Why did I seek a Chinese woman?

Jinlin

Recently I wrote about the beginning of our relationship with Jinlin. I will now explore the earlier "time before beginning", my path to seek a Chinese companion from international dating sites.

For a Finnish person, I have had higher-than-average level of contact with people from non-Finnish cultures. When I was four years old, my family moved to Oregon, USA, for two years, with my father working as researcher in the University of Oregon. Those were happy years and left good memories of foreign living. In my teenage years, from 16 and 18, I attended the Atlantic College in Wales. AC had students come from over 80 nationalities and I ended up being quite close to our students from Japan, China and Hong Kong - probably partly because my dorm mate Masahiko was Japanese. I even had a short fling with one of the Japanese girls until she sadly decided she does not want a boyfriend. And after the college ended in 1992 I did a five week trip to Japan and Hong Kong to see my friends there.

Masahiko and me at Atlantic College 1992

Later I have been travelling in 20+ different countries in different parts of the world, the most notable here being a five-week trip to Russia and China in 2007. We took with my friends the trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Beijing and down through China to Hong Kong. We spent three weeks in various Chinese locations and I was impressed with the scenery, the culture and the people.

My previous long-term relationships was with a Dutch woman studying in Finland. Although not culturally very different or geographically so far away, there was still personal growth and learning from living with an immigrant, speaking daily in other than mother tongue and working out issues concerning distance and travel and cultural differences.

Migutse and Haidee

I should also mention the encouraging example of my friend Migutse, who was travelling with me on our 2007 Far-East trip. He continued his trip from Hong Kong to Philippines and met there his future wife Haidee. After a one year remote relationship she moved to and now they have been together for four years and have two kids together. She has many friends in Finland and seems to be happy here.

The positive expectations

Given this background, I definitely had nothing against possibility of a relationship with a foreign woman. Still, it required some more inspiration before I made a profile to an international dating site and started to seek a serious relationship with a Chinese woman. Such act requires some positive expectations, some ideas and thoughts about "what Chinese women are like", in other words stereotypes. So like my earlier post on "sugar daddies" and "trophy wives", this is one about stereotypes, though mostly the positive ones.

Stereotypes are interesting beasts. They can't be fully avoided, but they can be hopefully understood for their limitations and used as wisely as possible. When a stereotype is based on true correlation, understood in proper context and applied wisely, it might sometimes provide useful "rule of thumb" in navigating your way through complexities of life. Harvard graduates are smart, women like flowers and Nigerians willing to give you million dollars might actually want your money -  these are not always true, but they are definitely based on true statistical correlations and can sometimes be useful as first approximations when there is need to do decisions on limited information. But when stereotype is not based on true correlation, or when it is is applied blindly, out of context, with limited understanding and too wide generalization, it can constitute a negative prejudice:

Prejudice (noun). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice. "Prejudice (or fore-deeming) is most often used to refer to preconceived, usually unfavorable, judgments toward people or a person because of gender, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race/ethnicity, nationality or other personal characteristics. It can also refer to unfounded beliefs and may include "any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence."

Even in a world where the word "stereotype" has a negative ring, it is important to admit that there are many significant statistical differences between groups of people. Some stereotypes are simply false, but many real statistical differences exist between boys and girls, men and women, between Finnish, American and Italian people, between young and old, between rich and poor, between western world and Asian cultures. In the noble pursuit of full equality and acceptance, some relativist philosophers have gone as far as claiming that there are no significant differences between groups or at least dismissing all discussion about such differences. I think such denial is an overreaction and counter-productive to their goals. We do not need to dispel statistical differences between social or ethnic groups to value equality and respect individual differences. A more productive approach is, I think, the "celebrate the differences" attitude that seems to be getting more common.


Equally importantly, one should never infer individual properties from any stereotype, even if based on true correlation. We humans have strong tendency to do so, but I think we should actively fight against it. Even if women are statistically (and in stereotype) more likely than men to like flowers it does not follow that Jane likes flowers because she is a woman or Jack as a man does not. Individual variance within groups is usually always wider than the differences between averages of groups so in any group known for attribute X there are likely to be many individuals who are very non-X.

Stories of Chinese women and WM-AF relationships

After my previous relationship ended in the end of summer 2011 my background and curiosity lead me to search for internet articles and discussions about experiences and opinions on Asian dating. Various Western-Asian dating sites are very popular nowadays and they are advertising their services rather aggressively. What do their users say of them and what kind of experiences they have had later in their cross-cultural relationships?

There is no lack of opinions and experiences reported on these topics in the net. Some were negative, but great majority of stories and comments draw a very positive image about Chinese, Philippine, Korean and Vietnamese women and relationships of western men with such women. I gradually gathered large collection of writings which draw a stereotype of these women as caring, loyal, honest, hard-working, family-oriented, deeply loving, polite, intelligent, independent, happy and beautiful in mind and body. Here is some small fractions from small selection of stories I read:

Jerry: "I was married for thirty years to a American woman who bore me two wonderful children. Then she divorced me, It was the luckiest day of my life. Before I married my Chinese wife I never really knew what true happiness meant. My Chinese wife is everything a man could want. She is independent and always in a good mood. She is very intelligent and helps me avoid mistakes in almost everything we do in our life together. She is so beautiful that I find myself staring at her all the time and wondering how I could be so fortunate to be with her. Every day we tell each other "I love you". Its not just words, we mean it. We demonstrate to each other in words and deeds every day how we love each other. I can say without any doubt that Chinese woman are the most beautiful and desirable of all woman. Its not just physical beauty, its what's inside that makes the difference. With that kind of love and caring a man can accomplish anything."

