On marrying gweilo, Hong Kong, et al...

This morning when I was starting out my day at my desk, I was thinking of one of my sisters, some friends and acquaintance, and this whole idea of marrying a gweilo. So, when I sat down, I searched on the web, and found this very interesting essay on that, with particular reference to movies (and I love watching movies of all genres).

You see, I grew up in Hong Kong in the 1980s during boom time. Remember the big shoulder pads from Dallas and Dynasty? But honestly, I'm more a Six Million Dollar Man kinda gal than the shoulder pad bunch. Anecdotes aside, times were good, economy was booming, and tourists were everywhere. One has to understand that population in Hong Kong is 99.9999% ethnic Chinese. Most of those foreigners (caucasians, in particular) were either expatriates or tourists, meaning they have the means to spend, and they mostly live large, in the eyes of general populace.

...Back then, we liked to spend on the Hong Kong island side, since there're less people. They liked to hang out around the City Hall Library. I liked going up from Star Ferry, and have this expansive view of this quaint looking building in front of me, that I could stroll up to check its books. From the windows of City Hall Library, you could have a panoramic view of Tsimshatsui Ferry Pier on the Kowloon side. I always found it so peaceful and neat. I could sit by the window staring at the boats and ferries on the Victoria Harbor for hours over weekends. I would take a bus ride to the Peak with my friends, and spend hours walking around the peak too. We would chitchat about anything and everything. It's heavenly...

I remember a childhood friend of mine. Her name is Helen. (Well, her name was Helen, since she has it changed now to Const, as in Constance.) She looks a bit caucasian like, bigger eyes and all. One time, when we were walking around the Peak, she was gazing at one of those apartment buildings around the peak dreamily, blurting out her thoughts: "I wonder if my grandmother lives up there." Me and my friends were like, "what?" It turns out, she always has this belief that her grandmother is caucasian, since she obviously got her good-looking gene from his father, but whom never told her that her grandmother is (or was) indeed a foreigner. I remember one of my friends blurted back to Helen, telling her "stop dreaming, Helen."

What does that have to do with marrying gweilo, you'd ask. Well, because the underlying attitude of Helen, and her dream to look up to some caucasian as my escape, a rescue, a white knight in armor, if you will, to one's daily otherwise boring existence.

It should also suffix to say that, if one has a good command of English, one has a much better chance to get a good job in a foreign corporation. I remember my parents were telling stories about how this was particularly true right after and after the Second World War in Hong Kong.

So, for a woman to marry a gweilo, it meant she would (or should) speak English very well (read: good job). It would mean that she would be mixing in the expat circle (read: crowd with money). It would also mean that she would live nicely (read: mid-level or above, for example). For alot of people, it would be a dream come true. At least, these were true back then, in the 1980s and before.

Personally, I only know a few people from Hong Kong who marry gweilo:

(a) A high school classmate of my younger sister, named Joyce. She went to a secretarial school after graduation, and married a 21-year-old white aussie boy who's a postal worker. I think she's 22 at the time. I was somewhat surprised when my sis told me about Joyce. Afterall, she has high career ambition; at one point, she even wanted to be a model. It's not a common career choice back then, because most girls do not consider themselves pretty or tall enough. She's not tall, maybe 5'2", but she's proud of her limps. The reason I remember her sturdy arms and legs is because, they look kinda out of place, considering her very slim body. No matter, she's proud of them, and that's what counts. In the end, she chose a postal worker and stayed in Sydney.

(b) My best friend Anna has a friend who married a gweilo. I don't know her personally. The thing that stuck with me most, was her exclamation that her husband still could not understand why she would give pocket money to her parents periodically. He could never grasp the underlying meaning of that gesture to the elders from an Asian daughter.

(c) Yet another friend of Anna, who was a secretary at BoA at one point, and got hooked up with a married expat lawyer (American) at BoA as well. The affair was short-lived, lasting a few months, against her wish. To be sure, she's quite good looking, and a decent 5'4" to boot. She refused to accept that she was anything less than his wife (also American, and fellow lawyer, at BoA), long after the affair ended. One time, toward the end of the liaison, she even got Anna to go along with her, to station at the entrance of BA Tower, since she got wind that he's coming out with his wife, heading to the airport. She wanted to get a glimpse of how his wife looks like, so that she can compare herself to his wife. When she finally saw her, she exclaimed to Anna, "she's not that pretty afterall!"

