John and I went to Su Causeway in Hangzhou not for the view or a walk, but to find the bench where we first kissed.
There are endless reasons to visit Hangzhou’s Su Causeway. A stroll with a lake view. A walk through — or rather on — history (it was, after all, named for Su Dongpo, the Song Dynasty poet). A brief respite from city smog. Or even just to fawn over the lotus blooms that grace the lake in the summer.
You don’t go to see a bench. At least, you don’t — unless you’re John and I, a couple minted beside the shores of this breezy little lake just a little over a year ago, on one otherwise unspectacular bench.
“This is it, isn’t it, sweetie?” I asked, pointing to the bench closest to one of the causeway’s bridges — a bench that happened to hold an entire family, curious why John and I were ogling their chosen seat.
“Yes, it’s ‘our bench,'” John beamed. We had secretly christened it our own bench, with John often suggesting that we plant a tree nearby, to commemorate a love that grew right from this very spot. Continue reading “Chapter 76: The Bench on Su Causeway”
An American woman wonders why her once-gentle Chinese boyfriend, who came to the US for his Ph.D, is suddenly showing a temper. Jocelyn shares similar experiences with her Chinese husband, and offers some advice.
HoneymoonIsOver asks:
When I came back to the states from China I met my current Chinese boyfriend and that has been an adventure. [He’s here in the US getting his PhD in Pharmaceutics] Now that the “honeymoon” is over with my new bf I’m looking to your blog and others for advice and ideas on how to keep things positive in this new relationship…. I always perceived Chinese men to be extermely gentle, but I have found that me new bf has a bit of a temper [I guess due to the stress of school & lack of decent income]. I heard from another family member that sometimes Chinese men change after they get married and don’t treat their wives well. I am horrified at even hearing this, but now my curiosity has kicked in. Can you tell me what you think?”
One Western woman reveals her love to a Chinese man, only to learn he can never love her back. Can she ever be more than just his friend?
LongingForLove asks:
I wonder about Chinese man act of love really. I have one guy from China and we become good friends first .We help and share stories together and have happy time also .One day i feel ” I love him ” but i don’t know what should i do really ? because he doesn’t show anythings to me that he love me ,only he always tells me that ” you raise me up.” So , i told him when i met him that ” I love you” and he replied me that ” i felt same like you ” but i feel uncomfortable if we thought like that .Whatever happen i expected we contact forever.
A woman wonders why her Chinese man doesn't show her love or affection, or give compliments.
Missing Dimension asks:
I am white, and I know my Chinese S.O. loves me, but he never says so. No affection, touching, except in the bedroom. No compliments. No flirting. He is 62, born in Hong Kong, and lived in Canada a little while. Mostly lived in NY. He can be highly critical. But I have controlled this to some extent. Is this normal for a highly educated Chinese American man? There seems to be a whole dimension of our relationship left out.
If your Chinese man likes it, how does he put a ring on it? Jocelyn takes on the topic of creative marriage proposals from Chinese men. (photo by wvermeulen)
Friend asks:
I was going to ask if you were going to make an entry on how chinese men propose, and maybe personal examples from you or others. Some thoughts ran around my head while I was listening to that cheesy but semi-adorable song by David Tao, Today you’re going to marry me (今天你要嫁给我). Although a lot of western guys come with a bunch of fun and neat ideas of proposing, there’s no lack of creativity from Chinese guys, shy as they may be. Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Chinese Men and the Marriage Proposal”
A Western woman had her heart broken, when the Chinese man she loved turned out to be married. How can you avoid dishonest men in China?
Just recently, a reader also shared with me how her friend, a Western woman, was heartbroken by a Chinese man who didn’t disclose his marriage — and pregnant wife.
Ouch.
There’s a saying in Chinese: 林子大，什么鸟都有 (there are all kinds of birds in a big forest). So, it goes for China too: there are all kinds of Chinese men. And some aren’t really looking for THAT kind of love.
Just as SARS began, and panic slowly began to mask the public, it felt odd to be so in love, in China. (Image from www.wired.com)
I’d been working for barely a month in Shanghai, when news of SARS began to spread like the virus itself.
Masks quietly spread around the bus I rode into downtown Shanghai.
The women’s bathroom became our morning decontamination station, as everyone washed their hands more obsessively than Lady MacBeth — over conversations about whether or not to buy face masks.
