Single? Get a foreign wife!
Lately, Chinese media has been publishing a lot of articles about Chinese men married to or dating foreign women. This and this are just a couple of examples that were shared on WeChat this past week. Searching 洋媳妇 (foreign wife) in Baidu News gives over 10,000 results. Many of the articles emphasize that the Chinese man was from a rural background or didn’t have much money, but the foreign woman didn’t care about this because he was a good man.
But there are also foreign women married to rich and famous Chinese men. Actor Liu Ye and his French wife Anaïs Martane.
I can’t help but wonder, why this “flood” of articles about AMWF couples? If they were blog posts I would not be surprised, but news on mainstream media… with everything that is happening in the world, is the fact that a woman from country X married a Chinese man newsworthy?
Could this be a campaign orchestrated by the Chinese government? After all, what Chinese media publishes is often “inspired” by directives coming from the high spheres. A few years ago it was very common to come across articles shaming single Chinese women: you are a leftover woman, don’t be too picky, settle down and get married as soon as possible, women need a husband and kids to be happy. That narrative seems to have been exhausted now, but there are still a lot of single men in China.
I can imagine the thinking heads of the high spheres’ trail of thoughts: “We have shamed the single women for years but things haven’t changed much. What can we do? We can’t afford having so many single men! They have a lot of potential for trouble!”. Then someone’s idea center lighted up: “Let’s convince them that getting a foreign wife is easy! We kill two birds with one stone! We don’t need to harass single women anymore and the men would have hopes!”.
Daniel Wu and Lisa Selesner. Actor Daniel Wu is considered one of the hottest men in China and probably has a lot of money too, so it’s not like he couldn’t get a Chinese wife…
In those articles, foreign women are pictured as beautiful, loving young women who only marry for love and don’t care about anything else. One of the articles I linked in the first paragraph is about an American woman who married a security guard. This 24 year old girl from Tajikistan married a construction worker and lives in the workers’ temporary houses. The underlying message seems to be: “A Chinese woman wouldn’t marry you if you didn’t have a home, a car and a high paying job, these foreigners are much better”. Then there is the other side of the spectrum: men who bought a wife from a poor country also get articles telling their story (is buying a wife even legal?).
If you are thinking about travelling abroad to “fish” a wife (because some articles make it seem it’s as easy as that) this news site tells you the 15 countries with the most beautiful women, so you can narrow down your destination (the title of the article is: “The 15 countries with the most beautiful women. Do you want to marry a foreign wife? Go to these countries”). It made me remember a story from my first year in Beijing. One of my classmates was Japanese. For some reason I never found out, he thought Spanish women were very open about sex. He honestly thought that if he went to Spain he would be able to hook up with any hottie he met on the street.
Being on an AMWF relationship myself, of course I support other intercultural couples and hope they become more and more common. But this sudden explosion of “amwf news” in the Chinese media makes me suspicious that there are ulterior motives behind. Or maybe I’m thinking too much and it’s just that news outlets don’t know what to publish anymore and present any a-bit-out-of-the-ordinary personal story as “news”!
I don’t think you’re thinking too much about it. Not sure about the “directives” bit, but wouldn’t discredit it. Whether it’s manipulated or legit, these types of stories seem to also percolate when you hear people chat about them down “on the street.” My wife read that one with the construction worker and thought it was interesting a little while ago. I’m with you, though. Why is this news?
Exactly! I can’t imagine a news article in Spain about an American woman married to a Spanish construction worker or a farmer. Unless they did something extraordinary apart from the fact of being married…
Nice. Time to get C a suit. He might have a future on some strange CCTV reality show – how to catch a foreigner!
Maybe they’re trying to plant the seed before the impending not-enough-Chinese-girls-in-the-dating-pool-because-of-the-one-child-policy crisis hits. China needs something like 10 million more girls. I think four things are coming. Super easy visas for single women under 30, major cultural pressure against WMAF couples, higher cost for marriage (house, car, cash) and more prostitution – gotta provide an outlet. 10+ million poor, can’t get married, can’t immigrate to the city, can’t get rich, no hope men is a recipe for revolution/revolt. For real.
I always make jokes with my wife about our hypothetical future children. If they’re boys, I will start making comments about how sexy/cool/amazing/way better than Asian/funny white women are starting around the age of 11. Why? Because I don’t want to buy my son a house, that’s why. Houses are way too expensive. Maybe I could leave some white girl porn around the house at an impressionable age. I don’t know. Houses here are just too expensive not to try all possible angles.