Another time, when I was having dinner with Anna, she blurted a question to me, "what does it mean when someone has eyes like dead fish?" I said, "isn't that obvious what that means? Eyes of a dead fish?!" In any case, I asked her why she's asking the question. It turned out, it's one of the last comments the expat had, in the last dinner with her secretary colleague. She didn't understand him, but she didn't ask. I'm like, "if she didn't understand what he meant, why didn't she ask?" Natural response, right? As it turned out, she was a bit ashamed that, given her pride in her command of English, it's not good enough to understand him. That has haunted her, ever since the affair ended.

(d) One of my sisters is also married to an Australia. It's a decision of hers that still confounds the whole family (and extended families). It's quite obvious that the guy is a talker. I don't normally take to talkers. As Professor Randy Pausch's words to his toddler daughter in his last lecture series, don't listen to what a guy says to you, but watch what he does. My sis' marriage is another story of its own, that I'll tackle on another day. Long story short, don't marry someone simply because of someone's color of skin. As to my sis, I don't think she marries him simply because he's white, or any notion of some dreamy fancy life. But she likes challenges, and she doesn't like following crowds. She's had suitors all these years, but he's the ultimate challenge for her. What better challenge can there be, than to take on a completely different culture, speak a completely different language, for the rest of your life?!?

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With all those background details, we're ready to talk about that interesting essay which has references to most of the major/classic movies on miscegenation, like Sayonara, The World of Suzie Wong, Love Is A Many Splendered Thing, etc. I like classic movies, among other genres; and I watched them all, long ago.

When I was younger though, I never had the appreciation of how stereotypical Suzie Wong had been on all Asian women. Surely, as the article pointed out, Suzie had fed the fancy of generations of Western men, with the kind of Wanchai bar girl, whore in body but "virgin at her heart" submissive women that they have come to expect from Asian females. It's quite safe to say that, should they have come to Hong Kong since 1960s, when the economy and rising education have allowed generations of women in Hong Kong to rise even above alot of their men counterparts, they would realize that women from Hong Kong are not submissive at all.

Looking at it from a different perspective, the anecdotal marriages to gweilo that I cite above, bring forth to my mind, how that article has completely missed it from the other side of the table. Perhaps it's entirely due to the fact that the author was cataloging why Western men, himself included, fall for Asian women, mostly fatalistically, whose romances (at least in movies) often ended tragically.

For those women that I cite above, they have means (unlike Suzie Wong). But they chose gweilo as marriage partners, which I believe arise mostly out of this generational long-held belief of a better, wealthier life with an expat. (Perhaps with the exception of my sister who always likes to be an outsider looking in.)

Romance and courtship are one thing, but I do not endorse marriage based on sheer fantasy. With marriage, it's a life-long commitment that based on reality. As the essay rightly pointed out, at the end of the day, when Suzie and Lobert walked down the hill at the end of the movie, they would still need to choose what they have for dinner, or where they're going to stay, and more importantly, how they're going to make a living. Fantasy alone cannot sustain any of that.

As I commented to Anna, if her friend didn't even have guts or candor to ask her partner what he means, how are they going to have a real/proper conversation? Pretty face and fancy dress will only carry her so far. If she's such an airhead and/or total whimp, with eyes of a dead fish, I'm not surprised at all that the gweilo dumped her, to stay with his more intelligent and intelligble wife.

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PS: Since the handover of Hong Kong to China, there's been major shift in culture and attitude in Hong Kong. Likely amplified by the worldwide financial meltdown in 1997, the number of western tourists to Hong Kong have dropped substantially, replaced instead by the oft less civic-minded local tourists from mainland China, who spit without any care and squat in front of high class department stores while waiting for their tour bus. The number of expats has also declined markedly, alot of whom are now dispatched directly to Shanghai or Beijing to tackle the China market in the coming decade. These days, if you see a gweilo, there's higher chance that s/he might be working as a bartender in Wanchai, instead of being a banker in Central. The kind of "currency" (or fantasy, if you will) that people have these days, of some woman locking arms with a gweilo, is never quite the same anymore.

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PPS: By the way, for a long time now, contrary to the belief of some people who don't know much about Hong Kong, the term gweilo itself does not hold any derogatory connotation anymore. Whatever the terms one might use, it depends more on how it's used, and not just the term itself, that is more important.