What consequences must a laowai (foreigner) accept if he marries a Chinese woman?

The following is translation of a blog post written by North America Brother Cui, a Chinese stand-up comedian living in the United States who is well-known among the Chinese diaspora in the U.S. He writes in the opening paragraph that he interviewed “a dozen laowai married to Chinese wives” before he summed it up in this article, which lists “marrying a Chinese woman is marrying her entire family,” “no privacy”, “a palate for everything”, “driving kids to death” among others as the consequences of an interracial marriage between a Chinese woman and a laowai, who, according to Chinese stereotypes, is more often than not a white male.

The post, published on October 24, immediately gained popularity on Chinese social media and Internet forums. On Sina Weibo alone, it has become the No.2 trending topic and has garnered over three million related discussions. A great majority of Chinese netizens say they find it hilarious and somewhat true, although others beg to disagree. What do you think?

Two years ago, a blogger named “Ambitious American Young Women” wrote a similar article, which was widely read by people both at home and abroad. The smart woman, with her witty language and personal experience of being married to a foreign diplomat, made her article vivid and fun to read. Pity that she herself has become an American diplomat and stopped writing. To hand on her torch, I borrower her idea and interviewed a dozen laowai married to Chinese wives before I wrote this article. Please, my fellow Chinese, listen to the moan and groan from the bottom of laowai’s broken hearts.

Consequence 1: Home occupied by Chinese 

Anyone believes that marrying a Chinese woman is marrying her alone? That’s the biggest BS (bull shit), or in Chinese, backwards, SB (sha bi, stupid cunt).

Laowai around the world, listen. Once you marry a Chinese woman, it is tantamount to marrying her entire family. In less than six months, her father, her mother, her second elder sister, the kid of her second elder sister will queue up to come here. More than a hundred years ago, it was only one Chinese worker who came to San Francisco to build our railway, and look, today, California has over a million Chinese, and you cannot even survive there without speaking Chinese. Which country in the future has the never to invite Chinese over to build railways? Chinese call it “A single spark can start a prairie fire.”

And my perfectly normal American home has been occupied by Chinese in a blink of an eye. I am a white man of Scottish descent. So many generations in my family since my great great grandfather have never seen a single wok, and now there are two in our kitchen. Open the drawer and look, except for three pairs of forks and knives, it is all chopsticks. What a pain! I can now even use the damn chopsticks to pick peanuts. For instance, chili peppers, Chinese are capable of turning them into a dozen products, chili pepper oil, chili pepper sauce, chili pepper paste, chili pepper powder. There is even one called “Old Godmother” (a famous brand of chili pepper sauce). How can one not be turned into an Old Godmother after eating such hot stuff every day?!

Consequence 2: No more privacy 。

Once Chinese occupy your house, do not think about privacy. One day, I was sitting on the toilet seat doing No. 2 when my father-in-law pushed the door open and walked right in. He turned on the tap and practiced English while washing hands, “Hao-ah-yo? An-der-yo?” (How are you? And you?)

Sometimes I fall asleep on the couch in my study from reading, my mother-in-law would sneak up to me like a cat, throw a blanket on me and pat on my leg. She patted on the wrong place quite a few times. Yes, Chinese are just so hospitable. There should be no distance between one another now that we are a family. So every time I want to go Dutch with my wife, she gets very angry, “What? You want to go Dutch using my money?”

In my own house, wherever I go, I find either my father-in-law or my mother-in-law or both of them follow me around. I walk ahead, they turn off lights right behind me. Basically, I leave darkness behind me wherever I go.

Consequence 3: No touching anywhere at home

A perfectly find staircase with a thick rug, and my Chinese wife wraps the rug with a layer of plastic. Then upon a closer look, I realize that almost everything in the house that easily attracts dust is wrapped in a layer of plastic, for example, remote control, and piano keyboard.

Chinese rarely use dish washer, because it is for storing bowls. Americans like furniture to be closer to life, comfy and casual. Chinese want their furniture to be simply for display, for show. It is hard and cold when you sit on it, and you cannot lean on it or lie on it. We foreigners are usually tall and big. I have broken three antique Chinese chairs, for god’s sake.

