Security Guard Marries American Woman

A few weeks ago, Cai Xiaohua, a 35 year old security guard with no high school education married 26 year old Daphne, a native of New Jersey. Xiaohua worked at the gate of the school where Daphne taught English. The relationship began with Daphne entering the guard house and demanding to talk to him. When her Chinese wasn't good enough, they would communicate by drawing pictures. They are currently on their honeymoon. (Full story in Chinese)

This story has appeared around the country and is unusual not just because of the differences in the couple's backgrounds, but also because of their sexes. Of the 58,000 foreign-Chinese marriages that took place here last year, I would guess (hard statistics on this were surprisingly hard to track down) that more than 40,000 of them involve a foreign man, who is probably old, bad-looking, dorky, or rich, and a Chinese woman. I've only ever seen three or four couples in which the woman was foreign in my two years in Beijing, but I've seen hundreds the other way around.

The netizens' reactions to this news item were mostly positive (here in Chinese):

"What a badass [the security guard is]!"

"What a lucky couple!"

"What a pretty bride!"

"I wish you luck!"

Compare these congratulatory statements to the reaction netizens have to a foreign man marrying a foreign woman. (These from a post about Zhang Ziyi and her boyfriend via lostlaowai blog.)

“She is so cheap in the Chinese people’s minds. She’s dead to the Chinese people and should leave China forever.”

“Women who marry foreign devils should be hung.”

“She is shameless and cheap. He will leave her soon. Can’t she find a Chinese man to please her? After the foreign devils f- her she will be useless.”

“After the foreigner tastes her snatch they will know she has a decaying one!”

“The old man just wants to have sex with her.”

“Zhang Ziyi is just a high level prostitute that only likes foreign d--k!”

It is disturbing to see that the nationalist overtones also bear strongly sexist ones too. It is okay for Chinese men to marry foreign women but not the other way around. Many people say that a lot of the rage Chinese netizens express for foreigners comes from both racism and an inferiority/superiority complex.

Interestingly enough, the only negative comments I found on the Security Guard/American Woman story seem to support this theory:

"What happens when she finds out his d--k isn't long enough?"

"What a brave girl. It would be like a Chinese moving to Africa and marrying an African."

"He wouldn't dare marry an African."

"They'll get divorced after she realizes that their sexual relations aren't harmonious."

One of the main reasons the Chinese-as-husband marriages are acceptable is the general view of women, not just in China of course, as being weaker. For the last two centuries, many Chinese have felt that their homeland is the woman to the West's man, and for some, reminders of that imbalanced relationship can provoke visceral reactions. When foreign men marry Chinese women, it reminds the angry youth, the majority of whom are boys, of foreign exploitation. The act of Western men stealing innocent Chinese women away expresses what many Chinese perceive as Western superiority over their own country in a concrete, physical and sexual way. A Chinese man marrying a foreign women, therefore, is role reversal. The Chinese man is the strong, dominant person in the relationship, and the West is put in its place. Under this framework, Chinese women are expected to eschew the advances of Western men while Chinese men are free to do whatever they want.

Given the number of Chinese women who still marry foreigners, however, it is clear that this mindset has not taken over mainstream Chinese thought. But as the angry youths' voices grow louder, it will be interesting to see how this nationalist-tainted form of sexism continues to develop.