Be Careful When Dating Chinese Women

By Peter Chambers


Have you 'dated' Chinese girls before? You might have taken them out on a 'date' or maybe several 'dates' only to be spurned in your advances. You probably paid for a couple of nice meals and spent a lot of time with them, thinking that things were going very well. Obviously she must like you a lot if she went out together with you so often! So then you try to kiss her and get hit with bitter rejection. That's because your 'date' was more like an appointment.

The term date in Chinese literally means a meeting. It often has no romantic connotation whatsoever. From MDBG.net (fantastic Chinese dictionary site), the word ??yue?hu means "appointment / engagement / date ... / to set up to meet." It simply means an arrangement to meet. The same word you use to ask a woman out is how she asks her dentist to meet her for a cleaning!

Don't be amazed if she conveniently twists the context of this word to her advantage. The word itself serves to shield Chinese girls' interests. If you take them on a few dates and she decides there is no sexual/romantic connection there then she simply says she never imagined there was any romantic implication! This might lead you to ask, "Well how come she going out with me if she never had any interest?"

This is where "face" comes into the discussion.

If you know much about Chinese culture, you have certainly have heard of face before. Chinese girls think that by merely being with you they are offering you face. By merely being out in public with her she is doing you a service. This has a deep reference to a prior article I wrote about Chinese girls having a sense of entitlement. Only a Chinese girl can give you face, not the opposite way round.

The main reason this leads to this type of problem is because Chinese girls maintain this mentality when they arrive to the USA. It may take them over 1 year before they fully grasp the concept of "dating" in English. Obviously in the event you ask a woman on a date in English there is a romantic implication there, but it will take a Chinese girl some time to realize this. The way to combat this issue is to just be honest with her and after a couple "dates" remind her that you've got romantic feelings and avoid getting the run around.

It is essential to recognize that this isn't an isolated phenomenon. Translation can result in issues and you must be careful of the language you select so as to make your speech clear and concise. You have to be conscious of simple things like calling a gal funny suggests that she is humorous in English, but in Chinese means weird or irregular. It is not easy to recognize these complaints and not using a little bit of research so go out there and learn some Chinese for yourself!




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