Dear Miss Shiok! and your readers:
I had a nerve-wracking time reading your latest article about the Western moron who cheated on his Chinese wife and subsequently got himself pretty roughed up by her paid muscle. It brought back too many memories, and also some sympathy, since it was obvious the man in question was a complete novice when it comes to dealing with the delicate issues of cheating and/or leaving.
Generally speaking, it seems Chinese women don’t take well to being cheated on/broken up with/hurt in general. No woman should react lightly to these matters, but Chinese ladies are the least elegant in expressing their anger. I still have the scars and angry emails and text messages and two smashed windows to prove it — and I’ve only broken up with one woman (and been “dumped” by another) during my seven years here. You thought the number was higher, didn’t you?
The Western man you wrote about was in a stickier situation than I had ever been in, for the simple reason that he was married to his scorned lover, and they had children together. Being a footloose bachelor is one thing, but I don’t condone screwing around on your wife and mother of your kids. Just wanted to make that clear before you bash my head in — once you’ve legally and reproductively committed yourself to a woman, don’t even touch the secretary with a ten foot pole. Stand by your woman and offspring for the next eighteen years, at least. You owe them that.
But I am a bachelor, and sometimes in the course of frenetic Shanghai life and love and experience, there comes those moments when you realize the lovely almond-eyed non-missus you are with is not The One, after all, and you must get away.
But how do you do it? How do you break up? Do you talk face-to-face, like I did with my Swedish college girlfriend? Do you write a heartfelt letter, like I did to my American fiancee once I decided not to leave Shanghai? Those were amicable partings, with traces of hurt, but not hate. Those seemed like the best, most honest methods of leaving someone.
Well, they didn’t work in China.
My first Chinese girlfriend — I had to end it when she became worse than your Tiger girlfriend. When I tried the face-to-face talk, she changed the topic. When I persisted, she pretended not to understand what I was saying. When I switched to Chinese (I am Eurasian), she asked me who I was sleeping with, and threatened to “expose” me to my employers. I hadn’t cheated, yet. Actually, I never cheated, ever — I sincerely thought we were broken up; she disagreed, even though it’d been a month since I’d firmly told her we were through, and sent her an email as written proof. This was followed by a (fake) pregnancy scare, even though it came long after we’d last been together. She finally stopped sending me angry messages when she found somebody new, a Korean who looked like Rain. When she met him, she quickly disappeared from my life.
When my second Chinese girlfriend started telling her friends we would marry by the end of the year (without ever discussing it with me), then moved her clothes in and painted my entire apartment lavender when I was away, I knew it was time for a slow retreat. I’d learned my lesson: the answer to how to dump a Chinese girlfriend? You don’t. It is her job to dump you, you no-good laowai. I instigated my own dumping, using the following steps:
- Be sloppy, unshowered, and unpresentable in public. This may cost you your social life; luckily, I work from home.
- Lose your job, or appear to have taken a severe pay cut and be unable to afford anything except instant noodles.
- Introduce her to new friends of yours, who are eligible bachelors — or at least showered and gainfully employed.
That’s it. No Chinese girl (or any girl, really) wants to be with a poor loser she has to support. I blamed my transformation from decent, well-paid chap to sloppy, penniless bum on depression and stress; she dumped me as soon as I started to smell, saying she deserved a better man (like my friend the accountant). I truly hope she’s found happiness. I don’t wish anyone ill.
The beating-up of the husband is a rare, extreme case, different from anything I’ve ever experienced, but a warning to tread carefully when it comes to matters of the human heart.
Sincerely,
Happily Single Man
(Note from Shanghai Shiok!: Read the Comment Policy before posting. Thank you.)
Note: Apparently Yeeyan has translated this post into Chinese; link here.
I’ve had male friends that reached financial settlements with departing girlfriends, like they were paying out alimony in a divorce. One guy paid his ex-girlfriend’s rent and gave her a small allowance for close to a year after she moved out of his house because she hadn’t found a new boyfriend with whom to cohabitate. She didn’t have a job, didn’t want to get a job, and needed a foreign boyfriend to support her. Another just made a lump-sum payment to make her go away.
