foreign woman | Speaking of China

Featured in Global Times Article: On the Fast Track to Love

Champagne glasses, toasting at the beach — The Global Times featured me in a recent article titled "On the Fast Track to Love." (photo by Roger Kirby)

I’m on the fast track back to the US (I’ll be hopping a plane back there on Tuesday, August 16). That’s why I’m late to tell you about my latest appearance in the news — a Global Times article titled On the Fast Track to Love, a story about cross-cultural speed dating. Here are a few quotes from me in the article:

For some, the attraction comes from an interest in their partner’s culture. “I’ve always felt more comfortable in the company of Chinese men, since their culture is more in tune with who I am,” US born Jocelyn Eikenburg, an English/Chinese translator who married a Chinese man and blogs about intercultural relationships, said, adding that she’s actually “incredibly shy and not so direct with people.”

…

For many Westerners, saying “I love you” is a big step in a relationship, a sign that you are really serious and invested; while love is usually implied among Chinese couples through actions such as sending you all the way to the door of your apartment, Eikenburg said.

“When Chinese do verbalize their feelings, they tend to use softer terms than what we are used to, such as ‘I like you’ because the word for love packs quite a punch in Chinese,” she added. “Not surprisingly, many Chinese with foreigners actually feel more comfortable saying ‘I love you’ in a foreign language.”

Check out the full article online. And if you love it, share it. Thanks!

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My Chinese Husband’s Cousin, Looking For a Western Wife to Brag About

Wang, my Chinese husband’s cousin, seemed to have it all. A lucrative job as a real estate developer. Two new BMWs. Expensive suits. Nothing about him suggested his countryside roots — the same mountain village as my husband, where people still planted their own rice paddies, used wood-burning stoves, and had free-range chickens scurrying in and out of their houses.

But when he volunteered his silver BMW sedan as our wedding car in 2007 (of course, he couldn’t help but boast “oh, if you had mentioned this sooner, I could have prepared my bigger and better BMW.”), he discovered he was missing the ultimate accessory of all — a Western wife.

“He told me he wanted to find a yangxifu,” my husband recalled. “He asked if we could introduce him to some Western women.”

But we didn’t. Sure, we didn’t know any single Western women in China, since by then we lived in the US for nearly two years. But even if we did, introducing them to Wang had the kind of cheap, mail-order-bride feel to it that no friend would get their friend into. After all, he didn’t really care who she was, so long as she was foreign.

It’s just like I read over a year ago in a study about What Western Women Think of Chinese Men:

Those [Chinese] men with Western girlfriends or wives will brag about them, as if these women were a BMW.

Wang already had two BMWs to show off, but no such Western wife — never thinking, of course, that a wife, any wife, should never become a man’s bling.

“People who think this way have no suzhi,” my husband said as he frowned, using the word that Chinese often use to refer to the quality of people — which, in this case, was not much at all. “They turn their wives into objects, and try to show they are better than others in such a low way.”

Still, Wang could have gone much lower, as we learned two years ago while visiting the Kaifeng Night Market. After we bought almond tea from a stall run by lanky twentysomething wearing a white kufi — the hat worn by the Muslim Hui minority in China — he nudged my husband. “Hey, do you think you could get me a foreign wife? I could buy her a house and a car.”

John grinned as he shook his head. “It’s not that simple. Western women have different expectations.”

Then the lanky guy leaned over and whispered something in my husband’s ear — which John told me about later. “He said his penis is very strong.”

What do you think about this?

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The Relationship Between Language and Falling in Love

Over dinner two weeks ago in Beijing, Melanie Gao — a fellow yangxifu and blogger — asked an interesting question. “What language do you have a better relationship in with your Chinese husband?”

I didn’t know what to say because John and I had always floated between English and Mandarin, as if the two languages together somehow became our hybrid “husband-wife” language. “Hmmmmm, I don’t know. It’s hard to decide between English and Chinese. Maybe our relationship is slightly better in English these days.”

But I never would have guessed Melanie’s answer. “My husband and I have a better relationship in Japanese.” Japanese? If John had been here, he (and the remnants of his anti-Japanese ideas) would have fallen over. “I think it’s because it’s another language for us. We both have to try hard to understand one another.”

Still, I remembered reading how Melanie met her husband in Chiba, Japan when they were foreign students there — and came to know him in Japanese. Which made me wonder about another explanation. “Maybe that’s because Japanese is the language you fell in love in.”

