Chinese husband | Speaking of China

Ember Swift Interview Part 2 – How China Changed Her Life

Ember Swift and Guo Jian, during one of their wedding ceremonies (photo courtesy of Ember Swift)

Last week, I introduced you to Canadian artist Ember Swift’s professional career — from how China changed her sound to what’s next for her as a musician/singer-songwriter and a writer. If you missed it, check out Part 1 of my Ember Swift interview. Also, you can purchase her music at iTunes and her website, peruse her must-read blogs, and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Sina Weibo.

But when it comes to her writing, Ember isn’t afraid to get personal. She has written about her marriage to Guo Jian — the lead singer/bassist of Long Shen Dao — from the unique perspective of a queer woman. She has also shared her experience of being pregnant, giving birth and raising a baby in China, including navigating life with a Chinese mother-in-law who assists with child care.

In Part 2 of our interview, I asked Ember about her personal life — from how she met Guo Jian to what it’s like raising a baby in a Chinese family. Continue reading “Ember Swift Interview Part 2 – How China Changed Her Life”

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On Dating Chinese Men — Or Why You Shouldn’t Judge After Only One Date

It always amazes me when people judge an entire population of people based on just one date alone. But people do it all the time — including the author of this blog post.

To be fair, I give her credit for going on a date with a Chinese man. There are many women who go to China and won’t even try — women who have already made up their minds perhaps even before they’ve set foot in the Middle Kingdom. So, definitely, kudos to her.

I don’t even mind that her account of that date is largely negative and unflattering towards Chinese men. She has every right to share what happened and voice her own opinions.

What does bother me, however, is how she presents the information. Continue reading “On Dating Chinese Men — Or Why You Shouldn’t Judge After Only One Date”

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In January, The Holidays Still Thrill Me, Thanks To My Chinese Husband

(photo by Victoria Pickering, via her Flickr stream)

John smiled with admiration as he hung my new down jacket up for me. “You can wear it on chuyi,” he said, a Mandarin term for the first day of the Chinese New Year.

This down jacket would join the red underwear, red bras, red long-sleeved shirt, red sweater, red-striped socks, and the jeans tucked into a Calvin Klein bag in the corner of our closet.

My heart fluttered with excitement, even though it surely seemed out of place in the Northern US in early January, a time when the snow outside our window looks as white and melancholy as a funeral in China.

But my marriage to John has become my own personal solution to the January blues — with him in my life, I now have another holiday to look forward to. And according to the tradition in his family and hometown, that means a new set of clothing — it’s auspicious to start the lunar new year wearing something new from head to toe.

There’s also a Chinese New Year’s Eve banquet for us to prepare. I imagine stir-fried bok choy, pickled daikon radishes, homestyle tofu, and the roast duck and ribs that will make John salivate, along with an auspicious dessert of eight treasures glutinous rice.

And I can’t wait to take a trip out to the local Chinese supermarkets, where we’ll find a wealth of decorations for the new year — plastic red firecrackers, red couplets, and, hopefully, a lovely paper snake we can hang on the wall.

So, January, do your worst. I’m not afraid of your mournful, snowy days, a time when most people struggle to return to their lives, leaving behind all the holiday mirth and magic. I’ve still got more holidays yet to enjoy — not to mention one gorgeous down jacket that awaits me — and I’ve got a Chinese husband to thank for that.

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On My Negative Dating Experiences With Chinese Men, and Why I Still Kept Smiling About China’s “Dating Scene”

Jocelyn Eikenburg, smiling in a windswept — The winds (of China’s dating scene) didn’t always blow my way, but I still remained smiling, despite all my own negative experiences w/ Chinese men.

