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In the year I’ve spent blogging about Asian/white relationships, one question was asked more than others. Sometimes this question was put forth by people wanting a thoughtful answer; other times, it was aggressively thrown at me as a way of suggesting my relationship is far from genuine.
The question took different forms, but the gist of it was: “White male/Asian female couples outnumber Asian male/white female couples. Doesn’t this disparity prove that white male/Asian female relationships are based on something other than real affection and mutual respect?”
Well, here is the Shanghai Shiok! answer, based purely on personal opinion after years of trolling the Internet and talking to Asian/white couples of various age groups in different countries:
In short, I will never deny that WM/AF couples greatly outnumber AM/WF couples.
However, I really believe there isn’t a great disparity between the number of genuinely loving and respectful relationships between both types of pairings.
The great disparity lies in the types of pairings that get people riled up on the Internet. The problem, to me, is that shallow, superficial relationships between white men and Asian women vastly outnumber the same sort of suspicious pairings between Asian men and white women. And sadly, these types of WM/AF pairings are the most visible ones, because they often create spectacles of themselves — they are the Asian women posting YouTube videos bashing Asian men, the white men on forums making disrespectful comments about their latest Asian fling, the old drunk gentleman with his barely-dressed escort. They are the ones who “self-hate” and “exoticize,” publicly declare they can only date white guys, boast about their Asian conquests, and look down on other types of interracial pairings as inferior. They are the Douchebags, the Jerks, and the Ambitious who think dating a white man or Asian woman “betters” them, financially or socially. Sometimes one partner has good intentions but is simply Naive, and doesn’t realize that the other partner is in the relationship for dubious reasons. And even when these relationships fail — as relationships tend to do when you get together for superficial reasons — those are the types of WM/AF pairings we remember, because they were so offensive and in-your-face to forget.
I sincerely think that because the barriers to entry for Asian male/white female relationships are higher, the vast majority of AM/WF couples who do get together and eventually marry do so carefully, with real commitment and good intentions on both sides.
The genuine WM/AF couples live differently from their more visible counterparts. They live quietly. They keep their heads low and don’t make spectacles of themselves. Despite what the cynics think, skin color didn’t bring them together and doesn’t keep them together. Most weren’t looking for someone of a different race; the decision to commit to each other was a difficult one, because of the personal challenges they knew they (and their children) would face due to their different backgrounds. There is mutual respect for where and what the other comes from. There is usually not a huge disparity in age, income, or more importantly, level of educational attainment (intellectual equals). The white male is humble and has Asian male friends whom he’s close to and sees as equals; the Asian female appreciates her own culture and ensures her children are exposed to it. These couples cannot maintain friendships with the shallow WM/AF couples who only resemble them on the surface; they have little patience for that sort of shit, and they’re too busy trying to make a living, raise their children, pay their taxes, deal with crazy Auntie Chan or Grandpa Smith, and simply live their lives to let the stereotypes others create get the better of them.
And I think it’s time I do the same, and leave this topic for good.
Take care, everyone. I’ll be back soon with another cross-cultural topic, but without the focus on dating and relationships.
Till then,
Christine
Dear readers and friends, a big happy new year to you!
And what a new year this one will be.
I’m still reeling from shock, thanks to certain events that happened as the old year ended and the new one began. Maybe I can write about them soon, when I’ve sorted some things out. If I’m able to maintain this blog, it will be moving into a different direction, since many of the concerns I had last year have faded in importance. I enjoyed writing those posts when I did, and thank you for reading them.
So goodbye for now. As a silly aside, I’m glad I finally made it up to Beijing for the first time — I’ve ticked off another renminbi note in my old goal of following the money around China.
 Young minority women -- quick to jump into bed and cohabit with white men for "status-caste exchange," says a new study. Actual dialogue between my white boyfriend and I yesterday night:
“Honey, when you look at me, do you feel colonial?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Am I a proxy for you to sexualize all Asian women?”
“Are you on the Internet again?”
