Sino-American Relations, or How to break up with your Chinese girlfriend

You’ve been dating for months, and you’re a bit worried about being a cliché. You see it everywhere, at the mall, on the street: sub-par average white guy holding hands with the cute young Chinese girl. Common enough these days, but here it brings an entirely different connotation than it did back home. It’s not really cool or progressive, its more … “loser Western guy can’t get girl in home country so he comes to Asia.”

Still, you’re happy enough, but not without a certain distance that comes with such an intimate cross-cultural exchange. Oh, she speaks well enough English, and you can talk about movies and pop music and hang out at the bar. But she’s not big on conversation. She doesn’t like hanging out with your friends, and she prefers to sing those Taiwanese songs at the KTV and you’re just not good enough at Chinese to join in.

At first, the lack of introspective conversations is a relief. You never have to feel guilty for forgetting and anniversary, and that “where is our relationship going?” speech never comes. She doesn’t introduce you to her parents, even when they’re visiting. And yet somehow, there’s an anxiety. It’s not that you particularly want to go through the awkwardness of having dinner with her parents and practicing your broken Chinese as they practice their broken English. But … you’d like to asked. You’d make up an excuse not to go, of course, but you’d just like to be asked.

And there was just one fight, and all of a sudden she stops returning your calls. Not even a text message. Maybe you saw this coming for a long time, but you’re surprised at how very depressed you get. It’s not a good feeling to be disliked.

You finally confront her, and tell her she can’t ignore you like this. You go to her apartment, and you have that uncomfortable conversation. She’d rather you just leave, but you need this. Because back where you’re from, they call this closure.

And you see her from time to time, and you’re civil, and you smile, and you miss her, but you know it’s over. You hate to bitch and moan, but you’re from a therapy-ridden culture, and so your friends console you. Your hip Westernized Chinese friend tells you, “Chinese girls just want to try the foreigner guy, and when they’re finished they want to go back simple Chinese life.” Your cynical American friend who’s been through it before tells you, “Chinese girls aren’t as sentimental. They’ll just forget about you one day.”

You go to the bar, and you look at girls, maybe aim higher for a fellow foreigner girl you can get along better with, and you chalk it up to experience, and you get over it. It’s a cycle that you go through in life from time to time, but now you’ve done it in China.

You wonder if we’ll ever reconcile these subtle differences between China and the West. You wonder if we can ever truly understand each other. Will we always be destined to meet halfway, have fun, but only glaze the surface? We can get along just great, but will we ever truly connect? Well, one supposes this question can go for the whole mixed up world, but today you’re asking it in China …