“Chinese are drawn to the reverse-Cinderella tale—the story of a poor man falling in love with a rich girl, and of love trumping all else.”
That’s what I read in a Wall Street Journal article last week, which cited this as the reason why the movie Titanic is so popular in China. It continued:
…some of the most successful love stories in China touch on similar themes, catering to “Chinese audiences’ psychology of a normal male hungering for the touch from a ‘fairy.’
The theory behind the film’s draw stands in stark contrast to urban China’s increasingly money-driven marriage culture, in which many men complain that without a house and a car they have little chance of attracting a woman’s affections, or her parents’ approval.
When I read this, I had to wonder — was the attraction of Western women to Chinese men also a sort of reverse-Cinderella tale, in a sense? Maybe most Chinese men with dreams of a yangxifu aren’t as poor as penniless Jack Dawson who rode in the third-class section of Titanic. But perhaps the cache of having a Western wife, of a woman who could open up opportunities to him (such as study or work abroad, or more), could work like a reverse-Cinderella story to some men? Continue reading “Titanic’s Reverse-Cinderella Story and the Appeal of Western Women to Chinese Men”