Tag Archives: dating

DATING IN CHINA – MEGAPOST 1

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And now for your reading enjoyment. In case you missed it before. Allow me to lay it all out.

Megapost of my personal dating memoirs, covering the time span of August, 2008 to February, 2011

Links, from the beginning:

•

Prologue: How I came to China

Part 1: Burning Man
I go to a big trippy festival

Part 2: Doing LSD at Burning Man
I expand my mind and receive an invite abroad

•

Introductions

Intro to Dating in China
First things first, let me explain how this thing will work

I arrive in China
The story officially begins, I get here

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Girls

Mona
My first China-based girlfriend, and how that didn’t work out

Julia
The next level… Sigh, was it love?

Mary
A summer romance, a brief flight, all too innocent

Annie – Sky – Lulu – more
Singlehood, bachelor life, the learning process, playing the field…

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Zoey

The Beginning
Long-term relationship begins, a defining point in my life

An American intermission
You can’t go ‘home’, and I try and I fail and I drift

The End
Finally, and sadly, nothing lasts forever

•

 

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Dating – Rejected in Guangzhou

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at local gz pub, stay positive olives
At local GZ pub, with olives. Gotta stay positive

Dating in China, blah blah. More often than not it was Rejected in China. Especially during my Guangzhou Year.

Everyone seemed to be doing fine hooking up, yet I always found myself to be wrought with challenges in this game.

People all assume that it’s so easy to be an expat in China. There are advantages to be sure, I admit my privilege. However, honestly I get rejected by local girls all the time.

What can I say? I really put myself out there. That means taking risks. That sometimes means embarrassing yourself, falling on the hard dirt face-first, and somehow finding the strength to do it all over again next weekend. Did I learn anything?

There was the girl who made out with me while my friend was visiting and texted me all the time, yet she would never make the time to meet one-on-one for a date. There was the second date with the Sandy when she slept over at my place and we massaged each other in the morning and then she told me she’s seeing someone else. There was the girl I approached outside in the street who turned out to run a bar in Panyu, and we as per usual made out in a club and then I went to her bar and I could never get her alone again. There was my cute Italian friend, one ambiguous friendship with that flirting tension in the air and nothing ever came of it. The American (from guess where, Florida) who was really into graphic cybersex with me and then by the time we met in person she was constantly talking about her new boyfriend. The Japanese language teacher friend who rejected my advances multiple times. The girl I met while backpacking in Tokyo, who liked me when we were chatting and showed me around in person but wouldn’t let me stay at her place during my travels. I even met a girl who owned a manga shop in Yuefu and I thought she just might be my soulmate, but she evidently thought there were no sparks at all; this was when I began formulating my theory that too much in common is not good for attraction.

Off the top of my head, two girls especially come to mind, of whose rejections were particularly hurtful–

 

Josephine

Josephine. I really liked her. Slim and glamorous. She knew her fashion. A French major, a Europhile. She was meant for greater things than me…

I met her at the big nightclub in Zhujiang New Town. She wore a sexy black dress. I used a great opening line about looking like a drug dealer and pretending people were asking me if I was holding, wondering what she thought of my looks. She laughed, we exchanged numbers.

We had pizza for dinner one day and I bought her a stuffed animal, and she started talking about her boyfriend.

“Isn’t this a date?” I forwardly asked, though trying not to come across as resentful.

“Um…”

I never did get a goodbye kiss from her.

I tried to stay friends with her.

Somehow, her number got lost as I upgraded phones throughout the seasons and I no longer have her contact info. It would be nice to know what she’s up to. Just to be friends on Wechat, see her posts occasionally, not bug her all the time or anything.

Josephine, are you out there?

 

Seline

Probably the most drama I had in my entire Guangzhou era was with Seline.

Now, I met her indirectly through Couchsurfing. But let me assure you that I never ever use the crucial travel-and-networking website as a hookup thing. That is strictly against my code. This was the only time I kinda-sorta broke that code.

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Dating – China to Thailand to Cambodia

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tuk tukOn a tuk-tuk

 

Dating in China etc. sometimes expands to surrounding countries, and a common country to visit is Thailand. It’s nearby, it’s cheap flying, and it’s beautiful. Even easy for Chinese friends to get a visa. One day back in the mid of 2011. I decided to take a girl to Thailand. And what a mistake that was…

I don’t like to live a life of regrets. I try to interpret all positively, believe it or not. I do my thing, I have experiences, I learn. It’s not like I’ve burned that many bridges, it’s not like I do that bad. Yet there are certain things that have happened to me, certain people that were a complete waste of time, and I’ll feel regret. This is one of those.