Ed: "Many western woman want possession, or what we call "keeping up with the Jones's", wealth, and fame/notoriety. Most western women have lost the value of family and love between husband and wife and put their own personal wants / needs above the family and for me it makes western women very unattractive. I sought my Chinese wife because after an extensive search, knowing I no longer had the commonality with western women, of other countries and cultures and realized the Chinese culture was more in line with my feelings of family and what it means to me. I married my wife after corresponding over the internet after 5 months of daily letters and have not had one regret." 

Gino: "What I see [in a blog post of western man and young Chinese woman] is mutual feeling reflected in two happily satisfied people. The magnetism that got them together is what makes them happy. There is nothing wrong with that, whatever the reasons are. The fact is that the divorce in such a relationships between westerns and Chinese, Vietnamese, Philippine woman almost does not exist. Considering that they are in it for love. Whereas in the west in 50% of the "in love" marriages love lasts 2 to 7 years. The bottom line is that the truth and honesty is what will make most couples happy and the Chinese woman are more likely be honest with their man then western women."

Richard: "I am 55 and have a very deep relationship with my 24 year old Chinese girlfriend. I was married for 30 years to my wife , 3 grown children but I have never experienced the connection that I have with my Chinese friend. She knows how to understand a man and take care of a man unlike western women. I will spend the rest of my life with her. Go for it guys, yellow fever is best!" 

Zak: "I'm Australian. I promised my Chinese (Anhui) wife that if we were to be together and I touched her as a virgin, inexperienced with men - that we must become married. We lived together for 3 years and married in Nanjing in mid-2007. Yes, of course she is a glittering prize working for a multinational corp, as a project manager, 20 years my junior: but... she doesn't have "issues". "Issues" mar relationships with Western women. She has balls, got her own bank mortgage on a new apartment here in Suzhou. I pay the rent on our current apartment. In short - I'd never re-establish a relationship with a Western lady. 6 years with my honey. I'd never go back. Not yellow fever, just mutual care, respect - holding and being held at night. It's funny. I don't think of her as being Chinese, I just think of her as my wife. And I'm very tender with her. That's the key."

The statistics of Dating and Love

Still, given the earlier point of great individual variance within all ethnic groups, one might validly ask: could one not find a perfect spouse from more local surroundings? In the end we will be in a relationship with an individual, love and marry an individual, so in the end only his/her individual qualities matter, not the average attributes of their group. And with wide variance between individuals, surely an optimal match will be found from any group, including the local one? Well, this might be true in a situation of perfect information and perfect choice: If man in Helsinki would have full enumeration of all local women in the town and knowledge all of their attributes and he would have the power to simply pick single one at his discretion to be his loving companion, the averages might not matter. I am sure that a quite amazing woman and perfect match could be found.

But we know that finding good relationship and love does not work that way: it is not deterministic exact process with full information and choice available. No, the game of human courting and love is a fuzzy, complex and very random game of luck in a field of limited information and limited possibilities. And in a game of luck the averages, statistics and expectation values make a big difference. By extending ones search to a group with desirable average attributes one can improve the probability of "scoring high" in these attributes. So although no one has godly power to guarantee a good companion for him/herself in a deterministic manner, we can all affect our own possibilities of finding one by choosing which actions to take, what events to participate and what places and forums to attend. We cannot control life but we can affect the probabilities that luck operates on. If lake A has more trout than herring than lake B, it makes sense to fish in lake A for trout - even if it is still possible for catch a very big trout at B.

The End of the Game, the Beginning of a Couple

Of course the aim of all dating games is to end the dating game. In the past I remember having many simultaneous exchanges of messages going on with multiple women from different dating sites. When such discussions go on, it is a common to ponder at which point one should try to start focus on one of the ladies and whether or not one should keep the profile up just in case someone even better comes by. It is a good sign when one can write, just after one day of getting in touch with someone, like I wrote to Jinlin:

I love you Chen! <3 We will be together!
I'm closing my profile in ChineseLoveLinks, my search is over :-)

She is indeed cute, sweet, caring, unselfish, deeply loving, hard-working, polite, funny, sexy, interested, artistic, children-loving, idea-rich, talented, optimistic, brave and loyal. And like Zak writes above, I am beyond of thinking of her as a Chinese woman but rather my dear darling. And though I do value here attributes, in the end I value even more her love for me and her touching words:

"You are too perfect. In my heart in you, I see picture you was small and cute doll, I want you, my dear you. [...] I have you is the biggest happiness, marry you is the greatest happiness, and you are the true love. [...] I can give you a home, I become your wife, to the doll wrote a note, I want to tell you at the wedding, I made a wish on a piece of paper, I write: Chen and Robert married, happy life, forever love."

Breakfast on the street

I have written earlier about Hot Pot and other dinner habits during our July trip in Yunnan with Jinlin. When it comes to breakfast, the cultural differences between the western world (including Finland) and China are perhaps even greater.

In Finland people eat breakfast at home. If they are staying away from home at a hotel, they eat breakfast at the hotel restaurant. In China, much more of everyday life happens "on the street" and this often includes breakfast in one of the thousands of tiny street-side restaurants all around cities. Most of the hotels at Zhengzhou and other to cities we stayed during our trip do not even have a restaurant of their own because there are so many breakfast restaurants everywhere. Contrast this with Helsinki city centre where all restaurants are closed before lunchtime with the recent exception of Mac Donalds selling their Mac Muffin breakfast. But I must say that advantages of street-breakfast are clear: prices are cheap, no shopping required, no dishes to wash, no mess at home.

