publications | Speaking of China

Pub’d on China Daily: My Christmas Story from 2013

Recently, China Daily published my Christmas story in a piece titled Christmas memories from foreigners living in China. (I know I’m a bit late updating you but I’ve been busy battling a cold and also caring for my husband, who caught the flu. But hey, if you subscribe to the 12 days of Christmas, it’s still technically the holidays. 😉 ) Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

In December 2013, I had to spend Christmas in the Hangzhou countryside with my husband’s family, who never had the tradition to celebrate this holiday.

It was my first Christmas away from America in many years, and the loss felt palpable in this rural village, where there wasn’t even a hint of the holidays. But in the end, I made a resolution — if they could not bring Christmas to me, I would bring it to them.

You can read the full story at the China Daily, along with other Christmas tales from foreigners. And if you like it, share it!

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Pub’d on China Daily: Discovering the meaning of winter solstice

Today, China Daily’s newspaper and website published my winter solstice article titled Discovering the meaning of winter solstice.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

The late afternoon sun of winter warmed us as we bowed before the front door of that little whitewashed house in the mountains of rural Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. There we prayed to the ancestors, whose table before us carried a delicious spread of home-cooked dishes from my mother-in-law’s kitchen. The tempting aromas of chili peppers, garlic and ginger mingled with the faint fragrance of papermade ancestor money burning on the ground. As I stood together with my husband and his relatives, I had this strange feeling of deja vu, as if I had been there before somehow, somewhere in my life.

And in a way, I had.

Before I married into a Chinese family from rural Hangzhou, I had never known anyone in the United States who celebrated the winter solstice as an actual holiday. But once I moved back to China with my husband in 2013, I finally had the opportunity to experience a traditional winter solstice celebration in all its splendor.

To read the full article, you can head on over to China Daily’s website.

Additionally, if you’d like to hear me read the article, there’s an audio version available. Just scan the QR code below:

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Pub’d on The Wall Street Journal: “Mom, If Only You Could Have Known the Expat I’ve Become”

The Wall Street Journal just published my article titled “Mom, If Only You Could Have Known the Expat I’ve Become” (which was inspired by a blog post I ran earlier this year to coincide with Mother’s Day) on their Expat Blog.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

My heart aches as I stare down at my old Dr. Seuss Cat-in-the-Hat doll, now covered in splotches of mold. I chastise myself for burying it in the closet: How had I forgotten about the ferocious humidity of Hangzhou, the Chinese city I once called my home and whose climate ultimately claimed this most precious of childhood relics from my late mother. She never imagined this doll would follow me to China.

I was only 17 years old when she died of cancer. At the time, there was nothing to suggest I would end up in China, though China would eventually become a part of me, giving me a home, a career, and a husband.

Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal. And as always, if you love it, share it!

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Pub’d in the China Daily: I Never Expected to Marry a Chinese Man

The China Daily, China’s major English-language newspaper, invited me to write a piece on my cross-cultural marriage — and they’ve just published it on their site. Titled “I Never Expected to Marry a Chinese Man“, it covers everything from how I assumed I would stay single in China to some of the cultural differences in dating and marriage I’ve noticed over the years.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

The idea of dating or marrying a Chinese man never really crossed my mind before I first came to China in 1999. That’s probably the last thing you expected to hear from a woman known for writing and blogging about her marriage to a Chinese man, but it’s true.

When I think back to the months I spent in preparation for that year of teaching English in Zhengzhou, I draw a blank on Chinese men, apart from one simple thing. I assumed they weren’t dating material for me, and I wasn’t alone. An American man who had once taught in China famously told me, “You don’t have to worry about the students falling in love with you.”

You can read the full article at the China Daily. And as always, if you love it, share it!

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An Interview with Susan Blumberg-Kason on “Good Chinese Wife” – Pub’d in Asian Jewish Life

My interview with Susan Blumberg-Kason on her new memoir Good Chinese Wife was just published in Asian Jewish Life!

As longtime readers know, I originally interviewed Susan back in July about Good Chinese Wife as part of the Good Chinese Wife blog tour. For Asian Jewish Life, I expanded on that interview to ask more about how Susan’s Jewish identity factored into her story and also learn about the work in progress she’s currently writing (which has a very strong Asian Jewish theme!).

