BlogVault, which made it possible to get my databases and files off my former host).
The other happened with John — he didn’t get an internship, and now he’s scrambling to get applications together for the next round by Thursday, March 1.
But it’s our love that keeps us moving forward. And that got me thinking about all the times on this site when I’ve written about love in China and crises. So, to give this writer a chance to catch her breath, I’m sharing a few classic crisis-related entries for anyone who could use a little more drama. (Yeah, right 😉 )
Negotiating For My Life in China. One thing I always admired about John — he’s a fighter. See how he helped me fight against my former boss in China.
Love in the Time of SARS.When SARS struck Shanghai, John and I were still a young couple in love, trying to hold onto that romance in the midst of this deadly viral outbreak.
Kristen, a white Christian girl from America, never thought she’d marry someone different from her. But then she met a Christian man from China on a road trip, a man who would bring her unexpected love and blessings.
—–
I always wanted to end up with someone different from me, but would that ever actually happen? I was pretty cynical.
Instead, I pictured myself ending up with someone who, like me, had grown up in small town New Hampshire his whole life. The people I met at college were all basically male versions of myself: native New Hampshirites of French and Irish heritage. That’s when I decided to make a voyage to Italy to study abroad — and, perhaps, meet someone there.
At the same time, life seemed to be taking me to the Midwest. I found myself on my way to St. Louis, Missouri for a large Intervarsity Christian conference called Urbana. Of course, sitting beside me in our van was this random guy from China, who I ended up talking to about my plans to travel to Italy, as well as everything else we could think to share with each other. Conversation flowed easily despite my shyness and his imperfect English. I never mentioned the part about finding my man in Italy, but I was secretly hoping that this guy wasn’t developing feelings for me. Continue reading “Double Happiness: A Chinese-American Christian Love Story”
At Watson’s in China, a little personal shopping got too personal when I decided to stock up on condoms. (photo by Calvin Teo from wikimedia.org)
“Your Personal Store.” That’s the tagline for Watson’s, the most popular pharmacy/drugstore shop in Asia and my go-to in China for so many health and beauty items I need. But after my experience this summer, I began to wonder if Watson’s wasn’t becoming “Your A Little Too Personal Store.”
Last summer, I lived mostly with my in-laws and visited Hangzhou or Shanghai only a few times. For me, that meant no Watson’s conveniently just around the corner or a short bus, subway or taxi ride away. So when I saw a Watson’s, I would sometimes kick into “storage mode.” That meant buying some extra peppermint hand wipes, another bottle of Johnson’s Baby Wash (for my sensitive skin), and, say, some more Durex condoms.
I’m a married woman, and yes, I wanted to replenish my condom stash. I sure couldn’t do it in my Chinese husband’s rural village, which probably sold those dodgy ones with what always looked like adult movie stills printed on the package. On this day in question, I still stayed with him in his rented room in Shanghai for a few more days, we’d have a few weeks or so together at the end of the summer before returning to the US, and what we didn’t use, we could always take home. Yes, condoms would definitely come in handy.
But I’d have to go alone on this one. “It’s easier for you,” John said. “They expect foreigners to buy these things.”
I couldn’t deny the truth in what he said — that many Chinese believed foreigners, especially foreign women, were so much more “open” about sex. Sure, I liked sleeping with my husband, and wasn’t afraid to say so. But that didn’t make me some foreign Jezebel ready to screw on the spot. Besides, I couldn’t hide in China — people noticed me everywhere as a foreigner, and that meant they might even notice my purchase even more.
“But people will stare at me, it will be so embarrassing,” I said.
Accomplished Chinese food writer and yangxifu Carolyn J. Phillips talks with me about food and what it takes to charm your Chinese family at the table. (photo from zesterdaily.com)
Food is such an integral part of Chinese culture that it’s really hard to fit into a Chinese family if one isn’t adept at the cuisine. I suppose this is true to some extent with any country, but the Chinese are probably on par with the French and Italians when it comes to the importance of dining well.
This is probably doubly important when a yangxifu doesn’t speak Chinese fluently but still hopes to be accepted. Have your readers talked much about this? I truly feel that the old saw about the way to a man’s stomach etc is gospel for us yangxifu.
Carolyn should know — she’s a yangxifu who devoted her adult life to mastering the art of Chinese cooking. She blogs about food at Out to Lunch and tweets about it as @MadameHuang. She’s also working on two forthcoming books on the subject — “Simple Pleasures from a Chinese Kitchen: Authentic Seasonal Recipes from Every Region of China” and “Culinary Goddesses: The Women Who Changed Our Dining Landscape… Recipes Included.” — and is a regular contributor writing about Chinese food for Zester Daily. In addition, she’s even fluent enough in Mandarin to do court interpreting.
In any event, Carolyn has discovered a thing or two about what it takes to woo a Chinese family that truly loves to eat through food. So I sat down with her — from one yangxifu to another — to talk about all things related to food and Chinese family. As Chinese New Year approaches, it’s a topic that will come in handy for lots of readers.
if my experience means anything, many Chinese still turn to someone to play matchmaker -- even if that someone is just your coworker. (photo by DHSAM from wikimedia.org)
Last summer, I attended the Hangzhou wedding of my good friend Lao Da at the end of May. But it wasn’t until two weeks later — when we met over Dragonwell tea and snacks at a local teahouse — that I learned exactly how he met his new wife.
“We met through a colleague. He happened to be going out to dinner with a group of women who worked at the bank across the street from our office and didn’t want to go alone. So he asked me to come with him.”
“So, it was love at first sight?”
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t actually contact her until a few weeks later.”
“You didn’t have any special feeling for her then?”
“I had some. But later, my colleague said she had mentioned me, and he wondered if maybe we should date. You know me, I am not so outgoing. So I said I would meet her.”
Of course, Lao Da’s how-we-met story remained uniquely his — just like his geek-chic glasses, ocean-blue Chuck Taylors and funky stonewashed jeans. But I couldn’t help but notice that their story came down to the actions of one person: his colleague. Continue reading “Matchmaker, Informal Matchmaker”
My Chinese husband told me I've become more superstitious since I married him. (photo by zettmedia)
Cíjiù yíngxīn (辞旧迎新, farewell to the old, welcome the new). That’s what my Chinese husband said to me as we gathered the last of the dirty laundry to throw in the washing machines last night. We already scrubbed our entire apartment clean — I dusted, he vacuumed and washed all of the dishes. Now we wanted clean clothes too.
“You did this before?” he asked me as we walked to the laundry room.
“Nope, I never used to clean house for the New Year. Not before I met you.”
He smiled. “You’ve become more superstitious since you married me,” he said.
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