Jiǎozi pans and eggs in Lijiang

Typical breakfast items include steamed dumplings (饺子, Jiǎozi) with some meat or vegetable filling. Jiǎozi are collected to metal or wooden pans with holes in the bottom. The pans are then stacked to high stacks on top of boiling pot so that steam is passed through the whole stack. This allows simultaneous cooking of great number of Jiǎozi with very little space and simple equipment. When a client buys Jiǎozis, one pan is taken from top of the stack and the remaining stay in the hot steam.

Eggs, dumplings and soy-sauce

Jiǎozi have very tasty filling and this is enhanced with various dipping sauces like soy-sauce. Quite same can't be said of the rice porridge or congee that is another common breakfast item. Quite watery, it has only mild sweet taste in its base form. Another common sweet side dish are the bread sticks that are cooked in oil like doughnuts. Their Chinese name (油条, yóutiáo) means literally oil strips.

But the most tasty breakfast item by far on our journey was the noodle soup. I and Jinlin both like noodles and noodle soups come in huge variety in China. Nor are they limited to lunch and dinner but are available as a common breakfast course. A breakfast noodle soup can have dozens of different hacked ingredients from meats to vegetables to tofu to spices in addition to the soup base and the noodles themselves, bringing very rich taste. And with ample concentration of crushed chillies, it can be very hot both as in high temperature (热, Rè) and as in very spicy (辣, Là). Really kicks your body up for action of the day! :-)

Very spicy noodle soup in Xishuanbanna

Dough for bread sticks in a Zhengzhou breakfast restaurant on the street

Buying breakfast in Zhengzhou

Jiǎozi, rice porridge and bread sticks for breakfast

Steamed sweet buns in Xishuanbanna

More photos from Zhengzhou and Xishuanbanna.

I'm back to school too

It is over 15 years since I previously had a "student" status in my life. But now I am a happy to be a part-time class-room student again. I have just returned from my first Chinese language classes in the adult education centre of Helsinki ("Helsingin aikuisopisto"), one of the inexpensive state-sponsored evening schools in Finland.

When I was searching for Chinese courses from the schools web pages earlier in the summer, I found both beginner-level courses and intermediate ones that were aimed at students having "already some proficiency at the language". Well, I did not know how much my humble mumblings count as "proficiency" and the courses were cheap so I enrolled on both. It's convenient, since both are in the same location on Tuesday evenings, the intermediate-level class from 6 PM to 7 and the beginner class immediately after that. So I do both now side-by-side.

It was very nice experience. Our teacher Bái Lì has been living now 15 years in Finland, speaks quite good Finnish nowadays (though finding the strong tongue-vibrating Finnish 'R' sound as impossible as Jinlin!). She favours interactive teaching style with lots of discussion practice I like.

I am happy to say that the intermediate-level course does not seem too tough to my current skills. So my stubborn listening to Chinese audio mp3 lessons has had some positive effect despite my struggle with the language during our China trip. And although the basic level seems now quite easy, it is always good to repeat the basics and enjoy more nice social learning atmosphere with another larger group.

Repeat aka bang-your-head-against-the-wall-and-still-be-happy

Before this course I have been self-studying Chinese for the past 10 months. I wrote previously about translation and communication tools that have been invaluable for Jinlin and me so far. But when it comes to really learning speaking and really actively remembering, I must say my brain is not what it used to be :-) Although research tells us that children do not have such an advantage in language learning as is usually thought, I still remember how easy it was as a pupil in comprehensive school to memorize by heart whole chapters from our English textbook. Now I have to listen and repeat, repeat and listen, again, again and again to have some hope of loading some Chinese words to active use.

My main self-learning material is the excellent ChinesePod podcast which has several 100's of 10-minute audio-lessons on various levels from "newbie" through "elementary" and "intermediate" to "advanced". ChinesePod is produced by Praxis in Shanghai and features English-native teacher Ken and Chinese-native teacher Jenny. Their teaching technique is very much inductive: instead of enumerating items of grammar and vocabulary they speak out concrete real-life discussions with complete usable sentences. This is the "language shower" way of learning that seems to be suitable for most people: learn large number of complete examples of the language and your brain will follow in the end to generalize grammar and vocabulary in a natural way.

Early on I downloaded 250 newbie-level episodes to my phone and have ever since been listening when driving, walking or waiting for something. I have my Bluetooth headphones always with me so I can take advantage of even small breaks to listen some more. During the past 10 months I have listened to all of the 250 newbie episodes at least 5 times over, which adds up to 200+ hours of listening. When I am listening alone in the car I also make effort to speak all the sentences out loud (well, I sometimes do that in my thoughts in the public as well...) Now I have been slowly starting to include some "elementary"-level episodes to my listening menu as well, although they present a big step from the newbie-lessons and are often frustratingly difficult to comprehend. I can just imagine my frustrated neurons trying to reach our for connections. I am sure if I would be 15 instead of 39 I could get the same results with quarter of the time.

The love for learning, the learning of love

It's nice to be back on "school bench". I have always been quite learning-oriented person and I used to have both good memorable moments and reasonable success in my long path through comprehensive school to high school in Atlantic College and later in University of Helsinki and its laboratory of Physical Chemistry. Only when getting stressed out about repeated failures on different attempts for PhD projects I jumped out from the academia to work as a programmer in the industry. But I still enjoy the continuous learning possibility (and indeed need of) in career of software development as wonderfully discussed by Andy Hunt in his book The Pragmatic Programmer. And I do occasionally enjoy participation in conferences and workshops that have been the closest thing to sitting in a class since my school times.

