Racist Rant Against Chinese Gets Foreigner in China Fired and Booted From China

Last week, Austrian Mark Kolars, who had worked at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, posted a number of extremely racist comments on LinkedIn which went viral on Chinese social media. That led to him getting suspended from his job and subsequently booted out of China, as reported by the South China Morning Post:

One of them [Kolars’ comments] read: “not racism, just don’t like dirty yellow guys, talking trash all day long, who cares about your leaders, we are here to make money and you need us. Without us to begin with you would still wear rice heads”.

In another, Kolars referred to his son as “a mix of European Caucasian and Asien [sic] Chinese blood. Europe as bench mark which China will never reach. Not smart enough. Inbreeding for too long. Nature strives for genetic variances.”

He has a Chinese wife, and of course his son is part Chinese, which makes his racist tirade against Chinese people all the more stunning.

As the Global Times reported:

Kolars on Tuesday night apologized on LinkedIn, saying the posts “were inappropriate and racist in nature and hurt the feelings of my Chinese friends and colleagues, and caused a very bad impact in the society.”

Nevertheless, he’s leaving China — for good. According to a report in China Daily:

On Friday, the office of exit and entry control of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said in a statement that it revoked Kolars’ work-related residence permit on Thursday. It also stated that the Austrian had been asked to leave the country within a specified period of time.

What do you think about Mark Kolars’ racist comments and the consequences he suffered as a result?

Intercultural Love Leads to More Creativity? Study by MIT Prof Says Yes

Creativity doesn’t usually come to mind when we think of intercultural love — but it should, thanks to the 2017 study from MIT assistant professor Jackson G. Lu titled “Going out” of the box: Close intercultural friendships and romantic relationships spark creativity, workplace innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Here’s a summary of the researchers’ findings from the study [emphasis added]:

…we found that close intercultural romantic relationships and friendships predicted important creative outcomes. As a two-phase longitudinal study, Study 1 found that MBA students who dated someone from another culture during their program performed better on both divergent and convergent forms of creativity at Phase 2 (accounting for creative performance at Phase 1 and other control variables). Using an experimental design, Study 2 revealed that reactivating a past intercultural dating experience led to higher creativity than reactivating a past intracultural dating experience; importantly, this effect was mediated by cultural learning. Comparing the duration versus the number of both intercultural and intracultural romantic relationships, Study 3 found that only the duration of intercultural relationships significantly predicted the ability of current employees to generate creative names for marketing products. Extending the preceding findings to the “Big C” creativity (Simonton, 1994), Study 4 found that professional repatriates’ frequency of contact with American friends positively predicted both entrepreneurship and workplace innovation back in their home countries….

Furthermore, the study offers some insightful advice about the importance of being deeply engaged and open to cultural differences [emphasis added]:

Importantly, the current findings suggest that people cannot simply “collect” intercultural relationships at a superficial level, but instead must engage in cultural learning at a deep level. When in an intercultural relationship, an individual should not eschew cultural differences but rather embrace them, because such differences enable one to discern and learn the underlying assumptions and values of both the foreign culture and the home culture (Cheng & Leung, 2013; Leung & Chiu, 2010). Without close social interactions, it can be difficult for individuals to juxtapose and synthesize different cultural perspectives to achieve cultural learning and produce creative insights.

Previously, I had written about Why Ignoring Cultural Differences in Cross-Cultural Relationships is Harmful, pointing out the negative consequences of this colorblind approach. But this study from Lu highlights the tremendous creative benefits that come from welcoming and exploring cultural differences in a thoughtful way, and the findings indicate that such advantages wouldn’t come to those who disregard cultural differences.

This fascinating research has also led me to reflect on my own intercultural relationship and the ways in which it may have boosted my creativity (such as the founding of this very blog). And I also thought about the many other creative folks I’ve encountered in intercultural relationships here in China, from bloggers and writers to entrepreneurs, artists and musicians. How much has their creative output benefited from loving outside the lines?

In any event, the study certainly stands as compelling evidence for why everyone should embrace meaningful intercultural ties in their lives, including romantic ones.

What do you think about this study?

Velma Demerson, Arrested for Having Chinese Boyfriend in Canada

Loving a Chinese man and expecting his child shouldn’t be a crime. But white Canadian Velma Demerson got arrested in Canada in May 1939 because she was pregnant at 18 with the child of her fiancee Harry Yip.