I wish my comment were parody, too.
Wow. I put up this piece simply because I kept getting searches for “how to dump a Chinese girlfriend.” I thought, people can’t seriously be searching for answers…
I can confirm this from recent experience. In order to break-up, the X-GF wanted a bottle of brand name perfume, a watch, and “severance.” It was like negotiating a job termination in the office.
She got her perfume but not the other stuff. Which probably explains why she still calls/texts all the time.
Entertaining, but gold diggers these days come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.
Christine1, Christine 2, Christine n, has your schizoprenia gone so bad that you actually wrote the “happily single man” piece too?
Christine 1 here; I don’t know, will have to ask the other Christines when they get home.
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This writer is telling the absolute truth. I’m not sure if that should be allowed although I do believe that unhappy relationships should be ended.
Anyway, yes, all you have to do is be or look like a loser who is embarassing to be seen in public with and the girl will skedaddle. Simple.
What’s wrong with these women? Is there something wrong with the culture? Some kind of cultural rot?
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I once gave this advice to a male friend trying to break up with a Korean girl who sounded like a typically Chinese girlfriend -
fart loudly in the bed and don’t show any shame
Once is usually enough.
to all guys in China,
DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES let your g/f know you are well-off or own any real estate in China…THEY WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU ONCE THIS KNOW.
another suggestion, avoid g/f in Beijing or Shanghai (or Taiwan for that matter) and head south to Guangzhou.
I’m a Chinese girl learning English for working requirements. I read your article while practice my reading on Yeeyan.com. For can not accepting your bias, I leave my comments here with my poor English.
Not all Chinese girl will do like ones you have met with when they face leaving or cheating. Have you ever thought about why always such girls coming to you? It is for sure useful to break up with them in your way. But that also proved the essential of the love between you. So, when you first be with her, is love or something else you want to get from her? If you have not deep considered this before you two were together, that’s fair enough for her to leave you when you got sloppy and out at the elbows.
It is never lack of stories about able and virtuous girls or wives since old age in China. If you want a girl who willing to be with you at any situation, break up in peace without love, you need find her,treat her sincerely.
The dating culture is very different between US and China. In US, people will date different people before marriage. But in China, 50 years ago, arranged marriage was still very popular. Most of girls are very serious when they are entering that relationship.That will explain why girls will be outrageous when you break up with them in a way that seems like you don’t really care about the relationship as they did. Another aspect I want to highlight is most of Chinese girls are very loyal to their significant one, sometimes sacrifice their own interests, they should not be laughed at if they are trying hard to make this relationship work. Plus, in any relationship, honest and mutual respect are important, I wouldn’t surprise if someone leaves you when you pretend to be somebody else other than yourself.
I had a really difficult time breaking up with a chinese boy before, At first he refused to believe it and continued texting me and calling me as if nothing happened, then when I didn’t reply he started repeatedly texting me “I love you, I will forget what you said” then he text me repeatedly insisting we have to meet up and talk about this rationally like adults. I had said everything I wanted to say. Eventually I told him I liked another guy and thats why we couldn’t be together. then he said you are lying prove it. Then I just changed my number and didn’t log into Facebook or anything like that for a few months and then eventually he gave up.
But no one has ever been physical with me after a break up thank god
Ever consider write this down in Chinese
?
My Chinese is simply not good enough for that, but someone has translated it for Yeeyan: http://article.yeeyan.org/view/35624/183887
First I am a chines,girl. And I must confess that there are so-called gold diggers in China. Actually I’d like to believe that they exist everywhere,in every country. If you really look down upon chinese girls,stay away from them each time you are accosted. You could have done this. Seriously It will save your time cause you don’t need to write these kind of blogs to share your experience.
You should translate and post some of the more interesting Yeeyan comments here for views from the other side.
this man is rubbish, why he doesnot go back to his country? he cannot make a living in his country?
i think his company hr should consider his life behaivor before hiring him.
