正文
原文多图在这里http://www.guiyanggal.com/2007/07/10/what-makes-chinese-women-special/en/
Met up in Santa Cruz for a baby shower with a bunch of Marsha’s friends that she had met through a popular Chinese-language website. The celebration leapt from a beautiful house in Scotts Valley to a family-style BBQ joint to an impromptu BBQ at Santa Cruz University where sticks were used as cooking utensils.
(Interesting note here: baby showers are apparently not done in China — the term doesn’t even exist. Instead, in China, a celebration is done 100 days after the baby’s birth.)
Per the usual, the husbands made idle conversation while the women chattered back and forth in Mandarin. One with a paranoid bent of mind might think that they were chatting about the guys, but a quick question to Marsha dispelled any uncertainty:
Me: “The women don’t talk about the men while we’re together, do you?”
Marsha: “Oh, all the time.”
Me: “Oh, that’s one question I shouldn’t have asked.”
Along the same lines, sometimes the women will pretty obviously be referring to the men (i.e., saying our names and laughing hysterically). Yet, tragically, when I ask for a translation, Marsha gets a confused look on her face and says, “Oh, it really doesn’t translate.” Clearly, this is an incentive to learn Mandarin.
While we were at BBQ Saturday night a number of philosophical topics came up. One of these was “Which of the cast of Friends do you most like,” which I believe Plato and Aristotle debated. However, another one was “What is the major difference about Chinese women?”
The latter is, of course, an enormously loaded question, and any male with a basic capacity for self-preservation will either flee or dodge that question as quickly as possible.
However, in the discussion that followed, there were some interesting points raised by the various husbands:
* Chinese women seem to be able to balance femininity with toughness: a velvet lining wrapping a steel core. In public, they seem demure and sweet and nice, but at home it’s entirely different, and they are able to move back and forth between the different modes with nary a glitch. Marsha is very much like this: when we’re with friends she’s telling everyone, “Oh, Tim calls all the shots, he’s in the leadership position,” yet somehow as soon as we cross the doorway, she forgets that she has ever uttered those words, and instead I must bow to her will since “This is a communist household!”Of course, a communist household would be one in which the members shared equally, or at least had the pretense of sharing equally. So really it’s an imperial household, also an honored Chinese tradition.
* Chinese women know what they want. They have a vision, and a plan, and while they might not let you know exactly what that plan is, rest assured that you fit some part of it — if you didn’t, they would drop you like a hot potato.
* But, most of all, the key difference is bones. That is, Chinese women like bones, whereas women (and men!) of other nationalities tend to prefer their meat less encumbered by sharp and potentially lethal objects. For example, the Chinese prepare duck by simply slicing it every which way, carefully optimizing the number of spikes and caltrops that must be picked out of the meat. Perhaps this is why so many Chinese are so slender: they spend all their calories trying to pick out bone fragments.
Marsha:
The little gathering is fun and relaxing with husbands making fun of the wives, and wives teasing them back. However, being able to speak two languages does give us some advantage. Like Jasmine said:”It’s OK for them to make fun of us. But, when we make fun of them, they have NO idea what’s going on!” During the dinner, we were talking about some girl stuff. Robert (Jasmin’s husband) apparently heard something fishy and asked Jasmine to speak in English. Jasmine and us simply ignored him and the rest of the guys. “Not everything is translatable in Chinese!”
Speaking of the “imperial” household, it’s something brought up by James (Princess’s husband). I was talking to Tim about the rules and regulations in a communist household, James said “Why even bother with the pretense?! We are obviously living in an imperial household!”
James is cool guy, a guy who always gives you the most proper and vague answer possible, just like a lawyer. When the girls asked the guys the loaded question, Robert fled to the restroom. James gave us a very proper answer which sounded so good at that time but none of us could ever remember 5 min later. I was surprised that Tim was so brave that he actually provided a good answer. Later I found out he answered the question with an answer that were preciously discussed and agreed between us. So, he thought it was a safe answer anyway.