Still, I have been never very language-oriented in my love for learning. I learned good English during my high school in Wales but with that I've remained quite one-trick-pony in the language arena. Relationship and love combined with lack of good common language gives more than enough motivation to boldly go where I have not gone in many years in terms of new languages. And it's fun and interesting at times. But I still find it admirable that so many of my classmates have enough motivation to face the enormous challenge of Chinese with motivation simply described as "I though this would be a nice new hobby."

I'm very glad Jinlins surreal army-training-at-the university ends in few days. Studying alone and with the class is nice it's still lonely to have a remote relationship in the times when there is not even the remote connection present. And how lovely it is when we chat and she speaks beautiful Chinese and I can feel the sweet juice of understanding and smile! Meanwhile I try to find more black humour in the absurdity of listening to a ChinesePod episode five times, still not remembering the words, listening to sixth time and finally getting the click.

How it all started

"I am a little. Would you mind?"

The first contact from Jinlin toward me come on friday 7th October 2011. I had spent the previous week in an army training camp near town of Tammisaari, sleeping outside in tent with my comrades. During the long night hours we took turns to keep fire in the fireplace to keep the coming winter cold away. Sitting in front of the fire on my turn, desperately sleepy, I kept myself awake by surfing the net with my laptop and 3G-modem. Among other sites, I entertained myself by browsing various dating sites I had active profiles at, including ChineseLoveLinks where I had been setting up a profile few weeks before.

The internet dating scene has never been very symmetric when it comes to gender. In any dating site, including the international ones, women can easily get dozens of interested messages from men per day by just setting up a profile. Men, on the other hand, usually need to send dozens of messages to different women to have hope of a single occasional reply. Women are definitely in position of power and choice here and I am fine with that and play along the rules. Given this status quo, I was quite surprised when in the early morning hours of Friday I saw in the twilight of the tent my inbox containing a message of interest. And my surprise grew to stunned awe when I opened the profile and found an amazingly cute-looking girl, a student with artistic interests and only 18 years of age. I wrote to her:

Thank you for your interest! You look so sweet that I wish I can convince you of my sincere intentions and get to write letters with you and know you better. 

I am from Finland and have been using ChineseLoveLinks for about two weeks now. I have been travelling in China many times and find Chinese women good in looks and character. So after my previous relationship ended I though I would include China in my search for a new direction, true love and marriage. 

Please tell me more about youself! What kind of Artistic / Creative occupation do you have? Which subject are you studying? How did you decide to search for companion in  ChineseLoveLinks? What do you have for hobbies?
 
If we would become in the end man and wife, I would take good care of you and be your best friend and lover and try my best to make you happy. I am 100% honest and sincire man, I would be very happy to get a reply from you :-)

My army training ended and since my summer cottage is located in Tammisaari near the army barracks, I decoded to drive directly there to spend the weekend doing some forest work. When I got online again I was delighted to see a reply:

October 7, 2011 7:35 PM.   I am drawing design. My hobby is very broad. Like many of the art. I'm pleased do meet you. I am a little. Would you mind? I am quiet girl just chineselovelinks.com few days. I am waiting for you reply.

Jinlin was still online when I read this reply so I sent her hello with the chat tool of ChineseLoveLinks and we had a brief but friendly exchange there. She was asking for my QQ number and I had no idea what that meant (later we would use QQ messenger to write hundreds of pages of text and pictures to each other in video chat sessions). She gave me her QQ number and I promised to find out what it means, search and install the QQ tool and send her QQ message the next day.

"You have not lost, because I feel good to you"

Next I of course lost her QQ number. How stereotypical! I did find out about the QQ messenger software, managed to install it, create a QQ number for myself... and could not contact her. She had given the number in ChineseLoveLinks chat and apparently the chat history was not saved anywhere at the site. I had no other possibility than to send her another message in ChineseLoveLinks, hoping she would still be reading here inbox there as well and not only wait for my message in QQ. I wrote her message apologizing losing her number Friday evening. Her reply next morning had some of the sweetest sentences I had ever read in cute clumsy English:

October 8, 2011 5:03 AM. To: Robert
My QQ number is [...]
You have not lost, because I feel good to you.
I was feeling. Do you understand?
Although I am young, psychological maturity.
My English is not good. I will try my best to learn.
I am very glad to know you. Waiting for you my number.
I with you. I look to you.

I think atmosphere, minds and hearts in both Tammisaari Finland and Xinxiang China were prepared for the imminent great falling in love :-)

Love at first (3 hour) chat

In our society it is typically considered very romantic and ideal to experience "love at first sight", with the gaze of a man and a woman somehow magically meeting in a crowded room, time slowing down and special visual connection forming. I find it peculiar that at the same time with this ideal, there exists other completely opposite ideal: to love each other more for aspects of personality and character than outer appearance. Both of these ideals are considered morally proper and romantic, yet they are in quite obvious contradiction to each other.

While it is clear that Jinlin and I liked each others profile pictures, it definitely was words, words and words that hit the home-run to hearts when we had our first QQ chat on Saturday evening 8th October 2012. It was a one-way video chat. I was at my summer cottage, with bad network connection and no microphone or webcam. I could see her via her webcam but she could not see me. That did not seem to matter at all in the end.

