Building cultural bridges with love. 洋媳妇谈中国
Advice to help you with your Chinese husband. Stories about having a Chinese husband. All from one Western woman married to a Chinese man.
I’m excited to share with you my first-ever collaborative article, which I wrote with Susan Blumberg-Kason. Susan is the author of All the Tea in Chicago
This article grew out of stories that Susan and I swapped over the past year about going meatless in China, and especially going meatless in a Chinese family. Hope you enjoy it.
—– Continue reading “Things We’ve Learned About Going Meatless in China From Our Chinese Families”
“You’ve got some balls.” That’s how my husband’s white friend praised him the other day. John happened to share with him the discrimination — and his decision to fight back.
“He told me he could never fight back,” John said to me. Apparently, the white guy faced some serious injustice of his own last year, but did nothing in return. “He said he didn’t have the balls to do it.”
If they had to choose between the two, most Americans probably wouldn’t pick John as the guy with more chutzpah. Continue reading “My Chinese Husband Has Balls”
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 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.
So without further ado, here they are: Continue reading “2012 Blogs By Western Women Who Love Chinese Men”
M asks:
I’m 27 and I was born and raised in Europe but my fiancee is Shanghainese so we’re gonna have one of those Chinese super expensive weddings in a 5 stars hotel in Shanghai and I really dont know what to do. I really do not like the Chinese wedding style made up of performances, games and speech. Besides relatives, I invited around 20-30 friends to the wedding here and I’m gettin more and more nervous about what is going to happen during the feast. We have an MC that will entertain the guests and lead the night but both with him and the wedding planner I had a really hard time to plan everything and trying to make as nice and simple as possible but unfortunately there are some things such as exchange of vows and rings on the stage in front of everybody and organize some games for the guests, apparently Chinese people really appreciate and enjoy them. You went through this already so can you or anyone else who went through this and can give me some advises? Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Big Fat Chinese Weddings Revisited”
On our first official date together, John happened to slip a CD in my portable CD player, Lěngkù Dàodǐ by Yu Quan. I gave him one of the earbuds, turned the CD player on, and we listened to it all the way to the vegetarian restaurant. I’ll never forget how I felt the moment Cǎihóng, or Rainbow, came on, a song in Chinese that described the ultimate love as more gorgeous than a rainbow. Much of their music captured the kind of innocence and beauty that surrounded my love with John, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he even chose that CD on purpose. Let’s just say this: by the time John and I arrived at that restaurant, I already fell in love twice — with him and this new musical group. Continue reading “The Story of Our Chinese Love Song, Cǎihóng by Yu Quan”
AK asks:
I am a white 19YO university student living in America, and for one year now I have been in a serious relationship with a PRC national six years older than me. I was already studying Mandarin before I met him and his English is commendable, so communication hasn’t been an issue, and therefore everything between us on a personal level has been ideal. We both feel completely comfortable talking about the future, already assuming we’re working toward marriage after graduation.
However, my parents are none too pleased. They remained generally quiet for the first six months of dating, then all of a sudden began voicing protests. I do my best to ignore their complaints about his age and religion (we’re Christian, he was raised Buddhist), but there is one problem that really puts me between a rock and a hard place.
My father’s job requires him to have a high-level security clearance. Because of this, my parents understandably fear that were I to marry my “Communist” Chinese boyfriend, my father would be forced to quit his job. Even though my boyfriend is not a CCP member, his nationality is all that matters in the clearance. Every time I go home or open an email, I am reminded that I am ruining my family with attacks like:
“Some relationships shouldn’t be allowed to begin in the first place!” Continue reading “Ask The Yangxifu: When Politics Interfere With Love in China”
You two really have fūqī xiàng (夫妻相).
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this from Chinese friends. As much as I love when people suggest my husband and I are a lucky match, a couple destined to stay together forever, fūqī xiàng leaves me puzzled. How could anyone think we look that much alike?
I could imagine why such a saying came from China, a country dominated by the Han people, who share the same black hair and eyes, and similar skin tones. With that background, it wouldn’t take much for any couple to look alike. At a minimum, they’d need the same nose and the same shaped eyes; maybe the same shaped face, if you were a stickler. But even so, the odds are good you’d find many couples with their match reflected in their faces.
Not with John and I. Maybe we have the same nose — maybe. But one nose in common does not a fūqī xiàng make. Continue reading “The Fuqi Xiang Fallacy”
Last night, I saw the movie Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. I expected a relaxing evening with some of my favorite actors of all time — Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier — but ended up with more than I bargained. Especially when I heard these words from Monsignor Ryan:
I’ve known a good many cases of marriages between the races in my time, and strangely enough, they usually work out quite well. I don’t know why. Maybe because it requires some special quality of effort, more consideration and compassion than most marriages seem to generate these days, could that be it?
I just wanted to hug the Monsignor after he said this, and couldn’t help but agree with the character Christina Drayton, that they were “beautiful thoughts.”
But the more I thought about this, the more I was reminded of an e-mail I received in January, which read: Continue reading “A “Guess Who’s” Perspective on My Marriage, Effort, and What It’s Worth”
When you’re facing hard times as a couple, people say all kinds of things. “Hope it gets better.” “Stay strong.” “You’ll be okay.”
And then, there’s what my so-call friend told me back in December, after I told her about the discrimination against John, and how I supported him.
“So you’re standing by him? Wow, you’re so loyal.”
You’re so rude, I wanted to tell her. I also wanted to slap her across the table, but it was a holiday party and that sort of thing doesn’t go well with gingerbread and hot apple cider.
“Why wouldn’t I be? He’s my husband and I love him,” I finally said as I glowered at her.
From her perspective, “for better or for worse” just didn’t apply to us. She might as well have said, “You should have married a white man,” because that’s exactly what I heard hidden within her words — that when a white woman chooses to marry someone outside her race, in my case a Chinese man, she should throw in the towel when she faces something she’d never face with a white husband.
Please. Continue reading “I Stand By My Man, And Yes, He’s Chinese”