love in China | Speaking of China

Ask the Yangxifu: Your Chinese Boyfriend’s Parents Say No?

Chinese mother-in-law — Sometimes, the biggest obstacle to a relationship with Chinese men is the family. How can you overcome opposition to having a foreign girlfriend? (pictured - my mother-in-law)

Shocked in Shanghai asks:

I came to China from Europe over a year ago, to mend my broken heart, I left a long relationship in Europe to become strong in China and become independent and know myself. The man I have fallen in love with is an amazing guy from Shanghai. We have been together for around two months now, have spent pretty much everyday together for the last two months and it has been amazing. Our different cultures have not been too much of a problem, we laugh and always have so much to talk about.

However…. the sad thing is his parents won’t accept me. They can’t understand how he could love me. My family on the other hand have no problems at all with it and if I am happy they are happy. He promises me that we will always be together and I know how much he loves me, it’s just the pressure his family are putting him under. It is difficult for me to understand as in the West we don’t face such pressure, but I am always supportive of him. I guess I don’t want to lose this man but I have no control and I feel alone with it. All I can do is have faith and believe that his family one day will have to accept that we want to be together and love each other, rather than thinking it is just a fatuation. They think I will leave him or take him to Europe. I have told him that I will stay in China for him as Europe isn’t the greatest place for us to be together.

If you have any advice I would love to hear it. Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Your Chinese Boyfriend’s Parents Say No?”

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Chapter 42: New Clothes for Chinese New Year

Chinese tangzhuang silk jacket — I wanted a new beginning in Chinese New Year. So, I made an outfit to make a good impression on John's parents, and, later, a new job.

In Chinese New Year, wearing new clothes means a new beginning. Before Chinese New Year in 2003, I desperately needed a new beginning — because I’d lost my job at the Chinese Internet Company, and I was about to meet John’s parents.

After the remark from John’s father — that foreign women make good friends, not girlfriends — I needed something to make a fresh start with his family. That’s what I told Caroline, my Chinese friend, days before John and I would travel to his countryside home. We had just had dinner together that evening, and on our post-meal stroll, came across the tiny, brightly-lit store of a tailor I knew all too well.

My eyes twinkled like a child before the tantalizing toys in a Christmas store window display. “She’s the one who made my qipao.” The same qipao I wore for my birthday celebration the summer John and I fell in love. “Let’s go inside and take a look.” Continue reading “Chapter 42: New Clothes for Chinese New Year”

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China Blogs by Western Women who Love Chinese Men

(NOTE: For the most up-to-date list of these blogs, read my 2018 update of this list)

March is women’s history month, and just last week, March 8 was international women’s day. As we remember the women who make a difference in our world, there’s one minority voice we shouldn’t forget — the Western women who love Chinese men.

China blogs are still a man’s world, so our voices are often lost in the comments and trackbacks. But Western women who love Chinese men have a unique perspective to a woman’s experience in China — which makes their blogs even more valuable in the blogsphere. Here’s my list, in alphabetical order (according to the blog’s name). Continue reading “China Blogs by Western Women who Love Chinese Men”

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Ask the Yangxifu: Indirect Dating and Chinese Men

Western woman and Chinese man — How do you know if a Chinese man wants to date you -- or is dating you?

Anonymous asks:

I am an American female and began an international graduate program this January here in the US. Most of my classmates are foreign and I’ve gotten the attention from a Chinese male. There is a good chance our relationship is going to blossom, so I have a few questions for you.

At first, it didn’t dawn on me that he was interested, so he stepped it up a notch. He started waiting for me after class, sitting near me in class and initiating conversations. We have spent some time together outside of class. Our most recent encounter was a trip to the movies, where he picked me up and got a chance to meet my grandfather (he was very excited to meet Grandpa). He is currently on a trip for spring break and has phoned me a few times.

Here is the kicker and where my questions come in. He is very indirect. While I’m 99% sure he is courting me, he has never expressed in words his desire to date me (although it is still early). Should I wait for him to initiate that conversation? Additionally, he asks questions in a very indirect manner. For example, instead of asking if he can walk walk with me to the library, he asks where I am going next… I think it is a combination of his culture combined with being male haha. His English is also very choppy, so we have a communication barrier. I do not speak or read Chinese at all.

His indirectness combined with limited knowledge of the English language is difficult for me to understand his intentions at times (especially when he is hinting that he’d like to get together). I am an outgoing and honest person, so it’s difficult for me to know how to react to him. He is also very introverted and independent, kind of a homebody.

I guess I’m writing you for some advice. I don’t want to be too forward by asking him direct questions or disclose too much information that may turn him off. My instincts are telling me to find the balance between expressing interest and letting things happen naturally. I don’t know him well enough yet to know how I feel about him, but so far he’s caught my attention. Any advice/suggestions would be helpful. Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Indirect Dating and Chinese Men”

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Chapter 34: Love in the Time of Stomach Inflammation

Sometimes you hope for romance in China -- and instead, you end up with an IV drip, and your Chinese boyfriend caring for you.

When you’re in love, and only see each other every two weeks, on the weekends, you romanticize every meeting. You want it to be as perfect as a Tang-dynasty couplet, and script out the possibilities even before your lover arrives. You practice a new phrase, such as wàngchuānqiūshuǐ (望穿秋水 – awaiting you with great anxiety), to say when he comes, and might just even stand on the streets with roses to greet him — just as I had before.