Authorities took her in under the Female Refugees Act of 1897, where women could go to jail and become institutionalized for “incorrigible” behavior, including promiscuity and pregnancy outside marriage. As Vancouver Observer reported:

Demerson was sentenced to ten months at Ontario’s infamous Mercer Reformatory for Women. There, she said attending physicians performed eugenics testing on her and her unborn child, tests Demerson believes cost the health of her son and sent her down a path of despair and tragedy.

Imprisonment over “loving the wrong person” is outrageous enough, but Canada didn’t stop there with its punishment. As the CBC reported in an interview with Karin Lee, who is working on a documentary about Demerson called “Incorrigible”:

As soon as she got out of jail, she immediately married Harry and they tried to raise their son.

But [the child] was affected by some of the medications that she was given … so he had very extreme eczema, very severe eczema.

And the social worker just came by and just said, “You know, you’re just a child. There’s no possible way that you can raise this kid.”

So they took the kid away, and that was the beginning of a long struggle of trying to have her son in her possession [so] that she could raise [him].

Additionally, Velma Demerson’s marriage to Yip cost her Canadian citizenship due to an old law still on the books, stating women who wed foreign men would assume their husband’s citizenship. (The US also had a similar law that cost American women their citizenship when they married foreigners.) She only discovered this when applying for a passport in 1948. And when she followed the advice to seek Chinese citizenship instead, the Chinese embassy refused her application, which left Demerson stateless.

(That lasted for more than 60 years — yes, you read that right — until she finally had her Canadian citizenship restored in 2004.)

But because she had plans to move to Hong Kong, she went to British Columbia and managed to secure a passport under her maiden name. If authorities ever found out, it would have meant five years in prison for her, a risk that worried her every time she left Canada on her maiden name passport.

But in Hong Kong, where she went with her son, the hardship continued, as reported by the Vancouver Observer:

Demerson’s marriage fell apart under the strain of her pariah status, and unable to make ends meet in Hong Kong, she sent her son home to his father in Canada without her. Upon return a year after, she discovered her son had been placed into state care. She was never allowed to raise him. The two never reconciled. He drowned at the age of 26.

She went on to remarry and have another family, but everything she suffered because of her love for Harry Yip still weighed upon her. So after turning 60, she researched her situation and eventually decided to seek justice through the legal system, filing a lawsuit against the Ontario government, demanding an apology and $11 million in compensation. She received an apology in 2003 and later an undisclosed sum of money out of court.

Additionally, Velma Demerson went on to help other women imprisoned under the Female Refugees Act of 1897 get justice as well.

It’s heartbreaking to imagine that all of this happened to Demerson just because she loved a Chinese man and was having his baby.

How did the two meet? According to the filmmaker Karin Lee, Harry Yip caught Demerson’s eye when she was patronizing a Chinese cafe:

She was with her mother and a couple of other friends and they went to this Chinese café, and she thought he was a very cute waiter. So she kept dropping her silver to get his attention.

And finally he did pick it up and then he asked her for a date, and everybody was, like, happy about that. And then they went on some dates and she said that he was the most polite person and respectful person that she had ever met and just fell in love with him because he was such a decent guy — and good looking.

Just imagine what a beautiful life they might have had together, were it not for that fateful arrest.

Velma Demerson passed away in May 2019 at the age of 98. But Karin Lee hopes to share her story and struggle with wider audiences through a documentary about Demerson called “Incorrigible”, for which she’s currently seeking funding in an Indiegogo Campaign.

You can also learn more about this story through the interview with Karin Lee on CBC (Remembering Velma Demerson — the woman jailed in Toronto for living with her Chinese fiancé), a story about Demerson at the Vancouver Observer (Lost Canadian Velma Demerson’s tragic story of love and loss), and Velma Demerson’s page on Wikipedia.

What do you think of what happened to Velma Demerson?

A Trip Backwards: How People Thought of Interracial Marriages With Asian Men in the Past

People often say that to understand the present, you have to look at the past. That’s why I started my AMWF History series, to examine interracial relationships between Asian men and non-Asian women in earlier times.

So today, I’m revisiting some rather telling quotes from posts I’ve featured for AMWF History, in an effort to raise awareness about how people have talked about Asian men in interracial relationships years ago.

