I just got back from a business trip to Hong Kong, China. Great country, if it wasn't for all the Asians. I kid, the Asian culture is actually quite wonderful (except for their food); the people are incredibly polite and ridiculously efficient.
Getting to know several locals, as I had an opportunity to do, allowed me an understanding that while there are a great many things about these people that is the same as we're used to here in the States, there are also many things that are not. The biggest difference I noticed is their tradition of culture, especially the innate need to allow others to save face, even at the expense of one's own comfort.
The second night we were in town, out at a bar my friends and I watched two beautiful young local ladies being hit on mercilessly by some guys. The women's body language made it quite clear that they were not OK with the situation, under the table were tightly crossed legs and clenched fists. Above the tabletop however, they projected a completely different image. They laughed and smiled and let the men light their cigarettes, and if we didn't know better we would have thought they were enjoying flirting.
After a few minutes we rescued them from the situation and they came and sat with us for the rest of the night. When we asked them about the guys that were hitting on them, they straight up said that while they were wishing they were somewhere else, they had to entertain their advances because their culture absolutely forbids them to disgrace anyone else by being rude.
Of course we promptly taught them the American way of flirting, which is to raise your hand in someone's face and tell them to go away whether you like them or not.
These girls also had plenty of similarities to American women, in that the attached (married) one was all over me and insisted I give her my phone number. Apparently it's only important to ensure that someone doesn't lose face if they're right there in front of you, but not home waiting for you while you're out at a bar with some Westerner's phone number in your pocket.
Culture barriers don't make women stop being women, apparently.
Before the trip, a friend of mine was telling me about his brother who had visited China and ended up staying because he married a local girl. My thought at the time was that I couldn't help but be shocked at the cojones it must take to make such a long-term decision when the culture differences are so great. How can you truly know a person when they have such a different upbringing, and more importantly, how can you know what type of person they will grow into if you take them from their culture or introduce a marriage of your two cultures? It's a big risk, no matter how you slice it.
The potential for disaster is bad enough when two people that grew up in the same country start mixing their lives together. No matter how much of it is wonderful and beautiful, there are always things that have been built into our psychies from an early age that will eventually come to the surface and cause culture shock. Coming from two different families or neighborhoods is enough, forget coming from two different countries.
Now, however, it occurs to me now that those little differences, scars from our past, or morals (good or bad) taught to us by our parents, are probably even more apt to cause problems than cultural ones. And those sorts of things only come up after you spend a lot of time with someone in a variety of different situations. At least with cultural attitudes you know them going in and learn what to expect (assuming you do your research).
The more I think about it, I'm actually more astounded at MY relationship choices from the past than I am at my friend's brother's choice to marry into Chinese culture. Without the obvious cultural differences it's always seemed safe (to me) to dive into someone's arms and trust them with your heart, but the truth is that you simply can't trust what you see whether it comes from the same culture as you or not - it's what lies deep underneath that can come around and wreck your home months or even years later. And this isn't something you can predict like cultural norms, it's something specific to each of us. Or maybe you can predict it - I saw a hot Asian girl at the Hong Kong airport wearing a t-shirt that (along with my own experiences) sort of indicates that there's something genetic that comes along with the female gender that makes them natural home-wreckers. Her shirt said: "One Love Go, Another Come".
Women have been wearing a warning about their seeming indifference to committment and dedication to those that love them right there over their breasts all this time and somehow I missed it all these years. I guess like my new married woman-friend at the bar in Hong Kong proves, women will be women no matter what else it says on their passport,