A few years ago, I remember stumbling across a post that linked back to me on the now defunct Shlaowai blog (which billed itself as “Shanghai Uncensored”). The post, written by one of their white female writers, was titled, “So, What’s the Dating Scene Like?” I can’t share any quotes from the post — unfortunately, the blog’s creators blocked archiving of their material, which means you can’t even dig up their original content through the Wayback Machine. Still, given that the post featured the infamous photo of a shorter Long Duk Dong with his head buried in the bosom of a taller white girl, you can guess what the author had to say about “the dating scene” in China.

I can’t recall her exact wording when she referenced my site, but I remember how I felt. That I somehow couldn’t be trusted to understand her experience. After all, I crossed the line she somehow drew there in Shanghai by dating and marrying a Chinese (and then daring to write something positive about it).

You might wonder, why do I even care about an obscure post from years back on a now-defunct blog? It’s because I’ve increasingly encountered a similar perspective in e-mails from some readers — e-mails that ask, in a suspect tone, why I’m not writing enough negative things about dating Chinese men? Continue reading “On My Negative Dating Experiences With Chinese Men, and Why I Still Kept Smiling About China’s “Dating Scene””

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On Sex In The US, and How My Husband Taught Me the Word “Sao”

A red wall w/ the words "Sex" spray-painted on it in yellow — (photo by Stuart Caie via Flickr)

One Chinese word that’s guaranteed to make my husband laugh is sāo (骚). Most Chinese-English dictionaries translate the meaning he’s thinking of as “flirty” or “coquettish” — words that don’t come close to describing what’s really on his mind.

I’ll never forget that first apartment John and I rented in Cleveland, an apartment that schooled me in the true meaning of sāo.

One afternoon, while in the bedroom, I suddenly heard the unmistakable moaning through a heating vent. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” she screamed, a phrase that rose in volume with every creak and bounce of their bed. I couldn’t believe the show from my first-floor neighbors — either because it had been years since I lived in the US, or perhaps because all of my previous apartment or dormitory-style buildings had much thicker walls. Of course, I couldn’t help but tell John, who smirked when he finally heard the girl’s screams. Not long after, he gave the two girls downstairs a new nickname — sāo qīngnián (骚青年). Qingnian means youth or young person. But sāo, as I came to discover, is also a way to describe people who are more uninhibited when it comes to sex. Continue reading “On Sex In The US, and How My Husband Taught Me the Word “Sao””

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My Husband and His Childlike Christmas Cheer

John admiring the inflatable globe that "Santa Claus" brought him. — John, admiring the inflatable globe that “Santa Claus” brought him.

The other day, I caught John pouring over his inflatable globe — and couldn’t help but remind him of its origins.

“Remember when ‘Santa Claus’ gave that to you last year?” I said with a wink.

He giggled in response. “‘Santa Claus’ really knows what I like.”

It’s the sort of thing you’d hear a parent ask their child — instead of a wife asking her husband. Yet, even though we both know who “Santa Claus” really is, any talk of the jolly old man never fails to bring a smile to his face. Continue reading “My Husband and His Childlike Christmas Cheer”

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Are More Unconventional Chinese Men More Likely to Date/Marry Western Women?

My husband with his crazy spiked up hair — My husband John and his spiked-up hair.

“I’m not at all a typical Chinese!” That’s what a Facebook friend, a guy with a European wife, wrote to me in a message. But his words could easily have been spoken by my own husband.

When I first met John, he was anything but “typical.” I’d never known anyone in China with such a passion for psychology, or such chutzpah (he once threatened to file a lawsuit against polluting factories in his village).

As we dated — and eventually married, I discovered just how unconventional he was. Whether he confronted an exploitative boss in China or the US institutions that discriminated against him, John displayed a courage most would never have imagined in a man who only stands 5’4” (1.65 m) tall. While most Chinese would covet US citizenship and a life abroad, he wanted to keep his Chinese passport and return to China to start his career. He even loves my curves, something you probably wouldn’t expect from a Chinese guy — especially one thinner and lighter than his wife. Continue reading “Are More Unconventional Chinese Men More Likely to Date/Marry Western Women?”