As I compiled this post, I found it disconcerting (but not surprising) that a number of the opinions described below still endure, including in dark corners of the internet. A lot of people still believe interracial love is wrong.

This list of quotes is by no means comprehensive. So please, sound off in the comments with your examples too — let’s continue the conversation together.


From the San Francisco Chronicle, 7 April 1883 (per Frederickbee.com) (featured in my post Sarah Burke and Wong Suey Wong, Arrested in 1883 USA (For Love)):

Sarah Burke, who has unalterably set her mind upon a disgusting marriage with a Chinese laundryman, acknowledged that she had passed a dismally and frigidly cold night in prison on Friday.

From the LA Herald piece “Married to Chinamen – White Women Who Accept Mongolian Husbands” (featured in my post 4 Stinging 1890s Quotes on White Women Who Loved Chinese Men):

The average American cannot understand how any human being, however inured by custom, can live in an average Chinatown. That white women should live there by deliberate choice seems to him monstrous, horrible.

She is but twenty-two years of age, remarkably beautiful and possessed of a voice that…would be a fortune. Yet three years ago, she met and loved a Chinaman.

It is also well known that not one Chinaman in a hundred comes to these shores without leaving behind a wife in China; so by the laws of China, the white wife is not a wife…

They have had six children, of whom five are living – bright, intelligent half breeds. And Mrs. Watson (her husband took that name when baptized) is still handsome and pleasant spoken.

From Culture Victoria (featured in my post Mei Quong Tart, A Chinese Gentleman and Leader in Victorian Australia):

Quong asked Margaret’s father, George Scarlett, for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Even though he was a friend of Quong’s, George refused. Quong Tart and Margaret waited until the day after her twenty-first birthday, on 30 August 1886, and married anyway. Quong was then thirty-six. The appearance of grandchildren eventually reconciled Margaret’s parents to their daughter’s marriage.

From Lisa See’s book On Gold Mountain (featured in my post Letticie “Ticie” Pruett and Fong See from Lisa See’s “On Gold Mountain”):

Letticie wrote her brothers of her marriage, and received a terse letter back, in which her family disowned her. How could she marry a Chinese? It was disgusting, they wrote, and she was no longer their sister. She knew she would never see or hear from any of them ever again.

From Moviemaker.com (featured in the post Cinematographer James Wong Howe and Author Sanora Babb):

Aunt Sanora told me that on one particular occasion when they were going out to dine at a Chinese restaurant, a woman had taken the time to follow them to the entrance of the establishment. As she harassed the two of them for being together, Aunt Sanora took the woman’s hat and tossed it in the gutter. Aunt Sanora remembers this woman chasing the hat down the sewer drain exclaiming, “My $100 hat!” When the miscegenation laws were repealed, it took them three days to find a judge who would marry them. When they finally did, the judge remarked, “She looks old enough. If she wants to marry a chink, that’s her business.”

From the Australian Maritime Museum (featured in the post Australian Women Who Married Indonesian Men, Supported Indonesian Independence in 1940s):

Lotte fell in love with Anton Maramis, a Manadonese petty officer, and married him with her family’s support, although she battled much antagonism from the broader Australian public she encountered. Many other young Australian women faced strong opposition from families and friends to the decisions they made to marry their Indonesian fiancés and return with them to their homes once Independence had been declared.

From the South China Morning Post (featured in the post Liverpool’s Lost Chinese Sailors, and the Families Left Behind in the UK)

Married or not, they earned a reputation in ultra-conservative post-war England as being “loose women” and, in another archive, Charles Foley found that government officials dismissed those married to or cohabiting with a Chinese partner as “the prostitute class”.

What quotes have you come across about how people in the past thought of interracial relationships with Asian men?

The Unglamorous Reality of Citizenship in Chinese-Foreign Marriages

“So, do you have Chinese citizenship?”

As a foreigner living in China and married to a Chinese citizen, it’s a question I’m intimately familiar with, especially from friends and family back home in America. Even I used to think the same thing growing up in the US — that international marriage automatically meant getting another passport. Wouldn’t it make sense that, in the most intimate of all bonds, loved ones could also share their own citizenship?

How I wish it were that easy. That somehow saying “I do” with someone from another country would magically make another passport pop out of thin air, with your name on it.

