The F Bomb

Nothing—not sex, not politics, not money issues—is more important to a relationship/marriage than communication. You might read somewhere that money issues are the single biggest reason for divorce, but dig down and you will find that it was not the money that caused the breakup but the inability to communicate about finances—and often anything else for that matter.

If good communication is a challenge in any relationship, cross-cultural dating and relationships confront  a special obstacle in this area, since the intercultural couple often operate from diametrically opposed communication strategies. These two communication styles can cause even more difficulty for a relationship than the two languages. If a couple speaks two different primary languages, the issue is out in the open, obvious, and accounted for; the couple can deal with it (or not) as they wish. But when it comes to communication styles, many couples do not even realize there is an issue. But as anyone who watches a horror movie discovers, what you don’t know can hurt you. Entering into a intercultural relationship without an understanding of these two communication styles and how they function can be as dangerous as entering the backcountry without a map.

The two communication styles universally recognized by cultural anthropologists are known as direct and indirect communication. The difference involves the amount of context, that is, innate and mostly unconscious understanding, one carries into a communication situation. Indirect communication relies less on words and more on nonverbal methods to convey meaning, while direct communication demands that the information required to provide meaning be clearly stated.

To give a simple example, imagine a dining situation among friends where it is someone’s turn to treat. In a high context culture, no mention would be made this fact before, during or after the meal. By contrast, someone in a low context culture might want to verify this fact by saying, “it’s my treat” beforehand while the person being treated will probably utter a “thanks for lunch” at the end of the meal.

One reason to avoid the direct statement in a low context culture is that it is often thought it is inelegant, rude or simply offensive to speak on certain things directly (in this case, because it is reminding the diner that he is being treated).

Chinese culture and most Asian cultures are what is known as high context cultures while generally speaking the West is a low context culture. I remember my introduction into the world of indirect communication. It came when I was a Peace Corps volunteer living with an older Chinese couple for two months during orientation in a complex where a number of other Peace Corps volunteers were situated as well.  Over breakfast one morning, the woman asked, out of the blue and for no apparent reason: “what is the time difference between America and China?” I explained to her about time zones (which don’t exist in China) and that this meant the difference could be anywhere from 12 to 15 hours, to which she replied, “Oh, I knew it must be a lot, because one of the volunteers was outside my window at 2 a.m. and talked for an hour. So I guessed it must be a very different time in America.” The light bulb went off; all of those Peace Corps lectures about culture and the difference between direct and indirect communication suddenly made sense. Here was indirect communication staring me in the face over my morning cornflakes. It was clear that this woman wanted me to convey to the volunteer that she had been kept up the night before by her conversation. But it would have been rude to make that request outright.

Over that summer, I was given a master course indirect communication at close contact, a study I continued to carry out over the course of my time in China. But it is a lesson I have had to learn again and again over the course of my relationship with Yong.

Case in point: Not exactly early in our relationship but before we were married, while we were driving, I recall, Yong asked, “Do Americans swear a lot?”

I opined on a book I had just read about the F bomb, the sometimes-blunt nature of American discourse, and the levels of society in which such language may or may not be acceptable. Her reply made clear she was interested in none of that. “Oh,” she replied. “I guessed it must be the case since you use that word a lot.” I have been on my good behavior since.

Another early instance. One morning after a particularly passionate session, Yong mentioned that my beard grew back very, very fast. Yes, it’s probably genetic, I said, the Italian ancestry. It took me a couple of more times to determine she was not interested in my ancestry but wanted to let me know that my morning beard was not very comfortable for her face.

There is a line in a John Prine song that goes, “A question ain’t really a question/if you know the answer too.” With indirect discourse, a question is often not a question but a declarative statement screaming at you in the face, and a statement may mean something very different from its obvious content.

To expect a partner raised in a culture of indirect communication to come right out and say what she means is as unrealistic as expecting a watermelon dropped from a rooftop to suddenly float upward.  While the Western partner may well be able to get away without learning Chinese, you will not be able to survive in a relationship without learning a second language, that of indirect communication. At least it doesn’t have tones.

