Western and Chinese Marriages: One Wife or Many?

Western and Chinese Marriages: One Wife or Many?

An interesting comparison between what I call western marriages and Chinese marriages in China. I use the term western very loosely to include those in Australia, NZ, UK, USA and Canada for example. I can speak about these countries because i know the marriage and divorce statistics. And of course I can speak about China. China is my specialised study for many years and I was born into a Chinese family. In modern China divorce is common. Since 1978, it is even more common. What are the factors for this high rate of divorce? The factors are to do with dual careers, pressure from in law's, high cost of living, and so on. Much the same as in western societies.

However, in spite of these similarities. the divorce rate is still lower in China. This is because of a number of Chinese women especially in the older age group say in their fifties and sixties did not see that infidelities is their husbands cause a marital breakdown. No, they tell me, when a husband goes off to another woman's bed, it is OK as long as he continues to support his primary family and their children. I am not surprised when these women tell me this. In Chinese culture marriage had been polygamous meaning a man can have more one wife unlike in western societies where monogamy is practised. Deep within the Chinese psyche is still the acceptance of polygamy as a custom. Although Chinese wives, like all wives anywhere, experience jealousy and unhappiness when theeir husbands go prancing off to other women, they often swallow the bitterness and put up with their husbands' concubines or mistresses. Mu own mother had to do this. She took my father's concubine into our home and we children had to call second mother (yee ma in Cantonese). We were told to show due respect. How many of us can welcome our husband's mistresses into our home? I often wonder about that. Can I? Could I ? Well, until we are put to the test, this is a challenging question. My mother's advice to me was: always kill his mistress with kindness. Hmm old Confucian wisdom which could work. In my mother's case, it did. Second mother felt an obligation to leave my father in the face of my mother's kindness to her.My mother reclaimed my father and lived unhappily after.

I am reading Jeff Jarvis' WHAT WOULD GOOGLE DO?

Reading this book makes me think : that is a good thing. I haven't thought for a long time. Google makes me think about the Chinese guanxi. I like the fact that google and guanxi both begin with a "G" and so does the word God. Jarvis makes Google sounds like God... as for us Chinese we really don't have a god - our unconscious culture is shaped more by Confucianism than Taoism. For those who designate ourselves as Buddhists, well,  we all know that Buddhism is not a religion, let alone it having a god of any sort. Google and guanxi have a lot in common. For a start both are webs. Guanxi is best described as a web of connections and interconnections. A knows B and B knows C and this looks like three people. In actual fact, it is more than 3. It is infinite. Sounds familiar in the internet age. Reminds us of facebook and linkedin, doesn't it? And of course, google. Hence when doing business with the Chinese, guanxi is important. If you had grasped the significance of google, then perhaps you are beginning to understand the significance of guanxi. Connection, connection, connection, that is the most shared recipe for success when doing business with the Chinese. Yet the hardest recipe to follow.

The Tao of Being Chinese

in ancient taoist literature, the yin and yang symbolises the masculine and feminine forces within an individual.

Cristina del Sesto on Ian Teh's Dark Images of Coal-mining Pollution

Sometimes when a reviewer or writer has fallen into love with an image, a person, or an object, our subjectivity deserts us, rather like falling in love…it is an obvious emotional state…decisions become flawed with our bias. Reviews of art are by nature intrinsically subjective, although we delude ourselves that we can be objective… hence it is intelligent, if not wise, to listen to other writers and reviewers, and then construct a collage of the reviewed works of art. Digging through some of the things written about his works, I find a piece that Cristina Del Sesto wrote for the Journal-Constitution (Dark Images of China’s Coal-mining Pollution.
"In his image workers at a Coking Palna (Benxi,China 2007) ghost like figures of coal miners covered in coal dust make it seem as though Teh had traveled to Hades. In another image, a seemingly peaceful sunset over barren trees turns out to be flames from a tar refinery in Linfen, China. These powerful images had their first showing China…"
Reading the Cristina Del Sesto’s article which was an interview with Ian when he was on an assignment in Beijing, I cannot help thinking that for her, a photo has evoked imagery of hell. The same photo of coal miners brought forth a different feeling in me, one of relief. The coal miners had made it. They came out alive. This photo caught a mundane moment in the lives of humans doing very dangerous work. This is one of the appealing things in Ian’s works for me: his photos capture one of the great things about life - contradictions and constrasts. Just a man finishing a day’s work and going home. Nothing can be more mundane than that surely. Or is it?

