You will be dominated....

(And not for the first time, pen in hand, list of topics I wish to post at the ready, do I stop everything, My Pulitzer but at the doorstep, to serve thee….)

With over twenty years of self-inflicted torment on the clock, my mind is but only sometimes…..clear.  I’ve learned that in time, with but the change of a mood my Dear China Wife will say “yes” when but only a day before she had said “no”.   I’ve learned the hard way that China Mother in Law simply yaps her gums to hear herself talk-a personality defect no doubt.   Yet one reinforced by the meek compliance of her husband, himself a very fine man.

In short I’ve adjusted. 

Well….almost.

Like a good Southern Man you see I come with certain cultural baggage.  The very poor habit of calling my wife “Woman” when feelings of exasperation rise to the surface.   Yet I consider myself liberal.  Some would say “meek”.  But I beg to differ.  My purported weakness is nothing but calculated retreat.   

I am a very strong believer in keeping ones powder dry for another day.   As I let my wife make 99% of the decisions, one may say I’ve failed.  Again, I beg to differ.  Rather, I’ve managed the fine art of being married to a Chinese Woman with a very, very strong personality.    One who has learned from here mom, unfortunately, how to treat a man. 

And I’ve still got my powder.

Yet China Wife is nothing if not cut from the fabric of Mom of China Wife.  To this day “she with all the answers” has yet to take my advice and go to the UN to solve all our worldly problems.  For she is all knowing.  Who needs insight when you already have an answer for everything?   Her ability to talk without saying anything is beyond reproach.   Just the other day while in a conversation with Tiger Wife, China Know it all Mother in Law, in a different room some twenty feet away still felt it immensely important to proffer an opinion I would neither listen to nor heed.

My brain has over time programmed itself to shut down when she opens her mouth and to reactivate once she is finished.  Nothing of value of missed.

I am very, very serious when I tell all you Young Bucks so blindly, crazily in love with China Girl that if you don’t know the deal with Future China Mother in Law than you are fucked.  

As of today this is the score with this ungodly beast:

No talking during dinner.  We should all pretend we are Monks at mealtime.

Her daughter 好辛苦。

I am useless.

No punishing the kids, either verbally or with a good whack on the head. (I stopped using switches last week, and leather belts the week before.)

My daughter made a big mistake marrying you.  She could’ve done better if she had simply stayed in China.   (Bigger house, more money…of course a husband with a smaller 小弟弟  comes into play here, and of course the kids would have been uglier). 

To paraphrase the aim of Mother in Law, “you are unworthy of being my daughter’s husband and though it’s been over twenty years, I will live till I’m 120, (or the year 2061) and thus continue to torment you till then.  Your family is of an unsuitable background and if my wife was to leave you tomorrow I would fully support it.”

So all you Boys thinking with your lower brain need to follow this simple rule of thumb:

Don’t marry an only child.  Don’t speak Chinese. (the better to not understand them when they belittle every ancestor you’ve had over the past 100 years), and most important of all, Laowai just needs to know  “is your mom going to understand and respect Western social hierarchy when she comes to the West”?

Think about that last question.  Just raising that question to China Girl displays ones lack of cultural understanding.  The Chinese love to mention 入乡随俗。  When in Rome, do as the Romans…..(future post).

But in reality, (and yeah, I’m more than qualified to know), it’s all 入乡 and absolutely no 随俗。  It’s perhaps the most hypocritical Chinese saying I know.   We as Westerners understand the obligation to try other things when overseas, or at least to make an effort to respect the cultural norms of our host country.  

The above may be hard to ask your wife.  In either English or Chinese.   Trust me; it’s far, very far from her mind.  She’s busy finding a hotel for a proper wedding banquet.    Neither one of you have “keeping China Mother in Law in Her Place” on your mind.  And even if you did how do you ask the question?

Still, laowai needs to spend time with China Know it All.  You just do!  You need to get a good strong sense of her qualities, before marriage to her daughter. 

Is she arrogant?   Overbearing?  Respectful of your future authority?   Do you sense she will interfere with your household at every turn?   Will she respect your decisionmaking?  You need to find these things out!    What is China Wife gonna say when you argue with China Mother in Law?  She gonna back you up?  Because at the end of the day, if you think it might be you against a billion people, drop China Girl and find someone else. 

I didn’t ask these questions and I pay the price every damn day. 

Too in love at the moment to really think this through?

