Beautiful Tang Wei to Marry Kimchi Man

CHINESE ACTRESS TANG WEI IS ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED TO A KOREAN DIRECTOR WHOM SHE MET ON A FILM PROJECT.

CHINA'S LOSS, KOREA'S GAIN.

DESPITE THE JINGOISM OF THIS ENTRY'S TITLE, I ALWAYS FANTASIZE ABOUT MARRYING A KOREAN CHICK.  CHINESE AND KOREANS SHOULD INTERMARRY MORE OFTEN!

--BIAN LIAN HUANG

AT LAST, ASIAN LADIES ARE COMING TO THEIR SENSES

 

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/fashion/more-asian-americans-marrying-within-their-race.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

By RACHEL L. SWARNS

Published: March 30, 2012

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WHEN she was a philosophy student at Harvard College eight years ago, Liane Young never thought twice about all the interracial couples who flitted across campus, arm and arm, hand in hand. Most of her Asian friends had white boyfriends or girlfriends. In her social circles, it was simply the way of the world.

Michael J Charles Photography

Xin Gao and Liane Young married last June.

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Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Ann Liu, a Taiwanese-American, and her husband, Stephen Arboleda, a Filipino-American, who married in October, in San Francisco.

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Jerry Yoon Photographers

Ann Liu and Stephen Arboleda in October at their wedding in San Francisco. Ms. Liu later changed into a qipao.

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Sae Lee

Ed Lin and Lily Lin at their wedding in California in October.

But today, the majority of Ms. Young’s Asian-American friends on Facebook have Asian-American husbands or wives. And Ms. Young, a Boston-born granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, is married to a Harvard medical student who loves skiing and the Pittsburgh Steelers and just happens to have been born in Fujian Province in China.

Ms. Young said she hadn’t been searching for a boyfriend with an Asian background. They met by chance at a nightclub in Boston, and she is delighted by how completely right it feels. They have taken lessons together in Cantonese (which she speaks) and Mandarin (which he speaks), and they hope to pass along those languages when they have children someday.

“We want Chinese culture to be a part of our lives and our kids’ lives,” said Ms. Young, 29, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College who married Xin Gao, 27, last year. “It’s another part of our marriage that we’re excited to tackle together.”

Interracial marriage rates are at an all-time high in the United States, with the percentage of couples exchanging vows across the color line more than doubling over the last 30 years. But Asian-Americans are bucking that trend, increasingly choosing their soul mates from among their own expanding community.

From 2008 to 2010, the percentage of Asian-American newlyweds who were born in the United States and who married someone of a different race dipped by nearly 10 percent, according to a recent analysis of census data conducted by the Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, Asians are increasingly marrying other Asians, a separate study shows, with matches between the American-born and foreign-born jumping to 21 percent in 2008, up from 7 percent in 1980.

Asian-Americans still have one of the highest interracial marriage rates in the country, with 28 percent of newlyweds choosing a non-Asian spouse in 2010, according to census data. But a surge in immigration from Asia over the last three decades has greatly increased the number of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes, giving young people many more options among Asian-Americans. It has also inspired a resurgence of interest in language and ancestral traditions among some newlyweds.

In 2010, 10.2 million Asian immigrants were living in the United States, up from 2.2 million in 1980. Today, foreign-born Asians account for about 60 percent of the Asian-American population here, census data shows.

“Immigration creates a ready pool of marriage partners,” said Daniel T. Lichter, a demographer at Cornell University who, along with Zhenchao Qian of Ohio State University, conducted the study on marriages between American-born and foreign-born Asians. “They bring their language, their culture and reinforce that culture here in the United States for the second and third generations.”

Before she met Mr. Gao, Ms. Young had dated only white men, with the exception of a biracial boyfriend in college. She said she probably wouldn’t be planning to teach her children Cantonese and Mandarin if her husband had not been fluent in Mandarin. “It would be really hard,” said Ms. Young, who is most comfortable speaking in English.