E-mails about Hong Kong infected my inbox, with seemingly fictional photographs of people muzzled with face masks, and health workers dressed in outfits straight out of the Andromeda Strain.
In Shanghai, my Chinese boyfriend and I were almost as close as husband and wife. All of the signs said we were headed to a wedding -- so why did I have to ask?
There was no history of casual dating in John’s family. His maternal grandmother was a child bride, sent to live with her grandfather’s family when she was seven or eight, without the ability or understanding to contest her fate. She went from being a virginal pre-adolescent to a wife who would immediately bear children.
John’s mother, her daughter, married during the Cultural Revolution, in 1972 — with a “revolutionary marriage certificate,” stamped in red, to prove it. She was never a child bride, but still a stranger to this man, introduced to her through a matchmaker in the village, with a courtship that fast-tracked them straight to a wedding. Marriage was simply a practical matter, solving what the Chinese often refer to as their “personal problem.”
Even as I found so much to love in Shanghai, I still yearned for the flavors of the Hangzhou I once knew. (photo by HanWei, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
I moved to a district in Shanghai called Changning, which means “long peace.” After losing my job and even overstaying my visa in Hangzhou, living in Changning was like finding peace in my life. I had a promising new job as a copywriter in a multinational company named one of the Forbes’ 200 best small companies in the world. I resided in a quiet community, with evergreens, bushes, manicured lawns, weathered four-story, concrete apartment buildings and plenty of sunshine. Every morning, a fleet of modern — and mostly empty — air-conditioned buses could taxi me all the way to my new downtown office.
Most of all, I had John, my Chinese boyfriend, with me, everyday. And perhaps that was the most important difference between Hangzhou and Shanghai — now John was no longer an occasional weekend visitor, but, by unspoken agreement, my live-in partner. He turned Shanghai into something deceptively familiar, as if my new home was simply a Shanghai version of the Hangzhou neighborhood I once knew.
Should you wait to tell your Chinese boyfriend "I love you?"
Should I Say “I Love You” asks:
I’m an American woman dating a Chinese American man in the US, and need your help.
After just a few months [with him] I find myself thinking of him constantly! We talk all day long, via text, and spend at least an hour a day on the phone. We live about 50 miles apart, so sometimes I drive through hours of traffic just to see him; and he has to walk to a bus, take a train & then I pick him up & we drive some more to come to my house. We do our best to get together every weekend, but have gone 2 weekends without seeing one another and it was BRUTAL! The closeness of our connection and the quickness of it scares us both.
We talked about it a few weeks ago; I am just coming out of a HUGE relationship that I thought was going to last forever and I am now in a big ugly financial mess as a result–3 years ago he was ready to propose to someone who broke his heart, and now he is working full time while going to school full time and his priorities are finishing school [With an A average and no less, of course ;-)] and hopefully landing a job in his dream career. We talk about societal pressures to “settle down”, have kids, “grow up” and neither of us are really willing to conform to those norms. We discussed how it is good that we kind of live far apart, it allows us to take care of our responsibilities etc. during the week, and then really enjoy each other’s company on the weekends. But even with that distance, we are extremely close and I think both frightened by it.
A few weeks ago, we had spent the weekend together and it was beautiful. The next day we talked on the phone, and he shared with me that he is nervous that his feelings for me are much more than he expected, and he is afraid if our relationship moves too fast he will not accomplish his goals. I appreciated his honesty, he told me once that expressing himself openly is often very hard for him, so I knew it was important if he told me about it. Frankly, I think our relationship right now is PERFECT! We connect intellectually, emotionally, and most DEFINITELY PHYSICALLY (Yes!). The distance and other circumstances does prevent us from moving way ahead of ourselves and it’s a little safety net.
So here it is……………I am in love with him. No matter how I try to rationalize myself out of it, or think of reasons this could just be a “fling” or a “rebound” I have just connected so deeply with this man on so many levels it can be nothing but love. Certainly not at all what I had expected, but I guess it’s better when things happen that way, isn’t it? I am not ready to tell him this, because I feel it is too soon, and I don’t want to put any unnecessary pressure there at all. But sometimes the way he looks at me, right into my eyes, he seems that he wants to say the same thing too. It was after the first time he looked at me this way that we had our “I’m scared” conversation. It’s like every time I look into his eyes I want to scream “I LOVE YOU”, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Am I wrong for holding that in? Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Waiting to Say “I Love You” To a Chinese Boyfriend”
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