Chinese-Western Couple Relationships 中西夫妇和伴吕关系

hiewhongliang
 November 16, 2010, 09:58 AM posted in General Discussion

老师同学们，大家好。

I am a new student on cpod, just signed up recently and awaiting my first contact with my teacher. I hope to learn much from all of you in this forum.

I am a native Cantonese speaker from Malaysia, and studied Mandarin while in school. I have since moved to Australia and unfortunately stopped using Mandarin for the last 20 years. I'm here to pick up where I left off.

I am married to an Australian and living in Brisbane. My wife is a university PhD candidate doing Psychology. Her project (surprise, surprise) is East-West intercultural couple communication, using our marriage as her inspiration. One of the reasons I am picking up my Mandarin again is that her research has sparked a lot of the ingrained Chinese-ness I thought I had dropped many years ago. I am helping my wife with some Chinese-English translations and interpretations, and through it I am finding out many things about myself and how Chinese I actually am. For example, that I cannot argue with my mother-in-law no matter how angry I am because she is my 长辈 (elder)... a crippling weakness, I know :-S.

I hope through my lessons I will re-learn my Mandarin and also by doing so learn what it means to be East, what it means to be West, and what it means to link the two.

If anyone in this forum have experiences with Chinese-Western couple relationships, I would love to hear your experiences.

If anyone is interested in participating in a survey for my wife's research, follow the link below. You will probably find as I did that the survey questions will prompt you to think about your deep rooted beliefs, and how that affects your relationships. Anyone with Chinese or Western (eg. Europe, US, Aust, NZ) ancestry can participate. You can be single and don't have to be in a relationship to answer the questions.

Survey: https://experiment.psy.uq.edu.au/yinyang/

(Please excuse the totally inappropriate use of the expression "Yin Yang" in this survey... not my wife nor my idea, I assure you.)

I haven't looked through all the lessons yet, but I hope there's a cpod lesson on "mixed marriages", or one soon if not.

Anyway, I hope to hear much from my fellow poddies. It is my privilege and pleasure to join this vibrant community. Thank you for having me. 

Hong Liang

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xiao_liang
 November 16, 2010, 10:36 AM

Hello and welcome :) I filled in the survey.

 

Couple of things: the earnings you've just put $, but I think you mean $AUS right? People might assume american... 

Also. that progress bar on the bottom is a total lie! ;-) It's been 90% for ages and I'm still going...

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hiewhongliang
 November 16, 2010, 11:55 AM

Yes, that progress bar thing is wacky. The software (qualtrics.com) calculates by pages/blocks, rather than by number of questions, which made it misleading because the last few blocks have the majority of questions. Sorry about that. We've reported it to the support team many times but no fixes are available.

Thanks for the tip on $. Will pass it on. Not sure if they can change the survey mid-stream, but I'm sure they'll appreciate for future.

Thanks for doing it. Hope it was interesting for you. It certainly was for me when I took it. I didn't realise I had so many obligations to relatives that are so ingrain in me! :)

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bababardwan
 November 16, 2010, 12:28 PM

hiewhongliang,

I'm so glad you've joined the community. I hope you continue to enjoy it here and if time permits continue to actively join in the discussions. I look forward to any contributions you have. Jiayou pengyou :)

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hiewhongliang

Thank you for the welcome. I am looking forward to participating.

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daniel70
 November 16, 2010, 03:50 PM

Hi Hiewhongliang,

Does your wife have any numbers on the relative frequency of Chinese men vs  Chinese women who marry outside their ethnic group?

 

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hiewhongliang

Hi daniel70,

Sorry, breakdown of gender data is scarce. There are related claims such as that made by Chen (2007) (ref: http://paa2007.princeton.edu/abstractViewer.aspx?submissionId=72161) that due to Taiwanese women choosing to marry relatively later than Taiwanese men, the men therefore have less choices and so turn to intercultural partners as alternative. But this claim is made without showing data.

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daniel70

Thanks for checking. I'm sure your wife's dissertation will make interesting reading.

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yingshilangbu
 November 19, 2010, 10:22 AM

Well, somehow I did the never ending survey. Good luck with it.

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hiewhongliang

yingshilangbu,

Appreciate you persisting to the end. I assure you it is essential research for our community. Thanks.

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xiao_liang
 November 20, 2010, 06:03 PM

Will you share the results at the end? I'm interested :)

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hiewhongliang

Yes. Not sure how the research group will make results public, but I'll make sure I announce here. One major purpose of the research is for public education, so the more people know the results the better.