Ian Teh: Chinese photographer

Members of the Chinese diaspora are scattered far and wide, this we know for a fact but what we do not know is: what some of them are doing with their lives? What talents do they have? how are they using their talents? and how is the world recognising them?
One such Chinese man living in London and trots round the world doing wonderful things with his camera is Ian Teh. Born in Malaysia of Chinese parents, Ian or Eng Jin went to boarding school in England when he was 14 years old. Speaking with an English accent, and writing in beautiful prose, he has this to say of his art:
"Much of my artistic creativity stems from my interests in social, environmental and political issues. I imagine my work as a series of short films made out of stills. They are narratives that are built on moments of time collected over extended periods. Each story is a woven fabric of compositional and colour threads that come together to create a particular ambience intended to both emphasize my perspective on the subject matter and to, hopefully, encourage the viewer to take the narrative beyond the limits of my frame, into a direction that makes the experience of those images more vivid."
"Taking the narrative" beyond the limits of his frame is a lovely thought, a poetic and literary challenge for me. I have seen his photographs, again and again. in exhibitions in New York and in London, in magazines such as Time, Newsweek and The New Yorker and on books covers. They depict the many aspects of life in China. Ian's photographs are lyrical, visual poems, inspiring works of art. And I am unashamedly a fan, a devotee to his photographs. I pick up the challenge of taking the narrative beyond the limits of his frame. I choose the photograph of a young Chinese girl lying on her stomach, one leg bent, foot cocking at an angle upwards. That pose was captured in a second by Ian. This photograph of a Chinese prostitute is evocative and provocative. It evokes a sense of what is eternal in youthful unconsciousness. That pose caught by a camera in an instant is also provocative for in her very unawareness, the girl is seductive, simply in her bent leg and tilted foot.... it invites us to the sensual pleasures of the flesh. Yes, that one photo takes my imagination to the world of the oldest profession in history and even more alluring, it leads my mind to the history of prostitution in China....and opium dens, old China and the new China....and the foot fetish embedded in Chinese culture....
Much of Ian Teh's works are in line with expo`se journalism or expo`se Sociology. This adds an intellectual dimension to his photographs, especially those he had been and is taking in China. His works on coalminers in China are highly risky. They are powerful indictments of what China is achieving at huge costs. see Vimeo website for: Dark Clouds).
Ian Teh is a member of the Chinese diaspora, a tall poppy by any standards and certainly a photographer to follow.

The Australasian Chinese Theatre Company (the ACT)

Being Chinese in Australia has been a long interesting fascinating learning experience for me over forty years. Perhaps the highlight of these decades is trying to find myself and my Chinese identity through re claiming the mandarin language. Having found no one who could teach it properly to me, i opened a school using Accelerated Learning techniques of drama, music and whole brain tools. When ACCS is successfully running, i have turned to the performing acts and opened up a theatre company that will focus on creating intercultural performances among Australians and Chinese and of course our little brothers and sisters across the Tasman sea: the New Zealanders. the ACT's inaugural production was fun and successful. However looking for Chinese actors and performers was like looking for a needle in the haystack. Where are the Chinese Aussies who like to act? or are they engineers and doctors and dentists? Chinese parents like to steer their children away from the stage and performing arts into more stable and lucratice careers. And when some of these children insist on the arty farty pursuits, often they end up finishing their degrees in medicine or engineering first, then turn their attention to a performing arts career. I know of a brilliant violinist who is now a business man, a brilliant ballerina who is now a doctor. I often wonder what if... my dream for the ACT is that one day we will have musicals, plays and films created from the synergy and fusion of Australasians and Chinese.

Being Chinese: an Up or a Down?

Being Chinese can be a down or up, a debit or credit on our life ledger. For those of us who are Chinese and want to know our Chinese-ness and how that has shaped us or is still shaping us on an UNCONSCIOUS level, this is a lifelong challenge. This challenge occurs on so many levels. To really examine this process we need a psycho-cultural approach. This immediately implies we require knowledge from psychology, anthropology and sociology just to mention three perspcetives. To understand one self psychologically is hard enough but to understand how our culture and society have shaped us truly needs a multi-coloured perspective.
To attain some understanding of our spiritual and psychological/cultural growth which is the basis for authentic relationships with our selves and others is a journey worth pursuing no matter how challenging. However, there are interesting ways of getting to the core of this challenge that is, who are we as Chinese? are we being too Chinese? is that an advantage or disadvantage? and what do being too Chinese mean? i know i am being Chinese when i am overly picky about how things are done. The Confucianist perfectionist in me wants every detail attended to, resulting in high stress in some situations as there is perfection impossible to achieve. When I am overly competitive, aha, is the Chinese in me rearing its head ?
Self questioning is a good technique to use for understanding our Chinese self. Other methods such as story-telling, journalling and dreaming through relaxation and contemplative techniques derived from a Taoist/Jungian perspective can also be useful. A workshop on Am i being too Chinese and how is that going to help or impede me in living with and forming relationships with others could be useful, dont you thing? Let me know.