Home » Opinion » Foreign Views
Eastern girls seek stability, Western gals love
By Fernando Bensuaski |
July 22, 2011, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
HAVING spent nearly one-fifth of my life in China, I am still continually fascinated by cultural differences.
A couple of days ago, I was having lunch with a new friend and generally talking about cultural differences between China and the West.
I mentioned that in 2005 I carried out a survey among 23 young ladies I knew. They were from throughout China, all were university educated, in their late twenties, and all were single, unattached.
I asked each, over coffee or pasta, to list the five most important qualities she expected in a husband. Over the following few months, I found my answers.
Without a single exception, each one listed "financially stable" as one of the first two qualifications. Other qualifications were an emphasis of the first: must have a house; must have a car; must have a good job. Only a handful of girls listed something non-monetary - that he be humorous.
Each had a well-thought-out list in her head, like I might have a list of accessories I wanted in a new car as I headed down to the dealership on a Saturday morning.
Out of curiosity, and wondering if I was out of touch with reality, I contacted eight European girls working in Shanghai who were also unattached and in their late twenties. Having been asked the same question, the first or second answer that popped out of their heads was "that he loves me."
At lunch, I commented on this enormous difference in one's approach to life's most important relationship.
My new friend then defended a husband-finding system that is led by the head instead of one led by the heart. He defended the rational system because love, as a foundation for marriage, is unpredictable and unreliable.
Is the foundation that comes from match-making - whether by wizened old women or shiny computers or a careful list on a poster in the middle of People's Square on Sundays - a better creator of a stable relationship than one that starts with John Donne's, "Come live with me and be my love, and we will some new pleasures prove, of golden sands, and crystal beaches, with silken lines and silver hooks ..."?
Is love predictable? Is love reliable?
Certainly not! How can you call predictable an emotion that caused the King of England (Edward III) to abdicate the throne (think of all those castles, and yachts, and pomp and circumstance) so that he could be with a divorced plebian whom he loved?
Certainly not! How can you call reliable an emotion that caused Jacob to offer seven years of farm labor to Laban for the hand of his daughter Rachel? And then, when, at the wedding, the old geezer tricks him by delivering instead the older sister Leah, Jacob chooses to work seven years more, to also be with Rachel whom he loved.
Love hides the incompatibilities, the flaws, the differences, the obvious difficulties. But such inadequacies must surely be clearer than crystal to a computer or a matchmaker.
Temporary madness
All of us who have lived a while have seen matches made in hell, week-long marriages, bitter divorces where no one is a winner.
It is the erudite marrying a bimbo; it is the educated marrying the massage girl; it is the old and conservative man marrying a young and liberal woman; all disasters waiting to happen. A good computer program or a wise matchmaker would certainly have prevented these disasters.
When a matchmaker you trust calls at the house to announce that she found you a match, there is transparency, there is reliability, there is clarity.
As Louis de Berniers said, "Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides ... Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement ... For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away."
A marriage that arises from a fact-based search cannot possibly be wrong: it is like a corporate merger. Experts from both sides look at the union from all angles; they think of every detail and leave nothing to chance. The matchmaker stakes her reputation on the lovely boy she brings to you.
With love, you take a risk, like traveling down the road unknown without a map or directions. Lao Tzu said, "Love is the strongest passion for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses."
Are the poets and philosophers wrong? Are we better off now that the arranging of marriage, this thin fabric of society, can be done by computer programmers and psychologists? Yes and, again, yes.
So, shall we Westerners adopt this safer, sounder, more logical approach to life's most important relationship?
Probably not. We still believe, as the Persian poet wrote, that happiness is "a book of verses beneath the bough; a loaf of bread, a jug of wine ... and thou!"
(The author is managing director of Goshawk Trading Strategies Ltd, Shanghai.)
A couple of days ago, I was having lunch with a new friend and generally talking about cultural differences between China and the West.
I mentioned that in 2005 I carried out a survey among 23 young ladies I knew. They were from throughout China, all were university educated, in their late twenties, and all were single, unattached.
I asked each, over coffee or pasta, to list the five most important qualities she expected in a husband. Over the following few months, I found my answers.
Without a single exception, each one listed "financially stable" as one of the first two qualifications. Other qualifications were an emphasis of the first: must have a house; must have a car; must have a good job. Only a handful of girls listed something non-monetary - that he be humorous.
Each had a well-thought-out list in her head, like I might have a list of accessories I wanted in a new car as I headed down to the dealership on a Saturday morning.
Out of curiosity, and wondering if I was out of touch with reality, I contacted eight European girls working in Shanghai who were also unattached and in their late twenties. Having been asked the same question, the first or second answer that popped out of their heads was "that he loves me."
At lunch, I commented on this enormous difference in one's approach to life's most important relationship.
My new friend then defended a husband-finding system that is led by the head instead of one led by the heart. He defended the rational system because love, as a foundation for marriage, is unpredictable and unreliable.
Is the foundation that comes from match-making - whether by wizened old women or shiny computers or a careful list on a poster in the middle of People's Square on Sundays - a better creator of a stable relationship than one that starts with John Donne's, "Come live with me and be my love, and we will some new pleasures prove, of golden sands, and crystal beaches, with silken lines and silver hooks ..."?
Is love predictable? Is love reliable?
Certainly not! How can you call predictable an emotion that caused the King of England (Edward III) to abdicate the throne (think of all those castles, and yachts, and pomp and circumstance) so that he could be with a divorced plebian whom he loved?
Certainly not! How can you call reliable an emotion that caused Jacob to offer seven years of farm labor to Laban for the hand of his daughter Rachel? And then, when, at the wedding, the old geezer tricks him by delivering instead the older sister Leah, Jacob chooses to work seven years more, to also be with Rachel whom he loved.
Love hides the incompatibilities, the flaws, the differences, the obvious difficulties. But such inadequacies must surely be clearer than crystal to a computer or a matchmaker.
Temporary madness
All of us who have lived a while have seen matches made in hell, week-long marriages, bitter divorces where no one is a winner.
It is the erudite marrying a bimbo; it is the educated marrying the massage girl; it is the old and conservative man marrying a young and liberal woman; all disasters waiting to happen. A good computer program or a wise matchmaker would certainly have prevented these disasters.
When a matchmaker you trust calls at the house to announce that she found you a match, there is transparency, there is reliability, there is clarity.
As Louis de Berniers said, "Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides ... Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement ... For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away."
A marriage that arises from a fact-based search cannot possibly be wrong: it is like a corporate merger. Experts from both sides look at the union from all angles; they think of every detail and leave nothing to chance. The matchmaker stakes her reputation on the lovely boy she brings to you.
With love, you take a risk, like traveling down the road unknown without a map or directions. Lao Tzu said, "Love is the strongest passion for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses."
Are the poets and philosophers wrong? Are we better off now that the arranging of marriage, this thin fabric of society, can be done by computer programmers and psychologists? Yes and, again, yes.
So, shall we Westerners adopt this safer, sounder, more logical approach to life's most important relationship?
Probably not. We still believe, as the Persian poet wrote, that happiness is "a book of verses beneath the bough; a loaf of bread, a jug of wine ... and thou!"
(The author is managing director of Goshawk Trading Strategies Ltd, Shanghai.)
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