We were talking of many things. We talked of each others names (with me misunderstanding her family name), of our age, of our families and our homes, of our childhoods and personal histories, of my ex-marriage, my childen and my divorce ("Yes, I have divorced", "I love children! Never mind I don't mind"), of the death of my parents and divorce of her parents, of her relatives at the mountains of Anhui, of differences of China and Finland, of Chinese, English and Finnish languages ("Meet you teach me English, I can teach you Chinese"), of travel and nature, of my previous visit to China, of our common hobby of photography and our cameras, of my travel in Nevada in the summer, of flowers and Chinese temples, of Jinlins paintings and interest in interior design, of my raytracing art, of studies, jobs and career, of our height and weight ("I am 180 cm and weight 75 kg", "Very much!"), of dogs, cats and ferrets (she has one), of my beard ("Remember to have a close shave when you come and see me"), of challenges of relationship with long distance, of the schedule to meet each other (summer 2012), of future life together, of marriage ("Yes, I want to marry you!", "I am very happy") and of our families opinion on international relationships ("Your family mind I am a foreigner?", "No")

The topic of age difference was addressed briefly and has not been returned to ever since:

- How old are you?
- I am 38 years. I hope you don't think I am too old :-(
- Not. I love you! This is the most important. I 18 you feel me? I really want to be with you. Would you mind? :-?
- I know you are 18 and that is wonderful!  <3. I do not mind at all
- Today I am so happy 

There were several funny misunderstandings and non-understandings arising from differences in language and problems in translation. Like the word "sleep" does not seem to have in Chinese language all the subtle connotations is has in English ;-)

Robert:   I want to sleep with you <3
Jinlin:     You want to sleep with me?
Robert:   Yes!
Jinlin:    Why?

Only later in the chat I realized how late it is in China. The time difference from Finland to China is 5 hours in the winter time, so it was getting past 2 AM for Jinlin when it was 9 PM in Finland: 

Jinlin      It's 2:08
robert    Ah! late! Good you don't have school tomorrow!
Jinlin      I fear you are hungry
robert    No, I am not hungry. But I fear you are sleepy
Jinlin      No

It was clear that we ready to fall in love and as the hours passed, the chat drifted more and more from discussing factual topics to expressions love and will to be together. Some selection from the latter half of the chat:

Jinlin: I hope to be with you. I feel like a long time knew. [...]

Robert: Your happiness makes me happy! <3  [...]

Jinlin: Never mind the long distance. Love is to test. I'll wait for you. 
Robert: Long distance, close hearts! [...]

Jinlin: Yes. I want to me and you together  tourism. I will be very happy
Robert: Traveling to great places together with you would be a dream come true!  [...]

Robert: I hope to be your prince and you will be my princess :-)
Jinlin: I am waiting for my prince to come [...]

Jinlin: I wait for you to come! For my darling, I miss you very much!
Robert: I want you to wait for me :-)
Jinlin: I will wait for you!  [...]

Jinlin: I feel very happy with you. Happiness
Robert: You are my dear!  [...]

Jinlin: I  love  you.  I hope you stay in my life
Robert: I love you too Chen! <3 We will be together!  [...]

Afterthoughts

The best beginnings of love are not usually planned in detail. Although we were both definitely looking for love, I was planning to look carefully and investigate possibilities for a long time. In my ChineseLoveLinks profile I had specified several expected criteria for women, including having reasonable English language skill, having some university-level education and willingness and ability to relocate to Finland. In the case of Jinlin these requirements have been getting somewhat compromised. Her English skills still lacking, her university education only now started and although she has will to move to Finland the original plans have been getting postponed to later date.

So the rapid escalation of our love created needs to make compromises in these requirements and I have been willing to make such compromises for our love. The language gap has prompted my very enjoyable studies in Chinese language which is good thing in any case. As for the need to be patient about our life together and her studies, I am hoping and waiting, waiting and hoping.

P.S. The small cute animated pictures in this post are from our various email- and chat-sessions. Jinlin has during the months introduced me to hundreds of such cute and funny "emoticons" that seem to be commonly used in China. The characters in these little pics are much more varied than the few "smileys" of the western world. These little guys and girls have even names and there are dolls and other stuff made about them. They often add nice flavor to our communication.

It seems she went to a military school after all

The current daily life of Jinlin involves getting up at 5 AM, walking long marches in military uniform, tough physical exercise, practicing martial arts in formation, training use of hand weapons, singing soldier songs and listening to lectures on military tactics. The heavy program continues to late night every day before she can fall to her bed exhausted.

But wait! Wasn't Jinlin supposed to have just started to study interior design in the Shanghai Academy of Arts? Indeed. But it turns out that first year university students everywhere in China are required to participate in one month long military training. The training is arranged by the university at the university and takes place usually in September immediately after the term starts. The teachers are actual soldiers and officers from the active Chinese army.

I had no idea of this weird tradition beforehand and certainly Jinlin had not mentioned it in any of our earlier chats. I had just started wondering why it was taking so long time for her to reply to my messages when she wrote:

I am very busy, I participate in the school's military training.
All of our students in universities will have military training.
This is very tiring, consume me a lot of physical strength. But exercise and my will, I strive.
School classes begin in the 25th September.
Now only military training, every day of the week, from morning to night

Of course I had to try to cheer her up, telling about my own nine-month compulsory military training in Finland. And:

- Well, you will have big muscles, when we hug next time ;-)  

- Ha ha. I am about to start training

I've been now reading more about this weird system of boot-camps mandated by the Chinese Communist Party. Jinlin will be joining over 6 million other new students as potential members for the already massive (largest in the world) and well-armed (including nuclear) Chinese military machine. I don't much like this thought. Even less attractive is the realization that these massive training operations are mainly a brain-washing tool for the ruling Communist Party to encourage patriotism (under the party rule) and banish any disobedience or requests for democracy and free speech. The training program was started in Beijing after the 1989 student protests at Tiananmen Square. The training first included only Beijing University, the focal point of the democracy protest movement, but later expanded to the whole country when its usefulness as tool for suppressing criticism become clear. So when other countries are trying to modernize their education systems to encourage critical thinking, China is marching to the other direction.