Met up in Santa Cruz for a baby shower with a bunch of Marsha’s friends that she had met through a popular Chinese-language website. The celebration leapt from a beautiful house in Scotts Valley to a family-style BBQ joint to an impromptu BBQ at Santa Cruz University where sticks were used as cooking utensils.
(Interesting note here: baby showers are apparently not done in China — the term doesn’t even exist. Instead, in China, a celebration is done 100 days after the baby’s birth.)
Per the usual, the husbands made idle conversation while the women chattered back and forth in Mandarin. One with a paranoid bent of mind might think that they were chatting about the guys, but a quick question to Marsha dispelled any uncertainty:
Me: “The women don’t talk about the men while we’re together, do you?”
Marsha: “Oh, all the time.”
Me: “Oh, that’s one question I shouldn’t have asked.”
Along the same lines, sometimes the women will pretty obviously be referring to the men (i.e., saying our names and laughing hysterically). Yet, tragically, when I ask for a translation, Marsha gets a confused look on her face and says, “Oh, it really doesn’t translate.” Clearly, this is an incentive to learn Mandarin.
While we were at BBQ Saturday night a number of philosophical topics came up. One of these was “Which of the cast of Friends do you most like,” which I believe Plato and Aristotle debated. However, another one was “What is the major difference about Chinese women?”
The latter is, of course, an enormously loaded question, and any male with a basic capacity for self-preservation will either flee or dodge that question as quickly as possible.
However, in the discussion that followed, there were some interesting points raised by the various husbands:
* Chinese women seem to be able to balance femininity with toughness: a velvet lining wrapping a steel core. In public, they seem demure and sweet and nice, but at home it’s entirely different, and they are able to move back and forth between the different modes with nary a glitch. Marsha is very much like this: when we’re with friends she’s telling everyone, “Oh, Tim calls all the shots, he’s in the leadership position,” yet somehow as soon as we cross the doorway, she forgets that she has ever uttered those words, and instead I must bow to her will since “This is a communist household!”Of course, a communist household would be one in which the members shared equally, or at least had the pretense of sharing equally. So really it’s an imperial household, also an honored Chinese tradition.
* Chinese women know what they want. They have a vision, and a plan, and while they might not let you know exactly what that plan is, rest assured that you fit some part of it — if you didn’t, they would drop you like a hot potato.
* But, most of all, the key difference is bones. That is, Chinese women like bones, whereas women (and men!) of other nationalities tend to prefer their meat less encumbered by sharp and potentially lethal objects. For example, the Chinese prepare duck by simply slicing it every which way, carefully optimizing the number of spikes and caltrops that must be picked out of the meat. Perhaps this is why so many Chinese are so slender: they spend all their calories trying to pick out bone fragments.
Marsha:
The little gathering is fun and relaxing with husbands making fun of the wives, and wives teasing them back. However, being able to speak two languages does give us some advantage. Like Jasmine said:”It’s OK for them to make fun of us. But, when we make fun of them, they have NO idea what’s going on!” During the dinner, we were talking about some girl stuff. Robert (Jasmin’s husband) apparently heard something fishy and asked Jasmine to speak in English. Jasmine and us simply ignored him and the rest of the guys. “Not everything is translatable in Chinese!”
Speaking of the “imperial” household, it’s something brought up by James (Princess’s husband). I was talking to Tim about the rules and regulations in a communist household, James said “Why even bother with the pretense?! We are obviously living in an imperial household!”
James is cool guy, a guy who always gives you the most proper and vague answer possible, just like a lawyer. When the girls asked the guys the loaded question, Robert fled to the restroom. James gave us a very proper answer which sounded so good at that time but none of us could ever remember 5 min later. I was surprised that Tim was so brave that he actually provided a good answer. Later I found out he answered the question with an answer that were preciously discussed and agreed between us. So, he thought it was a safe answer anyway.
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