On Dating Chinese Men

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Last month Jocelyn over at Speaking of China wrote On Dating Chinese Men and asked us fellow bloggers to do the same. Her goal is to gather us mus reliable information about dating Chinese men as possible, so when others are searching it online they will get a better picture what is it really like to date a Chinese guy.

I dated a Chinese guy back in Finland already and have been living  in China for three years now. The following tips are based on my own or my friends’ experiences.

Date to marry

Goal for a Chinese person to date is to get married and have a family. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, but most of the Chinese men out there date to marry They might start talking about it very early in the relationship in order to know if you have the same ideas about dating as he does.

Usually if you meet the parents it is a sign of a serious relationship, probably this guy wants to marry you if things continue going well with you.

Parents have the final say

Wether your Chinese boyfriend will continue to be with you or will marry you depends on his parents. If parents say no, then it usually is the end of the relationship sooner or later. You two might be able to work it out with the parents when they get to know you better, but parental acceptance is important even when both are Chinese.

If you two are 25 or older and the parents agree you being together, they will start asking when you two get married. When you get married they will start waiting for a grandson.

Taking care of you

Chinese guys are generally good at taking care of you, or at least a good Chinese man is. He might cook for you, or make sure you always have water to drink. Or he might go shopping with you and insists paying for everything. Chinese man is expected to and wants to take care of his loved one, to be the breadwinner of the family. It might be hard for him if his girlfriend earns more than him.

Language difficulties

Even if you speak fluent Chinese or he speaks fluent English you still might have language difficulties in your relationship. Perhaps his native language is a dialect of Chinese and you can’t understand a word they are saying in the family dinner table?

Or perhaps your Chinese is as terrible as his English but you want to make it work anyway? Be ready for lot of work and mutual understanding and patience to have a successful relationship. If necessary learn the local dialect in order to communicate with his family and relatives.

The good and the bad

I’ve got my heart broken by a Chinese guy, I’ve already felt the happiest with a Chinese guy. Dating someone outside your culture, especially from such a different culture as Chinese culture is, it isn’t easy. There will be hardships, misunderstandings and compromises has to be made, more than if you dated and married  someone from your own country.

But at the same time you get a man who wants to take care of his family, is willing to work hard for everyone’s happiness and loves kids. Someone who knows why he is dating you and will let you know it too. Someone who haven’t even heard about commitment phobia.

So should you date a Chinese guy? Why not! If you meet a great Chinese guy then go for it, don’t let the stereotypes or someone’s bad experiences hold you back.

Are you dating a Chinese man at the moment? Or dated one but it ended? I would love to hear about your experiences on dating Chinese men!

Did you like this blog post? If you have been enjoining my blog I would appreciate if you wanted to vote my blog at the Lotus Blossom Award. My blog was nominated in the Chinese love blog category which inspired me to write this blog post On Dating Chinese Men.

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  • Ellen

    Hi Sara,

    I’m so happy you posted this. I am also following Jocelyn and I think she asked for such posts, because Internet is congested with awful stories about dating Chinese men… which are based on stories taken place in Shanghai or Beijing and hence are rarely veracious. However, these two metropolitans and people in there, just like with any other big city, do not (!!!) represent a “typical Chinese”, “typical dating manners” or any other aspect of life. People often forget that China is HUGE and DIVERSE. There are huge differences in China itself.

    I’m dating a classical Guangzhounese. This relationship certainly is a fairytale, similar to your relationship: he takes care of me in ALL possible and impossible ways, cooks for me, makes a cup of tea (even when I don’t need it), brings me an extra pillow even from another part of town, stays up late with me when I need to study. When I started dating him, I freaked out. I thought he’s insane :P Later I got used to it. But not completely. After a while, I raised a question: if you cook and do the shopping and take care of me, then what’s MY role in this relationship?? Be the princess on the pea? We made a compromise: kitchen is now my sacred area! :)

    However, I would like to stress now: not all Chinese men are very caring like this (!!). We happened to visit one of his best friends, who’s from the North of China. When she saw us together, she was shocked and asked my BF, “Why are you like a puppy around your girlfriend??” Then she gave us insight into her relationship. That relationship resembled me rather a Western relationship: both partners are ambitious, independent and in case of conflicts wins that one who has better arguments. There’s no such thing like the man forgets himself, leaves his tasks in the name of his beloved one.

    In short, China is diverse and so is dating behaviour in China. The attitude of a partner in the relationship can be “independent” and “egoistic”, but most probably it will be “I will do anything to make my girlfriends/wife happy”.