Invariably, I have to let everyone who asks this question down, dispelling those fantasies with a cold, hard answer: “No, I don’t have Chinese citizenship.” And sometimes, I might strangle any remaining hopes by adding the disappointing details of how it’s very difficult to gain Chinese citizenship, and that China doesn’t even allow dual citizenship, so I would have to renounce my US citizenship (something I would never want to do).

I’m reminded of how, years ago, people in China would ask my husband, after we had just tied the knot, “So, are you an American now?” And then we’d be forced to divulge the far more complicated reality — that first he would have to apply for a green card (which isn’t guaranteed), and then later he would be eligible to apply for US citizenship (which also isn’t a sure thing and requires taking an exam many Americans can’t even pass). And even if he received US citizenship, he would still have to surrender his Chinese citizenship. It’s a strangely dispossessing situation that he has never wanted to face, preferring to remain a citizen of China.

The clunky reality of how citizenship actually works — especially when Chinese and foreigners wed — is nothing like all of those gossamer hopes and dreams you might have had about international marriages. And I haven’t even gotten into the issues involving kids in a Chinese-foreign marriage (which my fellow blogger Susie writes about at WWAM BAM in a post that deals with citizenship issues). And if you really want to make your head spin, read about how kids and citizenship issues and the like left Ember Swift, who was married to a Chinese man, grounded in a Toronto airport.

Some people do get lucky in their international marriages, though. For example, Monica, an American woman married to a Korean man, could actually gain South Korean citizenship and still keep her US citizenship at the same time.

But what I know is this — as much as I would love for things to change, I cannot possibly measure the value of my marriage by whether it grants me an additional passport or dual citizenship. I care far more about the “dual” things that really matter in the passport pages of our life: love, respect and support. Jun and I have all of these and so much more in our marriage, which continues to bring us both boundless happiness. That’s something no passport could ever guarantee.

‘African Jasmine Flower’: Ruth Njeri Finds Success, Love on Chinese Stage

Among the many talented foreign women who happened to marry Chinese men, there’s Kenyan Ruth Njeri, who rose to fame – and found love – on the stage in China.

Njeri is also known in China as “非洲茉莉花“ (fēizhōu mòlìhuā, the “African jasmine flower”), a nickname she received from the country’s former president Hu Jintao after meeting him and singing together with him the Chinese folk song “茉莉花” (Jasmine Flower) in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2006, which landed her in the national TV news in China. As China Daily reported in an April 7, 2013, story titled Chinese Tones:

Njeri’s patience and persistence in learning Mandarin paid off in April 2006 when Hu Jintao, then China’s president, visited Kenya. Because of her progress in Chinese, she was selected from the Confucius Institute to meet him.

“I was quite nervous meeting him, and I heard my voice trembling while talking to him. He is actually a nice person who is very approachable and likes to chat with young people.”

Njeri completed her studies at Nairobi’s Confucius Institute in June that year and moved to China to pursue a degree in language and literature at Tianjin Normal University a month later.

She also received a scholarship for her studies, thanks to winning the Chinese Bridge Competition in Kenya.

In the next several years, she went on to appear numerous times in TV shows on networks all across China, including the country’s prominent China Central Television, or CCTV, which named her one of the most influential foreigners of 2007.

But her greatest moment – the one that changed her life and love forever – came with her high-profile singing performance in the 2011 Spring Festival Gala, or Chunwan, China’s annual Chinese New Year’s Eve show broadcast across the country on CCTV on the most important night of the year. That year, she shared the stage with Ya Xing, a Chinese man she first met in a Shanghai:

Ya, 40, hails from Luoyang, an industrial city in Central China’s Henan province. He met Njeri, 34, from Nairobi, Kenya in a restaurant in Shanghai while she was studying on a Chinese government scholarship. At the time, they were both participating in the World Expo and met again a month later in Shanghai just before sharing a stage during the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in Beijing in 2011.

“It was fate, Yuánfèn“, Ya said.

The two of them would go on to perform together on TV many times.

Njeri also sang for the 2013 Spring Festival Gala as well (a year that saw Celine Dion perform for the event).

And as for Njeri and Ya:

Three years ago, Ya Xing married Ruth Njeri before his friends and family in China. He is considered brave among his peers for starting a new life in Kenya but the ebullient entrepreneur, once a TV host, does not think so.

“I am in love,” he said. “It might look complicated to marry into a new culture, but I think people think too much of it.”

Read the full story — and see a photo of the delightful couple — at China Daily.

