Tag: Western women

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The Dengji Question: How Marriage in China Gets Confusing

Weeks after John and I became a legally recognized couple in China in late July, the pink pastel envelopes of misunderstanding — with return addresses from my parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts — started pouring in:

Congratulations On Your Marriage!

To the Bride and Groom…

On Your Wedding Day…

“It’s not really a wedding,” I had told my father. “They call it dengji, or registering. It’s more symbolic, like an engagement.” I didn’t wear a bridal gown that day. There were no friends present to witness, and no gifts to receive. We didn’t even tell John’s family about it, until afterwards.

But I’d sent photos home to my dad, and they told another story. China’s national seal, flag, and an official podium with the words “Shanghai Marriage Registry Office” adorned the stage where John and I stood side by side. Across from us, a bureaucrat read our wedding vows, asking us to pledge to care for one another, and our parents. The whole thing screamed “wedding at the courthouse or justice of peace.”

So years later, after John and I came to the US, my American friends and relatives just didn’t understand our need to have a wedding. “Didn’t you already get married?” they might ask, as if I was trying to erase how I’d chosen shotgun eloping over a ceremony. Every year, around late July, we’d find the same well-intentioned pastel envelopes in our mailbox, feeling like another round of votes against our wedding hopes. Sometimes even I wondered if I’d wasted all that time and money getting three wedding dresses, now languishing in the back of our dusty wooden closet.

“My family doesn’t consider us married until we have the wedding ceremony,” John would reassure me. So, by the time we did have our ceremony, it didn’t matter that it was nearly three years after we had “registered.” John’s family welcomed us back home to China, to do the ceremony that I wanted, and they wanted. There was no confusion about it — this was our true wedding.

But I can’t say the same for my family in the US. After all, they still ask me what’s the date of our anniversary. 😉

Have your family or friends ever gotten confused over the “dengji question” — or other wedding/marriage customs in China?

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Three Inches of Separation: On Loving a Shorter Chinese Man

Western wife and Chinese husband, getting married
There are three inches of separation between me and my Chinese husband — because I’m five-foot-seven and he’s five-foot-four.

There are three inches of separation between me and my Chinese husband. That is, three inches of separation between us being exactly the same height — because I’m five-foot-seven and he’s five-foot-four.

Five-four is not what I expected when I measured him a couple of weeks ago. I happened to ask for the measuring tape, just so I could size up our oven for the Thanksgiving turkey we planned to bake this past Thursday. But then he asked for it. “Could you measure me?”

He stood with his head high and chest out, just like the People’s Liberation Army had taught him years ago during those military exercises in the few precious weeks before he started his freshman year of college in China. But as I unraveled the metal strip all the way to his head, I suddenly realized that the five-foot-five I’d told him to put on his driver’s license was, well, one inch too tall.

Years ago, I couldn’t imagine the separation of one inch — let alone three inches — between me and my love.

As John and I flirted for weeks like teenagers, the fact that we always met each other sitting down made me believe in my own version of a tall tale — that he was as tall as I was. But then I invited him to lunch one Saturday, and the moment John stood up from his chair, I traded in one cliche for another — a tall tale for a short Chinese guy.

I’d already vanquished many stereotypes to fall in love with Chinese men before: not sexy enough, not handsome, too effeminate. With every soul-stirring kiss and embrace with one of the sons of Han, I discovered that the stereotypes were no match for the beauty, strength and passion of Chinese men. But now I faced the final dragon, and I didn’t know how to cross this river without faltering. After all, I’d never given my dream man a race or ethnicity, but somehow I’d always promised myself he’d be as tall, if not taller, than me.

To my friend Caroline, who schemed to match John and me up, the answer was obvious. “He may be short, but he is handsome.” Which was true, from his large, oolong-brown eyes to a striking straight nose. And then, she cocked her eyebrow and grinned, imagining another reason to look beyond appearances. “I think he’d make a good husband.”

At first, I didn’t know what to think. So, over time, I just listened to John and his stories. How he wanted to become a psychologist and open a “humanistic care center” to help heal others. The way he had confronted the growing menace of stone-processing factories in his hometown, and their noisome, 24/7 din that had disturbed the peace. His deep passion for philosophy, from Carl Jung to Erich Fromm, and the natural environment. The fact that he was madly in love with me, imperfections and all. And, with each new passage, with each new revelation, he stood taller — in ideals, in character — than any man I had ever known in my life.

