In marriage, is love really destiny? (photo by Scott Snyder)
“I think love is destiny.” My Chinese sister-in-law Wenjuan blushed as said these words, her own definition of love in marriage.
But even though I understood her every word, I still didn’t get it. “What do you mean by that?”
She glanced down at the table and then met my eyes with an almost virginal shyness, as if she were yet to understand everything about love. “If a couple has destiny, then they have love. Love is a part of destiny.”
Love is destiny. I thought about her words long after we left the table — especially when I pondered something my Chinese father-in-law once said at my wedding ceremony:
There’s always someone out there who really understands you, they are destined to cross a thousand miles to meet. The same idea will bring two people together.
He never spoke of love between John and I; just that we had this destiny that bound us forever in marriage. I heard the same when I attended Lao Da’s wedding earlier this summer. When the bride’s mother praised their union, she called it “destiny” over and over again, never once coming out and using the big “L” word.
In China, how many times had I heard “destiny” invoked in the success or failure of a relationship? Before Lao Da found a wife, he used to shrug off the dates gone wrong and the girlfriends that never happened with this phrase: “We didn’t have a destiny to be together.” At the same time, so many Chinese friends praised the “destiny” between my husband and I — to the point that even I embraced “destiny” as the reason he and I came together.
If love really is destiny, then maybe that Beatles song could go another way — “all you need is destiny.” 😉
Have you ever heard “love is destiny”? What do you think?
A Western woman wonders, how should I tell my Chinese boyfriend about my dark secret -- Asperger's Syndrome? (photo by Zsuzsanna Kilian)
Alhana asks:
I feel embarrassed asking this but since you mentioned your husband is PhD, and since he is a psychology major, I’m positive that he is familiar with Aspergers, otherwise known as high functioning autism. In May a psychologist diagnosed me with Aspergers, and around the same time I did some research and found out that Aspergers is genetic, which means if I have a child then there is a high chance of them having Aspergers. Also, ironically, I’m in kind of a long distance relationship with a Chinese guy. (I haven’t told him.) If he and I should ever get together and if he proposes to me, I feel that I must tell him about it because I know that there’s a possibility it will bite me back in the future and will create resentment. The thing is I don’t know how to go about it. I doubt that he has heard of it or is familiar with it. How can I make it seem normal or casual without making me seem like a freak or whatnot?Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Should I Tell Chinese Boyfriend I Have Asperger’s?”
"Won't you graduate already?" That's the pressure my Chinese husband felt from family and friends, wondering why he was over thirty, with no career or children. (photo by shno)
My Chinese husband John shot me his weary, it’s-way-too-late-on-Sunday look. I expected him to vent about his PhD studies the way he always did when he appeared tired — the homework, the papers, the feeling that you’re always, despite your best efforts, just a little behind. Behind it all, though, I always felt his passion, his love for the path he’d chosen — to become a clinical psychologist.
But not tonight. “I’m tired of being a student,” he sighed.
I dashed into the living room, as if his words signaled some emergency, that his lifelong passion needed life support. “What do you mean?” I asked, staring into his eyes for signs of something, anything, that could tell me what was wrong.
He hid himself behind a generic smile, the kind that doesn’t really mean he’s happy. “My cousin is my age. He is settled down and has a family.”
“So? Your cousin also will never be able to do what you can do after graduating.”
Sara Jaaksola offers insight from her own relationship with a Chinese man on what to do when language barriers get in the way of your love.
Over a month ago, Jin Feng asked me if I could share some advice on a special kind of relationship between Chinese men and Western women — where language poses a problem.
I said “sure, I’ll do it.” But then faced a problem of my own. How could I write about this? After all, the closest I came to this happened in my relationship with Frank — but even then, I spoke decent enough Chinese that communication didn’t really get in the way.