Ed Lin, 36, a marketing director in Los Angeles who was married in October, said that his wife, Lily Lin, had given him a deeper understanding of many Chinese traditions. Mrs. Lin, 32, who was born in Taiwan and grew up in New Orleans, has taught him the terms in Mandarin for his maternal and paternal grandparents, familiarized him with the red egg celebrations for newborns and elaborated on other cultural customs, like the proper way to exchange red envelopes on Chinese New Year.

“She brings to the table a lot of small nuances that are embedded culturally,” Mr. Lin said of his wife, who has also encouraged him to serve tea to his elders and refer to older people as aunty and uncle.

Of course, race is only one of many factors that can come to bear in the complicated calculus of romance. And marriage trends vary among Asians of different nationalities, according to C. N. Le, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Dr. Le found that in 2010 Japanese-American men and women had the highest rates of intermarriage to whites while Vietnamese-American men and Indian women had the lowest rates.

The term Asian, as defined by the Census Bureau, encompasses a broad group of people who trace their origins to the Far East, Southeast Asia or the Indian subcontinent, including countries like Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippine Islands and Vietnam. (The Pew Research Center also included Pacific Islanders in its study.)

Wendy Wang, the author of the Pew report, said that demographers have yet to conduct detailed surveys or interviews of newlyweds to help explain the recent dip in interracial marriages among native-born Asians. (Statistics show that the rate of interracial marriage among Asians has been declining since 1980.) But in interviews, several couples said that sharing their lives with someone who had a similar background played a significant role in their decision to marry.

It is a feeling that has come as something of a surprise to some young Asian-American women who had grown so comfortable with interracial dating that they began to assume that they would end up with white husbands. (Intermarriage rates are significantly higher among Asian women than among men. About 36 percent of Asian-American women married someone of another race in 2010, compared with about 17 percent of Asian-American men.)

Chau Le, 33, a Vietnamese-American lawyer who lives in Boston, said that by the time she received her master’s degree at Oxford University in 2004, her parents had given up hope that she would marry a Vietnamese man. It wasn’t that she was turning down Asian-American suitors; those dates simply never led to anything more serious.

Ms. Le said she was a bit wary of Asian-American men who wanted their wives to handle all the cooking, child rearing and household chores. “At some point in time, I guess I thought it was unlikely,” she said. “My dating statistics didn’t look like I would end up marrying an Asian guy.”

But somewhere along the way, Ms. Le began thinking that she needed to meet someone slightly more attuned to her cultural sensibilities. That moment might have occurred on the weekend she brought a white boyfriend home to meet her parents.

Ms. Le is a gregarious, ambitious corporate lawyer, but in her parents’ home, she said, “There’s a switch that you flip.” In their presence, she is demure. She looks down when she speaks, to demonstrate her respect for her mother and father. She pours their tea, slices their fruit and serves their meals, handing them dishes with both hands. Her white boyfriend, she said, was “weirded out” by it all.

“I didn’t like that he thought that was weird,” she said. “That’s my role in the family. As I grew older, I realized a white guy was much less likely to understand that.”

In fall 2010, she became engaged to Neil Vaishnav, an Indian-American lawyer who was born in the United States to immigrant parents, just as she was. They agreed that husbands and wives should be equal partners in the home, and they share a sense of humor that veers toward wackiness. (He encourages her out-of-tune singing and high kicks in karaoke bars.) But they also revere their family traditions of cherishing their elders.

Mr. Vaishnav, 30, knew instinctively that he should not kiss her in front of her parents or address them by their first names. “He has the same amount of respect and deference towards my family that I do,” said Ms. Le, who is planning a September wedding that is to combine Indian and Vietnamese traditions. “I didn’t have to say, ‘Oh, this is how I am in my family.’ ”

Ann Liu, 33, a Taiwanese-American human resources coordinator in San Francisco, had a similar experience. She never imagined that an Asian-American husband was in the cards. Because she had never dated an Asian man before, her friends tried to discourage Stephen Arboleda, a Filipino-American engineer, when he asked whether she was single. “She only dates white guys,” they warned.

