discrimination | Speaking of China

7 Challenges after Moving from China to America with your Chinese Spouse

Many years ago, when my husband first received clearance in China his US Green Card, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Now the greatest challenges are finally over,” I thought.

Oh, how wrong I was.

It was only after I moved to America with my Chinese husband that I finally learned the truth — that the most challenging things happen after you set foot in American soil.

Here are 7 major challenges we faced after we moved together from China to America:

1. Nobody really cares about what you did in China

That amazing Winter Solstice dinner you had at the family home in China? Nobody gives a damn about it.

Returning to the US with a new spouse after years in China is like coming home from the greatest world adventure ever. You’ve both seen and experienced incredible things you’re dying to share with everyone you meet, from old family and to new friends. You want to enlighten your fellow Americans about the “real” China.

Except, there’s just one problem — nobody really cares!

As Marissa of Xiananigans noted:

Those closest do care, and job interviewers take a keen interest in my unconventional background, but for the most part I feel it’s a polite interest, not a deeply profound one. I’m a lone wolf in the sense that I don’t really know too many people, acquaintances or otherwise, interested in China. Many have a hard time placing Xi’an, even when I mention the Terracotta Warriors.

But is this really surprising for a country that often treats international headlines as an afterthought to Kim Kardashian’s bod and the popular reality show du jour? A country where a cable TV news show actually ran a map locating Hong Kong on the East Coast of South America?

John and I felt like the odd-couple-out at hundreds of social gatherings in the US, surrounded by Americans who would rather talk about TV shows neither of us had ever heard of.

It was a sad reversal of what we experienced in China, where friends and family would remain rapt with attention when we spoke of America. They were always hungry to hear about what things were really like in my home country, and excited to discuss the latest news headlines, movies and even TV shows.

Ultimately, the few people who actually wanted to talk China were usually from the country, former expats, or traveled there once upon a time. And sadly, there were never enough of them to go around.

2. Americans are incredibly judgmental towards non-native English speakers

Growing up, I often gravitated towards foreigners in the US who didn’t speak native English. When a young girl from Belgrade joined our high school orchestra for a period of time, I loved hanging out with her in the hallway and hearing her spin stories of the former Yugoslavia through her splendidly imperfect English. In college, I used to enjoy green tea with a couple of Japanese guys who sometimes paused in the middle of a sentence, and once helped put together a party to welcome a gaggle of Brazilian girls who spoke English with heavy accents.

None of these imperfections in their English bothered me in the least. After all, we could communicate and in the end, that’s all that mattered. Right?

Then I returned to the US with my Chinese husband who speaks English as a second language – and discovered the shocking truth. Most Americans were not like me at all.

Americans are extremely judgmental towards non-native English speakers – even when they speak outstanding English (as my husband does).

They’re even judgmental when they haven’t met your foreign spouse. People who had never even heard my husband speak a single word automatically assumed his English must be poor because he’s Chinese. (Sadly, in the hierarchy of non-native English speakers, Chinese place somewhere at the bottom.)

Whether you like it or not, language discrimination is a reality in the US – and it’s going to make life for you and your spouse that much harder. But that leads me to the next challenge you’ll face:

3. Discrimination

If you’re a white American like me, get ready to experience a new kind of education through your Chinese spouse: discrimination.

As I’ve written before in this piece published in Hippo Reads, discrimination is real for Asians of all stripes in the US (including those born and raised on American soil). But it’s going to be that much harder for your spouse because they’re not used to it – and, if you’re white, neither are you.

Even worse, if you’re like the vast majority of white people (who have no people of color as friends), you’re going to feel incredibly isolated when your spouse finally experiences the worst. Most whites don’t believe discrimination still happens in America today. Suddenly, the friends you thought would always be there for you just don’t get it. If you’re anything like me, you’ll grow tired of trying to convince them of the fact that it’s a real thing – and will be forced to move on and forge completely new friendships.

My advice? Be prepared. Read about how modern discrimination and racism in America really works (Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s Racism Without Racists is my favorite, but it’s not the last word on this). Make more friends with people of color – they can share their experiences with you and will become your allies when the worst hits your spouse.

4. Deep cravings for authentic Chinese food that are tough to satisfy

102_2242 — If we wanted the real, authentic taste of John’s hometown in the US, we had to make it ourselves.

Call it the American Chinese food conundrum. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Chinese restaurants that cover the US – and only a small fraction of them can deliver anything close to the ambrosial delights that you fell in love with in China.

It’s a nightmare for your Chinese partner, accustomed to the incredible diversity of Chinese food you can find in most urban areas in China.

