"I want a married man".....

She’s tall and dark, with the long hair to match.   She likes using that SW that is all the rage in China that helps China Girl look lighter than she is.   She’ll talk in a matter of fact way.  About China Guy taking her and her friends out to the club, spending their wads on a table and booze.   But China Girl goes home alone.

She gets harassed by China Guys.  She blocks them, but never without a warning.

Over the past ten years she has transformed from a mere college student(I didn’t realize I was pretty until I was in University), to having to simply say to China Guy(“you need to change your target”, cause it won’t be me).

China Guy has tried to “pick her up” at the real estate office, and even simply while walking down the street, exiting the front gate of her apartment.  She was offered a job in Shanghai while simply window shopping.  “They wanted to take photos of my legs”, she exclaimed excitedly.

Once she answered the phone during a casual walk only to be met with silence on the other end.  What did she do?  Well, she didn’t hang up.  Instead, she simply told the fellow on the other end,

“Catch your breath and think what you want to say.  Then call me again.  Or text.  I promise I won’t hang up.”

She nonchalantly talks about the luxury cars she’s ridden in.  She has a preference for the Land Rover, the newer, sleeker versions of course.   She mentions how once the son of a rich man brought 2 laowai with him to the pub to impress her.

Neither of the above had a chance of course.

China Girl wants a married man. 

I know this because she told me.   Only a few months ago actually.   

Her mother(like half the women in Chengdu) owns a hot pot shop.  It does well.  Her mom was married and pregnant before she was 19.   This particular China Girl was born during a rain storm while her dad was out gambling.   (Oh, and you win the lottery if you guessed she and her mom are super tight!)

Why this particular China Girl isn’t married is beyond me.  But maybe she’s just smarter.  She’s seen plenty.   Her best friend, no slouch herself, desperately wanted a baby.  She married.   Not four months into marriage she’s having an affair with some lucky guy.  

Many of us have given China Girl a bad rap.

Gold digger.  你没钱不要理我Control freak.  去哪里？Paranoid and suspicious.   你在外面和谁见面呢？

China Girl see’s Men(not just China Man) for what he is.  A cad wanting sex and a good time more than anything.  And these types of men are all over China.  The greatest irony in China is when a woman knows she can have a man, she thusly does not want one.  The same logic follows for marriage.  I have come across several women that duly married when they were supposed to.  And I have come across a few that simply laid out their future plans as if talking about a future earnings report.

I met one lady with perpetually oily skin and a pimple filled face, fairly endowed but rapidly gaining weight simply state to us that “she was getting married next year”.

Her Scottish boss, always amazed to hear her state this, loved broaching the topic in front of us at parties.

“Hey Jennie, tell me again your plans for Marriage?”

Problem?

She had no boyfriend!

Rather, so all knowing was she of China Man, and his own unique societal pressures to marry, this young lady knew she had the pick of the lot.   She could probably even pick the day of her marriage before she had even met “The One”.

I met yet another, with a 17 year old son, who had divorced after her first year of marriage simply tell me,

“Marrying in China is the easiest thing in the world, but I want to go abroad now.  So I need to marry a foreigner.”

Chinese women are jaded for a reason.  They understand the ugliness of Chinese Society better than most.  They know what makes it tick.  Conveniently ignoring the fact that they themselves are a major part of the problem. 

“Just say no” never comes to China Girl’s mind when she’s hungry, or wants a free drink in the club.  

Or a ride home in that Tesla.

So China Girl eventually got a new job in Guangzhou, along with an apartment.  She was to help market a new tea brand.  Before that she was a cosmetics sales lady travelling around the country.  Both ventures failed, and somehow she found herself with a divorced China Man in his 40’s, about whom she bragged could grow facial hair.

She of course moved in.   They lasted about a year.  I’m sure he loved showing her off to his friends.  And I’m just as sure he didn’t know about her former laowai lover.  And if he did, he sure didn’t know they lived together for a year.

Her former laowai lover kept his distance.  Surely soon she’d announce her engagement with a baby on the way, he thought.  