Bilibili has a more recent video about Ruth Njeri’s life in Kenya, including highlights from her performances.

For people in China, here are links to Ruth Njeri’s performances on CCTV, including this CCTV performance of Ruth and Xing, and this other CCTV performance by the couple

You can learn more about Ruth Njeri at Baidu Baike (written in Chinese).

What do you think of Ruth Njeri?

Are Highly Sensitive People More Accepted in Chinese Culture? One Study Says Yes

One of the fascinating things I learned from my husband when we began dating many years ago is this – that, as a more quiet and sensitive kind of guy who excelled at his studies, he was popular in school growing up in China.

This was the complete opposite of my own experience growing up in America. Being quiet and sensitive didn’t exactly help me rise in popularity among my peers, particularly in junior high and high school. Add to that the fact that I was a straight-A student near the top of the class, which led a number of kids to just write me off as another geek.

Over the years, I’ve found myself more at ease in China, and I would often attribute it to a number of things, including this sense that I felt my personality was more accepted in the culture. Imagine my surprise to read Elaine Aron’s The Highly Sensitive Person and discover a study that actually revealed that Chinese culture appears more welcoming to sensitive individuals:

If you remember only one thing from this book, it should be the following research study. Xinyin Chen and Kenneth Rubin of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and Yuerong Sun of Shanghai Teachers University compared 480 schoolchildren in Shanghai to 296 in Canada to see what traits made children most popular. In China “shy” and “sensitive” children were among those most chosen by others to be friends or playmates. (In Mandarin, the word for shy or quiet means good or well-behaved; sensitive can be translated as “having understanding,” a term of praise.) In Canada, shy and sensitive children were among the least chosen. Chances are, this is the kind of attitude you faced growing up.

Think about the impact on you of not being the ideal for your culture. It has to affect you — not only how others have treated you but how you have come to treat yourself.

Reading this was like a revelation, an ah-ha moment that confirmed something I had understood for years – that my personality felt like a better fit in China compared to the US.

How about you? Are you a highly sensitive person who has lived in the East and the West? Have you also felt more at ease in a culture in the East, such as Chinese?

Should Foreigners Who Marry Chinese Also Learn the Language?

If you’re a foreigner with a Chinese spouse or loved one, should you learn some Chinese? Even just at a conversational level? Do we have an obligation to do so because we’re intimately connected to this country and culture?

This idea came to mind while pondering my own past, and first steps, in China many years ago, a time when I began dating a local Chinese man in Zhengzhou and couldn’t speak a word of Mandarin. He and I eventually broke up after six months, yet during our relationship, his presence in my life served as a spark to prod me into learning (along with other more practical reasons, such as being more independent). Deep down, a part of me felt that because I loved him, I should make an effort to study his language, even if that simply meant mastering the most basic conversational phrases.

Ironically, he didn’t encourage my efforts, suggesting my afternoon tutoring sessions were just a waste of time. Of course, he said this late in our relationship, which means it potentially reflected the growing rift between us, more than his genuine thoughts on the subject. Nevertheless, some people out there would agree with him – and I’ve met some or even heard about them, including those who have lived many years in China and, yes, have Chinese spouses.

Most people who argue against learning Chinese turn to two primary arguments: One, that it’s too difficult, and two, that it’s not necessary anyhow.

We all know Chinese remains notoriously difficult to learn. A few months ago, during a business trip at a conference, Chinese academics from some of the most celebrated institutions in China admitted to me in private conversations just how challenging the country’s official language is. Still, nobody says you need to emerge as the next Da Shan, have absolutely perfect tones, or reach the highest level in the HSK. Merely choosing a more reasonable “conversational” level can make the task more doable and less daunting. (That’s exactly what I did when I began learning Mandarin.)

I found an entire article devoted to why foreigners in China often don’t learn Chinese, and it adds an explanation unique those who speak English: “The main reason why more expats don’t speak much Chinese is this: we don’t need to learn it. China caters to English speakers.” This would fall under the “not necessary” arguments many put forth, including that their job doesn’t require it or the employer provides a translator.

For those of us with a Chinese spouse, our loved ones from China invariably end up helping with all sorts of errands, even if you can speak Chinese. It makes sense for a number of reasons, including the fact that they understand how to conduct business much better than we do because it’s their native country and culture. But of course, this gives the foreigner less motivation to learn – and bolsters the “not necessary” side of the argument.

