Building cultural bridges with love. 洋媳妇谈中国
Advice for, and stories about, foreigners in China. From one Western woman with a Chinese husband.
“Jane” (not her real name) wrote that she hopes this one Chinese man will forgive her for her mistakes and missteps. And while I feel she’s very hard on herself, her story might give you a different insight into why some cross-cultural relationships in China don’t work out. Continue reading “Fenshou: “I Hope He Can Forgive Me””
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?”
Chinese American Michelle Guo — a fellow blogger and personal friend — shares her story of how she went to China and ended up marrying Alex, a man from Henan Province.
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Four years ago when I first came to Beijing, locals asked me what brought me back to China. The question always threw me off, since I was born in Portland, spent most of my life in California, and had never been to China before. I’m Chinese-American and was raised by my mom, who is anything BUT a traditional Chinese parent. My values, thinking, and culture are very Western, which is why I assumed that whoever I married, no matter what ethnicity, would also be American, or at the very least a Westerner.
Sometimes it’s really, really nice to make the wrong assumption. Continue reading “Double Happiness: How One Chinese American Woman Married a Chinese National”
When I called for submissions a couple of weeks ago, never did I imagine the overwhelming response from readers. Literally within days of posting, the submissions started rolling in.
The first I received was this piece from a woman with the nickname “Smallsquirrel”. It is a poignant and thoughtfully penned story of how her engagement to a Chinese man from a prominent Beijing family eventually ended. I’m honored to kick off my new series — which I’m calling “Fenshou” from the pinyin for the Chinese word for breakup — with what I’ve titled “I Was Once Engaged to a Chinese Man.” Continue reading “Fenshou: “I Was Once Engaged to a Chinese Man””
Just last week, a review of the anthology Unsavory Elements appeared in the Global Times, and had this to say about my contribution:
Jocelyn Eikenburg gives insight into the seldom spoken of (or seen) relationships between foreign women and Chinese men in “Red Couplets.” She writes, “From the first time I started to love a Chinese man, hiding became part of my life.” As she watches droves of Western men couple up with Chinese women, she feels alienated by her expat girlfriends, too, who openly express their romantic disdain for all Chinese men.
She’s referring to this portion of my essay: Continue reading “Does Peer Pressure Ever Discourage Dating Differently?”
It’s March 8 — International Women’s Day — and time for an update to my list of blogs by Western women who love Chinese men!
Last year, I had a little over 40 on my list. Now we’re up to over 50, so the community keeps growing! I’ve still grouped the blogs loosely according to their focus, and I also added a *NEW* tag to denote all new additions to the list.
And here they are: Continue reading “2013 Blogs by Western Women Who Love Chinese Men”
I am thrilled that Susan Blumberg-Kason invited me to participate in the The Next Big Thing, an Internet meme where writers answer questions about their latest or forthcoming works.
Susan is the author of the forthcoming memoir Good Chinese Wife. This book traces the five years she spent trying to assimilate into a Chinese family, after jumping quickly into marriage with a Chinese man. But over time, she comes to reconsider what she thought it meant to be a wife, have a family, and raise a child — and faces the tough choice of whether or not to leave her Chinese family.
I’ve read portions of her memoir, and I can honestly say it’s a gripping story written from the heart. I loved Susan as a narrator because she shares so many of her vulnerabilities on the page. I liked the unusual, non-linear structure of her book as well, which really adds to the drama of her story and keeps you turning the pages.
And I’m sure many of you, like myself, can’t wait to get your hands on Susan’s book. To learn more, check out her Next Big Thing post from last week, or read the brief introduction to Good Chinese Wife on her website.
Now for my interview questions, which I’ll follow with introductions to several authors to watch for. Continue reading “The Next Big Thing: On “Red All Over,” My Forthcoming Memoir”
She’s an independent Canadian musician and singer-songwriter with her own label and 11 albums to her name (including one in English and Mandarin Chinese), whose eclectic style defies categorization. She writes for Herizons, Beijing Kids and China.org, and also publishes stories about her intercultural relationship and Chinese family life in her smartly written blogs. And did I mention she’s married to Guo Jian, the lead singer/bassist of Long Shen Dao, China’s hottest reggae band?
Meet Ember Swift, a talented artist — and outstanding yangxifu — that I’m proud to introduce to you. You can purchase her music at iTunes and her website, check out her must-read blogs, and also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Sina Weibo.
In Part 1 of our interview, I asked Ember about her career — from how China transformed her sound to what’s next for her as a musician and a writer. Continue reading “Ember Swift Interview Part 1 – How China Changed Her Music”
A few years ago, I remember stumbling across a post that linked back to me on the now defunct Shlaowai blog (which billed itself as “Shanghai Uncensored”). The post, written by one of their white female writers, was titled, “So, What’s the Dating Scene Like?” I can’t share any quotes from the post — unfortunately, the blog’s creators blocked archiving of their material, which means you can’t even dig up their original content through the Wayback Machine. Still, given that the post featured the infamous photo of a shorter Long Duk Dong with his head buried in the bosom of a taller white girl, you can guess what the author had to say about “the dating scene” in China.
I can’t recall her exact wording when she referenced my site, but I remember how I felt. That I somehow couldn’t be trusted to understand her experience. After all, I crossed the line she somehow drew there in Shanghai by dating and marrying a Chinese (and then daring to write something positive about it).
You might wonder, why do I even care about an obscure post from years back on a now-defunct blog? It’s because I’ve increasingly encountered a similar perspective in e-mails from some readers — e-mails that ask, in a suspect tone, why I’m not writing enough negative things about dating Chinese men? Continue reading “On My Negative Dating Experiences With Chinese Men, and Why I Still Kept Smiling About China’s “Dating Scene””
A asks:
Now, I see a lot of positive things on Asian men here on this blog and I do appreciate that, but what about the not-so-positive ones? There is one thing in particular i’ve been thinking about for a while lately: the cheating and the tradition of having xiaosan [mistresses] here in China. I can’t even remember how many times I have been approached by married men or guys who have been with their gfs for 8 or 9 years! Not to mention the fact that dating someone is actually quite complicated because a good part of the guys in their late 20s are already married!!
I know a lot of foreign girls who do get in troubles eventually for starting relationships with men who are already taken and it just becomes a mess…
What do you think about this? Why is it that so many seem to prefer cheating than leave their ‘safety net’ (aka gf)? Why does it seem that foreign girls are their preferred choice when they look for xiaosan? Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: On Married Men in China Seeking Extramarital Affairs With Western Women”