Yes, I had been online again. A reader, frustrated with how I constantly deny that my white male/Asian female relationship follows certain “societal streams,” pointed me to an article which he believed would enlighten me on the nature of my relationship and others like mine.
The article summarizes a new study which is flat out absurd, insensitive, bigoted, and racist — but since it’s conducted under the dignified umbrella of academic research, it’s perfectly acceptable to put these ideas out there.
Two privileged white female academics get together and make powerful statements about women who they deem unprivileged. These nuggets of wisdom include the suggestion that unprivileged women exchange their bodies for the material benefits and social status associated with the privileged white men whom these academics feel are most suited to their own caste. At a minimum, their study “proves” that privileged white women (like themselves) wouldn’t jump into those white guys’ beds as quickly as those coloured hussies. After all, they have statistics to prove it.
Their hypotheses, quoted from their actual paper:
Hypothesis 1: The tempo of sex and cohabitation will be fastest for relationships involving white men and minority women and slowest for relationships involving white women and minority men.
Hypothesis 2: Interracial relationships will progress more slowly from sexual involvement to marriage than racially homogamous relationships.
Hypothesis 3: Some factors increase involvement in different types of relationships (e.g., interracial romances) and hasten sexual involvement and shared living, producing spurious effects.
Using data from two 2002 U.S. national surveys to analyze the heterosexual relationships of youths ages 18-24, the two white female academics responsible for this paper extrapolated enough evidence to suggest that white men and minority women:
- On average, had sex after one month of dating, almost twice as fast as white-white couples;
- Moved in together quicker than same-race partners;
- Persisted in “status-caste exchanges.” A quote from the actual paper: “…minority women partnered with white men received the highest values on interviewer-rated physical attractiveness, while white men with minority women reported the highest personal income.” Basically, the pretty minority women traded their looks for men with money.
Take away the polite academic jargon, and what the paper basically says is that minority females are sluts and gold-diggers.
According to the two authors’ interpretation of their data, the pace of sexual involvement and cohabitation for white women and minority men did not differ significantly by race of partner. I.e., white women are not as likely to be sluts and gold-diggers, and minority men are not creeps who let women use them sexually and financially.
Here’s how they turn human beings into automatons:
While “solidarity and affection and personal choice” no doubt remain important aspects of relationships (Rosenfeld 2005:1320), there is also strong evidence of status exchange.
I don’t understand why “status exchange” is presented as the particular domain of white men dating minority women. What man does not prefer a physically attractive woman as a partner, same-race or interracial? What woman does not prefer a financially viable man, same-race or interracial, especially if she is not well-off herself? Would a Chinese woman raised with the cultural expectation that her husband of whatever race must earn more than her (whether she pursues that sort of man or not), treat notions of status exchange as an epiphany? Until anyone can declare that white men rarely pursue attractive white women and minority women rarely care about the financial status of minority men, it is careless to make harmful, sweeping generalizations about how special sex and money are in minority women’s relationships with white men.
However, what I find most absurd about this study is that it looks at couples aged 18-24 (to be fair, the authors do acknowledge their age range is limited). The data consists of those barely out of college, many of whom had yet to start their careers. How do you significantly comment on the economic traits of people so young? And how much can these fledgling relationships built on little life experience accurately reflect the diverse circumstances in which interracial pairings come together?
In the end, this study is great ammunition to fuel the hatred of those who already think that white male/minority female relationships are unequal and unhealthy and rotten to the core. If I were trying to reverse anti-miscegenation laws, I would treat this paper as polite printed justification backed by the ivory tower. I would bask in the paper’s line of argument, that minority women and white men rush into relationships too quickly, have “less time to gather information on a prospective partner and ascertain whether goals and values are compatible,” have less support from family and friends, have higher chances of contraceptive failure and abortions. After all, “interracial relationships are not like all relationships; these couples generally perceive less acceptance and encouragement from family and friends (Vaquera and Kao 2005),” and thus have the highest chances of failure.
