A Mafan

Wan shi Sui yi!

My opinion on language is that you have two main parts: Grammar, and vocabulary. If you want a building, you have to have the right materials, and good quality materials. But a pile of good quality materials doesn't make a building. So the materials (vocabulary) have to be put together in the right order, the right structure (grammar). I'd say you need to start with learning grammar basics. Learn the three "de" markers (的 地 得) and the different ways they are used. (possessive, adjective marker, adverb marker). Learn the 把 pattern. Understand how a Chinese sentence breaks out. They don't put separations in, so you have to learn to read them: a single character is usually a function word or pronoun; a two character combination is the most common way you see verbs, objects, nouns; a three character combination is usually proper name; a four character combination is usually a phrase or saying (often idiomatic, chengyu 成语） But don't bother studying chengyus until after you are already fluent in Chinese. Most people don't use them that often in daily life. You learn that structure while learning your basic, survival level Chinese. I think the best way to do that is to read children's books, or something equally simple in natural language. Once you have that down, you start adding in vocabulary. learn all the nouns and verbs you can, and start using them in simple SVO sentences. Sure, Chinese has some more complicated sentences, but most of their complexity is in adding descriptors. The hardest thing in a long Chinese sentence is figuring out which subject or object is being modified...it can change the meaning of the sentence. But you must, must, must, must, must (I can't emphasize this enough) find a way to have fun studying Chinese. If it feels like work, you'll never get anywhere. Find some cartoons that you can enjoy. Find a television serial you think is interesting. Get into Chinese music. I can guarantee that they have enough variations of music that you can find just about any style you want. So maybe there aren't many songs that would classify as "ska", but I know of at least a dozen reggae style songs, and more than 50 jazz songs, bunches of blues, etc. These different songs are scattered across more than a dozen different singers...in the Chinese pop culture, the emphasis is on the person, not the style. That frees singers to do all sorts of different styles on one disc, and they do. But I digress. The point is, you can get youtube videos of all sorts of songs and use the pause button to look up every character. Then watch/listen/sing along once a day. You will be learning Chinese, but in a fun way! Or watch the television serial, and pause and look up every character, work on it until you understand at least 80%. The first episode may take you a week or more to get through. But the characters will use the same phrases, vocabulary and grammar. The 2nd episode will go faster, and each episode will get faster as you go, to the point that by the time you get to the last 3-4, you will be able to watch at near full speed. Maybe. It depends on your progress. But then whatever you do, make flashcards. And when you find yourself with nothing to do (waiting for an appointment, using the bathroom, waiting on your wife/husband to get ready to go, etc), pull out the flashcards and run through them. You don't have to test yourself hard, just glance at the Chinese character, then turn it over and look at the pronunciation and English. The point is repetition. Mindless repetition will get it into your head faster/easier than racking your brains to memorize it. Seriously. Learn how to write characters, just until you learn stroke order so that you can look characters up in a dictionary. They use the first stroke or the main radical to classify their characters in a dictionary, and you must understand that to look characters up. And you must look characters up to understand them. Finally, don't worry so much about tones. Do your best to memorize, learn, and use them. But they are one element of pronunciation. Some chinese have a problem with th and s. So they may get "sink" and "think" pronounced wrong. But context lets you know which one they mean. Nearly every Chinese pronounces "Thanksgiving" as "Sexgiving". Do you have any problem understanding what they really mean? No. Chinese without the tones is the same way. Context will help avoid 80% of the problem. But you must listen to how they speak, you must try to model their flow, and inflection. Even if you know the tones, if you use English inflection to emphasize a character, you will sound funny to them (and get teased). Any questions or problems? I am always willing to be a language mentor. I have a few websites that I can share that help people with study.

The Chinese teachers I've had call live-in Chinese teacher a "long-haired dictionary"... chang toufa cidian 长头发词典

The gender/power imbalance already exists. The impact is already showing. But what seems to be happening the most is only the alpha males end up with a wife and multiple girlfriends. the 1% vs the 99% in sexual politics. Men are also turning to foreign brides from the even poorer nations like Burma, North Korea, and Vietnam. And where the imbalance seems to be worst (in the countryside), they are actually purchasing kidnapped/forced brides in greater numbers. David, the way I understand it, women are raising their standards from a "sour grapes" viewpoint. If their standards are so high no man can measure up, then it isn't that no man actually wants them, right? Just like the guys in "Say Anything" who are so smart about love, but are sitting alone outside the 7/11 on a Friday night by choice.