The training will have it climax in final parade where all classes march across the training ground and various martial art and singing performances follow. After the training tests are held on military practice and theory and if a student fails the test, she can be denied the right to start her regular studies in the university. On a lighter side, the training has so much outdoor exercise that older students joke that first-years can be easily spotted from their darker tanned skin. The point here is that in China the beauty ideal is fair skin and tanning is definitely a no-no, especially for women (Jinlin complained about her getting tanned already on our travel in Yunnan although I tried to tell her that her bronze skin looks great).

So, our video-chats are definitely on hold again for few weeks. No computers are allowed in dorms before the end of the training and cell-phones can be used only for short time in beginning and end of the day. But meanwhile Jinlin will get good physical exercise and a bonding experience with her fellow students and new friends. I try to focus on those positive thoughts and meanwhile continue to write more about our history and experiences together.

A Very Long Engagement and Art

Video chat today from dorm in Shanghai

Today, 6th of September 2012, Jinlin flew from Xinxiang to Shanghai with big bags. She is moving away from her childhood home in Xinxiang where she has been living with her mother almost all of her life. This summer she was accepted to study interior design in Shanghai School of Design (上海設計學院, Shànghǎi shèjì xuéyuàn) which is part of Chinese Academy of Art. She has today moved to live in a dormitory at the Zhangjiang campus of the school. It's a big move, she is happy to take this step and I am happy for her. She has worked really hard and deserves the place.

Jinlin is talented artist.
Charcoal work from 2010

Early on in our relationship we were discussing our careers and it become apparent that Jinlin is studying very hard in her high-school and art studies. She described her typical day in email in November 3, 2011:

Honey. I get up at 6 in the morning, get to school at 7. After school, at two thirty in the afternoon to studio painting. Eat at 6 in the afternoon, evening 7 painting until 10 pm, every day of the week. And Sunday afternoon I go to study English just for good communication with you. Although every day is like this, I have very little time with friends. Just watch me when to rest. Everyday I repeat, learning, and painting, although very hard, but I'm doing. Because I have too much can thing, I miss you very much.

It might be difficult to believe, but after this email things soon got even more busy for her studies. In early spring 2012 she moved to a special boarding school "一中" (One China) focusing on studying to the dreaded university entrance examinations that would take place in June. 10 million students every year take this examination and there are university places only for a fraction of them so the competition and pressure to succeed are intense. Its not only competition between individuals: also schools get more benefits if their students get more university places, so both schools and students resort to extreme methods for pushing the limits. In Xiaogang students were using intravenous drips of nutrients during their daily marathon study-sessions to keep them focused and effective for extended hours. Also bribing for good grades happens in the corrupted China.

Students with intravenous drips at Xiaogang

Jinlins decision to move to the One China school created significant challenges for our remote relationship. Some of my friends had been already before this skeptical about possibility of adequately maintaining a relationship with such distance and time. I had been happily explaining them that we can actually have very good and frequent communication with Jinlin using video-chat, emails and exchange of pictures and files. But with the One China school all that changed. She stayed at the school studying from early morning to 10 pm in the evening and was very tired when returning to the dorm. She had no computer access any more and could only send occasional Chinese text messages with her cell phone chat software. Instead of communicating an hour per day with video, there were often several days in a row where she did not reply to any of my messages and even on best days the text chats were short and terse. Gone away were also the plans to visit her during the spring 2012.

"Gold fish", oil painting by Jinlin

Furthermore, the move to focus on the entrance examination was accompanied with her decision to apply to Chinese art universities, with the implication of staying in China at least to the end of year 2012. Before this decision she had planned to come to live together with me in Finland in the end of summer 2012, to study Finnish language here and then to apply for places in Finland's highly acclaimed design universities. When starting to write with her in October 2011, the end-of-summer-2012 target already seemed like almost too far away and now that was being pushed even further.

Jinlin is talented in arts and enthusiastic about her planned career in design. I value that very much. I understand her decisions - which she told to be difficult as well - and I want to encourage and support her in her studies and her career. Furthermore, the intense studying for the entrance exam in the spring did not leave her enough time to increase her skills in English or Finnish languages, making coming here according to our original schedule a less viable option.

A Very Long Engagement

Still, there is no denying that the long months of little communication were tough for the relationship. I remember occasionally thinking: What does it mean to "have a girlfriend" if I can't touch her, see her, hear her or read from her? Do I really have a girlfriend or not? Does this relationship really make sense? I was trying to think that soldiers in wars are in an even worse situation with months away from their loved ones and in danger of getting killed every day. I was remembering the great French film A Very Long Engagement, where a woman is losing her man in the first world war and starts a long and stubborn attempt to find him. I reminded myself of our agreement with Jinlin that I would travel to China to be with her in the end of July. I was reading our old emails and chat-messages in absence of new ones.

And in the end the dreaded examination come and was over  and more sun started to shine to our communication and relationship. The goodness of early times come back. And in the end I did travel to China and meet her and have great moments of love and growing together.