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I’m a Feminist AND It’s Tradition in China? On Not Changing My Maiden Name

“I am wondering why you have kept your maiden name?” wrote a reader. “When I married my Chinese husband [many] years ago, I was terribly proud to take his name, and still am.”

So I wrote back to her with my primary reasons. One that as a feminist, I’ve never felt comfortable with the idea that a woman must take on her husband’s name in marriage. And two, that in China, women traditionally keep their last names even after marrying.

When but I thought about my choices later on, I had to laugh. After all, isn’t it ironic that my feminist side finds refuge in China’s tradition? A tradition that, I’m certain, wasn’t created to accommodate feminists like me. Let’s just say I pretty much never expect “tradition” to agree with my feminist perspective on anything…and yet this time, it did. Sometimes, tradition — especially those of my husband’s country — will surprise me in unexpected ways.

But the best part of it all? No one in China ever raises an eyebrow at my surname, and then asks, “Why didn’t you change your name?”

Instead, the Chinese have other ways to put me on the spot, like, “So, do you have children?” But that’s another question for another day. 😉

P.S.: If you’re actually debating whether or not to change your name in marriage, see my post on this.

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On Shopping With My Husband, And The Parka That Got Away

A recent cold front turned my thoughts to the winter jacket I needed replacing this year, and ended up turning us towards the closest shopping mall to eyeball a few just-arrived winter jackets. I admired the colors — plum, tangerine, teal, and ivory. At least, before I turned the price tags over.

“Aiya,” I said to my husband at a whisper, still reeling from some serious sticker-shock. “And they said this was a sale?”

But John just smiled. “Do you like any of them?” He sounded like a guy ready to whip out his platinum credit card for me — that any price was still a good price to him.

I shook my head. “Too expensive, we should just wait until the after-Christmas sales.”

“But you need a new jacket,” he said. He smiled again, as if to say, go ahead, look around, I have an undisclosed bank account I’m about to tell you about.

My pragmatic side didn’t even notice. “No, I’ll survive without it, my zipper still isn’t totally broken yet.”

I linked my arm with John’s arm and pulled him towards the door. I could have sworn I saw him taking one last, longing glance at the plum-colored parka I loved only moments before.

“You really wanted to buy me that jacket, didn’t you?” I asked him the following day.

He grinned and leaned back in his chair. “Sure, I just want to take care of you.” Then he met my glance and added, “It’s my responsibility.”

I’ve called John “husband” for years, but I still can’t get over the way he loves to take me shopping — and shower me with only the best (even if we end up leaving the place empty-handed). Continue reading “On Shopping With My Husband, And The Parka That Got Away”

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Are Yangxifu (The Western Wives of Chinese Men) More Difficult Wives?

A Godzilla figurine dressed in a white wedding gown — (photo by theresa21)

“It’s hard to have a yangxifu [洋媳妇, the foreign wife of a Chinese man].” I know it seems strange, but every time my husband says this, we both bust up in laughter.

I don’t know when the phrase turned into our running joke, but I know why it makes us laugh. After all, I’ve never been the sort of woman who demanded a brand-spanking-new condo, car, and lots of cash; we’ve always rented, driven secondhand cars, and felt grateful just to pay our bills at the end of the month. I’ve never dragged John to the Apple store and begged him for an iPhone or any other status-gadget; instead I bought us dumb phones at the grocery store for a few bucks, and later lost mine somewhere in my car. And while I want a wedding ring someday from my husband, I’m content to wait for it until John graduates and lands his dream job. In short, if you looked up “demanding wife” or even “bridezilla” in the dictionary, you sure as hell wouldn’t find my photo there.

So today, I happened to nudge John with this phrase, how hard it is to have a yangxifu, while walking through the park. We laughed, as usual. But then I went off script, and asked him, “Do you think there’s any truth in it?” Continue reading “Are Yangxifu (The Western Wives of Chinese Men) More Difficult Wives?”

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