The tea utensils that Chinese drink tea with are even more frightening. They are as small as those Indian ghanta bells. I can still be thirsty after drinking three hundred cups of tea using those. How unbelievable!

Consequence 4: A palate for everything

Everything with legs under the sun, except for table, will be made into a delicious dish by Chinese people. I generally love everything they make. Just don’t let me know what is it that I have eaten.

They say Chinese love meat. This, I can understand. But is there any meat on chicken’s feet, duck’s beak, and pig’s ear? My wife’s family can never get enough of those, even though they eat those for every meal. I get shocked by just looking at that.

I love eating fish, but I cannot put up with eating fish head, because I don’t want to look at the dead fish in the eyes. Let me put it this way: any animal with eyes and capable of staring at me with his eyes is not my food.

I once joked with my wife that if one day there is a great famine in the United States, her family will not hesitate to cook me and eat me up, including my “foreign ears, foreign eyes and foreign chop suey”.

If you happen to have a Chinese wife who loves to cook soup or prepare Chinese herbal medicines, expect your neighbor to call the police. We have had police knocking at the door three times. Our neighbor called them, saying that it smells chemical weapons within a few miles.

Consequence 5: Don’t ever quarrel with your Chinese wife.

What is frightening about Chinese women is their memory. Even if you make her unhappy with just a small deal, she will immediately bring up a thing dating back to ten years ago that seems to be exactly the same as this one. I think this must have something to do with noodles that they love to eat: long, one after another, and seemingly endless. If you make an American wife unhappy, you can get away with “Sorry.” If you say “I was wrong” to your Chinese wife, she will ask you right away, “In what way?”

Chinese wives were born with a mission to transform men. Not only does she try to transform you, she wants to own you and have total control over your entire schedule. No wonder that China cannot produce a navigator/explorer like Christopher Columbus, because even before you set sail, your wife starts inquiring, “Where? With whom? Any woman on the ship? How old is she? What does she look like? As pretty as I am? How did you know her?” Then the man can only reply, “Okay, okay. I am not going.”

Consequence 6: Driving your own kids to death

Americans raise kids to make their life happy. Very few Americans vow to turn their kids into elitists. But Chinese seriously don’t pull punches when it comes to child-rearing. They force kids to learn piano, martial arts, ballet, Chinese language, math at a very young age. It’s probably the best if their kids can finish the master’s and Ph.D degrees before 18, skip over adolescence and leap into the middle age, retire by 30 and kiss the world goodbye at 40.

Anything little kids love to play, anything young people love to do, Chinese parents would forbid it. In other words, Chinese parents never treat their own kids like a human being. Their only goal is to drive their kids crazy as fast as possible.

I did not understand how tiring it is to be a Chinese until I married a Chinese woman: Instead of a spoon, they insist on using two wooden sticks when having meals, and they eat rice! How time-consuming is that? And the invention of their characters. Did they really have to be so hard on themselves by designing so many strokes? After you finally master 100 characters after making so much effort, you go to Taiwan and find, damn, they use traditional Chinese characters! What a waste of time!

I heard that in the past, Chinese had to carve every character on bones with a knife (Note: oracle bones script). It took more than a month to carve three characters. Does that sound like the kind of thing humans do?

Whoever is going to marry a Chinese woman is about to always have a goal in his life for the rest of his life. Buy a house. Buy another one. After buying this one, furnish that one. After the Ivy League, the kid moves on to a doctoral program. The next goal is getting into a big company. After a million is saved in the bank account, another million for each kid is going to saved. The next goal is… It turns out Chinese are always exerting all their strengths. As long as they are still breathing, they plan for the next goal.

I often ask my wife, why Chinese cannot and do not enjoy life and always make life so hard for themselves.

She answers, “Oh, right. And what we Chinese really enjoy doing is staying healthy and living long so that we can suffer more in the world.”

http://www.ministryoftofu.com/2012/10/what-consequences-a-laowai-fo...