But Mr. Arboleda, 33, was undeterred. “I’m going to change that,” he told them.

By then, Ms. Liu was ready for a change. She said she had grown increasingly uncomfortable with dating white men who dated only Asian-American women. “It’s like they have an Asian fetish,” she said. “I felt like I was more like this ‘concept.’ They couldn’t really understand me as a person completely.”

Mr. Arboleda was different. He has a sprawling extended family — and calls his older relatives aunty and uncle — just as she does. And he didn’t blink when she mentioned that she thought that her parents might live with her someday, a tradition among some Asian-American families.

At their October wedding in San Francisco, Ms. Liu changed from a sleek, sleeveless white wedding gown into the red, silk Chinese dress called the qipao. Several of Mr. Arboleda’s older relatives wore the white, Filipino dress shirts known as the barong.

“There was this bond that I had never experienced before in my dating world,” she said. “It instantly worked. And that’s part of the reason I married him.”

a match made in heaven?

Via www.chinasmack.com

From Chongqing Evening News:

In order to improve their situation through unity, Wanzhou 16-year-old young girl marries 34-year-old “uncle”

Young Girl:

He is steady with the motorcycle, and because he lives close by, we can take care of both families

Matchmaker:

Both families are poor, so it would be better for them to unite into one family to help each other.

Women’s Federation:

If a wedding banquet is held, will communicate and educate them on the laws.

In Huangxian Village of Longju Town of Wanzhou District, 34-year-old unmarried Deng Changjiang and a 16-year-old young girl from the same village are engaged and cohabitating, and will hold a wedding banquet according to local custom at the end of the month. With regard to this, both state: It is completely voluntary/consensual. Both of them come from poor families, the matchmaker who coordinated this marriage said: “Both families are poor, so it would be better for them to unite into one family to help each other.”

The local Women’s Federation state that if they fell in love and marry of their own free will, they will not interfere. However, if the two of them want to hold a wedding banquet, after conducting an investigation and confirming [that it is consensual], they will communicate and educate both sides on “Marriage Law”, “Juvenile Protection Law”, “Women’s Rights Protection Law”, and similar laws and family planning policies.

Deng Changjiang (left) and his family and friends all believe it is mutual love.

34-year-old single man

Dropped out of school after graduating primary school

Father deceased, mother blind. In a impoverished mountain valley, it is difficult to find a wife

Deng Changjiang, 34-years-old, lives in the second group of Huangxian Village of Longju Town. Longju Town is about 18 kilometers away from Deng’s home, which includes nearly 10 kilometers of the 318 national highway, around 5 kilometers of tractor road, around 4 kilometers of a newly excavated road for motorcycles only, and around 1 kilometer of fields.

From his home to the town, one has to first walk around 4 kilometers of mountain roads and climb over a garbage dump before reaching the village. When there is good weather and one can take a motorcycle for part of the distance, one can reach the town in half an hour. However, if one encounters rainy weather, one has to walk the entire path up the mountain, and going to the town will take at least two and a half hours.

In the past in this mountain valley, there were 10 families, but now most of them have relocated onto the mountain, into the town, or into the city. The most valuable thing in Deng Changjiang’s family is that motorcycle, worth over 6000 yuan. Because of a trade-in, he only had to spend over 2000 yuan, but this takes up one year’s worth of his income raising cattle.

Around 6pm the day before yesterday, when this reporter found Deng Changjiang’s home, he happened to be at the front washing sweet potatoes, a meal for two pigs. His family can produce two pigs and one cow each year.