I met Cynthia at a club in Shenzhen. One of the few times I successfully picked up a club girl. Although I had recently moved to Guangzhou, I was going to Shenzhen often, and we had fun together when I was in town. Not like I was tied down to anyone else. The relative distance prevented us from growing too close, and fun was all it was. Even that didn’t last long.

After crazed inebriated night in Shenzhen, I slept at her place and discussed my plans to vacation soon. Free time was approaching and I decided on a quick trip to somewhere Southeast Asia. With so many countries to choose from we narrowed it down; she had never been to Thailand before, and we searched prices together on Air Asia and suddenly tickets were booked.

I’ve written before about the challenges in traveling with a girl, but this thing was dead before it even began. When we later met at the Guangzhou airport, she didn’t even want to talk to me. She hadn’t kept in touch much in the intervening time, and I couldn’t believe how cold she was. It was hard to read. Was she mad at me? Did I do something wrong? She probably just had other guys by then. We weren’t serious or anything. No real relationship whatsoever. Perhaps she regretted committing to this trip with me. In all fairness, it was extremely stupid to make travel plans with a fuckbuddy I barely knew. I just get way ahead of myself at times, what can I say.

Or, I don’t know, like maybe she expected me to be a rich foreigner and take her to five-star hotels and pay for everything, have that sort of glamorous travel. I specifically told her that I want to have a backpacking-style travel experience at youth hostels and I don’t have infinite money. We discussed it at length, really. I mean, we were never boyfriend and girlfriend. I paid for a lot, taxi rides and a few meals, but I didn’t pay for everything. What exactly was expected of me?

I didn’t handle it well. The first night we went to Bangkok, I booked a guestroom and went to sleep and we didn’t touch each other. The next day there was a bad energy in the air; we went sight-seeing and forcibly took pictures (never together) and traveled by boat, temples and malls and so on. Eventually, she preferred to hang out with frat boy types from the youth hostel. They went to see the infamous sex shows and all that.

“Let’s go our separate ways,” I said. “No hard feelings.”

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Dating in China – Julia

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This one is gonna get sappy…

Dating in China would imply Chinese girls, wouldn’t it? Not necessarily. Behold, expat girls too, lost love, bittersweet memories~

I remember the first time I met Julia. I was at the usual pub with my pals, where we often frequented on the weekends. It was her birthday. I learned right away she was older than me. Up to four years.

She was so beautiful. And she still is. Tall, long legs, my height exactly. Bright blonde hair, dyed. She dressed casual, wore a white T-shirt and tight jeans. A very cute, very feminine face (sometimes tall women have more rugged squared-off faces, but not her). Perfect body, slim but not too much like that anorexic style of bar models.

Always elegant. She spoke English with a sexy Eastern European accent, a softer version of Russian. I have Slavic family and I know the general tone, but it turned out she was from an EU country. I wasn’t wrong in guessing that she studied in Moscow. She lived in Shenzhen as a classically-trained music teacher, and even performed at major concert halls on occasion.

I didn’t think I had a chance with her at all. Anyway, I was with Mona at the time.

I recall asking her how she felt turning that milestone age, and she said she didn’t feel different.

I probably didn’t make much of an impression the first time. I was just another white guy in the crowd. I tried to be funny, tried to be nice, but when you’re an expat you meet new faces constantly. Only a few stand out and prove to worth remembering. I wasn’t that special, not yet.

Well, we were in the same social and professional circles, and often crossed paths. From bar to bar, and even within the same garden, we’d bump into each other and say hello. I started seeing more of her. I started being more memorable. We’d hang out and text each other and generally be friends.

One day, I was dancing on a clean E pill and I flirted with her and made her laugh. That’s all, and it was a great night I remember it fondly.

The night things finally escalated. Me and another guy were at her apartment late. Perhaps we both had something on our minds, some subtextual competition. My American friend eventually got tired and left, while I stayed into the early hours of the morning. We sat together on her sofa and somehow I found the courage to kiss her.

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Dating in China – Mona

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Me circa ’09, Beijing–>Great Wall

The dating in China officially begins.

After being situated in SZ, I was introduced to Mona through a coworker who was transparently playing the matchmaker. Mona was a 20-something independent office lady, an intelligent Hunanese (a common enough home-province for those in SZ) who studied in Beijing and came to Shenzhen to work and live near Hong Kong. She was good-looking, with long, permed hair and a nice figure and she liked to wear purple and green contact lenses. She liked Japanese pop culture and Marilyn Manson. Her English was good – which is kind of a requirement for me. I won’t date someone for language lessons with whom I can’t have a meaningful conversation. Which is one reason my Mandarin isn’t that good.

One day said coworker invited us both to a restaurant and then suddenly cancelled. We were left alone to get to know each other better. Obviously being set up, right? We ate and went to my apartment complex to talk about movies and anime and then we sat on a bench outside and made out among the soft evening winds. It escalated and we became a couple for four or five months and I started introducing her to others as my girlfriend.