But nothing ever came.

After the longest absence emails began to trickle in.  Words of angst and hard earned wisdom filled the page.

“The happiest time of my life was with you,” she would tell her long distance laowai.

There was no marriage.  No baby.  No happy mom in Sichuan. 

“Being with a Chinese has its pros and cons”, she would say.   Knowing full well she was thinking of my distaste for karaoke.   

Finally she spilled the beans.

“He wants to get married…and I don’t”.   

“Why wouldn’t China Guy not want to marry her?”, I thought to myself.  

“We argue more than we used to.”

The whole while China Girl’s no longer that sweet 23 year old I once knew.  The one with no understanding of what jet lag was.

Upon explaining to her, she simply raises her head and says,

“I always wondered why you slept so early”, she would say with a shrug.

Now she’s a hardened thirty year old.  With her own damn business.  Past that preferred age of 25. Not as marriageable as before no doubt.   But Hot Legs never die I guess.   Still hordes of recent college grads flood into South China every year, many simply wanting financial security no matter how they come across it.

A punkass laowai wumao once asked in the comments section of one of my posts,

“Are you here to take”?

(What makes a laowai a wumao?  The goal of finally feeling like a Somebody?)

Well, children, China Girl is here to take.   She isn’t here to be your soul mate.  She doesn’t want to know your family history(thank God), and she can fucking care less what University you graduated from.   What’s your job, and oh, are you hungry, cause I’m starvvvviiinnggg!

So now China Girl is alone.  With a thriving business somewhere in Guangzhou.  Yet again she sent me pix of her attending some close friends’ wedding.  And I must say China Girl looked nice.   I can only imagine how many dudes at the celebration were intimidated by her air of confidence and “don’t even talk to me cause I’m too focused on my own life to give a damn who you are” look.

When I was last in China she asked me if could come to Guangzhou.  I said no.  Then she asked if she could come to Shenzhen to see me.  I remember when she used to do just that.  Muttering along the lines “if my guy friends knew I was boarding a train after work to come all the way down to Shenzhen to see a laowai how they’d get angry.”

I told her I was in North China.

Then she point blank asked if was going to be living again in China “like I used to” anytime soon?  That is, if I’d have an apartment once again and she could be with a man who had absolutely no intention of marrying her.

“I could be carefree again”, she said.

“So many men in Guangzhou want to marry you”, I opined.

“I don’t want to marry,” was all she said.

Her mom must be devastated to realize her 30 something daughter probably isn’t getting married anytime soon.   Her only child.   How does one adjust to the news that everything you’d been looking forward to, the next “big event” in your life simply isn’t going to take place?    And I’m talking about China Girl’s mom!   It’s like a soothsayer telling you a long time ago you would indeed win the lottery, only on the day of the event to be abruptly told, “lottery cancelled”.

China Girl makes it hard. 

“I want to buy a house in Guangzhou,” she says.

“It’s just so expensive!”

Like many a China Girl, this one probably realizes with marriage comes obligation and focus not just on one’s business anymore, but on China Husband’s family.  And well, you really have to be in love with  someone to put up with that don’t you?  

And isn’t marriage in China simply a formality to what is really expected of China Girl?  Making everyone happy and having a baby!!!

China Girl has probably simply figured out that marriage precludes one from living the lifestyle China Girl is accustomed to.  At least for the next couple of years.  And kudos to China Girl, just maybe the tens of millions of them out there that simply don’t want to fall into that trap.  Not now.  Not yet.  At least not until they are damn ready to have their own life put on hold.  Because marriage for China Girl is a tacit acceptance of getting knocked up, taking care of China Husband, and taking care of China Husband’s parents.  None of China Girl’s aspirations will matter. 

(And what if China Husband’s parents move in!!!)

And maybe just possibly she remembers that for thousands of years most Chinese women did not even have names, so guess what China Man and China Man’s Family, this is what revenge feels like!

Could it be China Girl just figures she’s a long fucking way from wanting to put up with all that crazy shit?

No wonder China Girl wants a married man.