Sunday, August 24, 2008

Chinese view on weddings

I keep hearing about a mentality amongst American women where they daydream about their wedding day since they were a little girl. I find the phenomenon interesting, because as far as I can tell, Chinese women don't share it.

Last week, I was talking to my mother about how my cousin recently re-married.

Me: "Did my cousin hold a wedding this time?"

My mother: "No. He wanted to do it quickly. If he did hold a dinner or some type of event, your aunt and uncle didn't know about it."

Me: "Don't worry. When I get married, I'll have a wedding."

My mother: "Will you invite me?"

23 comments:

konberg said...

What did you say??

Anonymous said...

Hello, I shouldn't bother you with this here but it seems Lively is your pet project and being in a bit of rush to get my point across, I'll take the fast lane. Actually we very briefly talked some weeks ago on Lively, at the time I was raving about it despite the minor bugs and repeated crashes but something a lot more disturbing came up recently.

For a few days now, the Active Search has been all screwed up. I've been told the Lively team may be experimenting with the servers and the way rooms are sorted, but given the current order is persisting, I thought it may be something else, a bug or a misjudgment. The first page of the Active Rooms list (http://www.lively.com/popular) seems fairly accurate, you can see some of the usual popular rooms. At the bottom of the page however, you may notice empty rooms are showing up, and there's a lot more on the second page. With a little more perusal you encounter, starting at page 4, after quite many neglected, abandoned rooms, some of the familiar and popular ones again.

And that's the whole problem, for some odd reason, the actual accurate Active Room list is now split in half; some rooms stayed where they should be, at the top, while others, equally popular, slipped onto page 4 to 6, behind a bunch of empty, irrelevant rooms. Initially I thought you may be giving a chance to beginners, but that was soon to be ruled out: the same unused (and sometimes old) rooms always come up, even their owners seem to have forgotten them, and they are not outstanding in any way.

Of course there's a selfish motivation behind my effort to report this problem. This bug - if hopefully it is one - has taken a toll on the visits in my own room. I rely entirely on random users, I log in a lot to be there when people come and so far it was working, the number of visitors was slowly increasing, some people were coming back, and the popularity of my room was justly increasing, up to page 1-2. It all ended last week when the Active Search changed; no matter how much time I stay in now, I can be glad if I get 2 new guests a day.

Sorry again for hijacking your blog with this message but I thought that really needed to be told to someone with an active hand in the project, plus, that was my reckless moment, ah ! -- steamboy@gmail.com

Anonymous said...

what did you say?

Anonymous said...

Don't worry. All Chinese families are not dysfunctional as yours :)

Anonymous said...

Your whole family is out of order ;)

Anonymous said...

I went to my cousin's wedding in HK. Tiny ceremony, huge banquet. Apparently the social custom there (or so I was told) is that the ceremony was way less important than the banquet.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry. All Chinese families are not dysfunctional as yours :)


Most Chinese families are MORE dysfunctional than n's... regrettably, this is first-hand knowledge.

Anonymous said...

I don't get why you're not married yet. You're in Asian-fetish Central AND you like white guys. Are you too picky or something?

Anonymous said...

anonymous, what are you talking about? She is perfecting the algorithm to find Mr.Right and we all know that premature optimization is the root of all evil ;)

-L

Bob said...

Well, my first wife, I don't think she really daydreamed about our wedding. Hmmmm, maybe that is why we eventually divorced.

My second wife however, it was always on her mind prior to the wedding day. I would run the chance of getting a stair of disbelief if I put thoughts of school or work ahead of that magical day. It was a very nice day however. It was small with a select group of family and friends invited. We had the ceramony in the Milwaukee Mitchell Park Domes.

As far as getting married, I say take your time. Be as picky as you want. Find the right person the first time. Unlike myself who found the perfect woman the 2nd time. :)

Anonymous said...

She is perfecting the algorithm to find Mr.Right

I thought eHarmony had that problem solved.

Anonymous said...

Niniane,

I enjoyed your writing, but like most of the Chinese girls who immigrated to US during a young age,brilliant and have a good care, you will be torn between what is a traditional Chinese way of thinking from your parents towards marriage(you can't get rid of them, can't you?), and apparent liking of white guys. Let me predict: you will be married to a white guys whose profession is opera singer/artist etc and don't make much of money but always hope for a Tony award.

Don't take my words for it. let's wait till that day.

cheers,

Anonymous said...

She is too practical
She is almost an engineer and probably have similar thoughts about calculating the pros and cons of every details.

Unfortunately, she is almost too old for an asian male looking for a bride.

Also asian males (almost wrote pig) often does not offer enough flattery that are needed to successfully court asian females.

But, in the end, she will choose Asian if the Asian can shower her with lovely poems and lots of "fluffs", because it will be less complicated, show national pride, ...etc.

Anonymous said...

uh, anonymous 8/27/2008 10:23 PM, Niniane is into white guys, not faggots.

Anonymous said...

somewhere in the heavens the asian gods shed another tear at the loss of one of their own to the whiteys

Anonymous said...

How is it possible to be too practical? I do not know why marriage should be the crowning achievement of one's life. I would rather think that a person should cultivate deep and lasting friendships with all manner of people, and if a particular relationship justifies the investment in marriage then fine, but if not, that's fine too. The false dilemma is in thinking you have to choose between a lifetime of loneliness, and a lifetime of corrosive compromise and domestic devolution. She is free to choose another path entirely. :)

Yoli said...

I love your blog Niniane and I look at it often for not only your wit but for glimpses of your family's cultural heritage.

Anonymous said...

I think the media likes to portray *white* American girls as marriage happy airheads looking for a free ride.
Most of my friends, who are Americans, are in their 40's and are never married. We are not under the delusion that some knight will sweep us off our feet. We don't get all giggly at the idea of a frilly white wedding dress. Apparently, recent statistics show that this generation of 40-something women are the highest number of unmarried, childless women in recent history.
But of course, t.v. would have you believe otherwise.

Noah said...

ermm ... what does it mean when your mum says "will u invite me" ?

david1082 said...

Marry me, Niniane!

(the Gmail ad made me say it.)

david1082 said...

Some recently-discovered lines by Robert Herrick:

Should Niniane be married off
To an aristocratic toff?
Or should she stay single always,
Haunting the G-plex's hallways?

Anonymous said...

HEY STOP POSTING THIS CHINESE SHIT AND POST MORE PARTY PICS!!! YOU SOCIALITE!! AND MORE PICS OF EVA THX!!!!

Anonymous said...

She'd doubtless no sooner mingle
With those feckless, pallid singles
Than doff a dandy, oafish prig
While giving her heart to a pig!