I’ll never forget the way my Chinese mother-in-law described the impetus for my sister-in-law’s divorce, a divorce that eventually paved the way for her to marry John’s brother. “Her ex-husband became fond of another woman.”
She used the word hào, to like or be fond of. Yet the tone of her voice made the sentence sound much more like a juicy piece of village gossip, and made me realize that, chances are, there was fondling that came along with that fondness. That, in fact, it was my mother-in-law’s way of saying this man had a sexual affair with someone else.
My husband giggled the other night when I brought it up, because even he could hear the salaciousness in such a simple word. “She was being hánxù,” or implicit. Implying something that, chances are, I wouldn’t have thought to hide behind other words. Continue reading “The “Room Thing” And Other Indirect Chinese References to Sex”
