I do not know if I will be able to cope with the weather and culture shock.  I had spent the whole summer in America grilling, drinking good beer, updating my Facebook account, and stewing about returning to the Middle Kingdom.

Two weeks back in country and it was raining girls and I kept forgetting my umbrella and gortex.  That’s Murphy’s Law for you.

There was a get-together with some colleagues.  They had cold beer and a patio overlooking a cute communist ghetto where children played in the dirt or chased each other on two-wheeled skateboards and geriatrics practiced sword fighting in slow motion.  Flank steak, chicken breast, and god-knows-what sausage sizzled on a grill.  It smelled like summer in America.  That was before the girls arrived.  Yes, there was good talk all around, but when the girls came we were inspired to new heights.  First there were only grunts, silence and sports metaphors.  And then there was the word and the word became conversation which begat dialog which begat poetry.

“You know that hot blonde chick with big titts back in America that everyone wants to fuck?” somebody said.  This happened sometime before conversation became poetry.  I was talking with one of my colleagues and we compared notes on this strange world, this alternate reality, this place that is a Puritan wife’s nightmare and a middle class bachelor’s wet dream.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.  It was true.  I had forgotten about America and their blondes.  Two weeks in country and all that stuff had become one single meaningless abstraction.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew there was a place called America – “home of the free and the brave” — and it was going crazy.  There was the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, and some weirdo in Florida who wanted to burn Korans.  Teachers were laid off, schools closed, and colleges – already charging exorbitant tuition fees and fleecing students with overpriced textbooks –  raised their price tags.   And the country was still at war, and perhaps looking to start a new one.  I just wanted to stay sane in an increasingly insane world.  But America made that impossible.  So I got on a plane to begin a new life.  As soon as I landed in in China I was humming The Guess Who’s “American Woman.”

I told my colleague that I had a condition endemic to this region, something lay people called “yellow fever.”  Its pathology was not very well understood, but I knew that increased libido, mania, intermittent tachycardia, and a strange selective memory loss (as in, forgetting everything you ever desired in your country of origin — such as hot blondes with big titts) were chief amongst its symptoms.

“Here in China,” the teacher said, “you are like that blonde chick everybody wants to fuck.”

Indeed, it was a strange new world.  Back in America, if I had gone to a similar party the sexual politics were win-lose as everybody cock-blocked each other left and right.  Here, guys acted more civilized according to principles of game theory, reciprocity, and altruism.  They had to.  At some point in their Casanova careers they came to the conclusion that juggling more than three girlfriends could be problematic (something beyond the scope of this article).  As for me, I had to leave the party early with just two phone numbers because another girl texted me and had gotten off work early and wanted to sit with me by the river.

Now I am afraid that I am metamorphosing into an asshole.  I had been nice all my life — the kind of guy that finishes last, opens doors, and listens — if of course, I was granted any of these privileges at all — the kind of guy a girl would want to marry and raise children with and perhaps talk to about being such a bitch to her colleagues whenever she got her period.  I was the guy that girls would use as a couch as they told me how pissed off the guy they were fucking rolled his eyes when she had suggested they go out for sushi.  I was the kind of guy who would quietly suggest that I love sushi – both real sushi and the metaphorical kind.  I was the kind of guy who would listen to a girl who just did not hear me say that.   You know that big cuddly polar bear in the Christmastime Coca-Cola commercials?  That would be me.

Unfortunately, these nice guy traits (probably due to the NcGy1 and NcGy2 human asshole suppressor genes) were problematic in an age when it was becoming socioeconomically impossible to get married, stay married and have children — let alone buy a house and get a middle class job.  And if you were a debt slave, then forget it.  No nookie for you.  Ever.  On a side note, there were guys back in America – more evidence the country was going stark raving mad — paying good money for classes on how to be an asshole and suppress their own nice guy behavior.  Soon they would be using gene therapy in order to unleash their inner asshole.  It’s true; I saw it all on VH1 over the summer.  But here in China, I could be nice and have my cake too.

So now I’m back and a new problem set has blossomed before me.  Like, is it ethical to have more than one girlfriend in a country with 120 million surplus guys?

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About Matt M

A med school dropout turned migrant worker and master of allusions, this foreign monkey journeyed so far west he found himself in the Far East where he seeks his fortune, the great American novel, and other expat writers. He currently suffers from dromomania for which the elusive remedy lies somewhere west of his current location. Scribbling provides temporary relief for his condition.

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Discussion

30
  1. What the hell you are talking about?
    You just want to tell us you’ve fucked 2 Chinese slut at almost the same time? And then you feel sorry of that?

  2. Dammit, I meant to get in here with a comment before the “I take things way too seriously” crowd chimed in.

    Great post Matt. Funny and honest, what more could we ask for?