Full article. Full text: Ironically, the more desperate a "shengnyu" is, probably the more adamant she will be about her standards. For two reasons: 1) Finding the best husband and best life will justify her years of waiting. It will show her parents (and most importantly, herself) that it wasn't that she was single so long because there was something wrong with her, but there was something wrong with all the "inferior" men she was meeting/dating. Self-justification is one of the most powerful sources of self-deception there is. 2) No one wants to be taken advantage of. No woman wants to be seen as desperate. The point of a big diamond (or other jewelry) and flowers and LV/Hermes purses and ostentatious weddings is that a woman feels valued and loved by having someone willing to "waste" money on her. Possibly not every woman feels this way, but it also may be that any woman that doesn't display this tendency has something else going on, like being so hurt/burned previously that all they care about is not getting hurt again, even if it means accepting a lower status in life. IMHO, based on general observation.

You forgot "GLF" and "L1KFB". I got 3 of your references: T, T, CR. Not sure about OCD or 3GD...my wife jokes she has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but I don't think that's what you meant. I don't think the US' treatment of its citizens and lawbreakers is unscrutinized by the world at all. Anyone can criticize, because no govt is perfect, no legal system is perfect. The difference is in the US you always have the right to seek redress from the govt. And while the govt can and often does stonewall, Freedom of Information requests are powerful, the checks and balances in our system ensure that one branch of govt can compel cooperation from a stonewalling politician, and the two party system means that eventually someone from the other side is going to challenge or even replace you, and you can never guarantee your secrets can be kept forever. China can't even come close to saying even half those things about their system. Interestingly, my wife's attitude is changing. Not just about China and the US, but about politics. She always used to ignore politics, thought politics was stupid. She couldn't understand why I paid attention. When I explained that my participation in politics will help create a groundswell so that we can keep more of the money we earn, she began to start watching the news more. She got angry at the Chinese govt last night for complaining about the US Embassy releasing air particulate reports. She was upset because if China is embarrassed by those reports, they should clean the air, not "shoot the messenger" (that was a language teaching opportunity!). She was also amused and derisive that the news reports refused to actually name the US as being the nation doing it, as if the criticism was softened by not naming names when everyone knows who it is.

Rgr, good explanation. I have a graphic I found previously that shows the barbarians by direction...I'd upload/display it if I knew how...

FWIW, Chinese don't have separate words for ghosts and demons. I think "demon area" rather than "ghost area" is probably more analogous. Also, I haven't studied the etymology of "lao wai" before. The way I understood it was closer to what they describe here: I'd be interested to hear any different explanation of how the term developed and what it means.

You have to realize, though, Dennis, that most of our others are divorced (and some with children) which makes them less desirable to these men. If they are "desperate", why would they be so picky? My wife said that she had had several marriage proposals after her divorce (and one child), but from what I see here, that's unusual. Absolutely correct. But, do you ever get snide comments from men? Only time I did was while in GZ and those comments came from rural men working in GZ. My thought was then and after reading this article that those men who see us with 'their women' sometimes take it out on us easy targets, regardless whether the woman I am with is a thirty-something divorcee. But again, just a thought... Yeah. My wife agreed with this: Chinese men may not want the divorced women, but they don't want some foreigner taking them, either. Probably not fully thought out, but this is a good example of social normative pressure. If he doesn't want a divorced woman, no one should. If *anyone* wants a divorced woman, then what is to stop his (future?) wife from divorcing him to marry some foreigner. If a divorced woman has zero prospects for remarriage, she is less likely to bail on a marriage, and social order is maintained.

"less" does not mean "zero". No matter how racist you think America is, rest assured: it is worse in almost every nation on this planet. The US is the one place where the majority actually tries to not be racist, think racist thoughts, do racist things. Even if they fail to truly eradicate prejudice. What you describe is identity/grievance politics. Not the same thing at all.

Which is a problem in itself, as all her mainland China friends are wondering why she isn't driving a Lexus and living in a New York Penthouse, like all Americans do. (which is probably their underhanded way of getting even with her for daring to trump them in the face game)

It is beginning to seem like "Foreign Husband" is the new "LV/Hermes purse".