I love Asian women but to deal with one you need three things. 1. Heart of stone 2. Wang of steel 3. Wallet with no bottom. First, you need heart of stone to deal with drama that comes with you getting her to go away. She won’t cry but she will all of a sudden become very honest (generally rare among women of any race)and unless she meets someone she loves at the first food stall or hot dog vendor she encounters (not unheard of), she’ll put you on a long leash but won’t let you go until she consummates with new guy. Then you won’t see her for dust for a while unless she really liked you in which case always be ready with one of the above. Wang of steel is, as every man knows who has dated an Asian woman, mandatory. Make up sex is hot and often just before she drops you off the cliff and more often after because she feels sorry for you but it will be different. Cool and efficient but sex is sex I guess. Be ready with lots of KYJ and get ready for nada when she’s turned the corner and left you finally. They don’t have a word for “finally” so stay ready! You need lots of money to get her mother out of the financial jam she created for herself in that Asian scam where women pool money and lend it out cheap. It’s bogus, they spend it and lie until there’s a riot in their village and the “good boyfriend” has to be ready to pony up the 60 grand or so to save the old cow from the torches and pitchforks. Even when an Asian woman has kicked you to the curb you can still get laid if you keep the first three things in ready supply and respond to her without delay. Delay will result in punishment like her doing a local sports team just because she was “hurt”! (snif..) Oh yeah and don’t forget that she’ll never kick you in the cahonies, she’ll put them in a blender if you fail her in any way! Not that you’re brave enough to try that.
I only ever dated two Chinese girls and very happily married the second many, many years ago. The first was a nice girl in many respects but it slowly dawned on me that she was quite mad as in she frequently imagined / hallucinated things, sometimes really weird paranoid things. After that realization, it took huge effort to convince her to break up, she just didn’t believe it. It hadn’t happened, it wasn’t true. So she would endlessly just turn up at my place inviting me out on dates I didn’t know about, tempting me with sex, just to say hello and so on. She’d turn up at my workplace telling staff she was my girlfriend six months after I had told her we had broken up. She even crashed a date with my now wife a year later, sitting down while we were eating and telling her she was my girlfriend and demanding to know who she was….. she followed me frequently, so I rode fast and took different routes around the city… it was really weird. In the end, we had to move cities. The girl never asked for anything, just love, but it was a difficult and strange break up….
I’m a Chinese girl and sorry I have to say, you deserved it. There are millions decent Chinese girls out there and you find those… I don’t know how to call them…and when you enjoy your happy time in China, had you ever think of to learn the cultural difference between Chinese and western countries? If you find it’s hard to accept the way that Chinese thinking of relationship you may pause before you take the action. I won’t say you are a loser, sadly, there’re so many here in China though. But ” you’re who you meet” and that’s it…
I laughed at the Christine 1 and Christine 2 joke. I too has developed rather fond alterego. Casey 1 and Casey 2 and so forth and so forth.
But I use the Buddhist-Zen Multiverse laws of quantum physics here. (
Casey 1. Lived in Shanghai. Emphasis on LIVED… because his step mom decided to run a red light, and because Casey is a obese boy, she lacked the manuverability typical of Luke Skywalker on the hover speeder in the jungles of endor (reference to Star Wars 3, for nimble agility and grace). All Casey 1, saw was a bunch of dirty head lights where his head should be, on side walk.
Casey 2. Died in Cangzhou from Cholera, and tainted needles. and a very very dirty sick bay, at “Doctor” Sung’s “med clinic” run out of his garage at the CVC (Cangzhou Vocational College), Casey 2 b) died on the high speed rail accident. The Shanghai to Beijing route.
Casey 3 (Lives on Lamma Island, in a very very strange alternate reality atypical of Lamma’s paradise (currently there’s a dog killer on the loose using very toxic herbicides (Paraquate), killing dogs, and a nutty expat killed his mother in law. Lamma otherwise is a paradise).