“6 years ago, my father passed away, and my mother lost her sight due to cataracts and needs someone to take care of her, so how could I leave!” Deng Changjiang said. After graduating from elementary school, he dropped out. Previously, people have tried to match him with a wife, but the female side all felt that his home was difficult to reach, that his family’s situation was poor, and would not even give him a chance.

Wen Wen's parents home is not far from Deng's home.

16-year-old young girl

Dropped out of school in 2nd grade

Mother sick, father weak. The farthest place she’s ever been to was the town

16-year-old young girl Wen Wen (pseudonym) and Deng Changjiang are neighbors in the same village, the two families can even shout and communicate with each other, but because few people have passed through, the village road long ago became overgrown with weeds half as tall as a person, so one must over 1 kilometer following a brook to go between the two homes. Wen Wen’s mother suffers from epilepsy and often has seizures, while her 50+ year old father Wen Benfu’s body is weak, making it difficult for him to work. Longju Town is the furthest place she has ever been to.

Wen Wen’s family of three’s main source of income is a government subsistence allowance [a kind of social security], and apart from this, raising pigs: “But next year’s subsistence allowance, I don’t know why but it has been canceled” Wen Benfu and his wife are together starting a fire to cook, saving the left over charcoal each day to carry into the town each month, each half kilogram worth 6 jiao [0.6 RMB], to exchange for some cooking oil, salt, and laundry detergent.

Huangxian Village once had a village elementary school, with the sounds of children attending class. The village elementary school used to be near Deng’s Changjiang’s home. Back then, Wen Wen attended school at that village elementary school, but she did not like studying, and wouldn’t go even if her father hit her with a stick. She dropped out just after finishing second grade.

After dropping out, Wen Wen still liked to go play near the school, and Deng Changjiang’s place was also somewhere she often went. A villager said, “Play and play and eventually she ended up living there, becoming their wife/daughter-in-law.” According to their ages, Wen Wen can call Deng Changjiang “uncle”.

“I chose the coat, he gave the money.” Sitting in Deng Changjiang’s kitchen, Wen Wen is wearing a pink coat on top, her two cheeks bright red, and shyly laughed: “He is steady with the motorcycle, and because he lives close by, we can take care of both families.”

It was through a matchmaker's introduction that Wen Wen and Deng Changjiang established their relationship.

They are already living together, but claim they have not yet held hands

In Wen Wen and Deng Changjiang’s minds, their relationship began when the matchmaker officially went between the two side’s parents. When matchmaker Mr. Zou went to Wen Wen’s home to communicate the other side’s intentions, it was the this year’s rice harvesting season.

“Wen Wen often came to my house to play. At such a young age, she was already able to help with some housework, and is very kind-hearted. I too am not young anymore and want to start a family,” Deng Changjiang said. So, according to custom, he had the Zou Shenglun in the village propose marriage to Wen Wen’s parents.

Soon Wen Wen began living in Deng Changjiang’s home. They said, after moving in, Wen Wen helped the Deng family with the housework, and Deng Changjiang also often helps the Wen family do some work that requires a lot of strength. When the matter of how their relationship developed, they said they haven’t even held each others’ hands, but after shaking their heads, both appeared to be secretly giggling.

Reporter mistaken by Deng family to have come to steal [their son's] wife

Right when this reporter arrived at Deng’s home, a middle-aged man brought out an old lady, the two of them demanding, “What are you guys here for? It is none of your business! If you don’t explain, don’t plan on leaving this valley.”

Only after this reporter explained the reason for coming did they reveal they were Deng Changjiang’s collateral relatives who live in Longju: “We were afraid you were here also to steal [Deng Changjiang's] wife, to cause trouble, and specially rushed here to help.”

Deng Changjiang’s cousin said they need to be on their guard now, that as long as strangers enter the village, the moment they enter the village someone will tell them. “This is why we want to hold the banquet as soon as possible, to tell those matchmakers who want to separate them that she already has a husband she is satisfied with,” Deng Changjiang’s aunt-in-law said.

