A short documentary made by Chen Huang and Joey Li from the University of Southern California asks a question perhaps every college student would be curious about: “Why can a Chinese guy not get an American girl?
For me, the directors, both male, asked only half the question — they left the question why Chinese women can get American men unasked. So let’s put both questions together and see what interesting conclusions we can get.
Maybe the most obvious reason is that the language barrier seems higher for Chinese guys to climb over when facing American women. The latter generally prefer men who would make them laugh. But for Chinese guys, for thousands of years, their focus has been on how to make Chinese women worship their wisdom and social status. They didn’t grow up watching The Simpsons or Ben Stiller. So the American way of attracting women by humorous talk is unfamiliar to Chinese guys. They would rather not start a conversation than lose face.
Yet for Chinese women, the language barrier may have made them seem cuter in front of American guys. The shyness adds to the mysteriousness that further adds to the fantasies.
Secondly, the average Chinese male is about 5’7”, which is approximately the average height of an American female. Even if the ladies wouldn’t mind it, the Chinese guys still would feel less masculine standing beside them. On the other hand, Chinese women, with an average height of 5’2”, seem to be boosting some American guys’ egos.
Beneath these superficial phenomena, there is a reason that I think is the most essential one: needs. Chinese men have a bigger pool within their own ethnicity to catch a fish than Chinese women.
In ancient times in China, only males had the opportunity to get an education, which is the foremost path to better wealth and higher social status. Even the dumbest men would at least be viewed as good laborers, whereas Chinese women had their feet bound when they were young — a social convention to keep women obediently at home. So when it was hard to have high expectations for men, and women had no freedom in marriage, Chinese women were more satisfied with Chinese men in general.
This balance was well-maintained until the beginning of the 20th century when China experienced the revolution to crush more than 2,000 years of feudalism. Many female writers, poets and scientists rose up during that time and enhanced the socio-economic status of Chinese women. As Chinese women left their little rooms and opened their eyes to the big world, their expectations for the other sex increased. Will a Chinese female doctor date a Chinese man with a community-college degree? Probably not. It’s a universal notion that women never want to marry low and men never want to marry high. So how would Chinese women solve this problem? Explore the overseas market!
As for Chinese guys, there are always dumber Chinese women to make them feel smart and masculine. So why bother?
Indeed, Chinese people tend to be shy and are used to expressing their feelings implicitly. When most of the Chinese guys on campus stay within their own ethnic community, it adds further to some negative stereotypes in American women’s minds. Compared to many of my American male friends, I have to say that Chinese men are more of action than words. If a Chinese man dates a woman, he would buy the dinner, the movie tickets, and take care of her friends and family. Just like German soccer — it’s not as fancy as the Spanish or Italian teams, but they always score goals.
For Chinese, we use one language to say, “I love you” (???, wo-ai-ni). But for a million Chinese individuals, there could be a million different FM frequencies on which to send this message. What matters is that you ask yourself a simple question:
Did I receive the message he/she sent?
Bingxin “Sophia” Huang is a master’s student at Ohio University who is studying at the University of Leipzig this semester and a columnist for The Post. Send her your thoughts at bh586611@ohiou.edu.
