Men must face the slings and arrows of Valentine's romance
- Source: Global Times
- [21:02 February 02 2010]
- Comments
Illustration: Liu Rui
By Thabet Hassan
As Valentine's Day approaches, many young Chinese men are beginning to think about how best to celebrate it. Many men, including Chinese, perceive the festival as just another chance for women to chastise them for their lack of romanticism, while women look forward to the chance to be reassured of their partner's eternal love.
Men complain that, no matter what they give their partner, she's never satisfied because other female friends get more extravagant or expensive presents. Has the symbol of romance turned into a mere financial competition? Is the only significance of our significant other's gifts their monetary value?
What do Chinese women really want to get? Talking to my female friends, they said the only thing that mattered to them was to hear "I love you," but they agreed that the majority of Chinese men are too timid to get those three little words out. They blamed their male counterpart's lack of romanticism on Chinese tradition that restricts them from displaying their soft side for fear of being accused of being too weak or too girly.
Most of them also said that they would prefer flowers and poetry to any extravagant gift, as long as the poem was written by the man himself, and that they despised receiving pre-printed cards. The normal romantic gestures, such as photo albums with commentary, or chocolate boxes, didn't come up much, but some women said they'd appreciate them.
When I talked to my male Chinese students, I found that they believed they were romantic at heart, but didn't know how to express their romanticism. I remembered an incident I once saw at a KFC. A young foreign couple were sitting nearby, licking a shared ice-cream cone. Not far from them, a Chinese couple sat staring.
I could clearly see that the woman was envious of her foreign counterpart, while the man was fascinated by the foreign guy's courage. He went to the counter, bought an ice cream cone, came back to the table and handed it to his girlfriend without saying a word. He clearly wanted her to take his sweet white cream on her tongue while he licked her cone, but was too timid to do that in public.
The idea that Chinese men are shy may seem strange to anybody who's walked through a Beijing university late at night, where if you stray off into the bushes you can easily find yourself stepping on a "courting" couple.
But everyday relationships between young Chinese are strung around with a host of cultural and financial complications. Young women still generally see the ultimate goal as marriage, rather than taking the relationship at its own value, which puts many young men in a tricky position as to how far they're willing to commit themselves.
The Chinese media sends distinctly mixed messages in this regard. On the one hand, it encourages "Western" romanticism, complete with dramatic gestures, tragic sacrifices, and so on. On the other, Chinese comedy portrays henpecked, beaten-down men, subservient to their wives or girlfriends and unable to take control themselves.
These mixed messages often cause a weird swing between seeming indifference and virtual stalking among young Chinese.
It doesn't help that this current generation has been brought up as only children, and are often more familiar with online etiquette than with dealing with girls in the real world.
