Marriage

Asia seems to be dropping the ball when it comes to marriage and babies. In Beijing, a sleazy professor with a school-age mistress causes outrage. Abroad, Chinese-made fake handbags cause controversy ... but not in the way that you'd think.

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China Hearsay has an interesting piece discussing a recent China Daily/Xinhua story on the jurisdiction of divorce settlements between Chinese nationals and foreigners.

According to the China Daily article: "Chinese nationals married to foreigners will have to settle any marital conflicts according to the law of the country where they live most of the time under proposals that went before Chinese lawmakers Monday" -- a motion that clears up (somewhat) a long-standing ambiguity about how divorce settlement laws are applied in these instances. Or, as ChinaHearsay puts it, "The point is that this sort of thing tends to be messy, and judges here do not like dealing with foreign-related family law issues."

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What’s the secret to a happy marriage? Is it sexy lingerie and rose petals strewn over a king size bed? A diamond ring every anniversary? Separate His and Hers vacations? Although all of the above will certainly help, the art of conflict resolution is the true key to a lasting and happy relationship.

 
Conflict is inevitable in life. With your boss, colleague, neighbor, parent, sibling, children; but the hottest buttons always seem to be the ones your partner hits.
 
Some of the more common and least effective ways of dealing with conflict are:
 
The Silent Treatment
You keep quiet while your eyes burn into him like laser-hot beams, unfortunately you’re not from the planet Krypton so it has the same searing intensity of yesterday’s Jell-O. You remain uncommunicative except when asked if anything is wrong and you reply, “Nothing.” This requires a lot of patience and controlled fuming, especially if business travel takes him out of the picture for a few days. This can also cause consecutive nights of insomnia as you lie awake, tossing with righteous indignation, while he at the same time is thinking “ZZZzzzzzz…” 
 

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Marie Claire recently ran an article by Shanghai born writer Ying Chu that ruminates on the social phenomenon of older White men dating and marrying young Asian women:

“Were these tycoons consciously courting Asian babes? Do any of them qualify for the unnerving ‘yellow fever' or ‘rice king’ moniker? It's unsavory to think so. But after two or three failed attempts at domestic bliss with women of like background and age, these heavy hitters sought out something different. Something they had likely fetishized. Enter the doll-faced Asian sylph on the arm of a silver-haired Western suit. (Hello, mail-order bride!) The excruciating colonial stereotypes — Asian women as submissive, domestic, hypersexual — are obviously nothing new. But decades after The World of Suzie Wong hit drive-ins and more than 20 years since David Bowie's "China Girl" topped the music charts, why are we still indulging them?”

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