It probably wasn't that the marriage was more important than being together for her...it was that marriage represented the guarantee of future security. I could write books and books and books about what I understand of the female mind, and the way it plays out in Chinese culture (in my opinion, men and women are extremely different in thoughts, emotions, motivations, etc...all women are the same, but the culture a person grows up in filters the way it is expressed...your culture tells you what behavior is acceptable, tells you *how* to achieve what you want). One of the other points about it not being a binary choice is that it isn't just "She loves me and we will be happy forever" or "She is using me and doesn't love me." Love and trust grow over time. Everything you say and do either (and everything she says and does) either increases love and trust, or decreases them. That's why you can get away with arguments and problems in your 40th year of marriage that you can't the day after you met. So if you love her, you should be doing things that show her who you are, that she can trust you to do what you said you will. And you should be looking for indications of her character, her emotional reaction to different things, the way she releases emotional pressure, etc. It's hard, because EVERYONE puts on their best face early in the relationship. Both men and women complain about the things that get dropped after you settle in to the relationship. Women complain about not getting the romance anymore. Men complain about not getting the sexual stuff anymore. (Crudely: I've heard dozens of men repeat this as if it were a fact: "when the marriage starts, the bjs stop") So, basically, women are hypergamous. They want a man who is at least a little bit smarter, taller, more successful, richer. Women also think about a marriage as getting help in life. They want someone to help out around the house, help raise the kids, help earn money for a better life and retirement, take care of the lawn, and squish bugs. Women marry to improve their lot in life. Chinese women marry because there is intense social pressure for them to marry and have children. If a woman makes it to spinster age (35 and unmarried), their mother WILL arrange a marriage for them. My wife had to beg her mom to hold off a year until she saw whether I would follow through on marriage or not. (Her parents love me...in no small part because they are grateful that she found a husband who loves her AND respects them AND supports her putting a high priority on taking care of them). Also for Chinese women, regardless of your financial situation, getting to come to the US fulfills her hypergamous urge. Coming to the US puts her in a top class of Chinese women, better than the hundreds of millions that are stuck in small town, small cities, or the lowest economic rungs of the big cities. (plus, she probably doesn't have the capacity to understand exactly what your financial situation is...we tell them about mortgages and car loans and its almost like they don't hear it, because willingly and unconcernedly carrying debt loads like that don't compute for them...I think it is an instinctual cultural assumption that a Chinese man wouldn't even look for a wife until his debt was gone...this American man is looking for a wife, therefore he must not really have any debt he can't pay off immediately) Because you already talked about marriage so much, when you suddenly started talking about being together and NOT marrying, you damaged the trust. From her perspective, you were not following through on your promises. You showed her you were not trustworthy anymore. Because it isn't a binary choice, and because trust and love build over time, playing games like testing her to find out whether "marriage" or "being together" is more important too often creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. The obsession with "red flags" or "warning signs" usually does that. Humans aren't perfect. If you go looking for problems, you'll almost always find them. If you start to suspect her commitment, she'll start to suspect yours, and that never ends well. Most of the trainwrecks of marriage that have been detailed in the breakup/problem section of Candle For Love could have been avoided if there had been more patience and more understanding at a crucial time. The problem is, it is very difficult to identify the crucial time. Most of the trainwrecks occurred years after the wrong choice was made...the problem festered out of sight...by the time it manifested, it was too late. I'm sorry yours fell apart. If you try to get back together, remember that in her mind, this is all your fault for being untrustworthy. You will just about have to crawl across broken glass to get her to trust you again. If you aren't willing to go farther than you think is necessary to convince her of your sincerity, don't even try.

I think Americans don't realize how significantly less racist and more open-minded we are in the US. I know that I'm seen as a big, stinky, dirty, hairy half-ape to most Chinese people. But my wife and in-laws love me anyway. Luckily, I care more about how someone treats me than what they think of me. I use the shock value of my fluency in Chinese to get deals...sometimes better than native Chinese can get...but usually the best I can hope for is just "not much worse".

That's a good question.

Let me be clear: I'm not disagreeing. Assume I'm completely wrong, and my point is off-base. Assume your point is 100% correct. Then what? I'm just not following you.

I guess I don't understand the point either of you are trying to make, or its usefulness to any current or future CFL participants.

It isn't necessarily a binary choice. People aren't simple, pure, or single minded. She may want a green card, but want to get it with a man she can love. Or she may only care about being with you, but if you treat her badly after she gets here, she may give up on love and focus on living in the US as a consolation prize. Don't try too hard to put people into boxes. I'd say: don't be naive, but don't play games to try to discover the "truth". Relationships are fragile at the beginning, and you can ruin a good relationship with too much suspicion. Be honest about your goals, your likes/dislikes, your financial situation (*especially* your debt: mortgage, car loan, etc). Make sure she knows she isn't dating Bill Gates. Make sure she knows she will encounter cultural problems, and that you two will fight at times, and sometimes like cats and dogs. If she still sticks with you, she probably has loving feelings for you, that you both can develop into a strong love as trust develops. But don't ever promise her you love her no matter what, and will never leave/divorce/cheat on her unless you 100%, no kidding, damn sure will keep that promise. Tell her you love her all you want, but if you tell her you love her no matter what, she will believe you, and she won't be as careful with her emotions...and if you decide you have had enough and give up, it will be a betrayal like a dagger to her heart. Don't make optimistic promises. Be honest, be real, and back up your words with actions. There is no ambitious woman in the world that won't embrace love AND meeting her financial/security goals.