Holidays

If all the year were playing holidays/To sport would be as tedious as to work.” --Shakespeare

The houses are outlined with blinking lights; representations of Santa and Baby Jesus are plopped into people’s front lawns; stores blare out “Silent Night,” “There’s no place like home for the holidays,” and my personal favorite “Grandma got run over by a reindeer.” It is Christmas time in America.

Every culture that I am aware of celebrates holidays. Anthropologists often compare culture to an iceberg, and place holidays along with cuisine in the tip of the iceberg. The implication might seem to be that these are only superficial elements of culture, and reveal nothing of the real nature of the thing, that just as 97% of the iceberg’s mass lies beneath the surface, invisible to the naked eye, so too in order to get at the essence of a culture we must look beyond the obvious elements of diet and ritual.

Such a depiction is itself superficial. Far from being irrelevant, surface appearances can serve as the pathway to a plethora of insights, if only we know how to interpret them. Sherlock Holmes can scan a host of seemingly superfluous details to unveil an entire personality. Just so, supposedly surface aspects of culture like holidays speak volumes about what a culture values. The emphasis on family and the return to home that serves as the central theme of the Chinese New Year contrasts sharply with the relationship with the Divine that dominates the Jewish parallel, Rosh Hashanah.  Each celebration is in its way is revelatory of the culture, and its significance is ignored at the peril of one who wants to understand the culture.

But if holidays are essential to understanding a culture, they invariably play a key role in the development of the individuals who are products of that culture. At an existential level, they provide meaning and significance to our journey through life just as certain landmarks, say, the Louvre and the Eifel Tower, provide a sense of structure and purpose to a trip to Paris. More intimately, they instill in us a set of intense feelings and emotional experiences which, because they are undergone before the age of reason, hold an especially strong grip on the personality.

And herein lies the problem. We seek a soulmate in order to share the moments of life. A glowing sunset, a funny movie, or a fine dinner become richer events when they can be experienced with someone special. The work promotion is a personal triumph but is so much more satisfying when it can be savored with someone who knows and cares about how much we have struggled. The same is true of life’s sadnesses. As the saying goes, a grief shared is half a grief, a joy shared is twice a joy. But can we really share the experience of a holiday with a partner from another culture?

I am skeptical. If Christmas were merely buying presents and singing carols, if mid-autumn festival were simply eating mooncakes, then there would be no problem in sharing the experience of the holidays, since those acts obviously can be replicated by willing partner. But a holiday is not merely the external ritual but the internal feeling it generates. And this feeling cannot simply be acquired the way you can acquire a piece of knowledge by reading about it but arrives only as a result of a lifetime of experiences.

I realized this last September as Yong and I sat in our front yard in Kenosha, a blanket spread out beneath a full moon sipping tea and consuming the closest thing we could find to mooncakes, which were round brownies from a local bakery. For me it was a nice event and a special time, but no different from the other times we had sat in the yard or in a park and picnicked. But for her, that night harkened back to memories from childhood—decades’ old memories of joyful times when the family gathered together and told stories and distant relatives many now departed were present, sweet never-to-be-repeated times which both connect her to her past and provide meaning to her present.

The night was suffused with such thoughts the way Christmas morning in Western culture is intermingled in my mind with a parallel set of experiences and emotional reactions: the opening of presents, the smell of baking cookies wafting from the kitchen, the crooning of Bing Crosby, and a sense of wholeness and harmony, of peace on earth good will towards men. And I could no more share that experience of mid-autumn festival, nor she my experience of Christmas morning, than a blind person can share a sunset with a sighted one.

This is not tragic. Tragic would have been never to have met the love of your life. This is merely an instance of the law of life which says you never gain but that you lose something—a law too obvious to require defense. In my case, having an intercultural partner is not only a refuge from a Western worldview I have grown weary of but also an ongoing invitation to a never ending process of discovery of an alternate way of seeing the world--a different set of traditions, values, and experiences. And if the price for that is an occasional disconnect on the existential impact of a few days of the year, well, it is a fee I happily submit.