  3. I get it. I mean, my own experience isn’t identical, but I completely understand.

    Kinda hard to know if microbrews and sunny days are worth having to hear about Palin and Qur’an burnings all day. I’m really torn.

  4. Great post, the whole being an instant local celebrity was tough to deal with for about a day or so but you quickly realize it is as much a part of (laowai) life in China as playing frogger to cross the street and the sound of car horns.

  5. It’s surprising how many guys I know are going out with Asian women. I’ll admit that I do find some Asian ladies to be very pretty, but what do you think the appeal is really based on? Why do some white guys only date Asian girls…can somebody explain to me why so many guys have this preference?

  6. Booty call? Chinese chicks? I don’t think so.

    Chinese girls don’t fuck to get their rocks off, Chinese girls fuck to put a down-payment on a marriage. For laowai guys who play the scene in China, there’s only two outcomes: Being an asshole when you do a runner (leaving what most Chinese would call “damaged goods”, thanks for screwing up their lives) or being shagged into the metaphorical corner of having to spend the rest of one’s natural life with the sort of girl who’d fuck to get what she wanted.

    Read the fine print, as that tasty piece of ass can end up mighty expensive.

    • Chinese girls fuck to put a down-payment on a marriage

      That’s got to be the quote of the week.

      As to the “damaged goods” bit, I know you’re just stating the common feeling and I’m in no way denying it exists, and your advice should be well-heeded — but the thing is, it’s the people that see it that way that are in the wrong, not the damager (a porn and/or wrestler name if I ever heard one). In fact, the guy is really the least ethically at fault in that equation. The people that feel a girl is ruined because she owned her own body, and a culture that promotes it is ethically bankrupt in my books, and a girl that is scared of that outcome or cares at all about cockheads that are going to judge her decision to sleep with some guy should be staying home Friday nights satisfying herself on QQ chats with engineering students at 3rd tier city satellite universities. The minute she sleeps with someone outside of wedlock, which is not acceptable under the confines of the culture, she’s the one that broke the societal norm, not the drunk guy at the club with a hardon (or the nice guy at a rooftop bbq, as the case may be).

      • I hear you Ryan.

        These girls take a chance in the hope of what for them is a payoff. The problem is that despite what we might think of their culture, the cost of losing is measured in their terms, not ours.

        Re them QQ-cyberfucking, you’re still assuming they’re after satisfaction. If there’s no sugar-daddy to lure, they won’t bother.

        Honestly, China has the second-most fucked attitude to sexuality on the planet. (First? The Japs).

        Disclaimer: My Chinese wife’s been a joy for 21 years and counting.

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  8. you know, my first week in China … i can’t even get into it really … it was too much. But anyway right around then an older brother put his hand on my shoulder and was like, you can:

    1) Marry them
    2) Buy them
    3) Fuck up their lives

    and as far as I have seen in the last 10 years, he was pretty much spot on. Now the girls whose lives got fucked up (notice passive there) tend to bounce back .. but truly, some never do and are never as happy as they could have been.

    Naguib Mahfouz wrote a great novel and in that novel he wrote:

    “Only a man can ruin a woman and not all men are fit to be guardians of women.”

    In China I once heard that:

    “Women are Water, Men are Earth”

    (wtf does that mean? Did i hear wrong? I have always thought it meant they are pure whereas we are corrupt)

    so gold diggin slut she might be, but how did that happen?

    Am i giving women too much credit?

    Never.

  9. No offence but you guys are assholes…some guy chasing tail and not caring about the consequences if it doesn’t affect him is NOT on any kind of moral high ground, the girl’s ethics aside. Sorry to rain on your parade.

    • Sam, this was posted under “Arts & Entertainment / Humour”. It’s possible it’s all fiction. It’s possible Ryan’s just replying to our comments in character, and is otherwise still dick-in-hand, the womanhood of Zhongguo safe from his nocturnal predations. It’s all just possible.

      Or not.

      • Not my post, this is all Matt’s doing 🙂 But my “tail chasing” days are well behind me regardless, though I doubt the Middle Kingdom was ever uneasy about my nocturnal predations.

        I guess my point is (and this is mostly in response to Sam, but I’m too lazy to navigate the reply buttons) to assume that a man must presume the intentions of the woman in a consensual sexual relationship limits the liberty of both involved, not just the man.

        Sam, by subscribing to what you’re saying, you are basically saying only a man can place value on a woman and by the fact that other men will view her as valueless after the first man “discards” her, supports the very system you seem to be against.