Mona had a small apartment nearby; I’d often prefer going to her place to enjoy our time together and stay the night. She had a cute small dog, the poor thing cramped in a tiny apartment. We’d go on long walks with the dog, in parks and gardens and “mountain climbing” as the Chinese call hiking. I’d be the dog-sitter when she would go out of town. 2009 rang in and we celebrated the New Year at the stroke of midnight with a kiss.

There were some flaws in all this, some cultural and personality differences. Not all rainbows. But no big deals to get over. Most important of all, we had similar interests and she was nice and hot and she liked me. Though I did feel corny when she first held my hand at Dongmen, and I’ve since gotten used to how in China public displays of affection are a bit less public except for the ubiquitous hand-holding. It’s like primary school dating or something. Aw who am I to try to be so mature?

Occasionally I invited her to go to pubs with my friends, and she never seemed comfortable in that scene. Was it a mistake? Was I the one moving things fast, too much pressure? Is that something I do? When it was just the two of us we were fine. Usually we’d go out for dinner and stay in at her place on the weekends and watch bootleg DVDs. Celebrated my birthday like that. Other times she showed me around Shenzhen. I recall a great outing to Hong Kong, shopping and bookstores at malls and taking pictures at the Peak. Then, dangerously, we planned a trip to Beijing.

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Dating in China 1

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Begins. September, 2008, I arrive in China. Fresh after reinventing myself, neural reprogramming with lysergic acid dymethelmide, plus introspective road trips and self-improvement strategies. Was I ever ready for a new start.

Firstly, it should be noted that I’m a latebloomer as is. I hadn’t had a girlfriend in quite a while, to be honest. Didn’t really do well for myself in Southern California those previous three years.

Long before even that era, there was the main hometown girlfriend of my youth. Back in Cincinnati, Ohio, my adopted homeland. Ashley was a former opiates addict with dead eyes and a kind heart. The timing wasn’t right and she still had further healing that I could not help with, but it was valuable experience for both of us. We had fun and clubbed and talked all night and we grew. Eventually apart. Kept in touch a while, then I’d decided to seek my fortune on the West Coast. Goodbye, Ashley.

And before her, a few. One older woman punk rocker who taught me various things comes to mind. For the most part there were various crushes that usually never amounted to much. If they amounted to anything in the distant future, then I’ll write about it later if I think it’s worth mentioning.

Some other occasional learning experiences, few and far between, this and that. The early years weren’t kind, that’s all.

As of the arrival, my most recent girlfriend did happen to be Chinese-American. Oddly enough. I never planned for this kind of fever, I swear. Lila was just my type at the time, slim designer, a cutesy sweetheart, a real innocent. We met on a film set when I was living in hipster Silverlake for a few months. We held hands on camera, so cute.

I think Lila may have only liked me for my wannabe bohemian starving-artist ways. Liked it as a phase. We went to shows and talked about comics and she drove me around. Eventually she left me to go back to her ex-boyfriend, an exceedingly-square law school student. Security, right? Sell-out. While we stayed friends when I returned to Long Beach, it was more than a little awkward when she would repeatedly introduce me to her boyfriend. Perhaps she was playing games, with either one of us sap guys, who knows now. After a crazy time in San Diego (involving salvia divinorum) I confronted her and it went more sour between us. Last I heard she married recently.

A handful of flings in between as well, but can’t say I had much of a successful love life during those cold sunny years.
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Intro to Dating in China

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I think I’m old enough at this point to begin considering my memoirs.

How about a series focusing on that ever-fascinating subject: girls?

Please allow me to introduce this new blog category: Dating in China

After years and years of commitment issues, the stories have stacked up. The innocent, the naïve, the loved, the forgettable, and the mistakes. I could tell a few stories. Of the young, the old; the crazies, the addicts; the rich, the poor. Memories I will keep forever. Some were so breathtaking, others settling. Nice. Mean. Smart. Never stupid. And the one psycho who eternally holds a place in my heart.

Well. I’ve never really been one to high-five with the bros over my conquests. I’ve sincerely kept most of this to myself for greater part of my life. Now simply seems like the right time to put it all out there.

Still, I must admit this will get rather self-indulgent. Deal with it. I have made the decision to embrace my inner narcissist, and why not?

I do worry this may be pandering. I have always had goals of literary merit, but this is sure to be pure emo gossipyness. On the other hand, I try to take the writing process seriously and perhaps it’s good for the soul to share. I shall do my best to go over this subject matter in an intriguing and mature fashion. And people out there may even enjoy the read.

The names have been changed to protect the guilty as they say. Obviously.
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