But I do think holidays pose a challenge in cross cultural dating and marriage if they create unmet expectations, if you do not realize that you can no more truly experience the holiday of another culture than you can experience the inner life of the fan of a sports team by moving to the city and starting to cheer for that team.

In order to avoid these potential pitfalls, I recommend the following.

First, I would urge the Western partner to not put too much emphasis on the holidays, and especially not to expect too much of Christmas. You may have grown up with a set of rituals connected to this holiday; my advice would be to not to impose these on your intercultural partner lest either they or you become confused or disappointed by their inability to experience a holiday-like emotion during this time. This is easier to do if you are living in China, where the cultural cues are not going to be nearly as strong. But this policy of non-participation is essential if you happen to be living in the land where you are bombarded by constant reminders of how much happiness is available for you at this time of year if only you purchase the right product. Second, I would recommend you get up to speed on your partner’s holiday traditions. Even if you will not feel the emotional impact it is a gesture of good will that will not go unappreciated.

Stealing Flowers

So Yong wanted flowers. Usually this is one of her easier requests of her life in the West to fulfill. Certainly much easier than her request for “real” Chinese food, which requires a seventy-mile trip to Chicago’s Chinatown.

Unfortunately, things were not so simple here. The flowers she was coveting resided on public land, part of a display of wildflowers a local park had established. My response to her was the same one I offer to my students who request an extension on an assignment. What if everyone did it? If everyone simply turned in the assignment whenever they wished, it would make no sense to set a due date, no grading deadline would be possible, and class would be pure chaos. And if everyone who ventured by was attracted by the flower display grabbed a handful of flowers, there would soon be no more flowers for park visitors to enjoy.

Rule #1: Your wife is not one of your students.

It turns out, however, that my response to this request was not simply the product of a mind steeped in Kant’s categorical imperative. Rather, according to comparative culture research my desire to invoke the “what if everyone did it” standard is in fact a very typical Westerner response.

Consider the following scenario:

You are riding in a car driven by a close friend when he hits a pedestrian. There are no other witnesses and the pedestrian is bruised but not badly hurt. The speed limit in this part of town is 20 miles an hour, but you happen to notice that your friend was driving 35. His lawyer tells you that if you will testify under oath that your friend was driving 20, he will suffer no serious consequences. Would you testify that your friend was driving at 20?

96% of Americans said they would not, while only 34% of Venezualans said they would not.

According to Fons Trompenaars, Riding the Waves of Culture, America is what is known as a “universalist” culture. According to this worldview, “Certain absolutes apply across the board, regardless of circumstances or the particular situation. Wherever possible, you should try to apply the same rules to everyone in like situations. To be fair is to treat everyone alike and not make exceptions for family, friends, or members of your in-group.”

By contrast Venezuela (and China it turns out as well) is what is known as a “particularlist” culture. How you behave in a given situation depends on the circumstances. You treat family, friends, and your in-group the best you can, and you let the rest of the world take care of itself.

Despite being the product of a universalist culture, I have to say the particularists have a point.  Any westerner can see that there are few if any moral rules that do not admit of exception.  We all recognize that even the seemingly simple “do not lie” ought to be transcended if the Nazis are knocking at your door and asking if you have any Jews in your attic—not to mention the numerous white lies that we all indulge in.  Of course the westerner will respond that any exception we invoke must itself be a universalizable if it is to be moral.  I can justify breaking my promise to pick you up at the airport if a family emergency arises but this itself is a universal rule: only break your promises in case of emergency.  In fact the debate between the universalist and a particularist can probably go on indefinitely.  But it is probably a good idea to try to as much as possible to keep it out of mixed marriages.

Yong is no doubt right that the fate of this particular patch of wildflowers in no way hinges upon whether or not I decide to grab a handful.  But realizing this doesn’t make it any easier for me to act against a moral sentiment that has been drummed into me by the culture for most of my life.

So we’re at a standstill, or so it seems.  And while I could explain all this to her ,I somehow don’t think that’s going  make in any better. At such times I invariably recall the Chinese concept of the middle way, and attempt to find some compromise between extremes, in this case, between universalist and a particularist point of view.

So I bend down, make sure no one is looking, pluck out a single flower, and say let’s go.

