Bits on the side of China

This morning I just read a post about marriage in china on the Speaking of China blog and what it can often consist of Money. Home Car. It reminded me of what happened to my poor friend Wen xue,(Teddy)  I have known this guy for about 2 years now. He is an honest, hard working guy and he is from the same city as my boyfriend. Anyway his mom decided that he was 24 and it was time to start thinking about marriage.

So when he flew back to China at Chinese New year, his mom introduced him to one of her friends daughters they soon clicked and he brought her to Singapore to meet his Dad and that went well. 

Then shortly after he had to return to Ireland to finish his education, I think this was the biggest mistake he made, because we all know long distant relationships don't work out well, but they usually work out surprisingly well for Chinese couples, as I mentioned before in the American dream post. I don't know whether couples just turn a blind eye to anything that may or may not happen in the long years of absense or what.

But anyway Teddy had only been back in Ireland for about 2 months when his girlfriend (fiance) rang him and said she had fallen in love with somebody else. This wouldn't of been so bad, only the guy she had fallen in love with was 40 years old. His girlfriend was just 21.

He straight away he booked a flight back to China to try and plead with her. He promised he would never leave China again, he told her how much he loved her, there may have been crying.

But no the girl was not to be won over, this guy dispite his age had money and thats all she could see. It didn't matter how good or honest or hard working Teddy was her mind was made up.

I asked won't she feel ashamed? you introduced her to your parents and everything, What about her parents? surely they will stop her. No they are happy this guy has money. What about the guy, he must be married already? It doesn't matter he has money that's all that counts.

This is not the first time I have heard this sort of story. My boyfriend has 3 friends who own a snooker club Xin Yue Entertainment, and would you believe 2 out of the 3 have long term girlfriends of 7 years and also have a bit on the side. and the bits on the side know about the girlfriends and have in both case met the girlfriends, and the poor girlfriends are oblivious to the whole thing. The guys who own the shop have money and that's all that counts. That's seemingly enough for the bits on the side.

Personally I have always been of the opinion, if a guy cheated on me with a one night stand, I wouldn't want to know. but an arrangement like this is just horrible.

The Americian Dream

About a month ago Vodafone lowered the price for calling America, Naturally my boyfriend was delighted, his cousin lives in America and he hadn't heard his voice for almost 8 years, obviously they chatted on QQ but chatting on the phone is a bit more personal and special. 

The first time he rang him, He stayed on the phone for almost 3 hours in the middle of the night if you don't mind. My boyfriend is definitely a night-owl, more about that another day. After he got off the phone he was dying to share all the news, and accidentally woke me up. 

His cousins story is quite sad really. In 2002 he started the impossible task of trying to move to America. The whole process took 3 years and a lot of money. To be honest  I don't really know the full details but from what I can gather whatever agency helped him, were exploiting some loophole in the American law. He arrived in America with no English and no clue what to do and was detained in prison for a month given a solicitor who I presume applied for asylum. Which was successful but resulted in him losing his right to go home to China and then return to America. To be honest I can't make heads nor tails of it.  But this is all i know and I didn't want to pry any further since it was so late at night.

But not being able to return home wouldn't be as bad if he was a single man and free to search for a girlfriend to keep him company, but that wasn't the case he left behind a wife and child. I can't imagine how that must of felt. I said to my boyfriend "why doesn't he just return back to China and give up on America?" My boyfriend said he (strongly influenced by his parents) has a dream to be successful in America and set up a business and save lots of money. He hasn't achieved that yet. He is working as Chinese take away delivery man and earning just about American minimum wage.

So obviously 5 years is a long time to be away from your wife and missing out on your sons life must be tough. Which makes me think a phone call once a week just doesn't cut it when your married. Which leads to his cousin's next big plan. He wants his wife to move to China and leave their son with his grandmother. This doesn't sound too bad... but the worst part is the only way to get her there is to use a tourist visa and once that expires to allow her to become an undocumented person. They will live there for the next 8-10 years. I just thought it was a horrible thing for a husband to insist that his wife to do. The life of an undocumented person is far from desirable. I think it's really selfish of his cousin Then my boyfriend said he hasn't had sex for 5 years, doesn't he deserve a normal life living with his wife? 

I just feel sorry for their son, who's had an absent father for the first 5 years of his life and now he's going to have an absent mother and father for possibly the next 8 years. Theirs only so much a grandmother can do. 