Still, you could argue there’s a “need” for foreigners with a Chinese spouse. Given we already have an intimate relationship with the country, we’re going to encounter the language for the rest of our lives through family. When you can’t communicate with your spouse’s parents or grandparents or other relatives, it’s that much harder to forge a meaningful bond with them and makes holidays with Chinese family more challenging.

Besides the two usual arguments – “too hard” and “not necessary” — an additional barrier exists among cross-cultural couples. Whatever language you use while falling in love with someone becomes the language you prefer to use for communication (see The Relationship Between Language and Falling in Love). For those foreigners who start a relationship with their future spouses in English or another non-Chinese language, this serves as a psychological barrier to trying out their fledgling Chinese with their loved ones. Still, it doesn’t mean you can’t learn; you just might need to find yourself a supportive tutor or a language school or university program to fulfill your goals, instead of relying on your spouse, who might not be the best teacher anyhow. (See my post Why It’s a Really Bad Idea to Teach Your Spouse Your Language.)

So, let’s consider all of these factors together.

#1: Chinese may be difficult, but you can set a more reasonable goal (such as learning a set of useful conversational phrases) to put learning within your reach.

#2: While Chinese might not be a requirement for work or even running errands, foreigners with Chinese spouses may need to know some Chinese because they’ll encounter the language for the rest of their lives, through family.

#3: Foreigners who never spoke Chinese before with their spouses might feel challenged to learn, but they can choose to find tutors or language programs to study, instead of their spouse.

Ultimately, foreigners with Chinese spouses have a really strong excuse for learning – family. And they can overcome the barriers, if they set a reasonable goal and recognize their spouses can’t always be teachers.

So perhaps we shouldn’t ask the question, “Should foreigners with a Chinese spouse learn the language?” Instead, maybe it’s time we start talking about how to learn – and when.

What do you think? Do you agree that foreigners with a Chinese spouse should learn the language?

Photo credit: Kevin Dooley

Are Dating Apps Best for Chinese, Foreigners to Pair Up?

What dating apps or websites should I use? That’s the question a young Chinese man, who was looking to meet women from Western countries, posed to me recently.

But it’s also worth asking, are dating apps the best way for Chinese and foreigners to find love together?

Before we get to that, however, let’s consider what dating apps you might want to use.

Tinder remains one of the most popular options globally, so if you’re someone Chinese looking to meet a non-Chinese woman, then you should consider it, along with a few other possibilities:

If you’re looking for the best dating app to use worldwide, Tinder is currently probably your best bet. Coffee Meets Bagel and Bumble seem to be on the rise as well, but in terms of sheer volume, Tinder, PoF[Plenty of Fish], Match and Badoo seem like the biggest players in the current dating app game.

Disclaimer time – I’ve never used any of these apps, as I’m happily married! But you can give them a try. Just make sure you have a VPN in China, as some apps, notably Tinder, are blocked. (Note: if you need a VPN, one option is Vypr VPN – I’m an affiliate, so your purchase helps support this site.)

For non-Chinese individuals looking to meet someone Chinese, you should definitely give Tantan and Momo, the Chinese dating apps, a go, as well as WeChat.

Yet, should you depend on dating apps to deliver that Mr. or Ms. Right? It depends.

Here’s what Ms. Wai of WWAM BAM had to say about dating apps from her experience in China:

Last time I advised girls to try dating apps to meet guys, but that won’t work well the other way around. Few foreign women are on the dating apps and the ones that are are overwhelmed with requests (I had 24,000 “likes” on tantan before I turned it off.) If you really want to use an app, get a VPN, a Facebook account and try Tinder. But that will still be a challenge.

In other words, foreign women in China may have an easier time finding love through dating apps than Chinese men.

I should also note that Asian men in Western countries tend to have a harder time finding love online as well, though some have found success despite the odds.

Nevertheless, Ms. Wai recommends meeting people face to face in China, suggesting:

There must be neighborhoods, or cafes, foreigners hang out at. Or join some activities where foreigners are sure to be at like Toastmasters, English Corner at the university, or Hash House Harriers. Check online for where and when those groups meet. If you join international activities you’ll get to do something fun and have a chance to meet a lot of people, including women.

This is the same kind of advice I doled out almost a decade ago, and it still holds true. Check out my suggestions for meeting women in China and my suggestions for meeting women in America.