Medicine

Yong and I are at the doctor’s office. She has had some worrying symptoms lately. Indeed, the fact that we are here is some indication of the severity of the problem. The Chinese medical model does not dictate running to the doctor’s office at the first sign of a cough or occurrence of a broken fingernail. Instead there exists a list of foods you should or shouldn’t eat depending upon your specific condition as well as a host of concoctions to ingest to assist in the healing process.

If Yong at the doctor’s office is one surprise, I am soon treated to a second one. In response to the doctor’s questioning about the onset and progression of the symptoms, Yong declares that she has already taken a dose of levofloxacin, an antibiotic.

The doctor’s mouth drops open. She looks at Yong like a librarian at a patron who has just started talking in something besides a hushed tone, like a policeman staring at someone he’s just pulled over who informs him she did not know ‘red’ meant ‘stop’. Like you look at someone who has just violated one of the fundamental rules of the social order: you don’t speak in a normal tone at the library, you don’t run red lights at will, and you don’t just start yourself on a dose of antibiotics.

The doctor is not especially thrilled with me either, since the antibiotics were ones I was recently given for some overseas travel. But it is to Yong her wrath is directed and she begins to lecture her on the dangers of the activity she has just undertaken. Beyond the threat that antibiotic overuse poses to society, the doctor informs Yong that because she has ingested an antibiotic any diagnostic tests will be of limited value.  The doctor continues her lecture. Antibiotics are dangerous, she warns. You can’t just take them like candy. I see Yong nodding her head the way she has nodded her head at me when we have had similar conversations about Western medicine, and I know this means that nothing is getting through.

In one sense, I admire Yong’s disregard of the doctor’s advice. Western culture in general and Americans in particular tend to ascribe to doctors an almost god-like status and remunerate them accordingly. In much of the rest of the world, and certainly in the culture of China, this is not the case. Doctors are respected and admired. But divinity is not accorded to them, nor is their pay the astronomical, off-the-charts, mind bending salary most doctors in America receive. As a result, the cost of medical services in China is dramatically less. 

Because of her opinion of doctors, Yong views their treatment regimens less like commands from a mountain top and more like suggestions from a friend.  A well-intentioned and admittedly well-informed friend. But not a friend who possesses any secret insight or special training that qualifies them to be the final word on a subject. She is as likely to follow the advice as not.

And this is where the problem arises. On the one hand, I want her to receive the best treatment possible. For me, this means she should follow the advice of the best trained doctors in the world, doctors who graduate from top-ranked medical schools, who did internships at world renowned hospitals, and who are accredited by the appropriate bodies. On the other hand, I also respect her autonomy, the ultimate control she has over the decisions impacting her body. So what to do when her view of medicine says to let the body take its course and the view I ascribe to says to take the physician recommended treatment?

I suspect this conflict--the conflict that can arise from differing views of medicine--is an issue that interculturally mixed marriages confront in a higher proportion than marriages within a culture. Unless the marriage involves one member being an Amish or a Christian Scientist (and these groups tend pretty much to intermarry), an American husband and wife will have no compunction about following their doctors’ advice.

From Marcus Welby MD to House, Americans have been fed a constant diet television shows espousing physicians’ diagnostic brilliance, technical mastery, and near God-like command over life and death. When this isn’t the case, when an intercultural couple disagree about this issue, it can be as consequential as the problems that arise for Western couples who have different religious views and or discordant political orientations.

Unfortunately, I have to end it here because I don’t have any solutions to propose. The moral of the story—if there is any--is that in an intercultural marriage there are some issues you can see coming—like where to live and what to eat—and some—like this one—that will catch you by surprise. In any case, if there is one thing an intercultural marriage is not, it is this: it is not predictable.

Food for Thought

I once interviewed a Chinese poet who made an interesting, probably inaccurate, but ultimately insightful claim about intercultural relationships.  Asked why the number of Chinese men who dated western women was relatively small compared to the number of Chinese women who dated western men, he replied in one word: breakfast.  Chinese men had a clear idea of what they wanted for the first meal of the day (and for every other meal as well) and were not interested in the compromise, negotiation, or god forbid change, in dietary habits that a relationship with a western woman would entail. While we in the West obsess about appearances or fret about emotional compatibility, the Chinese mind, as is its nature, focuses on a practical, earthy, and ultimately much more relevant issue. Looks fade and disagreements are inevitable; but meals are forever, a permanent part of the marriage landscape.