Deng Changjiang says they plan to hold the banquet at the end of the month together with his mother’s big 70th birthday. “We definitely won’t be able to get a marriage certificate [now], but 3 and a half years later when she is 20, we’ll go get it then.”

Wen Wen is very hard-working in the Deng home, normally helping with some housework.

Young girl:

He is steady with the motorcycle, and because he lives close by, we can take care of both families

Sitting on Wen Wen’s left hand side, this big brother that will soon “marry” her, is someone Wen Wen has known for a long time. When she ditched school in elementary school, Wen Wen would often go play near Deng Changjiang’s home. After Deng Changjiang bought a motorcycle about 6 years ago, Wen Wen would occasionally take Deng Changjiang’s motorcycle to the town.

“At first, he would charge me money, but later he would sometimes charge and sometimes not charge,” Wen Wen said. She thought the reason Deng Changjiang didn’t charge was because they were neighbors who help each other out, and because of this she sometimes would help the Deng family do some work too in repayment.

“He is steady with the motorcycle.” Wen Wen also doesn’t know whether or not the man before her can bring her a happy life, but she candidly says: “We live close by, can take care of both families, so my mother and old man can feel at ease a bit.”

“Big brother”:

She is a hard-worker, and doesn’t look down on me as being poor

“When a boy and girl grows up, they should marry. I am already almost 35-years-old, and still a single man,” Deng Changjiang himself seems very helpless towards his single status. “Seeing others all go out to make money as laborers, moving out of the impoverished mountain valley, he is not very happy inside.”

“The longer one remains a bachelor, the less girls are willing to come consider you as a marriage partner.” Deng Changjiang believes 30-year-old bachelors in the countryside have it worse than 40-year-old bachelors in the cities. With regards to the girl willing to marry him beside him, Deng Changjiang is extremely satisfied: “Though Wen Wen is like me poorly educated, she is a hard-worker, and the key thing is that she won’t look down on me as being poor. I hope that after we become a family, our circumstances will quickly get better, and we can overcome our hardships.”

It was through a matchmaker's introduction that Deng Changjiang and Wen Wen established their relationship.

Male matchmaker:

Both families are poor, it would be better to unite and help each other.

Fellow villager Zou Shenglun told this reporter that according to local custom, women always take the role of matchmaker, yet Wen Wen and Deng Changjiang’s matchmaker was him, a man, making it difficult for him right from the start too, but he still handled it. Zou Shenglun said that in their impoverished mountain valley, with Deng Changjiang’s family’s poverty so obvious, where could one find a wife willing to marry into his family?! And who would be willing to take on the burden of Wen Wen’s parents’ illness?

“Both families are poor, so it would be better for them to unite into one family to help each other,” Zou Changjiang said. This was the main reason he did all that he could do to match together this marriage, and the parents of both parties have verbally agreed to the engagement. As for the details of the engagement, both the male and female parties as well as the matchmaker are unwilling to speak of.

Girl’s mother: Baby is grown up now, can’t control her anymore

During the interviews, Wen Wen’s father Wen Benfu wasn’t very talkative. He did not clearly indicate whether he supports or is opposed to this marriage. “Off at her husband’s place! Very rarely comes back.” Amongst these few words, he has already regarded the Deng family as Wen Wen’s husband’s family.

Wen Wen’s mother expressed, “My baby is grown up now, has two feet, we can’t control her anymore, just hope she doesn’t suffer any misfortune.”

Deng Changjiang's soon to be 70-year-old mother.

Man’s mother: Good! Good! Extremely good!

Deng Changjiang’s mother will soon be 70-years-old, and even though she can’t see what Wen Wen looks like, she still continuously says, “Extremely well-behaved! Likes to help, very hard-worker!” With regards to her son being able to find a wife, the old lady even more happily says, “Good! Good! Extremely good!”