The results of this study brought back the nausea I felt for academia after years of social sciences. I always found it distasteful, the act of using quantitative data to meaningfully explain human motivations and actions, data manipulation and researcher bias often brushed aside in a footnote. I’m still flabbergasted that someone decided to send me this article to “teach” me something about myself and my choices, since apparently writing an academic paper makes one more qualified to talk about these issues than living each day as a minority woman in an interracial relationship.
A few weeks ago, one of my best friends, knowing I am in a relationship with a shorter man, sent me the following excerpt from an outdated manual on kissing:
It is […] necessary that the man be taller than the woman. The psychological reason for this is that he must always give the impression of being his woman’s superior, both mentally and especially physically. The physical reason, with which we are more concerned, is that if he is taller than his woman, he is better able to kiss her. He must be able to sweep her into his strong arms, and tower over her, and look down into her eyes, and cup her chin in his fingers and then, bend over her face and plant his eager, virile lips on her moist, slightly parted, inviting ones. All of this he must do with the vigor of an assertive male. And, all of these are impossible when the woman is the taller of the two. For when the situation is reversed, the kiss becomes only a ludicrous banality. The physical mastery is gone, the male prerogative is gone, everything is gone but the fact that two lips are touching two other lips. Nothing can be more disappointing.
– The Art of Kissing, 1936
This paragraph definitely riled me up and became the inspiration for my latest post on Diaspora @ chinaSMACK, “The Art of Kissing a Shorter Man.”
But before launching myself into a writing frenzy, I decided to talk to someone in the same boat as me. Jocelyn Eikenburg is the blogger behind the immensely popular Speaking of China, where she writes about love, relationships and family. I absolutely adore Jocelyn — not only is she kind, patient, and always willing to answer any of my questions, she’s also in an intercultural relationship with a shorter man! I definitely wanted to hear what she had to say. I used some quotes from our brief email interview for the chinaSMACK post; the full transcript is below. Thank you Jocelyn for sharing your thoughts.
Christine: Whoa! What’s your first reaction to that Art of Kissing excerpt about guys needing to be taller and physically superior?
Jocelyn: My first reaction is, this is as out of date as “close your eyes and think of England.” Why should the man’s height/physical superiority somehow make a difference in how good the kiss is? As my husband would say, it’s very unscientific. And when he mentions “the male prerogative” in this context, it’s as if kissing is sort of a “man’s job,” like we’re supposed to be some “Stepford Wife,” having to wait around for him to kiss us. Seriously?
C: Not to pry too much, but how do you kiss your shorter man/how does he kiss you? Any tips about angles of bodies, etc.?
J: I’m all about the standing kiss. I figure, if you’re woman enough to be comfortable in yourself and be inches taller than your man, embrace that difference by kissing in the way everyone would NEVER expect you to love kissing — standing face to face. Sometimes I have to angle my head down a bit, but I think it’s actually super-sexy. That’s because my man always holds me tightly around my waist — and, well, sometimes loves to let his hands go a little “South of the border” (which might even be easier for a guy who is shorter than you to do).
 My favorite intercultural relationship blogger and her husband at their wedding! C: It’s a common complaint that Asian guys are badly stereotyped in Hollywood, as short, emasculated, etc. But I’m starting to realize that short guys of all races are media victims too, and taller woman/shorter man couples are usually the butt of bad jokes. Can you name some movies demeaning short men or taller woman/shorter man couples off the top of your head?
J: I do know it happens in TV. Did you ever see the episode of Sex and the City called “Politically Erect” in Season 3? Samantha ends up sleeping with a guy who is shorter than her, and here’s how they describe it: “That night, Jeff proved to Samantha that he more than made up for his shortcomings. Samantha told us later it was like having sex with a horny smurf.” I also remember growing up, when I used to watch this one show called “Evening Shade” and one of the guys was short and a bit idiotic — one time he ended up with this tall glamazon type who must have been 1 foot above him, as a punch line at the end of the episode.
C: What do you feel about these shows now that you’re with John?