Like any potential area of conflict in a marriage, which cuisine a couple will consume is a decision best reached in a conscious, intentional, and the thoughtful manner.  If a Catholic and a Jewish couple were to have a child, it would only make sense to have some discussion before deciding which if any religion that child would be raised in and not just imagine the issue would simply resolve itself.  The comparison between different cuisines and different faiths seems appropriate.  As with faith, most of the world is raised on a single cuisine, and are not only passionately fond of it, but come to believe, on the basis of no rational evidence, that its own cuisine is superior to all others.  And while I have yet to learn of any wars started over this issue as have been commenced over the matter of faith, I have witnessed my share of heated arguments devoted to the topic carried out with the intensity of a religious debate (proving my observation that the passion of a discussion increases with the lack of proof available on the subject). Granted, what type of meals you and your love will be sitting down to on a regular basis is probably not on your mind as you flip through profiles. Another of the primal appetites is driving the day at this point. But somewhere between the first flashes of infatuation and saying the words “I do,” it would, I suggest, be in the interest of the long term health of your intercultural relationship to take up the topic. Indeed, unlike some areas of discrepancy in a marriage, differences in the area of cuisine cannot simply be avoided. A couple who disagree radically on politics can simply consent not to discuss politics. But an intercultural couple cannot agree just to not eat.

When it comes to the matter of cuisines, there are a triad of strategies an intercultural couple might employ: capitulation, alienation, and negotiation. Capitulation is the decision—implied or explicit—to adopt one of the cuisines as the preferred cuisine.  A couple operating in capitulation mode has the understanding that, unless a specific agreement is reached or a mention is made, this preferred cuisine will be the one prepared and consumed at all meals.  In my experience the dominant default cuisine for intercultural couples operating in this mode is Asian.  This is a combination of a Chinese woman’s attachment to her own country’s cuisine—which falls somewhere between her passion for her parents/children and her love of country—and a western man’s inherent laziness. Lenny Bruce observed that “men will f**k anything: chickens, dirt.” I would add they will eat anything, so long as it is prepared for them.

However, I suspect there are more than a few Western men who would no more consider switching cuisines than they would contemplate swapping religions, who would give up their guns before their mean and potatoes, who would fast before consuming a bowl of noodles for breakfast, and for whom rice is as unnatural an accompaniment for dinner as, well, broccoli. To these Western men who would impose their dietary preferences on their Chinese partner, I say simply: Gook luck with that.

At the other end of the spectrum, each member of the couple may opt to consume his or her own country’s cuisine.  This strikes me as a dangerous route to take.  Dinner possesses a significance that goes beyond the materiality of the food consumed.  It represents a reconnecting at the end of the day, a metaphysical function that is ill served by eating different foods and using separate cutlery.  Indeed, it is not too much to imagine a slow slide from separate meals to separate bedrooms, separate vacations, separate lives. There seems a special danger from this strategy for the Chinese woman. Just like someone who grows up in the desert will be especially impacted by a move to the Midwest, so the communal nature of the Chinese meal—where not only food but dishes and hence spittle and bacteria are shared—makes it more than likely that the Chinese member of the couple will be especially impacted by the alienation involved in this style of eating.

And then there is the middle way.  By the middle way when it comes to eating and marriage I mean any dietary strategy that attempts to combine both countries’ cuisine on a regular basis.  Living for a half-decade in China instructed me in the middle way, provided me daily with examples of its usefulness and, in the end, transformed me into one of its greatest advocates. It seemed a refreshing alternative to the polarization gripping my country – a polarization that, as anyone who has followed recent American politics can tell you, has only worsened with time.

