Pretty Lotus Flower' and I have been married now for 17 years. After spending
some time living and working in Taiwan, during which period I frequently
found myself a swim in dark-haired Asian beauties, I reluctantly
returned to the USA and met my wife-to-be in California, ironically
enough. Before that, during undergrad days in Berkeley (late 60s, thanks
to the Vietnam War), I had been totally immersed in Asian Studies
and was keenly interested in Asian-American cultural affairs. With
much knowledge of the 'iron-fist-in-velvet-glove' nature of
Chinese women under my academic belt (SIC--no humorous
allusions intended, I assure you!), and fully disabused of the notorious
Guai-Loh misapprehension that a Chinese woman is simply a
demure, subservient, giggling 'shiao-jie', this ruddy lad of
Irish ancestry sallied forth on several dates with my future wife, fully
expecting to be able to hold his own in the unevenly matched, gender
juxtaposed joust that is cross-cultural romance. As a happily
unmarried, red-blooded 41 year-old bachelor, permanence was really
the last thing on my mind. One day, however, I made the fatal mistake of
blinking briefly. Next thing I knew, I was being borne along, bound hand
and foot to a long bamboo pole, through the dense forest of engagement
towards some sort of alter (was that unmistakable sound a classical 'Er-Hu'
stringed instrument droning in the background?). [Note: She
Who Must be Obeyed' had scored her first victory.]
We continued seeing each other, but
shortly thereafter, I was informed that the coming year was an
inauspicious period for marriage, implying an accelerated trajectory
towards the presumed marital target ("Your intentions
are serious, aren't they?"). Holy
Mother MacCree! Things were heating up, and perhaps not unpredictably it
was not long before we were both flying along in a super-cruise flight
profile towards Loh-Pah and Lo-Gungdom. Thus began the
series of cultural shocks that several lifetimes of Asian cultural study
and all the help of the Eight Immortals could not have prepared
me for. Just prior to our marriage, having had a number of friends from
the PRC studying at UC Berkeley, I had prided myself in use of a wok and
preparation of such things as Fukien style fishballs, won-tons, and so
forth. I even measured rice cooking water with my knuckles! My usual
undergrad dinner fare was rice with 'something over it', and after I met
her parents, I proposed to prepare a traditional Fukien family style
meal for everyone, complete with 5-spice seasoning and the works. The
dinner went off unremarkably well....in fact, a lot more unremarkably
than I had expected. Both m'dear and my future in-laws seemed to be
intensely focused on getting through the meal and there wasn't much
conversation ('Ah! They like it', I thought!). Although I
didn't hear about exactly how badly my occidental
culinary wizardry had crashed & burned in her parents' minds until some
years after the event, my wife's gracious insistence thereafter
upon doing ALL the cooking was strangely gratifying. So much
for my vaunted Irish XY pride!
Further cultural imbroglios reoccurred
with fairly regular consistency after that opening round. I quickly
found that I was doomed to a lifetime of stumbling on brooms, rakes,
hoes, and other long handled yard implements in the garage, since
hanging them up with the bristles (tines, blades, et al) upwards brought
much bad luck! My cozy study, which due to its aggregation of climbing
gear, surfboards, books, aviation life support equipment, archeological
artifacts, aircraft ejection seats, and many more acquired objects of
male fascination, more closely resembled the tight confines of a
junkyard dog's house, would repeatedly take direct hits from applied
Feng Shui for many years. Imagine my surprise when I one day began
to shave and found an octagonal mirror that had seemingly materialized
on the wall opposite the sink...or the time I found a symbolic Feng
Shui charm placed just so near the study's window....or the small
rectangular mirror facing the entrance.....or the plasticized horse
figure.....or the constant exhortations to orient my desk to face the
door, rather than face away from it. Well, I think I've made my point
sufficiently here.
There was the most recent
circumstance, after years of visiting Molokai, when we purchased a plot
of land on the island upon which to build a cottage for upcoming
retirement. The sale almost didn't come about due to the fact that the
surveyor's map appeared to indicate that the plot's number was....shudder!...24
(Bu hau! Fortunately,
the indistinct blur on the surveyor's map turned out to be Plot # 22).
And there was the appearance of a cookbook titled "200 Delicious
Recipes for SPAM" on the kitchen table, one day.
I could go on and on...about the
difficulty in buying gifts for my petite little
Dragon Lady ("The color contrasts badly
with my skin tones, dear!")...the fact that my gift oranges for
relatives at Lunar New Year didn't have any leaves on them
(horrors!)...the fact that since I am by lunar astrological
determinations a 'fire dog' with two Siberian Huskies, we therefore live
in a Gow Dow...the
regular complaints about giant-sized driver's seat adjustments made to
m'dear's Toyota Camry...the admonishments that "You Guai-Loh use the
fancy woks...we use frying pans!" and another that one doesn't
enter a store without buying something before leaving...the reluctance
to buy Moon Festival cakes because the prices were too high...but what's
the need? Point, match, and game to the 5 foot tall, dark-haired love of
my life whose outlook on everything is about as easy to read as God's
Mah Jong strategies (NOT!). And you want ultimate ironies? Try this:
She's the devout Christian and I am the Godless Zen Buddhist lunatic!
One very important lesson has emerged
(for me) from our nearly two decades of married life, and that is that
when one's bride has spent the first 20 years of her life in Old China
and the next 20 in the United States, all bets are off. I still to this
day don't know which half of her Yang/Yin personality I'm dealing with
at any given moment: the traditional, demure celestial daughter, or the
avant-garde 'move-aside' modern woman! Talk about keeping 'em off
balance, disoriented, and seriously handicapped in any marital 'issue'
(large or small) that arises! Never was the Irish Republican Army as
sorely outclassed by the Ulster Constabulary as this lad is by the
Emperor's great-great-great grand daughter!
However....lest anyone think I am a
pompous, vain, and self-centered ingrate, let me qualify the
foregoing testimony with a firm avowal of the deepest love and respect
for the amazing wisdom and insights my sweet wife continually offers
(usually much needed) to me as mid-course corrections. Being a
fully vested, card-carrying, wild-eyed Irish romantic, I readily
acknowledge that without her pragmatic internal discipline and
frequent applications of her great internalized strength holding me
securely to the beautiful green & blue earth we all inhabit, I would
probably have long-since blasted off for the unknown depths of coldest,
deepest space (and consequently found myself in bottomless interstellar
poo-poo and out of air)! Despite all the hard knocks my male
ego has taken in the course of these 17 years of marriage, I have
learned an important lesson: that women (of Asian ancestry) truly do
hold up half the sky!
Cheers,
Chris Carey,
Celtic haole first class