Photo from here

When is it time to give up on your dream? When is enough, enough? 

The Burglary...

As much as I hate to admit it, My former classmate, still has a habit of coming in and out of my life more often than not as he pleases, whether it is to annoy me, to joke with me, insist on playing with me, comfort me, etc. Even though he is quite annoying I still feel that he is rather misunderstood by most people Irish people and Chinese. 

Irish people don’t get him because he is outspoken and sometimes his frankness comes across as rudeness. Once I went shopping with him for a new suit and he tried one on. Now most sensible Irish people who try on something in front of a sales assistant would never insult the clothes. They usually make some polite excuse like oh I will think about it and come back later. But on the contrary my former classmate just came straight out with the insults, the texture is to fluffy, the lining is too thin, the shape is not very good, and the insults kept coming… I felt embarrassed just sitting there listening. I’m surprised this manner is accepted in China, but it definitely isn’t the norm in Ireland not by a long shot. He was totally unaware that he was being rude, as far as he was concerned the shop is just there to serve him and he can say what he likes to who he likes. After we left the shop I gently told him he was too rude in the shop and Irish people never carry on like that. He seemed totally alarmed so I just let it be.

As far as his dealing with Chinese and Irish students people don’t take him seriously. You never know if he is joking, lying or telling the truth. I think I was the only person in the class who was able to get his humor. As I got to know him on a more personal level than most people. I was often able to ask him why he did what he did and so on… You just have to take him with a pinch of salt.

I hadn’t talked to him for the whole summer and then one day in November for the first time in 4 months I picked up the phone to him and he told me he had bought a house and a Mercedes! I was thinking I will believe it when I see it. But evidently sure enough I did get to see the house and the Mercedes.

Which leads to the burglary! Yesterday as I was heading into the city centre I got a call from him to say, His car has been stolen and his front door smashed! And he wants to me to meet him tommorrow probably not going to happen…..

Regardless of his behavior he didn’t deserve this…

Learn Chinese & Secrets

I remember the first song I listened to by a Chinese person was Jin- Learn Chinese; I know it’s not a classic Chinese song, but at the time and even now I love rap. So it suited me just fine. Although it never actually inspired me to learn Chinese, I just liked the tune.

During the Christmas holidays, I came across a blog written by an American woman married to a Chinese man. She posted a blog post about “How to get your boyfriend/girlfriend to teach you Chinese” I used some of the techniques she recommended such as to learn how to say the routine things you do every day, Like brush your teeth, turn on the light, take off your shoes and so on. Here is the link to her blog Speaking of China

Anyway I found out early on in the week that I could have improved my Chinese a lot quicker!! One of my friends in college, Xiaoji, has been giving Chinese lessons during the holidays and he never told me even though he knows I want to learn Chinese. So obviously I felt disappointed, I wanted to say something to him but my friend who told me Ma Jin... made me promise me not to mention to XiaoJi  that I had heard about the teaching @.@ so secrets are everywhere. Anyway I kept everything inside and was very distant to XiaoJi after that because I just didn't know what to say.

Ma Jin & Me (in the college grounds)

Nancy, Ma Jin and Me

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Me and Ma Jin (In class during the break)

But today all hard feelings were erroded and I got the full story. :) After class XiaoJi met me and said "Sarah I have something for you.... come with me to my dorm..." So I followed him and we were talking and he made me promise not to tell Ma Jin or any other chinese friend that he was giving me this gift! Ahhhh more secrets!!! So I promised. Then I got an opportunity to ask about the Chinese lessons, It turns out he was just teaching one classmate and the lessons only lasted for a week... and he just covered the very basic Ni Hao, Zai Jian,  blah blah and explained how to read ping yin. I have already mastered that hahah! 

Ma Jin, Me, Nancy & Xiao Ji (In front of the college)

Nancy, XiaoJi, and me (Horrible Photo of me!!)

Then he gave me a really cute gift of Choclates the box was lovely~~!! Chocolate makes everybody Happy ! :)

The chocolates (in my college Common room)

An all asian, Snooker Master final at Wembly

Since my boyfriend is obsessed and glued to Snooker these days I came to know that the Snooker Master's Final is on today and it is in fact an all Asian Showdown, not only that it's an all Chinese final. China vs Hong Kong. Not surprisingly my boyfriend was up for the guy from Mainland China.