It’s definitely NOT fair that Chinese men might have to “pound the pavement” a bit more to find love. (Maybe you can keep in mind that saying in Chinese: 好事多磨 (hǎoshìduōmó), or good things never come easy.)

Then again, as Ms. Wai notes, even the foreign ladies need a little chutzpah:

I know, it’s typically the guy that makes the first move, but in China, you’ll need to be a bit brave in making your intentions clear. Even if you are over-the-top flirting you might lose a little self-confidence because you feel like it’s not being reciprocated. Most of the time the guy seriously has no idea. They think you, a special butterfly, would never like just a “normal” guy like them, so they don’t pick up any hints you’re giving them. The dating world in China isn’t a good place for subtlety. Use your courage!

What’s your take? What dating apps would you recommend, and should people use them to find love?

P.S.: If you’re looking for more ideas on dating apps, read this guest post Single and Abroad? Here’s What You Need to Know About Dating Apps in China.

Photo Credit: Sweet Couple by Paško Tomić via Flickr.

Liverpool’s Lost Chinese Sailors, and the Families Left Behind in the UK (AMWF History)

Liverpool, England, is home to one of those shameful, forgotten chapters in history — when the UK suddenly deported Chinese sailors, who had bravely served during World War II, devastating they families they left behind.

In the early 1940s, the British Merchant Navy recruited some 20,000 Chinese sailors to assist in the war efforts. And of them, an estimated 300 had relationships with British women (either through marriage or cohabitation). As the SCMP reported:

Many of the women who set up home with Chinese mari­ners and started families did not formally marry, either because, like Grace, they were under 21 years old and couldn’t get parental consent or because, in the 1940s, when women married foreign nationals they surrendered their British citizenship and assumed the nationality of their husbands.

Married or not, they earned a reputation in ultra-conservative post-war England as being “loose women” and, in another archive, Charles Foley found that government officials dismissed those married to or cohabiting with a Chinese partner as “the prostitute class”.

“I was very angry when I read that,” Foley says. “They obviously hadn’t met my mother.”

While Britain had initially welcomed the Chinese sailors, things changed after they had a strike to fight for higher wages in 1942, as reported by the BBC:

These men were in demand and so they won, but were considered to be “troublemakers” from then on, according to shipping firm Alfred Holt’s documents at the Ocean Archive.

After the war, British authorities moved swiftly to force the Chinese sailors out of the country. The BBC noted that a UK Home Office document from October 1945 cast the sailors as “an undesirable element in Liverpool” due to an alleged “1,000 convictions for opium smoking” in recent years. However, as per the BBC:

…Belchem says that was an unfair analysis. “There were one or two with criminal records, but the government used this minority to stigmatise the whole Chinese population.”

“If you look at the way most people see it, they would be absolutely model migrants. They were respectful, well-behaved, believed in education, weren’t violent, looked after their wives, looked after their children.”

Adds the website Half and Half:

This statement by the Home Office directly conflicts with report after report, letter after letter from the Liverpool and Birkenhead Chief Constables. Going back to the early years of the century they repeatedly praise the law-abiding nature of the Chinese.

Nevertheless, the reality didn’t matter to Britain. The country also didn’t care about the loved ones left behind, either as the BBC reported:

…during a series of police swoops on the Liverpool dock area, deportation orders were served on the Chinese sailors.

“He just went out to the shop, and my mum was waiting for him to come home, and he never came,” Linda Davis said of her father.

And as the SCMP noted:

Officials argued that no Chinese seaman married to a British-born woman had been forcibly repatriated – the legal situation was complicated and the government did not want to appear to be splitting up families – but Charles Foley has seen evidence that this was not true. At least one married man, with three children, was “rounded up” and deported.

And for the unmarried fathers who were sent home, some did not have time to say goodbye.

It’s heartbreaking to imagine what these families had to go through. Some of the children of Liverpool’s lost Chinese sailors have spent much of their lives searching for their fathers — see the BBC story Looking for my Shanghai father.

To learn about the whole dark episode, you can also visit the website Half and Half, where you can also help the families by contacting them with any information about these lost Chinese.

Additionally, an article originally written by China Daily and reprinted by the Telegraph includes two stories from Chinese ripped away from their lives in the UK.

What do you think about Liverpool’s lost Chinese sailors?