Casey 4 . Casey was beaten into a Coma at the Zhuhai International Airport, while security guards just stood there freaked out of their wits. (which is odd, because judging by the frequency of such outbreaks of violence, they should have at least covered this in a subject of police school). The perpetrator was his mouth in Law a “Bullhorn” headressed farmer warrioress. Poor Casey 4 was just standing there in line, ignoring the many angry exchanges of vulgar Canto-swears about “shoes”.
Casey 5 Is beaten in a coma during the CHRISTMAS tandrum in Cangzhou, when the “Dragon Fa” (as the German bosses called her), went bonkers throwing cups, and everything Chairs, at him and everyone who was enjoying a family business Christmas dinner-business meet. (having hot pot). apparently what set her off was Casey 5 was using “too many napkins” and accidently spilled some soup on the table….
Casey 6 (the real one), successfully went back to Canada, in one piece…. Having seen the hellish matrimony hell like conditions, has decided to cut off his non existent Gonadal organs, and as celebrate as a Imperial Enuch….
Ok for my SANE answer (reflections of my year or so half here). although I have not dated Chinese girls, before, and indeed there are very kind and cute ones, at times you can have obsessive bf’s obsessive gf’s (exes). Movies are made honouring these transitory relationships. In the movie adaptation of Scott Pilgrim (a Canadian Comic, about a young bachelor musician, having to fight several ex boy friends), or the Blond helicopter flying girl on Ratrace who spies her “Super” (Dean King played Superman), boyfriend cheating on her, and chasing him away flying very very erratically Chinese girls get that reputation of being Go-Go Yubari (a teenaged body guard of her mistress Oren Iishii an assassin chick). Let the lesson be told in any culture don’t piss women off. Shakespeare said “Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned”. Chinese girls just happens to be more clever and Femme Fatale at it.
Take my step mom for instance. I have never met this lady before, and when my dad described her as “crazy” on MSN messages, I merely dismissed it as just non consequential disapproval typical of the later stages of marriage. We’re human, we don’t get along.. Mormon heaven (a big giant haram of men and women married through eternity… Well even the GODS and GODESSES hate each other put it that way. Zeus and Hera)… I learned of the extent of “Dragon Lady’s or Dragon Fa’s” (Flower), really atypical pathelogly. For starters, she has caused the quitting of two young secretaries. By repeadily calling the office, with vulgar swears, violent (verbal), visits, and really so called Batshit crazy behavior…. One girl left in tears, and these were hired by the GERMAN bosses! She has caused much trouble and verbal stress that the Klinger-Schonberg office had to relocate down the hall, because Poison Fa (as my novel will eventually be titled), causes grief with even NEIGHBOR companies that has nothing to do with Klinger. She sleeps on their sofa in the coffee-lunch room, because she wants to watch my dad like a ninjaess halkish swordswoman, the lunch room belonging to the other company… She has delibratly caused the break ups of my dad’s business partners just for the Lulz, she even tried to install one of her idiot country bumpkin friends as one of the secretaries… From my neutral bosses’ account of Fa, while talking business at a BUSINESS meeting, she barged in, the office and began throwing books. Her latest caper was to break my dad’s office door down, (hence they had to relocate to another office).
I just kept quiet during all this with a locked door, and my dad sifting me food, through it, until I could get a place of my own ( I was new to Shanghai). I especially enjoyed the scene where I’m working in the morning doing something for my German bosses Klinger…. when she calls my cell multiple times, (a different cell), because she though the cell which has a cute little MandM’s doodad, was a girls phone. and that my dad was seeing younger women. (honestly My dad looks like well he looks like Lawrence on Disney’s “Frog Princess”. (the squat fuzzy eared butler), no Chinese girl would be desperate for THAT are they)? Also, such is her degree of paranoia, she often calls EVERY night, at precisely 5… or 6, with my dad begging please don’t call I’m coming home, half an hour, an hour. So the ride home in a cab (on late nights, although the Metro is quicker, just zips in a straight line, instead of Shanghai’s many curves), is a symphony of ringtones, angry growls, begs and pleadings, and eventually ignores. If only I could have been a fly in the Driver’s ear…. poor guy probably gets it all the time. (honestly they should do a funny movie about a Shanghai cab driver) ha ha ha. Even one time, where this young Princeling crashed into us we were stopped at a red and thus had to wait for insurance or what ever, police or whatever.She calls multiple times. We were a few blocks from home so we just walked.
