Chinese parents say 'Marry White, not Black'
Chinese woman: (parents from Singapore)
My mother said, "When you choose a marriage partner, first choice is white, 2nd choice is Asian, but never black or Mexican!"
Chinese woman born in USA: (parents born in China)
My mother said, "You can marry anyone of any race except black or Mexican."
Chinese American man born in Hong Kong:(parents from HK)
My brother's wife is Swedish American... My mother has no problems with that... What will she think of me dating a non-Chinese woman of color? Native American may be ok, but definitely not black.
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I saw this on a website called ColorQ World, a "space where people of color and friends share perspectives and exchange experiences." This topic was opened by someone, it looked like in the 1990s, and it just reminded me of conversation I had with someone from Vietnam who told me similar things about their culture. I wonder if much has changed?
I am dying in laughter right now, because I am thinking about years ago at a time when I worked with this little Chinese lady, and several of my co-workers were from different countries, and a Ugandan jokester type guy used to always tease her about her daughter. Her daughter was an adult child still living at home and studying for a masters degree. She was very proud of her daughter and talked about how she only went to school, came straight home and studied. The girl had to be at least 26 years old.
So he would always yank her chain, "You don't know what your daughter does when you're not around." He used to always get into that when she'd start talking about the very predictable routine life her daughter had. So one day he asked, when she was getting married, and our co-worker said she can't have a boyfriend until she was done with studies. Then he would get into asking her what kind of men she can date. And you know the color thing had to come up. The co-worker shot that down and said she HAS to marry Chinese, and if she doesn't she is disowned--out of the family. And she firmly said this on every occasion. She was serious.
So someone egged him on to ask if she could marry black, when he knew good and well the woman said she can only marry Chinese (and we ain't talkin' black Chinese). He popped the question. I don't think she heard him clearly the first time or either she tried to ignore him, but he was persistent until he got a response. Her face turned from pale yellow to red to orange then back to yellow. She said, "What? Black?" Abruptly, "Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no."
It wasn't the fact that she said it. It was how she said it, and her facial response. It was almost as if he was asking her daughter's hand in marriage. Because, she was always the smiley type, and this was the first time we saw anger, shock, and disgust all on her face at one time. But she later recovered from that question, and went back to being her old jovial smiling self. The other co-workers laughed about that for days.
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