Chinese guy | Speaking of China

Ask the Yangxifu: Love and Location Dilemma With a Chinese Man

540898_90352305 — A European science graduate student loves a Chinese man, but doesn't love the thought of sacrificing her career to live with him in China. Can they overcome location to be together?

LoveDilemma asks:

I’m a 22 years old girl from europe and currently finishing a master’s degree in biology. Everything was clear in my life until last year, when I meet a chinese exchange student in my university. Our friendship evolved into something so deep that we become boyfriend and girlfriend. But he had to went back to China 8 months ago to finish his bachelor there. We simply could not give up of our relationship and we keep in touch, but now we have a dilemma…He wish he could move to my country but he can’t find a job here. I’m finishing my degree and I also can’t see any job prospects for me in China as well…Even if I move there to live with him, my future seems dark. I wouldn’t even consider the possibility to move to China if my love wasn’t so deep…I’d be completely dependent on him in a foreign country with strict immigration laws… I’m not even a native english speaker nor have any teaching degree in languages or teaching experience, can’t speak mandarin fluently… so my scientific degree seems worthless there. Unless I find a stable job and income in China (unrealistic), I think I won’t be welcome there or get a stable residence permit. How many foreign women had married a chinese national under these conditions? My head tells me it’s not wise but my heart……So we will have to break up because he’s chinese and I’m a foreign girl? I still can’t simply accept this and move on… Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Love and Location Dilemma With a Chinese Man”

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Chapter 75: Buying Amway in China

Amway Shop in Sanya, China — My friend Chris had completely bought into Amway as a way of life, when he began working as a sales rep for them. But while I bought Amway vitamins, I wasn't buying his sales pitch. (photo by HNPIX from Wikimedia Commons)

“I’ve discovered a new confidence and joy,” exclaimed my Chinese friend Chris, who I also visited during my trip to Hangzhou in August 2003. He spoke with all of the passion of a born-again Christian pastor. Except this wasn’t about finding religion — it was about finding Amway.

I don’t know just how Chris went from masters studies in Chemistry to layman’s studies of direct sales. He had finished a year of graduate school at Zhejiang University, one of the country’s top ten schools, and presumably had two more years. Yet, here he was, in a dress shirt and tie, passing out Amway business cards — and demonstrating their products as if this was a sales call, instead of the friendly meeting over tea.

“Here try this,” he said, passing around an Amway hand moisturizer. “The glycerin and honey makes your skin feel softer and smoother than any moisturizer I’ve ever used.” My Chinese friend Caroline — the one who had been a matchmaker to John and I over a year ago — raised an eyebrow at me, and looked as if she was stifling laughter.

But it was no laughing matter to Chris. Continue reading “Chapter 75: Buying Amway in China”

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Ask the Yangxifu: Concerned about Chinese Boyfriend with a Temper

Unhappy face — An American woman wonders why her once-gentle Chinese boyfriend, who came to the US for his Ph.D, is suddenly showing a temper. Jocelyn shares similar experiences with her Chinese husband, and offers some advice.

HoneymoonIsOver asks:

When I came back to the states from China I met my current Chinese boyfriend and that has been an adventure. [He’s here in the US getting his PhD in Pharmaceutics] Now that the “honeymoon” is over with my new bf I’m looking to your blog and others for advice and ideas on how to keep things positive in this new relationship…. I always perceived Chinese men to be extermely gentle, but I have found that me new bf has a bit of a temper [I guess due to the stress of school & lack of decent income]. I heard from another family member that sometimes Chinese men change after they get married and don’t treat their wives well. I am horrified at even hearing this, but now my curiosity has kicked in. Can you tell me what you think?”

Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Concerned about Chinese Boyfriend with a Temper”

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Ask the Yangxifu: When a Chinese Man Buries His Love

Broken heart — One Western woman reveals her love to a Chinese man, only to learn he can never love her back. Can she ever be more than just his friend?

LongingForLove asks:

I wonder about Chinese man act of love really. I have one guy from China and we become good friends first .We help and share stories together and have happy time also .One day i feel ” I love him ” but i don’t know what should i do really ? because he doesn’t show anythings to me that he love me ,only he always tells me that ” you raise me up.” So , i told him when i met him that ” I love you” and he replied me that ” i felt same like you ” but i feel uncomfortable if we thought like that .Whatever happen i expected we contact forever.

He told me that he is Chinese man and have tradition “love not easy” and love is in his heart . Please if you kind ,what should i do ? and his reaction to me friend or lover? Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: When a Chinese Man Buries His Love”

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Ask the Yangxifu: Where’s the love from my Chinese man?

Heart drawn in the moisture on a bathroom mirror — A woman wonders why her Chinese man doesn't show her love or affection, or give compliments.

