Favorites | Speaking of China

Asian Women “Too Tempting” To Husbands/Boyfriends? Please.

An Asian woman who looks unhappy or depressed — (photo by Sodanie Chea)

“I’m so glad he’s not going over to China anymore. It’s too tempting.”

My friend Susan Blumberg-Kason overhead this snippet of conversation one afternoon while attending a reading. The woman speaking was white, and referring to the fact that her white husband — who she followed to China — would no longer be working over there. It was in the context of a discussion about men who have affairs in China — with Chinese women, of course.

Guess what she meant by “tempting”?

Continue reading “Asian Women “Too Tempting” To Husbands/Boyfriends? Please.”

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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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A Story of Sexism, Chinese Men and Who Should Wash the Dishes

Washing the dishes — (photo by peapod labs)

“Washing dishes? That’s women’s work.”

That’s how Yao, my first Chinese boyfriend, ended one late Saturday night dinner at his apartment.

Up until that moment, he romanced me the entire day like any real gentleman — from running to the hospital for my medicine, to regaling me with a delicious homemade dinner of fried rice. All afternoon he told me to rest, relax, take it easy — I still felt exhausted from my recent illness, and had only just regained my appetite. Didn’t anyone ever tell him that sexist slurs are hard for girlfriends to swallow?

“What do mean, ‘women’s work?’ Are you telling me you won’t do the dishes, ever?” I asked.

“It’s not my job.”

I glowered at him. “So who’s going to do the dishes then?”

“Just leave them for my mom,” he said. He immediately jumped up from his seat and wandered over to the bedroom to start watching Saturday night football games.

How could he say that? Didn’t he realize he was dating a feminist who grew up in a household where both mom and dad were breadwinners, and didn’t believe in things like “women’s work”? I wrestled with these, and many more, questions about the man I was dating, and the future we might face ahead of us. But never, ever did I hold the one thought that all too often gets slapped on a guy like Yao — that he was just another sexist Chinese man I should never have dated in the first place. Continue reading “A Story of Sexism, Chinese Men and Who Should Wash the Dishes”

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Ask the Yangxifu: 3 Reasons Why You Should Pursue Chinese Men

By J. Howard Miller, artist employed by Westinghouse, poster used by the War Production Co-ordinating Committee – From scan of copy belonging to the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, retrieved from the website of the Virginia Historical Society., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5249733

I get a lot of e-mails that end with this question: “Should I pursue him?” (I can almost hear the woman wincing as she asks this.)

Even in these “women hold up half the sky” modern times, I’d say most cultures still leave much of the heavy lifting in dating to the guy, and expect the girl to flirt and wait for his advances. Mine sure does. I heard the exhortations from others — don’t ask him out, you’ll look too desperate or too forward, and on and on.

But when you’re interested in Chinese men, sometimes you have to flip this rule on its head like a wicked gymnastics routine and do a little pursuing yourself — at least, at the beginning. Here are three reasons why:

1. Language Issues. Ah, that bellboy in China, with a smile that could launch a thousand five-star hotels. I melted every time I passed him by to visit the gym in that hotel in Hangzhou, and even caught myself flirting like a high school girl. But even though I dropped every “let’s have coffee” hint in the book, he never dared ask…until I finally talked to him in Chinese.

Later on, he confessed that he wanted to say more to me, but he couldn’t. “My English, not so good,” he once told me.

Whether you’re in China or facing a possible immigrant Chinese who speaks (or is learning) a second language, confidence about language (or even a complete lack of fluency in your language) sometimes messes up the best laid schemes of asking a girl out. And if you’ve never done anything beyond smile back at a guy, you might have absolutely no idea that, say, his English kept him from making that move.

2. The Inferiority Factor. I’ll never forget when a Chinese guy friend of mine revealed this idea over tea — that some men in Mainland China would love to date me, except that they couldn’t possibly see themselves as good enough for me, an American woman.

What?

