Culture clash

It was bound to happen sooner or later but it certainly came in an unexpected form. The culture clash.

Relationships are very important in eastern culture. The building and maintaining relationships is seen as a must for all areas of life, from business to the home. This emphasis on personal connections however, has had quite an effect on the idea of 'love' for my people of my generation. In the western world there is a strong emphasis on the need for love and sex, but this is a lot more to do with companionship. (apologies for the generalisations) I tell you, the influence of these ideas at home, is nothing compared to here.

I was aware of it vaguely from the start. The first question people would ask me, 'so what's your boyfriend like?' and my answer, 'fairly translucent, you could say, non-existent,' (or something to that effect) was never believed. After the second or third try for an answer other than, 'I don't have one,' they would then try and figure out why (which I found mildly humorous) 'are the men in your country not attractive?' 'are they not nice?' etc etc, then would come the, 'oh, I know a great guy for you!' 'Chinese men very nice!' 'you must have boyfriend.' They couldn't seem to understand why I wasn't interested. (Well that's not necessarily true but it's easier to explain the 'you need to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince' theory, and I'd rather skip the frogs. I've met a lot of frogs with delusions of princehood.)

Anyway, all of this was okay until today. While walking for a coffee with a friend this evening, amid the usual barrage of questions about boyfriends came a rather unexpected statement: ' I think you must be genius or something. Girls who are 21 all have boyfriend, or spend a lot of time looking for one, they need one. You don't. We [a large group of my friends] talk about it,we don't understand. We think you must study a lot.' There it was, apparently if you're twenty one, single and a girl, you have obviously traded in 'every girls dream,' for a life of celibacy and an intellectual quest for a PHD and the Nobel prize before the age of 30. I laughed quite a lot at the thought of this allegation, which I most certainly have not done. I just want to wait and see. But my friend (who seemed to think this was a valid observation) didn't seem to quite understand why I was laughing. Hmm. But seriously, that's a lot of pressure to be under if that's really what's expected of you.