Missing Dimension asks:

I am white, and I know my Chinese S.O. loves me, but he never says so. No affection, touching, except in the bedroom. No compliments. No flirting. He is 62, born in Hong Kong, and lived in Canada a little while. Mostly lived in NY. He can be highly critical. But I have controlled this to some extent. Is this normal for a highly educated Chinese American man? There seems to be a whole dimension of our relationship left out.

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In Chinese culture, I’d say your man is nothing out of the ordinary. Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Where’s the love from my Chinese man?”

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Ask the Yangxifu: How to Avoid Dating Dishonest Chinese Men

558914_17615479 — A Western woman had her heart broken, when the Chinese man she loved turned out to be married. How can you avoid dishonest men in China?

Just recently, a reader also shared with me how her friend, a Western woman, was heartbroken by a Chinese man who didn’t disclose his marriage — and pregnant wife.

Ouch.

There’s a saying in Chinese: 林子大，什么鸟都有 (there are all kinds of birds in a big forest). So, it goes for China too: there are all kinds of Chinese men. And some aren’t really looking for THAT kind of love.

The thing is, when it comes to love and dating in China, Western women are no longer in Kansas, as Jessica Larson-Wang writes in this eChinacities article: Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: How to Avoid Dating Dishonest Chinese Men”

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Ask the Yangxifu: What Western Women Think of Chinese Men

Western woman and a Chinese man — What do Western women think of Chinese men? A study by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences provides further insight into why couples of Chinese men and Western women are so rare.

This week on Ask the Yangxifu, I’m preempting the usual Q&A to share with you an article published a few weeks ago, in Chinese, discussing a China study about what Western women think of Chinese men — a topic on the minds of many readers.

No surprises here — especially if you’ve read or followed the comments on my post On the Rarity of Foreign Women and Chinese Boyfriends/Chinese Husbands. Still, it’s nice to see a more empirical take on something we have understood more intuitively, or through our own experiences.

My translation comes from the original article, first published on the Xinhua website. Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: What Western Women Think of Chinese Men”

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Chapter 60: Love in the time of SARS

Hong Kong people wearing masks during SARS — Just as SARS began, and panic slowly began to mask the public, it felt odd to be so in love, in China. (Image from www.wired.com)

I’d been working for barely a month in Shanghai, when news of SARS began to spread like the virus itself.

Masks quietly spread around the bus I rode into downtown Shanghai.

The women’s bathroom became our morning decontamination station, as everyone washed their hands more obsessively than Lady MacBeth — over conversations about whether or not to buy face masks.

E-mails about Hong Kong infected my inbox, with seemingly fictional photographs of people muzzled with face masks, and health workers dressed in outfits straight out of the Andromeda Strain.

Even the office showed symptoms of the SARS scare. Continue reading “Chapter 60: Love in the time of SARS”

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Chapter 59: Going to the Hospital in China

Xiangya Hospital — Going to the hospital in China didn't mean my cough was serious. But it came just at a time when a more serious illness began to threaten China.

Going to the hospital. Before I came to China, the phrase seemed so serious, a harbinger of bad news — in the US, only those with a sickness or problem beyond the family doctor would visit the hospital.

But in China, hospitals handled everything, from minor colds to major surgery. You could not divine the severity of a problem just because someone went to the hospital.

That someone going to a hospital, one evening in mid-March, 2003, was me — a young foreigner gripped with a relentless, raw cough. I felt so sickly before John, my Chinese boyfriend, who never took ill because, unlike me, he had met much of the bacteria and viruses in China once before in his lifetime. My health had been a source of consternation before, and still was. So this evening, as we walked into the hospital, John wrapped his arm around me, gently stroking my shoulder to comfort me, like a parent soothing a doctor-phobic young child. Continue reading “Chapter 59: Going to the Hospital in China”

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Chapter 58: China Marriage On My Mind

Wedding rings on a white background — In Shanghai, my Chinese boyfriend and I were almost as close as husband and wife. All of the signs said we were headed to a wedding -- so why did I have to ask?

There was no history of casual dating in John’s family. His maternal grandmother was a child bride, sent to live with her grandfather’s family when she was seven or eight, without the ability or understanding to contest her fate. She went from being a virginal pre-adolescent to a wife who would immediately bear children.

John’s mother, her daughter, married during the Cultural Revolution, in 1972 — with a “revolutionary marriage certificate,” stamped in red, to prove it. She was never a child bride, but still a stranger to this man, introduced to her through a matchmaker in the village, with a courtship that fast-tracked them straight to a wedding. Marriage was simply a practical matter, solving what the Chinese often refer to as their “personal problem.”

By the time I moved to Shanghai, John and I were as close as a husband and wife, living together and depending on each other. John had long decided we were a “settled couple” — that’s why he moved in with me in Hangzhou, only days after our historic first kiss. We had skipped casual courtship and went straight to something serious — serious enough to wonder about marriage. Continue reading “Chapter 58: China Marriage On My Mind”

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