    As for language differences, then in our case yes, sometimes we can’t find the right word to express a thought, but since we can “read” each other’s mind, then that’s not a big obstacle.

    Finally, as for South Chinese men, then they take things seriously. Like you, Sara, said, Chinese men “date to marry”. They don’t have “commitment phobia”. Neither have they problems with ‘dating techniques’ (do I have to bring flowers? Do I play a tough guy or a soft guy? What shall I say? What.. How…). That’s because their (Chinese guys) prime goal is to take care of a woman and not to play intriguing games like most of men in the West do.

    That’s my experience. Sorry for being wordy.

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    Sara Jaaksola Reply:
    March 8th, 2013 at 8:56 pm

    Thank you so much on sharing your experiences and wisdom Ellen! I’m so glad that through these comments from you and others we can all learn a lot about dating culture in China.

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  • FrankL 世方

    Hi Sara, sorry to hear things didn’t work out with your boyfriend. Break-ups are never easy. 保重。

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    Sara Jaaksola Reply:
    March 8th, 2013 at 8:54 pm

    Thank you Frank. Things didn’t go down easy, but I wrote about it only after having processed it myself. I’m doing very well now.

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  • Mira

    Honestly in traditional Chinese culture, women have to do every house work(also in other Asian cultures). And hence Chinese men tend to let their wives to cook for them all the time. I think you have to be very lucky to find a boyfriend that would like to share the house work. And even if they do, it’s not guarantee that they will do the same after marriage. And many Chinese guy don’t know how to cook or they don’t do cooking. At least my Dad and most of my guy friends don’t cook. So I always feel jealous about friends whoes dad actually cook better then their mums! :P

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  • http://www.facebook.com/jocelyn.eikenburg Jocelyn Eikenburg

    Thanks for posting this — despite your breakup! I know it must still be painful for you. But for you to still come forth with such a supportive post…that’s amazing. So thank you, Sara.

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    Sara Jaaksola Reply:
    March 8th, 2013 at 8:52 pm

    No need to thank you Jocelyn, I’m happy to help the community!

    I’ll also let you (and others) in a secret, although I only recently wrote about my break up, it actually happened many months ago. Only after I processed it myself was I able to write about it.

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  • Jenna Cody

    This is an interesting post, but I have to say that, in terms of “typical” Chinese men who would fall into all of these categories (I realize there are exceptions), there are plenty of things in here that would make it impossible for me to date a typical Chinese guy (an exception – sure! And I know plenty of exceptions. I’m married, though, so it doesn’t matter).

    I wouldn’t be OK with parents having the final say – especially if they accepted me but expected marriage on their timeline, and then expected a grandson (the “son” part is so sexist – I realize it’s cultural, but it’s also sexist). I don’t have babies on other’s timelines, and at the command of others. In fact, I don’t want children at all – I know a few Taiwanese (not Chinese but bear with me) men who also don’t want kids, but this would probably be a dealbreaker with most.

    I wouldn’t be OK with a boyfriend or husband who felt it was his right or duty to be the breadwinner. I won’t curtail what I earn, and I am quite happy to be the breadwinner (if I’m not, that’s OK too) – the issue would be the idea that man = moneymaker, woman = cared for by the man, regardless of who earns more. I don’t like that paradigm and could never accept it. A man who is uncomfortable with his wife earning more than he does isn’t the man for me (my husband is fine with it, by the way).

    Although this is changing, I’m also not OK with being the one mainly responsible for housework and the gruntwork of child-rearing. Still an issue in much of China and Taiwan even as urban China and Taiwan change.

    So, while this is a really interesting post…it sort of outlines why a Chinese guy who does adhere to all of these traits (I am aware, again, that plenty don’t) isn’t the guy for me.

    [Reply]

    Rosie Reply:
    March 6th, 2013 at 10:48 am

    I have to disagree with some of this, particularly in the case of child-rearing and housework. I think it’s unfair to paint Chinese men as unwilling to do these duties. That’s actually not what I’ve witnessed having lived in China and being married to a Chinese man for several years. I actually find that Chinese men are just as helpful, if not more so, then American husbands. Chinese women/mothers also receive a lot of support from parents and in-laws when raising their child.

    As far as the desire for a son, this is common in many cultures. Even in most Western ones, I dare say many men hope they can have a son (although many don’t voice this feeling). I have struggled with this attitude, but when it comes down to it and a baby finally arrives, I think everyone is quite happy regardless of the sex.

