Chinese Romance

Image Source: nirots | Freedigitalphotos.net

The Chinese are very strict when it comes to marriage. Parents, especially traditional ones, prefer their children to marry a person who comes from the same ethnicity. Sometimes, having half percentage of Chinese blood wouldn't be enough. It has to be a pure blooded Chinese.

The children didn't want to create any havoc. It has already been instilled into their minds that they should find a match who carries the same heritage.

Yet, it's inevitable for Chinese living overseas to mingle with different people from different cultures. Some found love that weren't permitted by their parents. But they insisted. Some eloped. Some parents simply gave in. Some lost their inheritance rights from their angry parents.

Many parents are specially strict with their Chinese daughters. Some of the parents even resorted to consistent monitoring of their daughters' whereabouts. Some required daughters to go out with chaperons. Whoever courts their daughter should go through them first.

It is unclear to me why intermarriage carries a strong stigma among the Chinese. They want their tradition, culture, language, and values preserved. Is it that simple?

As I grew older, I came to realize lots of differences of Chinese romance from Filipino romance. Chinese men love differently. Chinese women interpret love differently. Once they decide to love a non-Chinese, they should be ready to deal with these differences.

So what are these differences that I am talking about? 

Based on what I have observed from interracial couples around me, Chinese men tend to be overprotective, a quality that outside culture may find suffocating. Chinese women, on the other hand, tend to be sheltered too much by their parents, thus, expect their spouse-to-be to baby them as well. Yet, foreign cultures value independent women. And the high expectations set by those women may just be too much to foreign men.

However, due to Filipino and even Western influences, I find many Chinese adopting many merging values with the outside culture. Perhaps after a few more decades, the gaps between Chinese and other cultures will narrow down, and intermarriage wouldn't be a big issue anymore.