She said after the exam that it did not go quite as well as she had hoped and that it was possible that she would not get place in a Chinese university. She said that in that case coming to Finland according to our original plan would be a good idea once more. It was a quite moral torment for me trying to wish her good success in the exam scores while knowing that lower scores would mean living together with her earlier. And in the end she did get good scores and a place in good university and she is happy about it and I am happy about it as well and happy about her happiness.

Work that won an art competition and was
printed in cover of a Chinese art magazine

So what are our current plans for getting together? I will visit China again in end of October and we try to get a visa for Jinlin to visit Finland immediately after that. I am working in a field of software development where I would probably get a job in Shanghai as well, but my boys are still only 12 and 9 years old and I want to stay in Finland to be with them at least as long as they are still children. Jinlin will gear up her English studies in Shanghai and I will continue to study Chinese here, preparing for our living together. Regarding her current thoughts about when that might be, I wrote her recently:

[...] I am of course very interested in when you can come with me to live in Finland. I'm sorry, if it is difficult for you to answer. But I think I deserve to know when I can expect to be together with you, even if the plan is preliminary and might change. Our love is good, but it is difficult for me to be so far from you, because I miss you much. I love you very much, I hope you are not planning to stay in China many years. If you want to learn a complete a university degree in China, I am afraid that might be too long time for me to wait. Although I much respect your willingness to have a good education. Please tell me dear what you think. I miss you.

She replied:
[...] Do not worry, I'll tell you what I think.

What can I say? It would feel stupid to reply just "well, tell me then" and I hesitate to push for answers. I know we have mutual visits planned and I know the next big move will not be at least for the next three months. So I'll wait, try not to worry and enjoy the happy aspects of remote relationship and other nice things in my life. At least Shanghai is easy access from Finland, flights are surprisingly cheap, and our lovely video-chats are once more alive and well.

Watercolour painting by Jinlin

Sugar Daddies, Trophy Wives and Whores

Only months after we started to write with Jinlin I slowly become aware that there are some stereotypes about relationships between older white men and younger Asian women exists and not all those stereotypes are unfortunately fully positive.

But let's start with the positive values and thought of international relationship, thoughts which were part of my mindset when I starting to search for a Chinese companion and have continued during my relationship with Jinlin:

• Love conquers challenges of distance and time
• Interest, respect and valuing for both races / cultures
• Equal relationship with listening, understanding and openness.
• Mixing up bloodlines is good for humanity.

Regarding the negative stereotypes, I do not mean the genuine concerns people have had about genuine challenges in an inter-cultural long-distance relationship. These include Jinlins mother worries of whether Jinlin can really know if she really loves me, my sister worry about possible lack of understanding because of language problems and my friends wondering how a relationship can manage through long months of physical separation. These are all well-meaning concerns from good people arising from care and worry about well-being close people. Such questions rise valid discussions and new insights about ones determination, decisions and understanding of the situation.

My blissful ignorance of any real negative stereotypes, stigmas or moral prejudices towards White Man - Asian Female (WM-AF) was slowly lifted by the occasional (though rare) comments like "raises questions" or "brings up contradictory thoughts". Such comments were hugely baffling to me since I had absolutely no idea what they meant and people making them (usually not very close ones) were usually not giving any clarification as to what exact questions are raised and what contradictions exists about such relationship.

Terms of Defamation

Only in the recent months, after my travel in China with Jinlin, I discussed with some friends my confusion about possible negative ideas some people might have and consequently I started digging internet for some answers with search phrases like "Western man Asian woman". The wealth of answers, opinions and articles I have found and read since them on the topic is large. I must note that all of the material comes from large English-speaking countries, mainly U.S.A., where culture, immigration history, inter-ethnic relationships and moral atmosphere are significantly different from my small Finland. So in many respects the attitudes here are, I think, more relaxed and liberal.

Many of the stereotypes can be coined as words or phrases that can be used in dismissive name-calling that suggest some kind of negative moral behaviour. Some of them concern relationships with significant age difference, some concern relationships between whites and Asians and some combination of these. Below are some terms interesting I have discovered. Many can be found in blogs, discussion boards and articles on WM-AF topics, but best place for concise definitions is http://www.urbandictionary.com

Rupert Murdoch and wife Wendi Deng

Yellow Fever / Asian Fetish

Refers to white men that have sexual preference for Asian women. Connotations include mental disease, sexual fetish, obsession and belittling of non-Asian women. Eg. "An Asian-American girl was harassed by some psycho who had a bad case of yellow fever."

Gold-digger

An (Asian) girl that is only with a (western) man because she wants his money. Shell spend it on luxury life until he goes broke and then she'll go for another rich man. Eg. "A lot of people say she was a gold digger, but I think she really loved that 90-year old decrepit penis"

Nicolas Cage and wife Alice Kim 

Trophy Wife


A young, attractive (Asian) woman married to an older, more powerful (White) man. His role in the relationship is to provide her with power and material wealth. Hers, beyond providing sex, is to remind others that he is powerful or rich enough to be desirable to such a woman despite his age and thus to serve as a marker of this status, hence the "trophy" part. A specialized type of gold-digger. Eg. "My ass-hole ex-husband went out and got himself a trophy wife as soon as he made partner."


Sugar Daddy

(White) Man old enough to be father of his young (usually 18-25) (Asian) girlfriend. In other words, if people assume your girlfriend is your daughter when they meet you and her, then she is your sugar daughter. It is implied that the man is rich or at least significantly more wealthy than his young woman, the "Sugar Daughter", so there is some aspect of gold-digging in play. Connotations of "dirty old man" for him and "whore / prostitute" for her. Eg. "She uses her sugar daddy for his money, but he sure gets some service in return!" or "Like a genie - he may be a little old Sugar Daddy, but if a girl rubs his lamp, he'll grant her wishes."