After my painful meeting with Mr. Fang, I romanticized the arrival of John, my Chinese boyfriend, on the weekend of December 13, 2002, even agreeing to meet John at the Hangzhou railway station, as if I was starring in some dramatic reunion scene in a movie.

Except, real life often departs from your own script. Sometimes, you hope for romance — and what you get, instead, is stomach inflammation.

I should have felt it coming, the way I inexplicably collapsed into his arms during the taxi ride home. It wasn’t like me to feel so drained. I expected it was simply the lingering stress of Mr. Fang’s confrontation, weighing on my exhausted frame. A good night’s sleep, with John, my Chinese boyfriend, by my side, would surely restore me.

Or not. Continue reading “Chapter 34: Love in the Time of Stomach Inflammation”

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Chapter 33: My Chinese Boyfriend’s Dormitory Despair

Door in a Chinese university — John, my Chinese boyfriend, was left in the dark at university when he faced a semester of dormitory despair.

While I faced a spamming dilemma in my company in Hangzhou, my Chinese boyfriend, John, faced a dormitory dilemma at his university in Shanghai.

John lived in a men’s graduate dormitory on campus, an older brick building with four floors that stood next to the school cafeteria. John’s initial dorm room, on the second floor, had a window perched just above some large fan or boiler unit for the cafeteria that looked like a large white mushroom made of metal.

John didn’t mind sharing a room with three others, or the smell of the drab, institutional bathrooms, or even the usual 11pm lights-out, power-off policy typical of a Chinese university. But he did mind the noise of the cafeteria — from that strange unit outside the window — which disrupted his sleep every morning, around 4:30am. Continue reading “Chapter 33: My Chinese Boyfriend’s Dormitory Despair”

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Ask the Yangxifu: How can Western women and Chinese men get along – as a couple?

Tony asks:

I’m a guy from China, really enjoy your blog, but am curious how you and your husband get along. Your from the US, he from China, so the culture and food are very different. I see few couples like yours, and don’t think I could ever marry a foreign woman because of the differences. Â How you can stay together well?

——

Thanks for the question, Tony.

I can’t speak for every couple like ours. But I will say this — understanding has really kept my Chinese husband and I together (we’ve been married since 2004). Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: How can Western women and Chinese men get along – as a couple?”

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Chapter 28: Of Chinese Medicine and Balance

In Chinese traditional medicine, there is a saying: anger hurts your liver, melancholy hurts your lungs, thinking hurts your spleen, happiness hurts your heart. The thing is, we are all angry, melancholy, happy, or just thinking at different times in life. What hurts is when we do it too much, without balance.

John, my Chinese boyfriend, thinks my life has lost balance, ever since our time together during National Day — and my health hasn’t been the same.

My back and neck felt unusually sore after an evening swim Friday, October 11. The pain lingered uncomfortably for over a week, even after I received Chinese medical massage. So when John came in the weekend of October 18, he took me to the hospital for an X-ray.

“Your neck has straightened out,” the doctor said to me, looking at the black-and-white photo illuminated in his office. All of those days in the office, sitting at an office chair before a desk, had hurt my neck.

But once John and I left the doctor’s office, it was as if the doctor was still in — the doctor of Chinese traditional medicine and wisdom. Continue reading “Chapter 28: Of Chinese Medicine and Balance”

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Ask the Yangxifu: How Western Women Can Meet Chinese Men in China

Chinese man, sitting on the campus of Suzhou University — How can foreign women improve their chances to meet good Chinese men -- in China? (Pictured: my Chinese husband, John, sitting on the campus of Suzhou University)

Priscilla didn’t ask me anything. But after reading her February 12 opinion piece in the Global Times, titled “Chinese men: pull your weight”, I thought she needed some answers — especially when it comes to finding a good Chinese man. So I decided to pre-empt my scheduled Q&A this week, to help Priscilla.

Here’s an excerpt, where she discusses her interest in dating Chinese men — but lack of suitors:

One girl in a circle of friends decides to give a Chinese guy a chance and is shocked to discover, he’s pretty cool. The others also start testing the waters: flirting with that cute Chinese guy in a uniform, dancing with the tall one at the club, maybe even venturing to have a fling or two. And once the blinkers are lifted, ladies, you’ll discover that you are actually surrounded by attractive men.

But I am writing this as an enlightened foreign lady with several foreign lady friends and I can’t think of a single one who is dating a Chinese guy.

….one reason I can personally attest to is a lack of effort by Chinese men.

She ends the piece by exhorting all would-be Chinese suitors to “man-up” — be a real guy, and get the courage to ask Western women out.

My response? Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: How Western Women Can Meet Chinese Men in China”

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Chapter 24: Tied in Chinese Knots over John

Red Chinese Knot — I was getting tied up in knots over my relationship with my Chinese boyfriend, John, when I never needed to. (Photo from Wikimedia, shot by Ucla90024)

As John, my Chinese boyfriend, and I spent more time together, it was as if we were creating a Chinese knot of our own, promising forever — a forever I had never known with anyone else. And I was tying myself up in knots, because in the world I had known before — where love came and went as effortlessly as the rain across the West Lake in Hangzhou — forever seemed so hard to find, and so hard to believe.

I found solace in my Chinese friend Swallow, one of the translators, a “spicy Sichuan girl” who knew John too. She gave me one of her easy smiles when I told her of my worries, and the experience I had with him during National Day. It was as if she had to laugh at all of the ridiculous mental knots I had created. Continue reading “Chapter 24: Tied in Chinese Knots over John”

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