    And I don’t think it’s unnatural for a man to want to earn more money or not feel like he has to be supported by his wife. I think this is magnified in China due to the whole concept of “losing face.” In any case, I do earn quite a bit more than my Chinese husband and while I know he wishes he could earn more, this isn’t an issue because we don’t make it one.

    Honestly, I think the points Sara brings up are true but they are generalizations. It’s good to know they might be issues you’ll face if you date a Chinese man, but you need to get to know the individual

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    Sara Jaaksola Reply:
    March 8th, 2013 at 8:38 pm

    Thank you for your excellent comment Rosie! You’re right, the points I brought up are of course generalizations, if I couldn’t generalize a little, then writing this post would be impossible. No matter in which culture, person is still an individual and might or might not be similar with the common generalizations about that culture.

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    Kai Reply:
    March 14th, 2013 at 11:45 am

    As a chinese guy I also want to say that according to some survey we have 180 million single guys in china…so it won’t be a surprise that we still have many many “exceptions” :D.

    About “Parents have the final say”, I think for many chinese guys, their parents ideas are quite important but they don’t actually have the “final say”, especially for people living in big cities like Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai etc.. If the man is determine to marry a foreign woman, he will try every means to persuade his parents.

    Actually, what most chinese parents worrying about is the distance, if the couple decide to live in china (or even better, the same city as the chinese man’s parents) after they got married, a foreign daugther in law won’t be a problem at all to most of the parents. After all, the chinese people are more family oriented.

    As I know, most parents don’t really care about the sex of their grandchildren nowadays, except for some really TRADITIONAL familie.

    [Reply]

    Sara Jaaksola Reply:
    March 8th, 2013 at 8:50 pm

    Thank you for your comment Jenna! Not all the Chinese guys are like this, but many are. It’s also good to know if their style of dating/relationship isn’t for you. There can be many cultural clashed between a traditional Chinese man and a modern independent Western woman.

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  • Adesia

    i have dated Chinese men before I think they must have been the exceptions, because up until the one i’m dating currently they didn’t really act too much like that. This one is different we havent even been dating that long and already has invited himself to meet my family next month, planned vacation the following month. And for my birthday has bought me a matching watch to his.

    Hummm maybe the serious man you speak of? Its a nice change , perhaps that is the bonus to dating someone 5 years older to you.. I guess we will see.

    [Reply]

    Sara Jaaksola Reply:
    March 8th, 2013 at 8:49 pm

    It really sounds like this man likes you a lot! Planning to spend time with you and giving gifts are good signs. Based on my experience a Chinese guy can get serios quickly if he has decided on a girl already, he will let you know that he wants to be with you.

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  • einnius

    where r u

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  • Alysa

    I have lived in Guangzhou for 13 years, and Chinese guys don’t seem interested in me at all. I assumed they don’t like American girls or I was just ugly? However a few of them overcame their shyness cause I’ve had a few asking for my number lately. It’s too bad the ones who aren’t shy are shorter than me! And the foreigner guys aren’t interested either, probably because getting a Chinese girl is so much easier. Do I have to move back to the US to date?? ;P

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    Someone Reply:
    February 28th, 2013 at 8:05 pm

    It’s not you. It’s a different dating environment and culture. You’re probably sending the wrong signals and probably aren’t picking up on his. Learn from the locals how interactions between the sexes should go. Don’t go into another country with an idea of cultural or romantic imperialism (foreign men are most guilty of this) expecting everyone to behave as you expect, speak your language, and romance you in the way in which you are accustomed.

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    Sara Jaaksola Reply:
    March 8th, 2013 at 8:46 pm

    Hi Alysa, I would say that shyness is one of the biggest reasons here. A Western girl might have to take the first step herself in order to get to know guys. I bet those Chinese guys were thinking the same thing, that you aren’t into them.

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    showlex Reply:
    May 16th, 2013 at 9:06 am

    Alysa, if you like a Chinese guy, you can go talk to him. He’ll be happy to chat with you, trust me. Some guys are shy and don’t tend to go to foreign girls and ask for their number. But it doesn’t mean that they are not attracted to you.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/yangxiao.ou.7 Yangxiao Ou

    You built this website by yourself? I really have to say it is beautiful, and your articles, too.

    [Reply]

    Sara Jaaksola Reply:
    March 11th, 2013 at 5:30 pm

    Thank you so much for your nice comment! The theme of this blog is a free theme I downloaded, nice to hear you like it.

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  • Wang

    You really know a lot about China and Chinese people. It’s nice reading your posts.

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