On the streets right beside our apartment, we can dine on cross-the-bridge noodles from Yunnan, spicy BBQ from Chongqing and Hunan, Lanzhou-style pulled noodles, and at least four or five different specialties from cities in Zhejiang province you’ve probably never even heard of.

When you move to America, you’re trading in that kind of rich culinary heritage for a blandly bastardized version that’s either breaded and deep-fried or drowning in some unnaturally pink glop.

Ugh.

If you’re lucky, one or both of you can actually cook decent Chinese food and satisfy those cravings on a regular basis. Even then, you’ll never cover it all. There are some things that are WAY too complicated to prepare on a regular basis (Beijing duck, anyone?). There are others you’ll struggle to buy or never find at all, such as fresh Spring bamboo roots, tang hulu, and Suzhou-style mooncakes.

(Well, at least it’ll give you something to look forward to when you return to China for visits, right?)

5. Teaching your spouse how to drive a car

Sorry guys, but teaching your spouse how to drive in the US is not lovely like this photo!

Unless you’re one of the fortunate few Americans returning to a city with excellent mass transportation (like New York City) you’ll need a car to get around. So will your spouse, except for one small problem: chances are, he or she doesn’t know how to drive.

Guess who will become their teacher?

This is a dangerous proposition – “dangerous” as in it could seriously wreck your marriage.

Anyone who has ever listened to the popular NPR show Car Talk knows that many a couple gets into an argument over something as simple as how to drive (and we’re talking about two adults who already have their license). There’s nothing more nervewracking than sitting shotgun as your sweetie is swerving in between lanes and on the verge of clipping someone else’s car – and it’s your job to yell at them and get the car under control.

In the end, I helped my husband successfully earn his US driver’s license. But ask me to do it all over again? Please…no!

6. Helping your foreign spouse through the exhausting task of finding work while you’re finding work

We may be smiling in this photo, but we weren't months later when we were both trying to figure out our lives in America. — We may be smiling in this photo, but we weren’t months later when we were both trying to figure out our lives in America.

Anyone who recalls that demanding post-graduation job hunt knows it’s not easy to land on your feet with that perfect job and apartment. Just imagine how much harder that whole process is when you have to do it as you’re guiding a foreigner through the ins and outs of a whole job hunting culture that’s not second nature to them.

If you haven’t already, you’ll soon learn that the process is NOT as universal as you imagined. You’ll also learn that America puts a premium on appearances (aka job interviews) so even if your spouse is wholly qualified for the work, they still might not get the job. Sadly, discrimination (especially language-based discrimination) looms large in subjective situations like interviews, leading to a lot of potential disappointments and frustrations that you never even expected.

Worst case scenario? You’ll give up on ever finding employment for your Chinese spouse.

That might sound easy enough if you’re an American man with a Chinese wife, but it flips the traditional marriage expectation on its head for American women with Chinese husbands. Still, I know of American women who have returned to the US with their families, understanding that their husbands will either be underemployed or become stay-at-home dads.

7. Realizing the American dream isn’t always what you imagined

We've traded in our American dream for a China dream. — We’ve traded in our American dream for a China dream.

So many Chinese remain starstruck with America, believing everything must be better in the “beautiful country” (the literal translation of “America” in Chinese). Their enthusiasm is so infectious that you’ll be dreaming of those Technicolor blue skies, sweet clean air, and the smell of freshly cut green grass on the lawn. Before you know it, you’ll build up your very own country into this perfect American dream that will deliver everything you ever hoped for – and more – to you and your new spouse.

One of the most painful things about moving to America was when the experience shattered all the fantasies I ever had about settling there with my husband. My own country crushed us and let us down in countless ways.

I know of couples who pushed past the imperfect and frustrating reality to eventually build a “good enough” for themselves and their families.

As for us, we’ve had it with the American dream, trading it in for our own China dream instead.

Have you moved from China to America? Are you planning your own move? Weigh in with your thoughts on the challenges of bringing your family to the USA!

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Debunking the “Model Asian” Myth: Five Ways Asian-Americans Still Face Discrimination (Pub’d on HIPPO Reads)

Last week passed in a huge blur as July entered my life, along with a lot of new things that will keep this blogger SUPER busy through the entire month! That’s why I’ve been late to tell you about an article published in late June that I’m sure will resonate with many of you: Debunking the “Model Asian” Myth: Five Ways Asian-Americans Still Face Discrimination.