Does it matter in what language you fall in love with someone? The question followed me long after that dinner, as I recalled my different loves in China. Continue reading “The Relationship Between Language and Falling in Love”

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Ask the Yangxifu: Is Married Chinese Man Worth The Trouble?

Many junctions ahead road sign — A Western woman in a long-distance relationship with a married Chinese man faces a lot of trouble ahead in their relationship. Is it worth it?

White Lotus asks:

i have a long distance relationship with a married chinese man ..he has never been in love with his wife, they married because she was pregnant. He is a great man, a loving father. he wants to marry me after the divorce . I ‘m afraid i’d be a burden for him since it would be hard for me to get a job in China. I’m not a native speaker of English and despite being an English teacher in my country .. i think i won’t be able to get a teaching position ( i don’t have an internationally recognised degree in my cv). i don’t have other skills and i’m just starting to learn chinese.
Sometimes i think i should set his heart free before he gets the divorce and spare him the pain we might inflict to his daughter. He doesn’t earn a lot of money so it would be hard for him to support us while i’m looking for a job. He doens’t live in a big city so i think opportunities will be scarce.
it’s difficult for me cause i love him a lot… he is more confident than me saying that i can do it, that i will be able to find a job ..we have only one shot at love cause it’s taking me half a year to save the moneyi need to fly to china.

What job opportunities are there for me? Should i set his heart free? Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Is Married Chinese Man Worth The Trouble?”

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Ask the Yangxifu: Is Chinese Man Forgetting Me After One Night Together?

An old lonesome teddy bear, wet and forgotten — After finally spending a romantic night together, just before she leaves China for good, a woman wonders, is this Chinese man trying to forget me? (photo by Mattox)

Pepper asks:

I would need some advice about someone I care about… I’m a female student, studying abroad in China, and this past year I met fellow Chinese student slightly older than me and from Beijing. We instantly became friends and I had my eyes on him from the very beginning but I’m a very shy person and since we both come from different countries and met in another one I figured out it would be impossible for us to have a long-term relationship, and I didn’t want to cry for months when the time to part comes.

So we have been friends for the entire school year and sometimes I could catch a glimpse of interest from him, we used to look at each other in the eyes for a very long time or smile to each other for no apparent reason… on our last night at the university, when we were saying goodbye, we ended up kissing and he asked to come back to my room – which quite surprised me because he is a quiet and innocent-looking man. I could not think straight and accepted. It was a wonderful moment, but we decided not to take it further than that one night, as it would probably be too painful for both of us to be far away, and we know each other enough to be quite sure it would be very difficult for us to overcome our differences in order to be together.

However, we did agree on staying friends, writing to each other and he insisted on the fact he would keep me updated about where he would choose to study next year. The problem is: it has already been one week, I wrote one email but he isn’t replying. He’s not ignoring me, but isn’t very talkative either. I’m very confused; do you think he might have changed his mind and decided to forget about me ? I know we don’t have a future together but I really care about that person, it would hurt me if he had decided to forget about what has been happening between us or if he had never cared… Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Is Chinese Man Forgetting Me After One Night Together?”

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The Chinese Relatives Name Game

More than a week ago, my Chinese mother-in-law spent a whole day helping someone plant their rice paddy. That “someone” turned out to be a relative.

“She was out helping our Jiujiu plant the fields,” my sister-in-law told me at dinner. Jiujiu is the Chinese word for uncles on the mother’s side. But as far as I knew, we only had two uncles on John’s mother’s side — Da Jiujiu and Xiao Jiujiu. Neither of them needed assistance in the fields, especially Xiao Jiujiu who just became our village secretary. How could she possibly help someone called “Jiujiu?”

“Oh, that’s the godfather’s little brother.” Godfather, as in John’s godfather (John needed a godfather because his Chinese zodiac sign, the horse, conflicted with his father’s, the rat).

Then I remembered that, some time ago, my Chinese mother-in-law told me the godfather was a relative — but I’d forgotten how and asked my sister-in-law. “He’s the Gunainai’s son.”

“Gunainai?” I felt as if I was getting tangled in the branches of this family tree. Continue reading “The Chinese Relatives Name Game”

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Ask the Yangxifu: Chinese Boyfriend Never Plans Our Dates

Road sign indicating left or right turn is permissible — Her Chinese boyfriend leaves all of the date-night decisions to her, and she's tired of it. How can she get him to care?