        If two people agree to have a sexual relationship, there is no reason to assume that both persons in that relationship aren’t equally capable of deciding it is the right thing for them. If there are expectations beyond that, it is the responsibility of the person with those expectations to voice them and make them understood. Particularly if your self-worth depends on it.

        As Capn said above:

        The problem is that despite what we might think of their culture, the cost of losing is measured in their terms, not ours.

        It is not the onus of the person with nothing to lose to guard all those they interact with from losing something. To make that assumption I feel is to do an injustice to the concept of liberty and equality in the truest senses of the words.

        Keep in mind, this all completely falls apart if the guy in the situation is lying to the girl or leading her on with false promises. But if he’s open about his intentions, and she’s not about hers — there’s only one person in the wrong and only one person responsible for the consequences.

  10. I am engineering student at local satellite university. I am insulted by this post. You yangren are all same, only want take advantage of Chinese economy and Chinese girl. Then you go back your country and leave us with debt and spoiled girl. This Matt should be shamed himself. How he like if I come America and have sex with two American slut, then leave? You won’t like it. But joke on you: you think Chinese girl like you for your personal? Wrong. Chinese girl secretly think you are chou and hairy and too big. Your thing it hurts her, doesn’t give pleasure. She only sleep with you for money and visa. But soon our country richer than your country, then Chinese girl no longer want chou laowai. You will see. Soon, it’s we come your country. Then it’s ME at patio BBQ with two girls and YOU sit in dorm play on QQ on Saturday night, ha ha ha.

  11. well,its interesting to read such blog and the following comments,some people think its funny and the others get offended and getting diffencive
    just like the way we live our lives really,live in a simple life can be very difficult sometimes.

  12. Dear Community,

    I was worried that my reactionary commentary about society in America would provoke instability. But now I see that it is my shameful creativity that has disappointed our community.

    In fact, as I type this apology, I sit on a stool and wear a dunce cap in penance for my flagrant impropriety. Furthermore, I am taking extraordinary measures to make sure my offensive and lewd imagination never happens again.

    Tomorrow morning I will visit the cute little Chinese seamstress across the street that I sometimes see when I hang my laundry. Actually she does not exist at all, but I am going to say that she does. So this cute little Chinese seamstress is always dropping her needlework and her short skirt shortens more when she bends down to pick up her sewing needles. I am going to ask her to put scarlet letter A’s all over my clothes so that the people can know without a doubt that I am weak and have indulged in the forbidden pleasures of the imagination.

    Thoroughly Chastened,

    Matt M

  13. I think that no matter how stupid the Chinese girl is, it is the Western man’s fault for taking advantage of the situation. We know better. We understand the situation and choose to penetrate their weakness (pun intended). The number of horny Western wankers that ravage the country give us all a bad name. BUT, if the girl does this for a living (there is usually at least one at every expat bar) then by all means. Just don’t complain about your STDs.

    In my experience, dating a Chinese girl and then breaking up, even if it was just one date or several and you never had sex will already break their heart (I’m not talking about the girls that hang out in bars for an aeroplane ticket). They live in a fantasy world that they created in their minds with all the girls in their all-girl school dormitories. Very Disneyesque. The ones that have graduated for several years or are bolder will be a bit more mature, but the average Chinese girl is much more innocent than a Western girl. It’s not difficult to tell, either. If you choose to break the heart of an innocent girl then shame on you.

    In my opinion, if you are in China and looking to marry one, as I did, find one that you have to work to impress. One that doesn’t view you being a foreigner as a positive thing, necessarily. As for me, my wife was the only girl that wasn’t ready to jump on me and I spent quite a few months courting her before my charm seduced her and we have been together for over five years now.

    If you want to date for fun but don’t want to date plane-ticket-whores or break innocent girls’ hearts my recommendation is to date slightly older girls. They still look younger than their Western counterparts, even becoming hotter with age and have a bit more experience.

    • 马腾, I have to agree with every word there.

      A whore is a whore, you both know what you’re there for. You pay them the money so you can walk away. And Miss. Fishing-for-a-meal-ticket is no different, they just want the money later, not now.

      An innocent girl is another thing. They are so damn gullible, and the idea of a casual fuck so alien, that to be humped-and-dumped is no more believable to them than if one cooked them dinner and took a dump in it before serving. An absurd thought! That’s why they put out, because for them it’s as normal to assume that a fuck means things are damn serious, as it is to assume a dish is edible. That’s why they are so badly fucked over when foreigners project foreign values on them. 入乡随俗 and all that.

      • Yes, I agree that “when in Rome”.. has its limits. Often when you are in a foreign country you have to go with what happens, but taking advantage of holes in a foreign society is not oké. I used to be friends with some foreigners that have lived in China for a while and believe that it’s alright to have several 小老婆。。 ×SIGH*

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