When I published a story several weeks ago for Double Happiness, one comment caught my attention:
…I feel compelled to mention how disappointed I am that “foreign” girls are always white girls…. I live in China, and I’m quite attracted to Chinese guys, but my dark skin and less than European features seems to mean that I’m destined to be forever alone. It’s quite sad that no one’s aware of this growing problem, the plight of the forever forsaken non-white girl…. There are many of us out here, and every once in a while, we’d like some love, too.
After reading these words, I immediately thought of Chenyin Pan. He and I struck up a conversation this past summer at the Shanghai reading for Rachel DeWoskin’s latest book, and he happened to mention he once dated some non-white women as a university student in the US. In previous e-mails, he even mentioned the striking words of a Korean friend (who wrote them with respect to dating non-white women): “The world is getting smaller and we should try new things.”
Well, Chenyin definitely has, and I’m really thrilled he agreed to share. While I normally don’t run Double Happiness columns consecutively, I wanted to put this one out there as soon as I could — if nothing else, to give some non-white women out there a little love. 🙂 Continue reading “Double Happiness: Once You Go Black, You Never Go Back”