[From: Chris Carey, Celtic haole first class]
‘Pretty Lotus Flower’ and I have been married now for 17 years. After spending some time living and working in Taiwan, during which period I frequently found myself aswim in dark-haired Asian beauties, I reluctantly returned to the USA and met my wife-to-be in California, ironically enough. Before that, during undergrad days in Berkeley (late 60s, thanks to the Vietnam War), I had been totally immersed in Asian Studies and was keenly interested in Asian-American cultural affairs. With much knowledge of the ‘iron-fist-in-velvet-glove’ nature of Chinese women under my academic belt (SIC–no humorous allusions intended, I assure you!), and fully disabused of the notorious Guai-Loh
misapprehension that a Chinese woman is simply a demure, subservient, giggling ‘shiao-jie’, this ruddy lad of Irish ancestry sallied forth on several dates with my future wife, fully expecting to be able to hold his own in the unevenly matched, gender juxaposed joust that is cross-cultural romance. As a happily unmarried, red-blooded 41 year-old bachelor, permanence was really the last thing on my mind. One day, however, I made the fatal mistake of blinking briefly. Next thing I knew, I was being borne along, bound hand and foot to a long bamboo pole, through the dense forest of engagement towards some sort of alter (was that unmistakable sound a classical ‘Er-Hu’ stringed instrument droning in the background?). [Note: She Who Must be Obeyed' had scored her first victory.]
We continued seeing each other, but shortly thereafter, I was informed that the coming year was an inauspicious period for marriage, implying an accelerated trajectory towards the presumed marital target (“Your intentions are serious, aren’t they?”). Holy Mother MacCree! Things were hotting up, and perhaps not unpredictably it was not long before we were both flying along in a super-cruise flight profile towards Loh-Pah and Lo-Gungdom. Thus began the series of cultural shocks that several lifetimes of Asian cultural study and all the help of the Eight Immortals could not have prepared me for. Just prior to our marriage, having had a number of friends from the PRC studying at UC Berkeley, I had prided myself in use of a wok and preparation of such things as Fukien style fishballs, won-tons, and so forth. I even measured rice cooking water with my knuckles! My usual undergrad dinner fare was rice with ‘something over it’, and after I met her parents, I proposed to prepare a traditional Fukien family style meal for everyone, complete with 5-spice seasoning and the works. The dinner went off unremarkably well….in fact, a lot more unremarkably than I had expected. Both m’dear and my future in-laws seemed to be intensely focused on getting through the meal and there wasn’t much conversation (‘Ah! They like it’, I thought!). Although I didn’t hear about exactly how badly my occidental culinary wizardry had crashed & burned in her parents’ minds until some years after the event, my wife’s gracious insistance thereafter upon doing ALL the cooking was strangely gratifying. So much for my vaunted Irish XY pride!
Further cultural imbroglios reoccurred with fairly regular consistency after that opening round. I quickly found that I was doomed to a lifetime of stumbling on brooms, rakes, hoes, and other long handled yard implements in the garage, since hanging them up with the bristles (tines, blades, et al) upwards brought much bad luck! My cozy study, which due to its aggregation of climbing gear, surfboards, books, aviation life support equipment, archeological artifacts, aircraft ejection seats, and many more acquired objects of male fascination, more closely resembled the tight confines of a junkyard dog’s house, would repeatedly take direct hits from applied Fung Shui for many years. Imagine my surprise when I one day began to shave and found an octagonal mirror that had seemingly materialised on the wall opposite the sink…or the time I found a symbolic Fung Shui charm placed just so near the study’s window….or the small rectangular mirror facing the entrance…..or the plasticine horse figure…..or the constant exhortations to orient my desk to face the door, rather than face away from it. Well, I think I’ve made my point sufficiently here.
There was the most recent circumstance, after years of visiting Molokai, when we purchased a plot of land on the island upon which to build a cottage for upcoming retirement. The sale almost didn’t come about due to the fact that the surveyor’s map appeared to indicate that the plot’s number was….shudder!…24 (Bu hau! Fortunately, the indistinct blurr on the surveyor’s map turned out to be Plot # 22). And there was the appearance of a cookbook titled “200 Delicious Recipes for SPAM” on the kitchen table, one day.
I could go on and on…about the difficulty in buying gifts for my petite little Dragon Lady (“The color contrasts badly with my skin tones, dear!”)…the fact that my gift oranges for relatives at Lunar New Year didn’t have any leaves on them (horrors!)…the fact that since I am by lunar astrological determinations a ‘fire dog’ with two Siberian Huskies, we therefore live in a Gow Dow…the regular complaints about giant-sized driver’s seat adjustments made to m’dear’s Toyota Camry…the admonishments that “You Guai-Loh use the fancy woks…we use frying pans!” and another that one doesn’t enter a store without buying something before leaving…the reluctance to buy Moon Festival cakes because the prices were too high…but what’s the need? Point, match, and game to the 5 foot tall, dark-haired love of my life whose outlook on everything is about as easy to read as God’s Mah Jong strategies (NOT!). And you want ultimate ironies? Try this: She’s the devout Christian and I am the Godless Zen Buddhist lunatic!
One very important lesson has emerged (for me) from our nearly two decades of married life, and that is that when one’s bride has spent the first 20 years of her life in Old China and the next 20 in the United States, all bets are off. I still to this day don’t know which half of her Yang/Yin personality I’m dealing with at any given moment: the traditional, demure celestial daughter, or the avant garde ‘move-aside’ modern woman! Talk about keeping ‘em off balance, disoriented, and seriously handicapped in any marital ‘issue’ (large or small) that arises! Never was the Irish Republican Army as sorely outclassed by the Ulster Constabulary as this lad is by the Emperor’s great-great-great grand daughter!
However….lest anyone think I am a pompous, vain, and self-centered ingrate, let me qualify the foregoing testimony with a firm avowal of the deepest love and respect for the amazing wisdom and insights my sweet wife continually offers (usually much needed) to me as mid-course corrections. Being a fully vested, card-carrying, wild-eyed Irish romantic, I readily acknowledge that without her pragmatic internal discipline and frequent applications of her great internalised strength holding me securely to the beautiful green & blue earth we all inhabit, I would probably have long-since blasted off for the unknown depths of coldest, deepest space (and consequently found myself in bottomless interstellar poo-poo and out of air)! Despite all the hard knocks my male ego has taken in the course of these 17 years of marriage, I have learned an important lesson: that women (of Asian ancestry) truly do hold up half the sky!
Cheers, Chris Carey
Chris & Irene Carey