 I would be lying, however, if I were to say that it was philosophy alone that motivated my search for a culinary path in our marriage that would include both Western and Asian foods. I lived for five years in China—a time during which I not only sampled numerous regional cuisines but also acquainted myself in depth with the food of one particular area, Sichuan. So when I declare unequivocally that I cannot exist on a diet of Chinese food, I am not expressing an irrational preference for my own country’s cuisine but proffering a piece of knowledge gained--as all true knowledge is gained--through painful experience.

I am also confessing to a secret shame.  My Peace Corps training made it a point of pride for us to integrate as completely as possible into the local culture.  We were encouraged to eat the same foods, speak the same language, live in the same apartments, and shop the same stores as the locals –and provided with the poverty level stipend specifically designed to prevent us from indulging in western conveniences.  So I tried, believe me I tried, to subsist on a purely Chinese diet.  My efforts, however, were undermined by the realization that extended exposure to Chinese food invariably resulted in extended time in Chinese bathrooms. Nor was this simply a coincidence, as the aforementioned bathroom time was significantly reduced by a WFI or western food intervention. Slowly, reluctantly, but inevitably, I was compelled to confess my inability to subsist on a purely Chinese diet. Hence not only philosophy but necessity as well drove me to the middle way of intercultural marital eating.

The main, though not the only, culprit was the infamous Sichuan peppercorn. Responsible for the sizzle in Sichuan food and its reputation as one of the spiciest in the world, this culinary speck was my undoing, wreaking havoc on my digestive tract and inducing the notorious heat hiccups.  This phenomenon, if you have not experienced it, involves obvious signs of distress (e.g., sweating), upper body convulsions, and an inability to consume more food until the situation resolves itself.  There was an upside however.  For while I found this condition obviously painful it was nevertheless a source of great amusement to countless Chinese friends, colleagues, and even random restaurant patrons. Like Napoleon with arsenic I tried to inoculate myself with small amounts of the deadly material but to no avail; I was unable to get beyond the first dose. It turned out that placing me in Sichuan was like plopping Dracula down in Arizona--the one element that could destroy me existed in abundance. The analogy is not completely accurate, since Dracula must avoid the sunlight while I could subsist for limited stretches in the world of Chinese cuisine, but only on the condition that I return, at some point in the not too distant future, to the world of Western food.

Of course to embark on a middle way in marital cuisine is to solve one problem only to encounter another.  How exactly is such a strategy to be implemented?  Does one simply alternate days of western and Chinese Food?  Or include dishes from each culture at every meal?  Is it possible to invent some fusion cuisine that can consistently combine both traditions?  We’ve actually tried all of the above as well as numerous variations on these themes. We have consumed typical Chinese dishes one night and broiled steak or salmon the next, devoured stir-fried eggplant along with blueberry pancakes at a single sitting, and eaten “dueling noodles”—one bowl ladled with tomato sauce and served with a fork, the other drenched in soy sauce and Sichuan peppers and accompanied by chopsticks.

And although I would prefer a more systematic solution, this ad hoc approach seems to be working so far. Unfortunately this does not leave me much in terms of specific advice I can provide for those journeying on a similar culinary path, except to say that the principles that guide us through this situation—compromise and mutual respect—are probably pretty good principles to apply to all areas of an intercultural relationship.

Bon appetit!

Beginnings

This blog is an ongoing account of an intercultural marriage between a Chinese woman-- a rendering of its joys, complications, discoveries and compromises. Although such an account must by its very nature be sui generis, I hope that enough elements exist to be of interest to those either embarked upon or contemplating a similar journey.

The details.We met online in October 2014. At the time she was living in Shenzhen and I was in Tucson, Arizona. Our first meeting occurred in 2015 when Yong traveled to Tucson. I returned the favor in August of that year. She came to America again and October and I ventured to China for the Christmas holiday. When she came to America in February 2016 we figured we had had enough of this global ping pong and decided to get married. We were married on March 23rd, 2016 in (where else) Las Vegas. Yong applied for an adjustment of status and we are awaiting the outcome of this process, which is not quite as fun as going to the dentist, but a close second.

We are currently living in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a town of about one hundred thousand in southeastern Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Michigan. I am employed as the Program Coordinator for International Projects at Carthage College.