A birthday dinner in August reminded me of the value of friendships with Chinese women. (photo by ophelia cherry)
In early August, my Chinese husband and I invited five of our closest Chinese friends to celebrate my birthday a week late. We met at a Thai restaurant in Hangzhou. And while I longed for the piquant curries, I never realized I longed for something else even more until that evening.We happened to discuss the wedding between Min and Lao Da, who just married at the end of May. I really wanted to know about what they did to plan their ceremony. I had asked Lao Da about this almost two months earlier, but he dismissed the subject by saying his wife handled most of this.
When I approached Min about the process, she started dressing down Lao Da before she even got to the topic of dresses.“He did almost nothing to help!” she moaned, her eyebrows furrowed behind her geek-chic black frames. “I kept on trying to get him involved, but he didn’t. He always told me not to worry, that it wasn’t a problem. But we had all of these details to take care of and it was hard not to worry!” Continue reading “Finding Friends With Married Chinese Women”
Louise Van Arnam Huie, with husband Huie Kin (photo from http://www.huiekin.org)
mali asks:
I just came across this book Grace an American in China with a foreign woman marrying a Chinese man in the 1930s and going to China. I thought it was pretty cool that they had their relationship then…wow that must have been so hard!! So I wondered if you knew about other actual women like her that married Chinese in the past?
When her Chinese boyfriend gets very critical with her, a Western woman wonders, is this normal, and what should I do? (photo by Rob Rosenhamer)
Anna asks:
I came to China about six months ago with the intention of staying for four years to study at University. Three months ago, I met my current boyfriend — Chinese, 24, owns his own hair salon — although we’ve only been “officially together” for roughly two weeks.
He’s from Henan, and his parents are very poor farmers, so he was never able to get a good education and some of our outlooks on life are very different (although we value that about each other). He’s very bright and intelligent, though, and he’s always been the sweetest person to me. He’ll even accompany my classmates and I to the bars and clubs on weekends, and doesn’t mind hanging around the international dorms even though he can’t speak any English. Point is, he’s a great guy.
I’m a digital artist, and a few days ago I showed him some of my artwork. He said he really liked it, and asked if I could do a digital portrait of him. Of course I said okay, and went straight to work that night. I worked really hard, and it turned out really well. I was so excited to show it to him! But… when I did… all he could say was, “You made me look too old. I look 53. I don’t really like it… did you make any others?”
My Chinese is just intermediate, so for a minute I thought he was just joking around and trying to be humorous. But then I realized he was dead serious. Now… I don’t really mind so much that he didn’t like the picture… everyone has their own tastes… and although, to me, he doesn’t look 53 but in fact looks younger, I understand that he might have a different perspective.
What I DON’T understand is why he was so critical about it right off the bat! He often offers me those scolding-words-of-encouragement that I’ve come to appreciate… but he’s never been so directly negative before, especially about a gift. He really hurt my feelings. Is it normal/cultural for Chinese boys to be so harsh about these sort of things? Did we cross into the super-critical-is-okay boundary when we declared ourselves official? He really hurt my feelings… but I don’t want to make a big fuss if it’s jut something normal. The last thing I want is to seem petty to him. What should I think? What should I do? Has anyone else had a similar experience?Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: My Chinese Boyfriend is Too Critical”
The way my Chinese in-laws said goodbye to John and I, it could have been any other morning. But it wasn't -- we were leaving for the US, for another two years. (photo by Alexandre Caliman)
It looked like every other morning when I’d left my Chinese in-laws’ home this summer. My Chinese mother-in-law grumbled about how large our bags were, but then proceeded to push more honey pears and mooncakes into our backpacks. As usual, my Chinese father-in-law paced around the first floor like an expectant father – and only stopped when we climbed into my oldest brother-in-law’s car. Through the window, they appeared with the same calm and content face I remembered every morning, pushing heaping plates of breakfast my way (on this day, I had vegetarian dumplings stuffed with tofu and pickled vegetables and sweet fried rice pancakes) while asking why I’d risen so late from bed.