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

AJL: Your Jewish identity is an important part of your story – such as trying to explain to Cai’s parents that you don’t want to eat pork, and having a bris for your son. What was it like navigating a world where people might not always understand what being Jewish really means?

SBK: I really tried to fit in and was worried at first that Cai’s family wouldn’t accept me because I wasn’t Chinese. So I was careful not to draw more attention to my differences. For that reason, I wasn’t so open about my Judaism. In the beginning of my marriage, I only mentioned it in passing. My parents attended a lecture in Chicago by the renowned scholar Xu Xin and brought a couple copies of his Jewish encyclopedia (printed in Chinese) for Cai and his parents. I’m not sure they ever read the encyclopedia and at the time I didn’t want to make a big deal about it, so didn’t discuss it with them. Later when Jake was born, I asked Cai about having a bris for Jake and he agreed. It wasn’t easy for him, and I write about that in Good Chinese Wife.When Jake was a year old, I suddenly felt like it was important for Jake to be raised with a religion. That’s not uncommon for people who aren’t very religious growing up but then change when they have children. So I signed us up for an interfaith group run by the Jewish community in San Francisco. Cai went with Jake and me a couple of times, but then claimed he had no interest and didn’t want to continue going. I took Jake by myself until we left San Francisco. I am happy to say that Cai attended Jake’s bar mitzvah three years ago and was very proud of Jake. This fall Jake is studying in Israel and Cai will visit him there!

Read the full interview online at Asian Jewish Life. And if you love it, share it!

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Pub’d in The Huffington Post: “Why Won’t Western Women Date Chinese Men?”

Can’t believe I’m writing this…my article was just published in The Huffington Post!

Titled “Why Won’t Western Women Date Chinese Men?”, it’s my personal exploration of a topic close to my own heart. After reading a few too many misleading articles on the subject this year, I felt it was time for me to speak out.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

…when I think about the global reach of this problem, and the fact that it’s even tough for Western-born Chinese to score a date outside of their own race, I know deep down that cultural differences — as much as they matter in relationships — cannot alone account for why few Western women date Chinese men. When I think about how a racist caricature from Hollywood gets tossed around among expats as a symbol of Chinese men — and Westerners from around the world harbor consistently negative views of Chinese men — I realize there’s a dark side to this whole discussion.

If you like it, share it — and become a fan of my author page at The Huffington Post!

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My essay will appear in anthology of “True Stories of Expat Women in Asia”

Exciting news! My essay will appear in the forthcoming anthology How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit: True Stories of Expat Women in Asia edited by Shannon Young and published by Signal 8 Press. Our publication date is June 10, 2014, which is coming up soon!

My personal essay is titled “Huangshan Honeymoon” and centers on a rather unusual kind of vacation for newlyweds in China — one where my husband’s father-in-law came along for the ride! Why did we bring his father on the trip? And, more importantly, how did this journey change my relationship with his father, a man who once counseled his son not to date foreign women? Find out when you read “Huangshan Honeymoon” in this forthcoming anthology.

Want another reason to check out How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit: True Stories of Expat Women in Asia? The many fantastic contributing writers, including some names you just might recognize:

Susan Blumberg-Kason, author of the forthcoming memoir Good Chinese Wife
Dorcas Cheng-Tozun, an award-winning writer who contributed the memorable essay Three Words from a Chinese Father to this site and is currently working a memoir
Jenna Lynn Cody, the Taiwan-based blogger at Lao Ren Cha and a frequent commenter on this site
Kaitlin Solimine, author of the forthcoming novel Empire of Glass and a contributor to Unsavory Elements (her essay, “Water for Li-Ming”, was one of the standouts in the collection)
Ember Swift, the Canadian singer-songwriter who also blogs about her multicultural family and is working on her Master of Fine Arts in Writing in Hong Kong.
Christine Tan, whose now-defunct blog Shanghai Shiok was one of my all-time favorite reads on cross-cultural relationships and interracial dating between Asians and non-Asians
Edna Zhou, who wrote for Shanghaiist and is best known for her blog Expat Edna, which chronicles her globe-trotting adventures

Plus, the anthology has received glowing blurbs from two of my favorite writers:

“How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit is an eclectic, soulful collection of stories by badass women who have adventured far out of their comfort zones. Full of candid observations about travel, language, food, self and other, it’s a book for anyone who has ever felt peripheral, upside down, culturally shocked or inspired. In other words, a book for all of us.”
– Rachel DeWoskin, author of Foreign Babes in Beijing, Repeat After Me, Big Girl Small, and Blind.

