Saturday, April 28, 2012

Top blogger illustrates Chinese wife's struggles

With his winning of the prestigious Alpha Blogger Awards 2010, Tokyo-based cartoonist Junichi Inoue is now recognized as one of the most influential Japanese bloggers.


His blog carries comic strips of amusing episodes about a new life with his young, Chinese wife, Yue, who is in her mid-20s and struggling with cultural and language difficulties in Tokyo.


Hits on the website have risen sharply, especially after last September, when Sino-Japanese ties became strained by a territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea — a group of uninhabited islands claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing.


Inoue, a 40-year-old anime and manga otaku (geek), became convinced that a real-life cartoon depicting a Chinese woman living in Japan would be a hit because Japanese people's interest in their giant neighbor has grown bigger and bigger.


"Everyone wanted a (real-life) Chinese character through which they could understand what the Chinese people are like. It was very strange that there was no manga featuring real-life Chinese characters," he said.


"The number of Chinese-Japanese couples is the largest among international marriages in Japan, but there had been no manga about a couple like that," Inoue added.
The first volume of the printed edition of "Chugoku Yome Nikki" (Daily Records of a Chinese Wife), whose English title is "A Chinese Wife and an Otaku Husband," will go on sale Friday.

Junichi hails from Miyazaki Prefecture and Yue (which is not her real name) is from the Inner Mongolia region of northern China.


The two of you met each other for the first time at an omiai (match-making) party arranged by friends and relatives in China in 2008. How was the meeting arranged in the first place?
Junichi: I had been making (manga) figures at factories in China. I had worked for some time in Guangzhou (in southern China), so I'd become acquainted with a factory manager there who was associated with the family of Yue's sister, who had married a Japanese man.
Yue: My sister in Guangzhou proposed an omiai party and I agreed because I just wanted to see what an omiai was like.
What were your first impressions of each other?
Junichi: At first glance, I thought I would never get married with her because she was too young and too beautiful for me. I had done omiai four times in Japan and was turned down each time before that. I thought this meeting would never work (laugh).
Yue: I thought he might be a good person because I like a man of few words. Jin-san (Junichi's nickname) didn't speak at all. He neither smokes nor drinks, and he was very quiet during the meeting.
Junichi: I didn't say much because I felt very awkward. (Yue and her sister) didn't understand Japanese well, so I had no choice but to speak very slowly. (Yue had learned some Japanese in 2003 when she stayed in Japan for a few months.)
What was your impression of Japan in general?
Yue: The images of Japan in historical dramas on Chinese TV are not very good (because they focus mainly on Japan's war with China.) But when I actually met people, I found they were all very nice.
Junichi: When her sister got married to a Japanese man, her parents were strongly opposed to it. But he behaved in such a kind manner that the parents have come to trust Japanese people.
When you first came to Japan did anything surprise you?
Yue: I liked fashion in Japan (even) before coming to Japan. After I arrived, I was surprised to find even some Japanese men were using makeup. And the towns in Japan are very clean. You don't see any trash on the street.
Which language do you usually use at home?
Junichi: All Japanese. I knew some Chinese, but I'm getting worse and worse. She can now communicate too well in Japanese. Otherwise, it would have been much more interesting.
Do you have any plans for the future? Do you want to live in Japan or China?
Yue: We often talk about this. If we have a baby, (I) want to raise the child in Japan until kindergarten age. I want to move to China when the child reaches elementary school age.
Junichi: That would be OK with me if that is what Yue wants.
Why kindergarten age?
Yue: Because the medical system in Japan is much better. In China, there are too many hospital patients and doctors give children too much medicine and too many shots. That does not happen in Japan.
Junichi: Hospitals in China are terrible. You need to wait for about a day (to be seen by a doctor).
Then why do you want to have your child attend elementary school in China?
Yue: It's better for kids to learn both Chinese and Japanese.
Junichi: And Yue says the level of Japanese schools is lower than that in China.
Yue: They don't teach much to kids. Kindergartens and elementary schools in Japan just let children play.
Do children in China need to compete much harder at school than in Japan?
Yue: Yes.
Junichi: I saw the textbooks used by her sister's children. They are much more difficult than those in Japanese schools. They are given much more homework, too. I don't think Japanese schools are good at all.
Do you often have arguments at home?
Yue: He is just so nice.
Junichi: I was thinking of creating a manga (on their life), so I have kept records of everything that has happened. If you think of manga in that way, you find almost everything is just so interesting (laugh).
So you don't argue about any cultural differences?
Junichi: It's no use saying anything (about something different). Differences are the things that make someone else interesting. Yue is Chinese, and you can't do anything about that.
Yue: If I find anything different, I want to try to do it the Japanese way as much as possible. For example, our wedding ceremony was totally different. I wanted to do that in the Japanese way. I want to make the same meals that his mom made for him.
Junichi: You don't need to do things like that.
What do you like and dislike about Japan and China?
Yue: In China, it's quite difficult to get important documents from a city office. You need a friend there, otherwise it's very difficult. (I like) it that prices in China are very cheap. I like fashion in Japan.
Junichi: I don't dislike any particular thing about Japan. I like the manga (culture) in Japan. China doesn't have it. In China, the content industry is so hollow because pirated copies are immediately created. I will publish this comic in China, too, but definitely pirated editions will soon appear and I will not be able to make much money there.
What about the political system in China?
Junichi: It's also a problem for me. If you run a factory in China, bureaucrats come and openly demand bribes. If you don't pay, they will just start harassing you. Everybody knows that. They won't do anything good.
Has this work changed the way you approach your job as a cartoonist?
Junichi: I have realized that a big change has taken place in the manga industry. In the past, you needed to have your manga works published in a major magazine and it's very difficult. But now you just can create a blog to let everybody know about your works. This is a paradigm shift. A really big change.


Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Chinese Dragon Woman who seeks the Impossible Man

It has been a while since I last updated this blog.

This article about a modern age gold-digger grabbed my attention, for obvious reasons, as it fits in well with a stereotype that I have now developed as a result of my experience being married to a Chinese born wife.

This stereotype is neither politically correct nor fair, but unfortunately it is what it is, and stories like the one below only add fuel to my admittedly irrational conviction.

My saga has unfortunately gone from bad to worse, and I will elaborate on this when I have enough strength to, but for now what I can say is that I have not seen my son in almost a month.

In any case, I consider the woman in this article to be an extreme version of a typical Chinese-born woman, and not something of an exception.

This woman, unattractive as she is, with very little English and not much else to distinguish her, is seeking the IMPOSSIBLY PERFECT husband, and she has left China to the USA to find him.

Her name is Luo Yufeng, or Fengjie, and she is a Chinese internet celebrity who left Shanghai in 2010 for America on a quest for a husband who meets her exacting standards.

He must have graduated from Yale or Harvard, or similar, have ambitions of world domination, cannot be Asian and preferably stands at 2m tall.

yes, you read correct. he cannot be Asian. Why? I don't know but this is not the first Chinese woman I have heard who has made that kind of statement.

Fengjie, 27, stands at just 1.3m but points out that she wears heels.Hmmmm?!

She came to national attention in China in 2009 when she started handing out flyers for an ideal husband.

She says she became the “hottest” star in China, known to 80 per cent of the population.

She claims she’s a political refugee but more likely had to do a runner when she made it known that none of the 300,000 Chinese men who she claims proposed marriage were good enough, or tall enough, for her.

Despite misgivings that she is a self-invented internet figment, she is real enough. As she stood near Wall St in New York for her photo opportunity, Chinese tourists stopped, pointed and began taking photos of her.

Chinese bloggers, who hate her, believe that she represents the worst of China to the world, and I suspect that they are spot on.

Fengjie and a group of her friends started handing out husband flyers at Manhattan subway stations last year.

She says she gets about three calls, texts or emails a day with offers of marriage.

No American man has so far made the cut. She says she works in a humble Brooklyn manicure salon, living in a tiny room, waiting for Mr Impossible.

“I am a very clever person,” she said through a translator.

Asked in what ways she was clever, she said: “I cannot give you the details.”

Asked what she offered her husband in return, she said: “I do not care. I do not consider that.”

This point alone underscores the attitude of this woman, and perhaps to a lesser extent the attitude of many Chinese born women, towards marriage. It seems to be a unilateral, one-sided exercise designed to raise her standing in the world, but she herself feels no responsibility to offer anything to her husband to be. It seems to be little more than emotional exploitation, at a grander scale.

She said she did not believe in sex before marriage but when asked whether she’d ever had sex before marriage, she blushed.

“My husband must be very clever and intelligent. He must have a willingness to be president of a nation, or own a very big business. I require my prospective husband to have graduated from a famous university.

“I myself am very good at politics.”

Asked to name the Australian prime minister, she could not.

Asked if she would consider an Australian husband, she said she would. But he would have to move to the US because she was in process of applying for refugee status.

But what if she just fell in love with a guy who had nothing? “I will not fall in love with a person like that,” she said.

“I will wait until I find that man.”

FENGJIE’S HUSBAND MUST BE:

Aged between 25 and 31
About two metres tall (a bit shorter is acceptable)
Must have a master’s degree from Harvard, Yale, Stanford or West Point
Must NOT be Asian
Must have a house and car
Can never have been married, and no kids
Intends to rule the world

What do you like/dislike most about Chinese women?