The accomplished Kaitlin Solimine (she’s also a contributor to the new anthology How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit) asked me a few months back about doing a piece for HIPPO Reads, a website known for “Real World Issues, Academic Insights.” Originally, it all started when I shared an article about the bias against Asian students in academia (one of the most shocking findings from a recent Wharton School study) and she brought up doing a guest post for HIPPO Reads. So I said, “Sure, I’ll do it.”

Well, the article soon morphed into something far beyond the problems that Asians face in higher education in America, and now offers a more comprehensive snapshot of the many ways Asians just aren’t getting ahead in America (despite the “model minority” label Americans love to attribute to Asians).

Here’s a snippet of the article:

In April 2014, the public was collectively shocked when University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School unveiled the results of a study examining racial gender biases in faculty mentoring. This finding particularly struck a chord: “We see tremendous bias against Asian students and that’s not something we expected. So a lot of people think of Asians as a model minority group. We expect them to be treated quite well in academia, and at least in the study and in this context we see more discrimination against Indian and Chinese students than against other groups.”

For most of the American public, such a finding was confounding. After all, for many Americans, it seems Asians reign at elite colleges and universities and go on to live the American dream. Eugene Volokh, for example, in this Washington Post piece, points to the overrepresentation of Asians at the Silicon Valley behemoth of Google as an example of “how the Asians became white.”

Statistics can be deceptive, just like our own stereotypes about Asians in America. If Americans think Asians have truly made it—or even have an unfair advantage—perhaps it’s time to think again:

Read the entire article right now. If you love it, by all means share it around! And as always, thanks for reading!

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On Working-Class White Women, Interracial Dating and China

Recently, I’ve been reading this book by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva titled Racism Without Racists: Color-blind Racism & Racial Inequality in Contemporary America. On the chapter regarding white progressives, Silva mentioned the following in his conclusion:

Contrary to those who hold the “commonsense” view on racial matters, racial progressives are more likely to come from working-class backgrounds. Specifically, I found that young, working-class women are more likely than any other segment of the white community to be racially progressive. They were more likely to support…interracial marriage, have close personal relations with minorities in general and blacks in particular…

Elsewhere I have argued that whiteness is “embodied racial power” because “all actors socially regarded as ‘white’…receive systemic privileges just by virtue of wearing the white outfit whereas those regarded as nonwhite are denied those privileges. However, the wages of whiteness are not equally distributed. Poor and working-class whites receive a better deal than their minority brethren, but their material share of the benefits of whiteness is low, as they remain too close to the economic abyss. Hence, white workers have a powerful reason to exhibit more solidarity toward minorities than whites in other classes…

…racially progressive women, one after the other, used their own experiences of discrimination as women as a lens through which to comprehend minorities’ racial oppression. It was also clear that their shared class vulnerability with minorities (such as bad jobs and low wages) was involved in their racial progressiveness and it may even be the reason why they were the most likely subgroup of all the whites in these samples to have dated across the color line…

Continue reading “On Working-Class White Women, Interracial Dating and China”

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Why Ignoring Cultural Differences in Cross-Cultural Relationships is Harmful

While reading Laura Banks’ dissertation about interracial relationships with a Chinese partner, something in the conclusion caught my eye:

Each couple has different ways of viewing their own situation. Some address it directly and define the boundaries and what must be done to ensure cultural understanding. For example one couple said; ‘from the outset of our relationship, we have been conscious of intercultural issues and keen to address them by talking then through and explaining to each other what we are thinking.’ Other couples like B…and L…have addressed it in a completely different way and have ‘done something that is very unusual in Chinese-foreign relationships; we have never talked about that I am from a different country especially not in the case of conflicts’ and they feel that ‘many people like to overemphasize the influence of cultural differences.’ The way in which they address the situation is what works for them as a couple and as with many things in life there is no wrong or right way of dealing with it.

Naturally, since I write a blog meant to promote cross-cultural understanding between Chinese-Western couples, it seemed bizarre to just ignore cultural differences in a cross-cultural relationship. But as much as I would love to say that “there is no wrong or right way,” I can’t agree. In fact, the B/L way — essentially, a colorblind approach to interracial/cross-cultural relationships — is harmful. Continue reading “Why Ignoring Cultural Differences in Cross-Cultural Relationships is Harmful”

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“Why Us?”: More on Discrimination and Marriage to a Chinese Man

Once again, discrimination has landed smack in the middle of our lives here in the US. A hard landing, and one with reverberations far beyond anything I ever expected.