The article is about middle class Chinese women...not the elite. It is following the same trend in the US: the more education a woman has, the more difficult it is for her to find a potential mate acceptable to her. Women of all cultures are hypergamous: they want to marry a man who will raise their status. It plays out in women always wanting to attach themselves to men who are at least a little bit more/better than them in multiple ways: taller, richer, more outgoing, smarter, better educated, older, more wealthy, more powerful, more famous. The only change in China recently is that as more women can attain a middle class life from their own efforts, their field of acceptable husbands shifts upward. And since wealth/power/education plays out along a normal bell curve, the number of potential mates falls off quickly. So they marry later in life, complain about the lack of eligible men, demand more, and have less satisfaction in marriage due to a feeling of being forced to "settle". Same as in the US, just maybe 20 years behind the same process. The most interesting thing about this happening in China, however, is that the trend of sons outnumbering daughters will exacerbate this. If women delay marriage until their mid-30s and then look for older men, only single men over 40 will be sought. That means lots of men in their 20s and 30s who want to get married will be out of luck. I see this playing out two ways: 1) Young Chinese men are going to take more risks and be more flamboyant to establish themselves as acceptable targets of hypergamous women despite being younger and/or 2) Chinese men are going to accelerate the trend of marrying foreign women (lots of Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laos, Burmese blood about to enter China). The good news for Americans is that being American (and being an access to a green card) will be seen as a step up for another generation or two. The bad news for Americans is that many of these Chinese women won't be satisfied with just a green card, and may well nag and complain more than the American men will be ready for.

Jesse, that's awesome! Congrats! I hope this situation continues to improve at this pace!

I guess my starting point and ending point is: it is your health. If you are not willing to pay for fixing your health, if you are not willing to sacrifice or choose between less-than-optimal alternatives to improve/resolve your health problem, on what basis do you expect anyone else to care or sacrifice more than you are willing to? Yes, it should have been done right in the first place. It wasn't. Now what? There's no such thing as a free lunch. Every choice has costs. Socialism promises that no one will ever have to face that decision...but it has never delivered on that promise for anyone but the politically-connected. Now you live in a semi-socialist nation that lacks the mature medical and insurance practices that could have prevented this situation. Sure, it sucks. We all feel bad for you. What sacrifices are you willing to make to have your problem fixed? I saw your reasons for not being able to take certain steps. From what I could tell, those restrictions were imposed only by you, not by law or ability. As Yoda said, there is no try. There is only do, or do not. Good luck to you. I hope you are able to return to full health as quickly as possible and at the least cost/sacrifice possible. I fear you won't be able to do that under your current situations, but I would be ecstatic to find out I was wrong and you were able to wring the concessions from your employer and health "insurance" to find a doctor in China who can heal you rapidly.

Clearly, the US medical system is much better at trauma, infections, and treating things like this. Clearly, you should be in the US as soon as possible. (or Singapore, Thailand, or India, actually. Medical Tourism is a growing business, because there are places you can get excellent treatment for inexpensive prices...suggest you do some searches) However, I would caution anyone from believing this sort of thing doesn't happen in the US, too. For example, staph infections: http://www.doctorslounge.com/infections/articles/nosocomial/staph_hospital/index.htm Malpractice kills 195k/year in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_malpractice Of course, the US system leaves you with more recourse in the case of malpractice than the Chinese system, too. I guess my thoughts are: if you want to get good treatment in China, you have to be politically connected. If you want to get good treatment in the US, you have to be prepared to pay. Since excellent medical care is a finite resource, there must be some limiting factor, and since hard work to earn money is an option available to everyone, I infinitely prefer the latter. But this anecdote also highlights the importance of getting a second opinion and being actively involved in your care, asking the right questions, etc. In any case, I hope you are able to choose the path that returns you to full health as quickly as possible, with the lowest tangible and non-tangible costs!

This sounds a little bit like a "face" obsession, too. Do you really think it is your mission to educate the wogs into the way "civilized" people do things? Certainly not. But, I surely won't give a clerk money to help me with something that has already been paid for. I vote with my feet. It's a battle not worthy of fighting or validating. Simply go down the street and give money to those who don't have a condition attached of screwing you first, and then asking you to pay for it. I was thinking more of the cyclist on my question. But you certainly have the right to give your patronage to those who give better service.

This sounds a little bit like a "face" obsession, too. Do you really think it is your mission to educate the wogs into the way "civilized" people do things?

Probably if you would have offered 10 RMB to the front clerk, she would have had her brother or husband get you something from a nearby place for you. Or for 20 RMB they would have cooked something personally for you. Dealing with the Chinese takes lots of flexibility. Sometimes there is no solution. But sometimes the solution isn't what you expect. You have to be willing to explain your intent, and not be fixated on only one outcome. "Then what do you suggest I do?" doesn't always work...but it works often enough that it should be a go-to tool in your inter-cultural toolbox.