She was so paranoid, she went through my BAGS looking for money. (ummm she found erotic images. and threw them away, and gave my dad shit for them, what did he do? The funny thing was if she only searched the side pocket she would have found the 300 RMB (24 US dollars I think… 8 goes into one us Dollar). Wow she’s fucking rich! Loved the scene she makes, (much like Airport lady (a Hong Konger spoiled lady who didn’t have the foresight to arrive at the airport 1 hour before check in, or give herself enough time like say a day before (you know for weddings funerals, honestly give yourself a FULL DAY, just incase stupid shit like Al Queda holding up the runway or mechanical problems, or gasp “Fog”), or take a early flight….), anyways much like this spoiled childish woman, Fa is a master maniuplator, she begins a cry fest so all the Gasping Shanghai neighbors notice and look, at her “justified” sorrows, that time when I checked my ICBC account infront of her, (even the act of covering up the pin pad, She takes as some national conspiracy, are Chinese normally this paranoid? is it living in a communist state or is it the heavy metallic compounds pustuling into the river?). She though my dad was funniling his CANADIAN retirement into my account… (I brough him some of his old personal effects his brass UofA engineering diploma, the silver plated one from the UofM… and other stuff that my mom wanted out of the house). Including what money remained from 90′s Shyster business deals run amuck). Fa wanted that money to be used to buy HER parents a house, (with 12,000 Canadian dollars? 25,000 CND?!?!?! hahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahaahahahahahahaahahahahahahahhahahaahhahahahahaahahahhahahhaahahahahahaahahhahahahahaahahahahhahha in China HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAHAHAH. For the months post arrival, Dragon Fa seemed to make this strange monkey sound. “Ooo oooo oooooo ooooo ooooo oooooo oooookkkk ooooo oooooooo ooooo oooooo ooooooo oooookkk ooookkokokokokokokokokokoko” (Cantonese for house, but since her pathology, some sort of disorder where she’s addicted to adrenalin, or speedy thought, (Manic?), she tended to stumble ALOT), all she said was Mai oook mai oook. and said “Cheen Cheen Cheen Ch Ch Cheeen” alot.
And throughout her paranoia, she had this fantasy that she was in touch with the Shanghai TV reporters, doing a show on husbands who beat their wives. And that she had brain swelling to prove it (but despite constant scans, and consulations with China’s many competent (sarcasm), mental health caregivers. They found nothing….
Here is a graphic example of “Crazy” Chinese women. If you wish you could contact the Klinger Schonberg China offices and speak with the “white” guy. They told me even more bizzare accounts of Dragon Fa….. and after witnessing random Chinese arguments, (usually revolving the lack of money, but typical ghetto family discord). This and any other typical Chinese shinanagans (like teachers beating to death students throwing them out windows, dead babies floating in rivers, unlucky Foxconn blowing up, Catching fire, and people jumping off the roof, and other mayhem). Is giving me ALOT of material to work with….. thanks China for making me rich, and giving me a muse…… I shall call this story “Poison Flowers”.. Good ol China Smack, CNN, ESL blogs, Midnight runs, crazy Shanghai wives…. Sigh I was happier in Canada, a little ignorant Yellow-Redneck working Mc Jobs, and getting fat on junk food… being stupid. I had to come to China the sophisticated land of “Smart Chinese” because I was envious of them and wanted in. China is the Willy Wonka factory (strange shit), AFTER failing the health sanitation inspection (gross, poop. Oh speaking of poop a little Chinese girl in Zhuhai, took a dump infronto of me! then pulled up her cute little school uniform sweat pants to rejoin her friends). I love this place. I’m so proud of being Chinese.
I like that breakup method. Genius!