Ding Junhui (丁俊晖) [Mainland China]

Marco Fu (傅家俊)(Fù Jiājùn) [Hong Kong]

Earlier on when i was watching the snooker on TV I thought Marco Fu was the handsome one. But now looking at Ding Junhui's photos I think he looks a lot cuter ^^ and has an uncanny resemblance to my ex boyfriend.

Which one do you think is cuter?  
Update
Ding Junhui won the competition.... so i guess he is the all round winner in terms of cuteness and snooker 

My Chinese Name

When i started dating my first Chinese boyfriend it really bothered me that every Chinese person who comes to Ireland is required to choose a "new" English name. So I felt it was only right that i should get a "new" Chinese name. My ex boyfriend made a huge heap of excuses as to why he couldn't give me a Chinese name

Firstly you don't have a Chinese surname.
Therefore it's impossible for me to even contemplate giving you a Chinese name. End of story. I was a bit disappointed I wanted a Chinese name I hated that new names were only suitable for Chinese people but not for Irish or any foreigner for that matter. So in the end i gave up.

Then when we went to China to meet his family, All his family found it impossible to remember my name because it was so different and foreign. So i tried to suggest that maybe he could put his thinking cap on and give me some sort of Chinese name... I assured him that i would be OK with even just one word.... Then he met me half way and gave me a Direct translation of my name "Sailia" he found it on a Chinese book that had been directly translated from English into Chinese.

I know i said I would be happy with any Chinese name... I quickly explained to him i didn't actually mean any... I want a real name not some made up direct translation name.... He refused to accept it and said its this or nothing. So i decided to stick with nothing.

Finally when we came back from China and I pursued the Chinese name one final time. He asked his Mom to pick up a Chinese name for me! Then i got the name Tian Tian. meaning  Sweetie.

I was really touched. His mom was really kind and nice at the beginning she always tried to make me feel comfortable whenever we visited. She believed western girls would never sleep on the hard cold ground so she paid for me and my boyfriend to stay at a hotel. When we went to China she rang my boyfriend everyday and instructed him to take care of me and make sure i eat good food and make sure he brings me to the right places and watches my bag on the street. His mom lived in Ireland but the rest of his family lived in China.

Sadly when she heard me and my boyfriend were talking about marriage she forced my ex boyfriend to break up. :(

So after that my "sweet" Chinese name was no longer as sweet as I thought. So I reverted back to Sarah period  I used Sarah as my screen name on QQ and a Chinese girl told me that no one uses there real names on QQ in China. So she helped me create a new Chinese name and I then became Zhi Han and she even gave me a Chinese Surname which was inspired by my Surname. Lin

Since that day my Chinese name has been Lin Zhi Han. However no one actually calls me that... Although when my boyfriend saved my number on his phone he saved it as Zhi Han. :) and I saved his as Michael lol!

Sometimes my boyfriend calls me Sarah Chen! So it makes me wonder will i ever actually change my name to Sarah Chen? I don't know if the shoe fits?

Lucky Number 7

The first person my boyfriend introduced me to, when we started dating was his friend Tommy. Me and my boyfriend spent a lot of time with him when my boyfriend was working in Kilkenny.Whilst visiting him in Kilkenny, we went for a picnic in Kilkenny's Castle's Nature Park

 My Boyfriend and I, Entering the park

 Tommy with Bunny ears

 Me and Tommy posing very excitedly lol

 Me posing by the Nature reserve

 Beautiful Swans

 Beauty and the Beast

 Yay Tommy is a bunny lol

 Tommy and My boyfriend Haw Haw

 Piggy in the Middle

 Tommy and I waiting...

One final pose

This week we had to say farewell to Tommy, He is going back to China for good, On a rather negative note. To be honest I think he probably would of liked to continue living here. But i think he had to take control of his finance's. He couldn't stop gambling and lost and owed to much money. Gambling is a terrible drug once it gets into your system. Its hard to kick the habit. No amount of talking can encourage you to quit. When you say something... it goes in one ear and out the other.... Sad but true.

My boyfriend and I's relationship was almost ruined through gambling. My boyfriend went through a period where he was unemployed for about 2 months. He had nothing to do and turned to gambling.... I thought it was just an entertaining way to kill a few hours. But in the end it got out of hand. Nearly 1000 euro lost due to gambling. Then after 2 huge rows, We decided we were never going to gamble again. And we haven't.