Women’s Federation:

If they get engaged before she is of age, we will seek to educate and persuade

Director Zhang of the Longju Town’s Women’s Federation said that if the two are having a relationship and both sides are consensual, as long as the female party is 14 years of age, even if they are cohabitating, they are unable to intervene. However because Wen Wen and Deng Changjiang’s marriage involves a minor as the female party, if after an investigation that the engagement is true, they will seek to educate and persuade [against the marriage].

“The People’s Republic of China Minor Protection Law” clearly forbids minors from getting engaged, with article 15 stipulating: The parents or other guardians must not allow or compel a minor to get married, or establish a marriage agreement for the minor.

Article 62 stipulates: If the parents or guardians do not lawfully carry out their responsibilities as guardians, or violate the minor’s lawful rights and interest, other present organizations or resident committees/villagers’ committees shall admonish and intervene; and behavior that constitutes a violation of public security administration shall be lawfully punished by the public security organ.

As a member of this newspaper’s legal counsel, Han Zun Law Firm director and lawyer Shen Rengang explained that from the perspective of the law, minors do not have full civil capacity, so even if they consent to the marriage, it does not have legal effect, while the “Minors Protection Law” forbids parents from arranging marriage for minors.

What can we do for them?

Two poverty-stricken families, one family lacking labor, the other family lacking someone to manage the housework, them rushing to create a [combined] “family”, if only to “unite to help each other”.

If both parties were adults, we would definitely wish them well. But when it involves a 16-year-old young girl’s fate, it becomes an awkward topic.

How do we crack this difficult problem? Of course, we hope the local Women’s Federation’s education and persuasion will eventually be effective, putting off this “wedding banquet” that never should have been held at this time. Simultaneously, we hope everyone will offer some ideas, on how they can emerge from their present difficulties and hardships.

Abridged or excerpted versions of this news story have appeared on China Daily, Tiexue, QQ, and many other websites.

Comments from Tiexue:

若木:

As long as there is warmth [love between the two people, working together making each others lives better], who cares about the age. It’s at least more real than those so-called experts who find girls from their granddaughter’s generation.

just like a really bad korean drama

from: http://www.citifmonline.com/site/news/news/view/11332/1

Irish siblings plan to get married

Irish siblings are planning to defy the law and get married later by September 2010, despite being brother and sister.

The pair, who already have a child together, have been warned that it is illegal to marry a sibling but say they are determined to do so anyway and spend their lives together.

The couple, who have assumed the pseudonyms of James and Maura to protect their identities, claim they were unaware that they shared a father when they first met and fell in love.

They say their attraction was so strong that within just one week of meeting they felt that they had known each other for a lifetime and within two years their son, Mark, was born.

Speaking to the Irish Mail on Sunday, 'James' explained that despite setbacks they will be able to marry by the end of the month.

"We were aiming for Christmas but we have decided to do it sooner," he declared.
"Maura has got her wedding dress; we've ordered identical suits for myself and our son.

"It will be a very small wedding. We have two witnesses who we know very well and they know about our situation.

"I don't know whether our father will come or whether any of our parents will be there.

"Our son is getting excited about the wedding. He knows what is happening. As for Maura and me, it hasn't really sunk in yet that we're getting married."
When James' mother first learned who Maura's father was she was shocked and told her son the disturbing truth about their incestuous relationship.

James and Maura explained that it was only through DNA tests and constant questioning that they discovered the full details of how they came to be half-brother and sister.

They say that in the '80s James' mother dated a man named Tom for five weeks and never told him she was expecting his child.

She was in a new relationship by the time James was born and named this partner as James's father on the baby's birth certificate.

However, when his true father returned four years later and questioned if 'James' was his, a complex court case denied him access to the boy.

James stated, "The way I see it, if the system can know about things and hide the facts, then I can do the same. They turned a blind eye and so can we.

"People can criticize and say it is not right but they should say the same about what was done to me in the family law courts."