J: It feels weird. Why is it that my relationship isn’t good enough to get more positive portrayals in the media? Why should it only be a punchline? It’s almost like taller women shorter men are one of those few areas where it’s still socially acceptable to ridicule us in the media. It’s too bad, because if that wasn’t the case, maybe more of us would be more open-minded about it.
C: Are we really able to dismiss the notion of wanting a physically superior male?
J: I’m guilty as charged in this area. I was shocked by just how much taller I was than John — I had no idea until I asked him for lunch. It did make me feel a little uncomfortable at first. And even though I was a little attracted to him initially, part of me didn’t know if I could deal with the height difference.
C: Do you ever miss being in the arms of a taller, larger man, and being able to rest your head on his shoulder when you’re walking together?
J: Do I miss it sometimes? I don’t know. I honestly never really think about what it would be like, and maybe that’s because John and I have been together for so long?
Well, I did think about it once, during our wedding. In China, the man often will carry his bride in his arms — which is pretty much impossible for us. Still, John can lift me up and even carried me down seven flights of stairs when I sprained an ankle, which is why I always tell people that John’s stature is misleading when it comes to strength. The greatness of a man isn’t measured in inches.
Read Jocelyn’s own post about loving a shorter (Chinese) man here.
My chinaSMACK post on kissing a shorter man here.
I often hear from readers who need someone to talk to about their cross-cultural or interracial relationships. However, I’ve never quite gotten an email like the one that popped into my inbox yesterday evening, hopefully because my readers know that I absolutely condemn cheating, adultery and deception, interracial or not. I am unable to think of affairs as relationships. Thus, after mulling over this email, I’ve decided to turn the matter over to my readers, and ask you to respond to this gentleman’s dilemma. His email is reproduced below, edited only to protect his identity. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
I have a problem that I couldn’t share with anybody, so I hope you will find time to read this and maybe give me your advice.
Let me give you some information about myself. I’m Caucasian guy, in early forties, married 2 kids. Live in the states.
It all started some 9 months ago.
Met a very cute, but 15 years younger Chinese born and raised girl, that moved to the states some 5 years ago. We started to see each other, and very soon both crazy fell in love.
At that time she was single. However, her parents kept pushing her to get a husband and even recommended a Chinese guy that she should start dating with.
I offered to get divorce and marry her. First she said, divorce are messy and take long time. So i said, it will not be messy. I will leave everything to my wife if that is going to speed up the process.
Then she said she couldn’t marry me because I’m Caucasian and her parents will never approve this.
So, 2 months after we started seeing each other, she said yes to the Chinese guy recommended by her parents. She tried to break up with me, but she couldn’t.
I said to her, that I love her so much and I will accept that she “has to marry” this other guy, if she can keep seeing me.
So we continue. And our love kept growing up.
The Chinese moved to live with her and after 3 months he proposed to her, and she said yes. She didn’t yet sleep with him, they live in separate rooms.
We kept making love for 2-3 times a week and seeing each other almost every day.
She said she will not share the bed with her future husband until the day they get married, which is going to be in 2 weeks.
As that day is approaching i feel like i’m going to die. I offered to do anything for her, but she said that she cant live with me, but cant live without me either.
I accepted that she is going to marry the other guy, but I cant imagine her sleeping with somebody else.
She said that i shouldn’t worry, that for her it will be just a job that she has to do.
She even pushed me not to divorce. Since I started seeing her, I stopped making love with my wife and even moved to sleep in another room.
I feel like I’m going crazy.
Taking into account your experience and openness in writing about relationships, could you please give me your opinion about this. If you need more information I will be happy to share with you.
*Shanghai Shiok! assumes all reader emails are for publication unless specifically told otherwise.
I’ve never been the same since the six-floor Barbie store on Huaihai Lu closed down in March. It took all the pinkness out of my life and left my Shanghai days dreary and gray after having been my form of escapism since a friend first dragged me there two years ago.