Yes, it’s crazy — certainly to me, because I never considered any of the guys I ever dated in China as anything but my equal. Not every guy thinks this way, though, and I believe this will wane over time as China continues to rise. Still, for now you’ll probably run into some guys who think this way — guys who will cross you off their lists, believing you’re just some fantasy woman they could never possibly call as their own.

3. Shyness. I don’t buy into the stereotype that every single Chinese man feels too bashful to even say “Ni Hao” to a girl. But if you’re like some of my readers, scratching their heads because this great guy seems to blush every time she gets near him, then you need an intervention. Seriously, ask him out already. 😉

What do you think? What are some other reasons why Western women should pursue Chinese men?

Do you have a question about life, dating, marriage and family in China/Chinese culture (or Western culture)? Send me yours today.

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I Never Intended To Marry a Chinese Man

“Did you always want to marry an Asian guy?” That’s what a friend of mine asked me the other night, a question that surprised me.

It’s not that I didn’t know what to say. “No, I never really even thought about it until going to China,” I told her. Then I landed in Zhengzhou, and met a super-sexy, sullen James Dean of a guy who just happened to be Chinese. And while I didn’t end up marrying him, he opened my eyes to a new reality — that I could find love with a Chinese man — that eventually led me to John.

Maybe her words shocked me because yellow fever, Asian fetishes — whatever you want to call it — just never entered into my own equation, and I know I’m not alone. Continue reading “I Never Intended To Marry a Chinese Man”

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“Rougan”: How My Husband Helped Me Love My Curves

A shot of a woman in a short plaid skirt showing off her strong thighs — (photo from Flickr, by Emily Johnson)

Last night, when my husband rolled into bed, he rolled straight over my thighs and couldn’t help caressing them as he went by. Once he tucked into the covers and spooned me, he once again ran his hands up my thighs to my waist and pulled me in closer.

“I love your ròugǎn,” he whispered to me, using the Chinese word (肉感) that means sexy and voluptuous.

Even though I always understood his Chinese perfectly, the idea of ròugǎn as a compliment once sounded absolutely foreign to me. The first character in the word, ròu (肉), is the same word used for meat and flesh. And that reminded me of how people in English might say, “She’s got a lot of meat on her bones,” but never in same sexy and sultry way as my husband. Continue reading ““Rougan”: How My Husband Helped Me Love My Curves”

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Things We’ve Learned About Going Meatless in China From Our Chinese Families

Eating at Chinese wedding — Eating dinner at the family table at my Chinese wedding ceremony -- while I dine on the veggies, my husband goes for the pork.

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 and the forthcoming book Good Chinese Wife, a memoir of the five years she spent trying to assimilate into a Chinese family.

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”

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My Chinese Husband Has Balls

“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”

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Why I Write About “Forbidden” Love in China

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”

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Yangxifu Pride: 8 Memoirs For Western Women Who Love Asian Men

Burmese Lessons by Karen Connelly — Burmese Lessons (photo from Goodreads.com)

Only a handful of Western women wrote about their love affairs with Chinese men (such as those I’ve recommended on this list). But I’ve found new women to call my Jiemei (that’s sisters in Chinese), thanks to the many memoirs I’ve discovered about Western women who found love in Asia (and beyond). In honor of International Women’s Day (March 8), I’d like to salute and recommend these literary sisters.

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Burmese Lessons: A true love story by Karen Connelly. When Karen went to Burma in 1996 for research on the conditions of Burmese political prisoners, love wasn’t on her mind — until she met Maung, a sexy young Burmese revolutionary leader. But this isn’t just a love story, as she beautifully captures her entire experience in this country — the struggling artists and writers she meets, the monks who pull her out of dangerous situation one evening and send her home with crackers, the family in the countryside who helps her understand the state of family planning, her interview with Aung San Suu Kyi. Continue reading “Yangxifu Pride: 8 Memoirs For Western Women Who Love Asian Men”

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