So what..?

The first question is of course: why should I care at all? After all there are zillions stereotypes about zillions of things and their combinations. Specific cases can be completely different from any stereotype. Any moral questioning I have heard about our relationship has been absolutely minimal compared to positive feedback. And, like the great thinker and physicist Richard Feynman said, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"

But I am curious person and my curiosity was aroused by my complete surprise about even a hint of indecency implied to our relationship. Because I am a rather trusting (even naive) person in the sense of assuming people have positive intentions, I find negative assumptions rather interesting. Furthermore, I am a layman philosopher and a Skeptic and therefore interested in digging deeper to reasons and root causes of beliefs, stereotypes and moral prejudices. I am interested in the arguments (if any) presented for such beliefs, possible logical fallacies in such arguments and the social and cultural historical evolution of such beliefs. In the past when investigating some moral issues I have often found that when the fog of ad hominem arguments, name calling and circular logic is cleared away, very little is left of any judgemental moral position. 

And finally, being a morally sensitive person, I want to have the humility to occasionally reflect on my own thoughts, motivations and behaviours, find out if there actually is something that I don't feel in the end morally acceptable and, if necessary, change my ways.

Good couples and bad couples?

It is obvious that not all WM/AF relationships are equal. Christine Tan writes in her blog:

There are the WM/AF relationships which I firmly believe are equal partnerships between two egalitarian, colorblind individuals who respect each other’s cultures and beliefs. However, as someone recently reminded me, there are those kinds of WM/AF relationships that give the rest of us a bad name — the ones that are formed on the perhaps covert and destructive valuing of the white man’s race and culture over the Asian woman’s, where the white man has little regard for his partner’s culture, or sees her as a trophy. 

An obvious way to defend myself (not that it is clear that any defence is needed) would be simply to state that we have with Jinlin great respect and interest to both of our cultures (both our own and each others), no thoughts of superiority of any race and motivation rising from love rather than getting something to display as trophy. While these things are true, I hesitate to make the argument along these lines because that would yield to the implicit argument that having any other set of motivations would be morally bad. I do not see that demonstrated in convincing way.

I am liberal (in the sense of accepting and allowing) in my moral thinking: I think that with two consenting adults, with understanding of each others expectations and wishes, all mutually agreed choices, behaviours and relationships should be morally acceptable regardless of the content of the expectations and wishes in question. The "parameters" of a relationship between two consenting adults, including their motivations and reasons for the relationship, should not matter and should not be judged from outside by me of anyone else. Hetero or homo - both acceptable. Age difference or no age difference - both acceptable. Same skin colour or different skin colours - both acceptable. Same culture or different cultures - both acceptable. Interested in each others cultures or interested just in sex and watching TV - both acceptable. Same level of wealth or different level of wealth - both acceptable. Both working of other one working - both acceptable. Both equally dominant or other more dominant and other more submissive - both acceptable. Having true love or having other reasons for relationship - both acceptable.

Whore: Not Bad

So I want to hit the "Sugar Daddy & Gold Digger" stereotype and stigma at its root and logical extrapolation: the stigma for paid sex, prostitution and whore. The relationship between a sex worker and her (or his) client if clearly very non-symmetric: the partners have significant differences in their sources of motivation for the relationship. But this asymmetry in itself cannot be valid argument for immorality of prostitution as long as both partners have mutual understanding of the conditions and expectations and freely engage in the relationship from their own will. On the contrary, I am willing to argue that freely-wanted prostitution is as morally acceptable as any freely-wanted relationship. There are good arguments to let go the stigma of prostitution like we have in the past given up other stigmas of sexuality. For example feminist Clarisse Thorn writes very analytically how whore-stigma does not make any sense:

"Stigma is an interesting beastie. Whore stigma is particularly interesting, in part because it makes no sense and falls apart the minute it’s exposed to any rational analysis whatsoever. Yet somehow, even though it makes no sense, it is a constant and often overwhelming social force that shapes the lives of all women. [...] What’s weird about these conversations [about rewards for sex], though, is that everyone almost always gets caught up in the question of who’s a whore and who’s not a whore — and in the confusion, very few people think to question whether whore stigma itself is insane and divisive and harmful. This even happens during conversations that start with the intent of questioning the very concept of whore stigma."

The biggest problem with the whore-stigma is not among sex-workers themselves but in the fact how the stigma is used to bully and taint and belittle lives of billions of non-sex-worker women on the planet:

"...being an “actual” sex worker is in no way a requirement for being called a whore, or for having whore stigma slammed in your face. Any woman who carries condoms might as well be a whore, right? Not even thirteen-year-old girls are exempt from whore stigma, as we learned from Hope Witsell’s suicide last year. Hope sexted a boy who betrayed her and sent her message all over the school — at which point she was punished severely, was socially ostracized, and killed herself."

We should drop the whole whore-stigma and it's evil twin, the "dirty old pervert man" -stigma. Regarding the latter, if old man buying groceries is not dirty, old man having sex with his wife is not dirty, young man buying sex is not dirty, what possibly could make the combination of the three "dirty"? With the abolition of these stigmas and their negative moral connotations from our minds (not, unfortunately, from the wider society yet), we can rejoice of any happiness that any couples get from any relationship for any motivations instead of sulking in "bad, bad, bad" moods in some cases. This also relieves people like me an Jinlin from the implicit burden of continuously presenting enough evidence that we are together for the traditionally "right" reasons (which we are) and not for some traditionally "bad" reasons (which should be okay as well).