MC asks:

I hate the whole “passive Asian man” stereotype because I don’t think it’s always true. For example, my Chinese boyfriend is a Banquet Captain at a hotel, and sometimes his coworkers will call him to ask where something is or how to set up the banquet hall. The way he takes charge and responds shows that he has a leader in him, and it’s a huge turn on when I see him like that. But then when we hang out, I decide everything, from what we do, to where we eat, and even what we eat sometimes. I don’t mind doing it sometimes, because it basically means he’ll go anywhere I want him to without complaining, yet it gets tiring. I feel like it’s the guy’s role to lead and to decide even just where to eat sometimes. I’ve talked to him about it but his thinking is so different than anyone I’ve ever met (though he doesn’t think so). I can see it from his point of view, but he can’t see mine. And I understand his logic. He honestly does not care what we eat. So even if I tried to make him care, his mind would be a blank. If that’s the case, you’d think it’d be easier for me to just choose a place, right? What should I do? Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Chinese Boyfriend Never Plans Our Dates”

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Ask the Yangxifu: Chinese Boyfriend Seems Too Chinese To Western Girlfriend

A worried Chinese man — When a Western woman tells her Chinese boyfriend he's "too Chinese," he wonders -- is "too Chinese" unattractive to Western women?

Seborga asks;

my fiance has been together with me for 4 years. she always mentioning that it won’t be possible for her to be together with me if I were too Chinese. Since I have been overseas for 13 years since I was 16, she thinks I have the same wave length of thinking as her. I had few western gfs, and most of them taking “Chineseness” as something very negative. So does that mean thinking and behaving as a total chinese is very unatttractive in the eyes of mainstream western women? Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Chinese Boyfriend Seems Too Chinese To Western Girlfriend”

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Making up Beauty in China

Handheld wooden mirror — The Chinese women doing my makeup considered me the real beauty — while I believed them far more beautiful than myself.

“Beauty” could barely describe the two girls hovering over me for a makeup session two weekends ago. Both had smooth black hair reminiscent of a calligraphy brush dipped in black ink, eyes the color of pu-er tea and lips more brilliant than the fiery red pomegranate blossoms. Their smiles illuminated the entire room.

But in their minds, they weren’t the real beauty. I was.

“Look at her eyes! So big!” one of the women squealed, after powdering my face.

“Her nose is so straight,” the other sighed. She then squeezed it gently a couple of times, giggling like a schoolgirl.

But when they moved to my eyes – and specifically, my mascara – the excitement waved over the room in sudden tsunami fashion. “Her eyelashes are curved. Can you believe that?” Several women from outside rushed in to take a peek. A makeup artist next to me and even her client pulled the curtains back and lunged their heads to admire my lashes. “She doesn’t even need an eyelash curler!”

Laying there on the table, I felt like some sort of model woman from another world on display – and given my sweltering palms and the way I kept crossing my feet, it wasn’t an easy job. If anything, I didn’t understand them at all, or the way they told me “you’re so beautiful” the moment I sat down next to them, before going over to the makeup room. Continue reading “Making up Beauty in China”

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Ask the Yangxifu: Chinese Boyfriend Thinks I’m Fat

Feet standing on a bathroom scale — A big woman and her Chinese boyfriend plan to go to China -- and all of a sudden, he wants her to lose weight. (photo by Julia Freeman-Woolpert)

Elizabeth asks:

So I’m a really big girl and my boyfriend knew this (obviously) before we started dating. He’s been really open and supportive about everything about me but recently he has wants me to travel to China with him but he also mentioned that he wants me to lose weight. I got upset about it and we argued, which is something we haven’t done been before, and when I asked him why? He said that because when I’m in China, we will be looked down upon because not only am I fat but because I’m with a guy who’s smaller than me.

Being raised in America, yeah there are image issues but really, with the majority being fat, everyone is all about self value and not caring what people think. I know superficial skinny people will just be like, “Lose weight then.” But mostly I’m hurt that he cares what people think about me. It has me thinking, “Why is he dating me if he cares how I look?”

I’ve read that that is the way things are in China and he said something like that too but…We’re not in China and we are going to visit, not live there. I’m also not a miracle worker, I can’t lose as much as he wants, between now and the time he wants to leave.

So this whole topic has me really insecure right now and I don’t even want to be undressed in front of him because I think he thinks I’m unattractive. So, my question for you and everyone is: Is the weight issue truly that big of deal in China and is it worth the insecurity to lose the weight to make him not feel ashamed of me? Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Chinese Boyfriend Thinks I’m Fat”

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