As I wrote not that long ago, I never imagined I would come to know discrimination so intimately through my marriage to a Chinese man. Maybe that’s naivete or plain ignorance; either way, it’s clear that I just didn’t realize the extent to which discrimination and racism still remained in this country, and their ability to strike down (and even ruin) a young man in pursuit of his own small patch of happiness.

What I have learned is this Continue reading ““Why Us?”: More on Discrimination and Marriage to a Chinese Man”

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Foreigners Who Think They’re Entitled To Date The Hottest Chinese?

If you couldn’t get a “Brad Pitt” to date you in your home country, why do you think you somehow deserve nothing less than his standard of men because you’re in China? (photo by Juanky Pamies Alcubilla via Flickr)

Recently, a reader wrote the following to me:

I remember when I was back in [city in China] I was with a large group of Westerners for our orientation and a lot of us got to talking about potentially starting relationships in China. There was one American girl, who was very pleasant but kind of heavyset and nothing special to look at, who said she wouldn’t settle for anything less than Jay Chou or a local Chinese rapper we knew who was modelesque stunning. Another man on our orientation, who is fifty years old though not bad looking, also said he would only go for girls between the ages of 25-30 who were “drop dead gorgeous.” Continue reading “Foreigners Who Think They’re Entitled To Date The Hottest Chinese?”

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Despite the China-America Divide, We’re On The Same Team

The other day, my husband and I were having a conversation in the car about discrimination and racism in America — two things he knew firsthand from his own experiences over here.

“Mean and wicked, that’s what these people were to me,” he said, referring to the Americans who had betrayed him in the past. “They just don’t care, they have no concern for you at all. They think they can just bully you.”

My heart ached to see him this way. “I’m so sorry. It just goes to show how much work in this country is still undone. We Americans have a lot to learn.”

“Don’t say ‘we’! Don’t put yourself in the same category as them, you should be careful of your language!”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to say ‘we’, it just came out by accident. Just a reflex, that’s all.”

But his words haunted me the rest of the way home. I couldn’t believe that the word “we” — a word that normally brings John and I together as one — could divide us into two in a completely different context. Continue reading “Despite the China-America Divide, We’re On The Same Team”

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Ask the Yangxifu: Negativity From Friends (And More) About Dating Asian Men

A B&W photo of a girl looking sad — (photo by Taston via Flickr)

A asks:

Here, in Eastern Europe, seeing white girls with an Asian guy — and what’s even more shocking — a guy shorter than her, it just blows people’s minds! People in the street are staring at you in a sarcastic way or sometimes even making comments like “what is she doing with him? Are they really dating each other?!” Even my friends find it hard to understand. So I wanted to ask you, if situations like this happened to you, how did you feel that time, was it bothering you? Did you feel hurt? How did you overcome this prejudice? Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Negativity From Friends (And More) About Dating Asian Men”

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The Miracle of the “Long March Spirit”

My Chinese husband, wearing a "Red Army" hat — My Chinese husband, wearing my "Red Army" cap

Slam.

I’m sure I heard that sound this past Friday, after a phone call closed one of the best options for my husband’s internship. The person in question echoed much of the same discrimination we’ve known from the past. It sent me reeling for much of the evening, and well into Saturday.

Maybe it hurt me harder because I considered this person’s very emergence a miracle. That kind of “hey, someone else actually believes in my husband too” sort of feeling. But the person turned out to be nothing more than a mirage, and so were the opportunities.

Still, even if they’re not real, mirages can sting. I should know, because I came this close to just giving in, just saying, “To hell with it, maybe they were right all along.”

But yesterday, I donned my Red Army cap, the very one I bought years ago on a trip to Chairman Mao’s hometown of Shaoshan, Hunan, and headed outside with my husband to kick around a soccer ball in an empty soccer field nearby. Continue reading “The Miracle of the “Long March Spirit””

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The Discrimination Continues, But I Need A Break (Today)

A tired person holding their face in their hands — (photo by Simon Cataudo)

Today, I’m taking a break from my usual Friday content. The same discrimination I wrote about back in November continues to rear its head in new and malevolent ways, threatening my husband’s future.

I want to be the kind of yangxifu who can shove it all aside and find the strength to churn out another Ask the Yangxifu, Yangxifu Pride or even Mandarin Love. But I can’t right now. To be honest, I’ve spent most of this week oscillating between a kind of “don’t worry, everything will be okay” mindset to outright fear, terror and the tears that come along with it all. Most days I’ve cried, some more than others. And just when I find a small patch of hope — something that gives me a sense that maybe, just maybe, this will turn out all right — it gets stamped out by another goon. Continue reading “The Discrimination Continues, But I Need A Break (Today)”

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