So, I was more than a little excited when, walking around Hong Kong’s Times Square last night, I saw The Unmistakable Glow of Barbie Pinkness coming from the second floor. The small exhibit and Barbie shop were roped off for a press and VIP preview, but after telling staff how desperately I had loved the Barbie store in Shanghai, and that I was the proud possessor of a Barbie passport (worldwide privilege, right?), they let me and my companion in.
It’s a temporary Christmas display, running from November 17 (today!) until January 1, 2012. “Some of the materials here, both the structure and the merchandise, come from the Shanghai store,” a staff member told me. “It really is a reunion for us then!” exclaimed my friend, a Hong Kong resident and fellow fan of Barbie Shanghai.
Unique to this exhibit are the fantastical, fairy-tale inspired fashions by Chinese haute couture designer Guo Pei, who dressed Barbie in miniature versions of her 2007 life-size creations. So beautifully weird, and delightfully intricate. Continue reading Photos: Barbie comes to Hong Kong for Christmas, dressed by Guo Pei
It’s been over a year since I started blogging about my conflicted feelings over being an Asian girlfriend to a white boyfriend, and how I grapple with the abundant negative stereotypes out there about my kind of romantic pairing. I’ve reached out to kindred spirits and harsh critics, laughed and cried and stewed over messages of support and empathy, condemnation and contempt. Sometimes, I prefer the critical messages as long as they’re civil. After all, these are the ones that really make me think. And after all these months, something suddenly hit me, my own little “Eureka!” moment.
Interracial relationships are okay until there’s too many of a certain type. It’s an unspoken belief, an unacknowledged assumption that underlies the most fervent disapproval of certain interracial pairings.
 The right to be involved with and married to someone from another race was something that was fought for in many societies. Today, interracial marriage is usually celebrated as a civil right, a symbol of our common humanity. Not many people in the circles I’ve lived in would publicly speak against intermarriage, even amongst friends. It’s just not PC.
However, even amongst tolerant citizens, there seems to be an unwritten rule, one stating that interracial relationships are wonderful until too many of one type are getting involved with too many of another type. The racial hierarchy in relationships exists, and many times, readers have thrown figures at me, such as how a whopping 40% or so of Asian Americans marry whites, and the majority of these are Asian women and white men. There are other examples of this — not only are there “too many Asian women dating white men,” people grumble, there are also many more white women dating black men than the other way around. Even in my own Malaysia, I’ve heard dissatisfaction over why interracial relationships “are usually between Indian men and Chinese women.” In these situations, these couples no longer represent the wonderful result of a human right. Instead, it’s as if something is wrong with them.
And why are they in the wrong, anyway? Who decided that for interracial relationships to be celebrated and accepted and respected, there has to be a quota on certain pairings? That there is a correct ratio? That there has to be 100 white female/Asian male couples for every 100 Asian female/white male couples? That any racial hierarchy in interracial relationships must be explained using derogatory terms, the often repeated “yellow fever” and “white worship,” etc?
Many anonymous souls who complain that “there are too many white men with Asian women” invariably point to how there are fewer white women with Asian men to justify why the ubiquitous pairing sucks; they point to the disparity to “prove” there’s something problematic about white man/Asian woman relationships. On behalf of Asian women like me, I’d like to politely say: What’s this got to do with me? I am not a white woman nor an Asian man. I’d be very happy to see more of them dating each other. I tell white women their preconceptions of emasculated Chinese men are wrong. I tell Chinese men that foreign women make wonderful partners. Short of forcing my white female and Asian male friends together, I don’t have the solution. It’s between them. All those types who are not dating each other? It’s between them. White women and Asian men? Up to them. Black women and white men? Up to them. Indian women and Chinese men? Up to them too.
Decreasing interracial pairings which are common will not increase those which are uncommon. A ban on white men dating Asian women will not help more white women and Asian men get together. That problem, if you actually think of it as a problem, is due to factors that have little to do with whether white men and Asian women date each other.