So I stopped noticing the height of his stature, and instead embraced the height of his character. And, in 2004, I married him.

Which is probably why John doesn’t even see five-four the way the rest of the world might. “I’m a wusi qingnian!” a five-four youth, he declared, a joking reference to the May Fourth Movement when the youth of China rose up against the Chinese government’s weakness — a movement they call “five-four” in Chinese. While John never was one of those angry youths of the past, in a way, his very presence is like a demonstration — that the greatness of a Chinese man isn’t measured in inches.

Have you loved someone who didn’t “measure up” to your expectations? How did you overcome it?

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

John and I in Chicago
Where can Chinese men find Western women for love in the US?

B asks:

I really want to ask you a question about “How Chinese Men Can Meet Western Women in US”? Because I would like to stay here and find a western wife! I am on Match.com and I have a lot of American friends, but there is only a few of them who are interested in Chinese Culture, let alone want to marry a Chinese guy!

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You may be striking out on Match.com and with your friends. You might have been rejected at the bar last weekend. But, believe me (and, for that matter, all of my amazing female readers from the US who love Chinese men) — we’re out there. It’s just that “there” might not be the kind of place you might expect.

So where is there? Here’s my shortlist of places to start your search for love in the US of A:

Go Back to School (Sort of)

Colleges and Universities. These bastions of intellectual curiosity abound with Western women willing to look beyond the obvious, and beyond the stereotypes, for true love. And you don’t even have to crash the intermediate Chinese language class to find them. Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: How Chinese Men Can Meet Western Women in America”

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Ask the Yangxifu: Books with Chinese Men and Western Women in Love

Books such as Foreign Babes in Beijing feature Chinese men and Western women falling in love. (image from http://www.goodreads.com)
Books such as Foreign Babes in Beijing feature Chinese men and Western women in love.

In lieu of the usual Q&A, I decided to do a post is inspired by a previous Q&A. Specifically, the question I answered two weeks ago about movies with Chinese men and Western women — since many movies owe their existence to books, that ultimate writer’s labor of love (including at least two of the movies on that list). And, even if it is cliche to write this, well, the book usually IS better than the movie. 😉

So, here’s a list of all the books I can think of with Chinese men and Western women in love:

As the Earth Turns Silver by Alison Wong

As Katherine struggles to care for two children in New Zealand in the wake of her husband’s death, she discovers love with the Chinese shopkeeper — but must keep it secret because of the racism and prejudice of this era, just on the brink of World War I. Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Books with Chinese Men and Western Women in Love”

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Stereotypes About Couples of Chinese Men-Western Women

This post exploring stereotypes is a collaboration with Gerald Schmidt. We wondered about the idea of stereotypes in Chinese-Western couples — how are they different, and who has it harder? Read Gerald’s take on the Chinese man-Western woman pairing.

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Couples of Chinese men and Western women are so rare, so unstereotypical, you might think we’re immune to stereotypes altogether.

Well, we may not have “yellow fever” — but, in some circles, we’re not such a “healthy” idea.

So, what are those stereotypes, and how do they affect Chinese men and Western women who love each other? Continue reading “Stereotypes About Couples of Chinese Men-Western Women”

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Ask the Yangxifu: What Western Women Think of Chinese Men

 

Western woman and a Chinese man
What do Western women think of Chinese men? A study by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences provides further insight into why couples of Chinese men and Western women are so rare.

This week on Ask the Yangxifu, I’m preempting the usual Q&A to share with you an article published a few weeks ago, in Chinese, discussing a China study about what Western women think of Chinese men — a topic on the minds of many readers.

No surprises here — especially if you’ve read or followed the comments on my post On the Rarity of Foreign Women and Chinese Boyfriends/Chinese Husbands. Still, it’s nice to see a more empirical take on something we have understood more intuitively, or through our own experiences.

My translation comes from the original article, first published on the Xinhua website. Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: What Western Women Think of Chinese Men”

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