“Dangerous imbalance of gender in China: in 2000, 100 girls to every 117 boys; by 2020, there could be 30 to 40 million frustrated young men in China who cannot find women.
This not so insignificant fact was part of some research done for an exhibition in Rotterdam this summer on ‘Contemporary China’. When I read this during a meeting with my colleagues, a sentence jumped out of my mouth spontaneously: “I should go back to China!” The whole conference room suddenly burst into laughter. But come on guys, I’m serious! Without anything sweet, romantic or sexy having happened to me since I came to the Netherlands a year and eight months ago, you can imagine how excited I was when I found out there might be millions of cute Chinese boys waiting just for me in China! China then is a paradise for this 24-year-old, frustrated Chinese girl living alone in Rotterdam!
I can still clearly remember when I was together with my ex-boyfriend in China, how sweet he was. He’s Chinese and we were both studying at the same university. As an architecture student, sitting at my computer drawing day and night is part of my life; but when this happened, he was always taking care of my three daily meals, buying my favorite food from restaurants and bringing it to me in my dormitory. And we also had wonderful trips together around China during the summer holidays: swimming by the fantastic beach in Sanya, a southern Chinese seaside city; listening to the frogs singing by the lake under the full moon in Wuyuan, the most beautiful countryside in China; watching the sunset in desert in western China….
I now realize that this might never happen again to me, at least according to my limited Dutch experience. So many such stories I have heard here: dating 2 or 3 times in the beginning, sleeping one night together afterwards, then? Maybe nothing, maybe keep sleeping with each other once a while, or maybe switching to another one and repeating the same procedure, but hardly any serious relationships. A Dutch girlfriend told me she was having a kind of special relationship with a guy: once they met, they spent one night together, but only having sex, and the next early morning she left his apartment. During the time since they never contacted each other. “Do you like him?” I asked, wondering what the point was of doing this. “I really like him, a lot!” she replied. I then asked her why she didn’t just try to be a normal couple, boyfriend and girlfriend? “He knows how to find me,” she answered. “He has my email, my mobile number….But he never invited me out, for a drink or dinner. If he can do this as a guy, I can as well as a girl!”
But I knew she was always thinking about him, even though she was kissing different guys at every different party. But how much fun did she really get out of this? And don’t forget at the same time, she was also suffering by missing him.
So for me, I guess ultimately I will go back to China, for love, for the real fun and pleasures. Because I believe that with somebody you love, even though you may only be doing something small and simple, it still touches the bottom of your heart.”
‘Asian Girl’ Yi Ya’s next column will appear in Delta 23.
“Dangerous imbalance of gender in China: in 2000, 100 girls to every 117 boys; by 2020, there could be 30 to 40 million frustrated young men in China who cannot find women. This not so insignificant fact was part of some research done for an exhibition in Rotterdam this summer on ‘Contemporary China’. When I read this during a meeting with my colleagues, a sentence jumped out of my mouth spontaneously: “I should go back to China!” The whole conference room suddenly burst into laughter. But come on guys, I’m serious! Without anything sweet, romantic or sexy having happened to me since I came to the Netherlands a year and eight months ago, you can imagine how excited I was when I found out there might be millions of cute Chinese boys waiting just for me in China! China then is a paradise for this 24-year-old, frustrated Chinese girl living alone in Rotterdam!
I can still clearly remember when I was together with my ex-boyfriend in China, how sweet he was. He’s Chinese and we were both studying at the same university. As an architecture student, sitting at my computer drawing day and night is part of my life; but when this happened, he was always taking care of my three daily meals, buying my favorite food from restaurants and bringing it to me in my dormitory. And we also had wonderful trips together around China during the summer holidays: swimming by the fantastic beach in Sanya, a southern Chinese seaside city; listening to the frogs singing by the lake under the full moon in Wuyuan, the most beautiful countryside in China; watching the sunset in desert in western China….
I now realize that this might never happen again to me, at least according to my limited Dutch experience. So many such stories I have heard here: dating 2 or 3 times in the beginning, sleeping one night together afterwards, then? Maybe nothing, maybe keep sleeping with each other once a while, or maybe switching to another one and repeating the same procedure, but hardly any serious relationships. A Dutch girlfriend told me she was having a kind of special relationship with a guy: once they met, they spent one night together, but only having sex, and the next early morning she left his apartment. During the time since they never contacted each other. “Do you like him?” I asked, wondering what the point was of doing this. “I really like him, a lot!” she replied. I then asked her why she didn’t just try to be a normal couple, boyfriend and girlfriend? “He knows how to find me,” she answered. “He has my email, my mobile number….But he never invited me out, for a drink or dinner. If he can do this as a guy, I can as well as a girl!”
But I knew she was always thinking about him, even though she was kissing different guys at every different party. But how much fun did she really get out of this? And don’t forget at the same time, she was also suffering by missing him.
So for me, I guess ultimately I will go back to China, for love, for the real fun and pleasures. Because I believe that with somebody you love, even though you may only be doing something small and simple, it still touches the bottom of your heart.”
‘Asian Girl’ Yi Ya’s next column will appear in Delta 23.
Comments are closed.