“Sorry, white man and Asian woman. You seem like nice enough people, and we accept the general idea of interracial relationships, but your union is wrong because other nice people out there aren’t getting together at the same rate you are. You’ve used up your quota. Try again in a year or two.” Put this way, can the invisible quota be anything but ridiculous?
We are people. We love who we love, and we should keep on loving who we love, as long as we don’t belittle others to justify our choice. Disrespecting certain interracial pairings over others is just another type of small-minded discrimination, and perhaps nothing but an attempt to disguise racism by using ratio imbalance as a smokescreen, in the words of my wise uncle. I think it’s less ridiculous to be against interracial relationships entirely, than to say you approve of them so long as some sort of balance is enforced.
This piece was originally published as “Why I will keep writing about white male/Asian female relationships.”
This article is now available (in a more coherent form, I believe) on Diaspora @ chinaSMACK.
[Updated below with a discussion of scrap peddler and savior Chen Xianmei's flawed heroism.]
It has now been two weeks since a little girl named Yueyue was struck by two vehicles and left to die. We know the details: two drivers who fled, and numerous passersby who simply ignored a blood-covered child in pain. Kindness arrived too late in the form of a scrap peddler who pulled her off the road and called for help. Yueyue passed away eight days later.
There is so much anger out there over this meaningless death. Anger, and sadness, and soul-searching about what happened to a society to make adult bystanders, even people with children, ignore a toddler in need. Everyone, it seems, has a theory to explain the whats and whys and hows, and whether this grave incident will encourage Good Samaritans in the future.
We’ve been asked to talk about Yueyue’s accident in class. Our Chinese teachers are clearly troubled by it, and the students surprisingly frank. Yes, it completely disgusts us, some said. It’s because of the Cultural Revolution, opined others. It is the students with Chinese ancestry who are especially harsh, drawing lines between the cultured “us” who would never have ignored Yueyue, and the inhumane “them” with no sense of civic duty.
In fact, the Yueyue tragedy has encouraged many of my overseas Chinese friends to turn their backs on China. Many of us already have a tenuous relationship with the part China plays in our Chineseness, and Yueyue’s case is ‘proof’ that this is a different world. We are proud to be ethnically Chinese, yet doubt whether our values and culture and traditions, inherited from forefathers who left the mainland over one hundred years ago, have much to do with China’s society today. Many have rolled their eyes at my decision to come to China to discover my roots; to them, my roots are planted in my great-grandparents’ home in southern Malaysia. They are not here, in a place where people refuse to help a child. “Come home,” said a friend. “We’re afraid you’re going to grow a cold heart the longer you stay there.” I was also sent an article written after the tragedy, which was quick to claim that Singaporeans will help others in need. The message from my friend was clear: We may be ethnically Chinese, but we’re different.
I can’t jump onboard the “us Chinese VS them Chinese” train. Yes, I have had unsettling experiences in China, but it hasn’t been enough for me to condemn this whole nation to an evil, inhumane “them.” There is this thing in the air that feels like ‘cold apathy’ to an outsider, but to the Chinese is just a sense of ‘can’t make it my business.’ I don’t think there’s anything cruel about it. There’s a lot of fear in it, fear that goes in many directions — don’t want to meddle, don’t want to get in trouble, don’t want to be blamed, don’t want to regret helping — but there’s no desire to cause pain and suffering. Here, I think even good people are wary about stepping in to stop pain and suffering — but they will always avoid creating it.
When I watched the video of Yueyue, my strongest emotions weren’t directed at the many people who passed by her without offering a finger to help. At the back of my mind, these people weren’t evil. Unkind, unwilling to put another before themselves, but not evil. They hadn’t caused her pain, and their only crime was complete submission to cowardice. Nor did I feel anger at the second van that ran her over. At the steady speed he was going, I assumed he didn’t realize that he’d run over a child.
Instead, the moment that has stayed with me, the complete horror of it all, are the three seconds when the driver of the first van pauses with Yueyue between his front and rear wheels.