Daughters can marry anyone they like.
Do you think that will work?
Probably not. Better start saving a billion dollars.
Hahaha, C. has a lot a suits, he has to work in them :P
I can’t find it now, but a few weeks ago I read an article saying that the gender gap in China is smaller than previously reported because many families had girls and kept them, but just didn’t register them. Even if that is true, there would still be many more men than women.
Easy visas for young women? Ha! That would be fun. But I think unlikely. More pressure against WMAF couples would NOT be fun. Chinese women can marry whoever the hell they want.
I hope by the time your hypothetical future children are of marriageable age houses are not part of the wedding pack! Or that your sons find women that don’t care about that.
Oh, it’s totally a campaign. But they really should have started it in the 70s and 80s, with dramas and comedies about the awesomeness of foreign women. They could have indoctrinated the young men much more effectively if they’d started earlier.
That would have meant they had an incredible capacity for foreseeing problems… and they are not exactly known for that hahaha.
it looks like there’s something going on – I got approached by one of the big magazines from HK for interview and photo shoot as part of ‘mixed marriages’. too bad the timing was bad so we can’t attend :-(
I remember sometimes Sing would show me news like that but to me that’s weird :D
Were they focusing on AMWF couples, or Asian woman and foreign man were ok too? It would have nice to see you on the magazine! :D
mixed in general, too but I couldn’t make it :(
Sí que es raro, sí. Siempre pensé que a los chinos no les interesan, ni les atraen mucho las extranjeras. Y no consigo atisbar que interés puede tener el gobierno chino en que sus hombres se casen con extranjeras, a no ser que sea para acelerar la conquista del planeta Tierra.
En lo que no coincido es en lo que los chinos consideran tíos buenos chinos. Por favor, esos actores y cantantes repeinados, con trajes de tejido brillante que no tienen ni medio bofetón. Los chinos guapos caminan por la calle. Sobre todo en el norte, cerca de Rusia, eso sí que son bellezones.
Tienen interés porque hay muchos más hombres chinos que mujeres chinas. Y tener un montón de hombres solteros no por elección, sino porque no encuentran esposa, es un marrón y un foco de revoluciones (ya pasó en el siglo XVIII o XIX!).
Pues a mí Liu Ye (el de la primera foto) me parece bien majo, jajaja. Eso sí, esos cantantes chinos y coreanos jovencitos que yo al verlos no sé si son chicos o chicas… pa mí no.
¿Qué dice Charlie como hombre chino? ¿Qué piensan en general los chinos de las extranjeras? (Excepto de tí, claro)
Hay un foro chino de “chinos con chicas extranjeras” donde los miembros suben fotos de sus novias y esposas para presumir. Hay de todo. Pero como todos los foros de internet, es bastante superficial (“esta es guapa”, “esta es fea”). Yo creo que no es que a los chinos no les gusten las extranjeras, sino que la mayoría nunca ha tenido contacto con extranjeros y no se plantean una relación ni en términos hipotéticos porque lo ven como algo que nunca puede suceder.
Yeah I believe it is some kind of campaign. One Chinese guy here who is married to a German for many years got also approached just recently by an online magazine for some story…
My wife read also that more and more such articles are popping up in diffrent forums even, oh well lets see what will happen :)
Not sure much will happen, haha. Maybe the bought wives from poorer countries will be more common…
Its a combination of all the above.
1) there are too many Chinese men vs Chinese women, period. Even if they all paired off, there will be millions of single Chinese men.
2) Chinese women are more money and asset focused than foreign women.
3) for every Chinese man with a white woman, there are hundreds of white women with a Chinese woman.
*white men with Chinese women
Yes, I agree. If this campaign fails, what will the next one be? Encourage those men to become monks??
It is very interesting to read, especially the construction women story. Foreign wife or not, a wife is a wife and partner a partner. As the others said, maybe there is not enough local Chinese women. Or they are just not a good match and there are standards issues.
In theory the problem is that, as there less women than men, women have more options and choose the men with more money, better positions, etc. So the poorest men are left with no options at all.
Another interesting post Marta.
Thank you Sue!
The ‘mail order brides’ are quite common in Taiwan with most brides being from Vietnam, China, and Indonesia [from why I hear.] One of my friends works as an English teacher in a town here in Taiwan where most are farmers and he told me that over 1/2 of his students’ moms are from a country other than Taiwan.