Allow me to be clearer.  Someday your wife will cut her hair.  Someday all that great oral sex you received before marriage will come to an abrupt end.  Someday sex on the sofa will go by the wayside…..and eventually China Wife’s priorities will change.  You will become nothing but an afterthought.   Rather, her life will be consumed with buying another apartment, another German car to let everyone know how well she is doing.  She will spend her time thinking about which Chinese tutor to use.  Most likely it will be the one twenty miles from the house.   In short her focus will be on enhancing her own material status as well as the life of her children.  You will be but one of many, many small moons that orbit Jupiter.   And of course China Wife will be Jupiter.

She will want to make every decision in the house.

“You know I will get what I want”, I will often hear her sneer….

And what you want is Soccer Dad.  A guy delirious with joy when he gets laid every ten days.   A guy that will know his place in the hierarchy of the family.  

Well, laowai…..are you gonna be that guy?

A few days ago I was told a light was out in the garage.  I hadn’t noticed.  I changed it.  With a nice bright, environmentally safe light.  Done.   The next day China Wife comes in and says she’s not happy.  I don’t understand.  She tells me the light I changed in the garage is too bright, and doesn’t match the other, dimmer light.  (We have two lights in the garage.) 

She tells me she prefers the dimmer light, and to change the light I just changed the day before, to match the darker one.   I flatly say “no”.    However, I just couldn’t keep my Southern Man persona down.  It had to come out.  So for emphasis I added,

 “This is a decision I should make, not you”.   

China Mother in Law no happy hear this.

China Wife retorts right away,

“This is such a small decision, why can’t I have my way?”

I reply,

“I let you choose the car, I choose the lightbulb.”

This threw my wife into a rage.   China Mother in Law needed to be heard, so insults of my long dead ancestors ensued.   (Think about that for a moment…I have relatives dead 60 years and they are still being insulted??)

Everybody remember Jiang Qing? My China MiL is Jiang Qing reincarnated.  A shrill voice that won’t shut the fuck up.   Mao was no fool.   She got dumped for a reason.   (The Chairman can do what he wants.)  Think how many Jiang Qing’s there are in China today? 

Jiang Qing was bitter until the end.  Even on trial, faced by her accusers she showed little in the way of shame or remorse.   Pride swelled in her veins.  And more to the point, she just had to say something. 

Sometimes I think my family should be on a reality show in China.  A warning to others. 

“At least I’d make millions”, I think to myself. 

Instead, I imagine myself being the nail driven down by the hammer of Chinese society. 

I remained unmoved, however.

“If you make the big and small decisions, than what decisions can I make?” I add.

She has no answer for this.  Finally she and her mom both agree I’m “small minded”.  My wife has been trained by the best.  And she knows no other way to act.  She has seen neither her grandmother nor her mother ever act any other way towards Man.  When surrounded by logic, China Girl’s only retort is anger upon realization that no, you cannot always get your way.

When logic fails, what does China Girl do?  Simple.

你为什么不能让我？

Simple as that.   What she is really trying to say is simpler:

“Why can’t you just let me have my way?  I’m a girl.  Why can’t I have this Face?”

My answer would be even simpler. 

“Because marriage is a collaboration.  It’s not about one side dominating the other, and it isn’t zero sum.”

So they wait till I’m gone and change it themselves.

Sometimes I wonder if bad luck is simply the root of my angst.  Is it really so simple that I just got a one in a million Mother in Law from Hell?   Am I the only laowai out there with one of these?

I decide not.

I think back to Jiang Qing. 

There are probably 50 million men today in China that suffer from their own version of Jiang Qing.

A whiny, shrill voiced always right just can’t stop talking old lady.   To be ignored or buried alive.

And my biggest fear?  That my wife, despite my efforts will turn into one.

Meanwhile, my emotions towards Father in Law are mixed.  We’ve had our quarrels.  And I’ve seen him argue with the woman he calls his wife, with whom he’s probably not had sex with since the time of Nixon.  I wonder when he passes if his wife will be sad?  Will she cry?  To this day she addresses him as Mr. followed with his surname.   He addresses her as “teacher followed by her surname”.

So happiness with your China Wife relies on two things.  The personality of your China Mother in Law and the respect she has for Son in Law, and the willingness of China Wife to keep mom in line.   Respect cannot be one sided.  If China Wife refuses to put the reins on her mom, your marriage will suffer.  Simple as that.