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Published: January 16th 2008
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Ask about the Shanghai's dating scene and the answer solely depends on whether you ask a guy or a girl. For ONCE, for one beautiful, shining moment in time and space, the stars have aligned in cosmic proportion to finally grant us guys the upper hand to meet girls! With a virtually inexhaustible supply of beautiful Chinese girls to pick and choose from, the ratio couldn't be better for the less-fair sex. Shanghainese women clearly consider themselves far more refined, cultured, stylish and international than their countryside comrades, so what better way to show off your progressive lifestyle than by whoring yourself out to rich, fat, balding expats? This is a city where as long as the size of your wallet grows in proportion to your beer gut, there will always be a steady flock of gold-digging Chinese hussies at your beck and call. So, western guys get to run around free and single without a worry in the world. You hear that guys? Free and single. Just fend your way through the subset of certifiable crazies and you're home free.
But ask a group of Western girls and suddenly this city of sin turns into a Victorian England nunnery.
The funniest part is that girls don't know how to react to this sudden dearth of good looking guys always asking them out (it must get sooo frustrating, doesn’t it ladies?). They are confused, bewildered and god help you if you get stuck in a hen party where the subject comes up. It's like watching the 12-step program unfold before your eyes: shock, disbelief, dismissal, anger and finally acceptance. Hahaha! I'm sorry ladies, but for once it's your turn to see the other side! With the western guys busy running around with a harem of Chinese concubines (see above to relive the image over and over and over again), and dating Chinese guys CLEARLY out of the question, not much is left for good ol' fashioned white women. Those girls with experience with Chinese guys come back with horror stories of patronizingly, old fashioned, fatherly treatment ("Oh isn't that cute. The poor, little, white girl thinks she has a brain. Quiet now, Daddy’s here. Don't fret your pretty, little head...).
But it's not all fun and games for us non-sleaze bags (insert joke at my expense here). It takes some serious work to sift the non-crazies out of the
crowd. Far too many Chinese girls are just boring, uptight, traditional, prudish and infantile to spend more than 10 minutes without wanting to insert your freshly sharpened chopstick roughly 3/8ths of an inch into your left eyeball just to give you something else to do. But believe me, those girls are a welcome change from the True Crazies, who strut around the expat bars (queue up You’re Fit But You Know It), patting themselves on the back for their shitty English, “progressive” mindset, high fashion sense and penchant for foreign dirtbags.
All of which is why meeting “Helen” (Wang Hui - 王惠) ended up being such a bullet dodged. An art teacher at one of the schools I work at, she’s lived the kind of fascinating life story that has kept me so enthralled with life in modern China. A Sichuan native, she grew up as part of the Han migration to “Develop the West” in the farthest reaches of Kashgar and Ürumqi in western Xinjiang Province (side note: the CCP has been using economic incentives to entice migration of the Han majority into these western provinces to stamp out local culture and autonomy for greater central governmental stability),
not to mention, a gripping story relating to the 1-Child Policy which may be too personal to expound in this public forum. As a gifted artist, she has taught me tons about traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy as well as given me a first-hand glance into her country’s traditional culture.
By far the luckiest break we caught is her ability to speak flawless Mandarin and just little enough English that we were forced to communicate almost solely in Chinese. “But Mark, she’s Chinese, you idiot! Of course she speaks great Mandarin.” you might be saying. While yes, I may be an idiot, you would not believe the level of local dialect and accents that makes half this country incomprehensible, even to Chinese people. Without that language gift, our interactions would probably have been reduced to a lot of smiling, pointing and the ubiquitous thumbs-up. Our first night out, when my Chinese was marginal at best, I must have just totally been in the zone (although her cell phone dictionary helped quite a bit) ‘cause I still don’t know how I even made it through appetizers. Over the last 2 months, just through our interaction, my Chinese has grown by
ludicrous amounts. I probably still sound like an idiot half the time, but hey, that’s the same with English.
We all know you can’t take the good without the bad with people, but at least here it’s easy to laugh off the “less desirable qualities” as cultural differences - yeah…that sounds good. Nothing quite like seeing a pretty little girl spit up pig cartilage and slurp up noodles with cacophonic voracity on your first date. To speak nothing of what Americans would deem neediness and emotional immaturity. At one point, I jokingly taught her the heralded phrase “T.I.C.” and watched as she turned it into constantly reminding herself with me that “H.I.A.” - He. Is. American. Things would be different with me.
But again, these can easily be understood as cultural differences. Dating, relationships and gender interactions are just plain different (read: weird) in China. This is a country where they are not exactly progressive on the subject of the Women’s Movement, yet in many cases the women straight up dominate their skinny, effeminate men. I still don’t understand how women can tolerate their boyfriends out all night drinking, smoking like chimneys and heading to the "xiaojie’s" at
the massage parlors, yet they have the stones to make their boyfriends carry their purses around for them all day. And I’m not just talking “here, hold my purse while I put my coat on.” This is full on, “you will walk around all day today with this oversized man-purse slung over your shoulder, you little bitch and you will like it.” I’ve even seen a guy holding his girlfriend’s purse over her head to protect her from the rain. It’s almost like the women are trained to fight and win the small battles, because they’d rather not go near (and lose) the big ones. My friend’s Chinese co-worker, when asked why she puts up with her boyfriend’s bullshit, responded (no joke) “Well, I like when he buys me things.” When relationships begin, a date means you are together. Sex means you are in love. And being in love means you are together for every single moment of the day and do everything together. So naturally, I had to take it with a sliiiiiight grain of salt when I started hearing L-bombs dropped after 1 week. It’s almost no wonder why Chinese men hit the massage parlors, when sex with
your own girlfriend is barely even worth the hassle! And it’s not like the women are the only ones at fault here. Chinese men don’t exactly see the fairer sex as true equals. The double standard on enjoying yourself would shock a misogynist. A lady doesn’t drink or go out to bars and my God, would never be caught dead smoking a cigarette. Maybe if they spent a little more time respecting their women and a little less time pretending they are their little child-like China dolls, they wouldn’t have unleashed a horde of crazies on their society. But hey, who am I to talk…all this coming from a guy who’ll probably be dancing at his kids’ wedding before his own.
Is it fair of me to see Helen as part girlfriend, part cultural experience, when she was ready to get hitched and have her 1 government-sanctioned baby after one date? Therein lies the debate. And believe me, the debate does rage on in Shanghai’s expat bars and coffee shops. One thing’s for sure though - if you don’t like your current relationship, there’s roughly 1.4 billion other fish in the sea.
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Hannah
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All growns up
You know you're grown up when you know exactly when your friends will make fun of you.