The Taiwan government even offers free Chinese classes for foreign wives. I went to one class and sat in the back, but I was singled out and given special attention by the teacher because I was the only Western woman in the class. He even came and talked to me during the break. I could write a whole blog post about that class, but I will stop here.
Hey, you should write that post! It must have been an uncomfortable situation but interesting nonetheless…
I didn’t know Taiwan had so many mail order brides. Is there a big gender gap like in mainland China?
Well, here in Taiwan the men also outnumber the women but the imbalance is not ridiculous. The main problem is that many Taiwanese women are choosing to stay single for life rather than be burdened with the duties/obligations of a traditional family. This is especially true of the women who are highly educated and financially independent and have trouble finding a worthy man for marriage (women tend to marry up the socioeconomic ladder). This phenomenon is seen all across East Asia, by the way.
http://www.economist.com/node/21526329
Very interesting article! I noticed it was written 5 years ago. I think divorce is very common in China now among 30 somethings and younger.
If those traditional views of marriage don’t change, educated women will continue preferring not to marry. Why would you leave everything you worked so hard for to become the servant of a man and the “property” of his family? No, thank you…
You may have heard about this, but one Taiwanese woman decided to marry herself. (-:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/taiwan/8080685/Taiwanese-woman-to-marry-herself.html
Well… this is a bit too much. I thought marriage involved 2 people xD
WHOAAAA!!! So interesting!!! I can’t believe there are so many articles being written about this!! I love the mental image you gave me about the higher ups at the PRC gov wondering about what to flush through the media next. Maybe they think: there are more men than women, we need to figure out a solution for them to get married…!!!
MANY of my Japanese/Chinese friends thought that Americans have sex all the time and hooking up with an American girl would be easy. I think it’s the image that American women have in Hollywood movies…
Also on that list of most beautiful foreign wives, America is ranked no.12. I think it’s odd to categorize any American as “American” since we’re all immigrants in this country. Ironically, California is probably 30% Chinese by now so the list must be including those females too, right?
I might have told this anecdote before but I will again. When I was in Beijing, my friend (also from Spain) started dating a Korean guy. That guy’s roommate (Korean, too) was very rude to my friend at the beginning and after a couple of months he started being friendlier. When she asked what happened at the beginning, he said he thought all western women were dirty hookers only interested in casual sex and changing to the next guy, and thought she was going to dump his friend and hurt him. When she asked why he thought western women were like that, he replied that because of the movies he had watched. PORN western movies. HELLOOOOOO~~
Interestingly, researchers have recently found China’s “missing girls”. In other words, the girls that are assumed to be missing as a result of the one-child policy and the preference for boys are in fact alive and well — they have not been aborted or killed soon after birth. These girls have simply been unregistered to conceal their existence from the family planning authorities. So, the much-talked about gender imbalance in China doesn’t actually exist.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/30/researchers-may-have-found-many-of-chinas-30-million-missing-girls/?utm_term=.aaea46ff8b5d
Yes! That is the article I mentioned above, thanks for the link. It’s still not conclusive, though, but the gap is probably smaller than thought before.
And there is something else about this. You probably remember (as I do) many articles and reports about the massacre of female fetuses and babies that was happening in China. Heck, I even remember pictures with supposedly baby girl corpses in the middle of the street. So what was all that and where did it come from??
The killing of baby girls probably happened, but I suspect the practice was not nearly as widespread as reported in the media. From what I understand, the unwanted girls were more likely to have been abandoned rather than killed.
I just read your comment above. I think you were referring to the article I referenced.
I thought I commented but it appears that was just in my head! I found this really interesting, I wonder if it is a campaign, thanks for getting me thinking! Happy New Year :-)
Happy new year to you too! And yes, I am convinced it is a campaign xD
I was one of the early adopters…married in 1982 at the age of 18 to a Japanese man from a remote island.
“Early adopter”, that’s a good one. (-:
Definitely a campaign. Good read. Feel free to check out my blog :)
International dating/marriage seems to be growing because more people want someone who is different.
In fact, my WordPress blog is similar to this. Like myself, I want to see more American or Western men going to Colombia, Ukraine, the Philippines, or another foreign country and fall in love with foreign women.
There are more beautiful (inside and out) women overseas than there are in your country.
I heard people also kidnap ladies from the City in China, to take them back to the countryside and force them to be wives.
There is a movie about that called Blind Mountain, I didn’t manage to watch it yet. I don’t have statistics but I’d think that is getting increasingly rarer. I did read though that many rural men “import” brides from poorer countries like Vietnam.