Continue reading Overseas Chinese reactions to Yueyue, and the 3 seconds that determined whether she lived or died
Hi everyone, this is another quick post to point you to my two newest articles on Diaspora @ chinaSMACK, a website dedicated to the personal stories and perspectives of the overseas Chinese. I started writing for the site in July, and hope to contribute much more in the future. If you like Shanghai Shiok!, please do continue reading my stuff on chinaSMACK.
1. The Family Home or the Nursing Home?
I started this post during my summer trip to Minnesota, where I was visiting my boyfriend’s family for the first time, including his grandfather who lives on his own in an assisted living facility. Excerpt:
When I first learnt that my boyfriend’s grandfather lived by himself in a “home,” I was extremely indignant on behalf of this elderly gentleman I had never met. I imagined a vulnerable old Mel, cast aside and unloved, all alone in some cold, impersonal institution with bad food and sour-face nurses. A nursing home, the worst place for the elderly, a place of doom for those with the bad luck of having no family or a cruel family.
Of course I thought of homes for the elderly this way. In my Malaysian Chinese family, I’d been taught that taking care of your parents when they are old, having them live with you, is a responsibility that must never be questioned. Continue reading.
2. The Short Diary of a Tall Asian Girl
How tall am I? Tall enough that I was self-conscious about my height growing up. They already knew I was going to be tall when I was born…
I. Birth
April 1985, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
The woman’s legs are cramped from being spread in front of the doctor for hours. He tells her to push and she does, but the baby still doesn’t come. I imagine her hair must be plastered to her red, sweaty face, her nostrils flaring, her lip bleeding from biting down too hard, fists clenched in pain.
After another eternity of huffing and puffing and straining, the Chinese baby finally slithers into the Indian doctor’s waiting hands, while Malay nurses anxiously peer over his shoulder. (It’s a poster scene for Malaysian multiracialism, I tell you.)
The baby starts screaming to prove she’s alive, and the doctor and nurses keep looking down at her, transfixed. “What’s wrong?” says the panicked new mother. Is it a birth defect? A missing limb? Too many limbs?
“Nothing’s wrong,” says the doctor. “It’s just that your daughter is rather long.” Continue reading.
Someone forgot to send me the memo on how October 19 was Write About Leftover Women Day. Aren’t I part of the club? After all, I used to write about a special leftover woman in my life named Teacher Wang, and I could have updated my readers on how she’s doing and whether she’s drawing anymore Venn diagrams.
 I miss Teacher Wang. Or maybe no one bothered to clue me in because I’m just a wannabe fiction writer with a dinky blog, not a cool journalist attached to major publications. Yesterday, both The Atlantic and Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post unleashed some pretty standard, predictable articles about how China’s single ladies are all leftover and feisty and independent and don’t need a man to be happy or engage in aromatherapy, rah rah rah, etc.
Is this attention to single women in China new? Of course not. Almost exactly a year ago, I remember a similar wave of leftover women articles (like these in CNNGo and NPR) before I blogged about my teacher. Back then I thought it was such a hot topic, but apparently the same stuff is regurgitated at the same time every year. Teacher Wang was only one of many.
So, dear readers, if you aspire to publish a China story in major media, you should remember to pitch ‘China’s leftover women’ articles timed for October-November 2012. To help you out, below is Shanghai Shiok’s advice on how to write a serious piece about China’s leftover women for prestigious publications, illustrated with examples from the recent ‘single women’ articles in The Atlantic and SCMP:
1. Stalk some educated, successful single women who are old but not too old (maybe in their early thirties) until they are willing to talk about how happy and independent they are. Examples:
Wei Pan, a 33-year-old biomedical engineer can’t seem to find Mr. Right. A fresh-faced woman with an M.D. and Ph.D. under her belt, Wei should have her pick of men. [from The Atlantic]
Jakii Zhu is among a growing number of women in China who are finding their paths to happiness and financial independence through hard work and a good education rather than a marriage certificate. [from SCMP]
Continue reading How to write an article about China’s leftover women
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