你怎么把我们的一个中国女孩儿,骗到美国去了。
ni zenme ba women de yi ge zhongguo nvhai'er pian dao meiguo qu le. How did you trick one of our Chinese girls into going to America. This is the first thing people say when they learn I married a woman with Chinese citizenship. When a friend says it, it is simply a slightly uncomfortable joke. When a stranger says it, it is a significantly more uncomfortable joke. At first, I thought that this was slightly xenophobic. Then I learned that this really has nothing to do with nationality (other than that it makes the saying slightly more fantastic). It is also said when two Chinese people get married. So instead of suggesting anything about foreigners, this phrase proffers the rather more unsettling notion that Chinese people have a fairly low opinion of women, as the reverse is never said. Are women really that easy to "trick"? I think not. In a country with rampant corruption and dangerously "fake" goods, I find women to be incredibly shrewd. Certainly not silly or thick enough to be "tricked" into marrying anyone. It's kind of insulting, both to the women themselves, and the people who marry them. That's sad.
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About TimAs you can see elsewhere on this webpage, I conduct research on ethnic minorities in western China. This blog offers semi-academic musings on the minutiae of daily life out here--the sort of information otherwise destined for footnotes. Categories |