“A unique and inspiring collection of voices that calls up all the wonder, fascination, challenges, disorientation, and delights faced by women expats throughout Asia. I was moved by the breadth of experiences included in this anthology at the same time that I fell in love with one thread running throughout: how the expatriate journey takes us away from ourselves and then ultimately delivers us back, richer, wiser, and even more aware of how our own identities fit within our wide, wide world.”
– Tracy Slater, author of The Good Shufu: A Wife in Search of a Life Between East and West.

I’ll keep you posted on the forthcoming publication of How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit. In the meantime, you can follow the anthology on Facebook.

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South China Morning Post Mentioned My Essay + Unsavory Elements Available for Kindle

I’m on a major deadline again this week and need a break from my regularly scheduled Friday programming. But I still have some share-worthy news, including one that was a definite jīngxǐ (惊喜, pleasant surprise) for me!

First off, the South China Morning Post recently came out with a review of Unsavory Elements. Mark O’Neill, who did the review, happened to single out my essay — titled “Red Couplets” — as one of “the most moving” contributions (along with essays from Kay Bratt and Kaitlin Solimine). Wow.

Here’s what he had to say in the review:

Jocelyn Eikenburg describes courting her Chinese husband. “From the first time I started to love a Chinese man, hiding became part of my life.” This is a rare account from the inside of a relationship that is much less common that that of a western man with a Chinese wife.

For anyone interested in reading the full review from the South China Morning Post, you’re welcome to peruse this PDF version. (Special thanks to Janet Brown, author of many great books including Tone Deaf in Bangkok, for sending me the original review!)

Also, for all of you enthusiastic e-readers, Unsavory Elements is now on sale as a Kindle e-book. So go ahead and download your copy today! And if you do, let me know what you think of my essay.

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“Unsavory Elements” Anthology On Sale Through Amazon.com Starting Today

The wait is over! Unsavory Elements — the China anthology featuring my essay (titled “Red Couplets”) — is finally available for purchase through Amazon.com in paperback form (note: Kindle edition will be available August 1 — I’ll make another announcement at that time).

For those of you who missed it, back in March I announced the exciting news about my essay being published in this anthology (which was featured in the Shanghai Literary Festival):

As my friend Susan Blumberg-Kason wrote, the contributor’s list reads like “a who’s who in the China expat literary world.” Those 28 writers include big names such as Peter Hessler, Simon Winchester,Michael Meyer, Deborah Fallows, Alan Paul, Jonathan Watts and Susan Conley. So for me, it is truly an honor to be in same publication as these distinguished writers. Tom Carter, author of CHINA: Portrait of a People, edited the book and also contributed an essay.…

FYI, the essay I wrote centers on love and relationships between Western women and Chinese men, so I’m sure it will resonate with many of you!

Additionally, to whet your appetite, you might also enjoy this take on my essay by a book reviewer for the Global Times: Continue reading ““Unsavory Elements” Anthology On Sale Through Amazon.com Starting Today”

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Essay Published in “Unsavory Elements,” An Anthology Featured in Shanghai Lit Festival

I have some extremely exciting news! My essay titled “Red Couplets” is going to be published this month in the anthology Unsavory Elements — a publication also featured in the Shanghai Literary Festival.

As my friend Susan Blumberg-Kason wrote, the contributor’s list reads like “a who’s who in the China expat literary world.” Those 28 writers include big names such as Peter Hessler, Simon Winchester, Michael Meyer, Deborah Fallows, Alan Paul, Jonathan Watts and Susan Conley. So for me, it is truly an honor to be in same publication as these distinguished writers. Tom Carter, author of CHINA: Portrait of a People, edited the book and also contributed an essay.

If you’re in Shanghai and you’d love to get a copy, they should be available at the March 15, 7pm event for the anthology. (NOTE: This event is going to be SOLD OUT soon, so ACT FAST if you want tickets to attend!)

Otherwise, it will also be available on Amazon.com shortly — and I will share that link as soon as I can. You can also visit the Facebook page for the anthology.

FYI, the essay I wrote centers on love and relationships between Western women and Chinese men, so I’m sure it will resonate with many of you!

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