But this was not just any morning. John and I left his home for the US – which meant we wouldn’t see his family for another two years. When I waved at my Chinese mother-in-law and father-in-law through the window, that was the closest to a “goodbye” that we had.
The Global Times featured me in a recent article titled "On the Fast Track to Love." (photo by Roger Kirby)
I’m on the fast track back to the US (I’ll be hopping a plane back there on Tuesday, August 16). That’s why I’m late to tell you about my latest appearance in the news — a Global Times article titled On the Fast Track to Love, a story about cross-cultural speed dating. Here are a few quotes from me in the article:
For some, the attraction comes from an interest in their partner’s culture. “I’ve always felt more comfortable in the company of Chinese men, since their culture is more in tune with who I am,” US born Jocelyn Eikenburg, an English/Chinese translator who married a Chinese man and blogs about intercultural relationships, said, adding that she’s actually “incredibly shy and not so direct with people.”
…
For many Westerners, saying “I love you” is a big step in a relationship, a sign that you are really serious and invested; while love is usually implied among Chinese couples through actions such as sending you all the way to the door of your apartment, Eikenburg said.
“When Chinese do verbalize their feelings, they tend to use softer terms than what we are used to, such as ‘I like you’ because the word for love packs quite a punch in Chinese,” she added. “Not surprisingly, many Chinese with foreigners actually feel more comfortable saying ‘I love you’ in a foreign language.”
An American woman with a penny-pinching Chinese husband wonders, is it normal for Chinese men to be very thrifty? (photo by Tracy Olson)
Pinched asks:
I don’t know if this will sound weird to you, but are Chinese men in general *very* thrifty with money? It’s interesting to me that before my husband and I were married, he really doted on me and practically bought me anything and everything if I even just said “oh look at this, how nice.” (Of course, I was always saying, “No, I don’t want you to *buy* it, I was just thinking out loud!”) But now that we’re in the US and married, he’s turned into a real penny-pincher. I get the idea that money in the bank is worth more than even happy memories sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, I totally think saving money is wise and the right thing to do, it’s just that he seems overly concerned about money all the time. I even overheard him telling his older sister (who is also very “thrift”) on the phone one day how much money we have and how much [I] spend… that really upset me and I told him so, and he acted clueless as to what he had done wrong. I tried to explain that in American culture, one family’s money matters are not to be discussed with another’s. I know that Chinese are a lot more “saving” than Americans are, and I think money is very important to them… like my husband once said to me, “You know, Chinese think wasting is like a sin.” And I admire a lot of that aspect of their culture, and have learned a lot from it. But I guess I place more value on enjoying life than counting my pocketbook. 😛
It just bothers me how whenever we go shopping or buy something or want to do something, my husband complains about how much this or that costs, almost as if it was the most important thing in life. My friends and family think he’s so weird because of it. And it’s almost impossible for me to explain cultural differences to people who have never experienced the culture in China. When they want us to go do things with them on a whim, like go watch a movie, my husband will say he’d rather stay home and watch one and save the money and gas. Which is totally okay with me, really, it’s just that when we were dating he would do anything with me without hesitation.
I was just really surprised how he changed a lot when we came to the States… I am SO proud of him for getting jobs and working hard and I really do not mean to complain. I just wanted to get your take on this, and see if there’s something you can suggest to me in responding to my husband in a way that he knows I both care about him and saving money. When he’s worried about finances, and I try to smooth things over by saying, “Honey we’re fine, everything will be alright,” he gets upset and says that because I just don’t care, or something to that effect.
I think it’s the US economy and how expensive everything is here that burdens him. I’m just not sure how to help. We are NOT struggling financially, in fact, we’re doing surprisingly well. But according to Chinese standards for some reason it’s not good enough. I have a feeling some of my husband’s frustration stems from his family and friends “back home” constantly asking how much money he makes here and stuff like that. Maybe he’s trying to live up to their expectations? My husband is the youngest child and only boy in a family with 4 sisters. I understand there is some pressure on him.Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: My Chinese Husband Cares About Money Too Much”
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