by Roseann Lake
Tantrum Tactics
Rather than fret over a limited man supply, June prefers to be proactive. In fact, her ability to switch between “Chinese girl” and “overseas returnee Chinese girl with an Ivy League degree” is remarkable, and she insists, absolutely necessary if she wants to date in China, where in addition to playing down her education, she would be well served to improve her skills in the ancient art of sajiao, or the strategically executed temper tantrum.
According to the March 2012 issue of Psychologies magazine (Chinese edition), sajiao is an indispensable element in the dating arsenal of every Chinese woman. “A woman who knows how to sajiao knows how to make a man happy,” reads the article. Though this may seem unlikely, given that sajiao is essentially a series of pouts, mewls, and foot-stomping, it is apparently the time-honored way of allowing a Chinese male to feel loved, needed, chivalrous, and just all-around manly.
An article about sajiao in the Beijing-based English magazine The World of Chinese provides further insight: “For the competent career woman in particular, sajiao is an indispensable tool for appearing neither too independent nor too self-sufficient for her boyfriend. Sajiao allows a woman to appear soft and feminine rather than hard and powerful; traits that challenge traditional notions of womanhood. By playing up to the male ego, she accomplishes the near-impossible: making her man feel like a man.”
Although the idea of sajiao might sound unconscionable to most American women, a gander through women’s magazines published in the United States during the 1950s and ’60s is extremely sobering. “Warning! . . . Be careful not to seem smarter than your man,” instructs a 1940s advice book. “It’s one thing to be almost as smart, but to be or seem smarter—that is taboo.” According to Beth Bailey, author of From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America, while most advice books of the time cautioned against deliberately “playing dumb,” they did make it very clear that any hints of intellectual superiority might “injure the masculine ego.” To create a happy balance, relationship experts instead encouraged intellectual women to seek out very intelligent men, but then to play down their smarts. “He’ll know it’s only an act. But you’ll soon become the little woman to be pooh-poohed, patronized and wed,” reassured one article.
As reported by Bailey, in the 1920s American women made such a sport of dating that groups of university girls were known for classifying prospective suitors into categories which included: “A” for a “smooth character,” “B” for an “OK gentleman,” “C” for “pass in a crowd,” “D” for a semigoon, and “E” for a “spook.” There are also myriad accounts from women of this time who would refuse a date with a man just because he couldn’t afford to take her to the right soda shop. (The Model T was still quite new at the time, and the drive to and from the soda shop was a big part of the date.) How then, just twenty years later, did women end up with the short end of the relationship bargaining stick, cooing and watering down their intelligence in an attempt to keep a man?
Beginning in the 1930s, Bailey explains that as a result of WWII, the United States (and Europe, for that matter) saw a significant drop in the availability of marriageable men. By 1943, 16,354,000 men, or almost every physically fit male between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, had been sent off to war. For the first time in history, reports Bailey, the United States had more women than men. In 1945, a New York Times Magazine article explained that as a result of war losses, 750,000 American women would be unable to marry (and psychologists argued that this would make them neurotic, frustrated, and mentally deranged). Good Housekeeping followed suit with a photo of a bride and a groom on the steps of a church, and a doozy of a caption: “She got a man, but 6 to 8 million women won’t. We’re short 1 million bachelors!” Readers were reminded that one girl in every seven would have to live alone, and were warned, “Unless you watch your step, this may be you.”
Bailey explains how books of the Win Your Man and Keep Him variety filled the shelves, and cites a 1943 Good Housekeeping article that even offered up a new typology. Appropriately titled “Somebody’s After Your Man,” it recounts how merciless huntresses and hijackers who might steal a man at a moment’s notice were broken down into four categories: the Vamp, the Pal, Big Sad Eyes, and the notorious Button-Twister, who weasels her way into a man’s heart by coyly tugging at the buttons on his shirt.
As men were at the top of the list of war scarcities, Bailey writes that a cheeky correspondent for Esquire even suggested making polygamy legal, in order to solve the problem of what may be referred to as “American leftover women.” But instead of being high on visions of polyamorous feasts, explains Bailey, the soldiers returning from war to a large surplus of women were spooked. While away, they had seen images of “Rosie the Riveter” and other women very competently filling the “masculine” jobs they once had. Still shaken from the Great Depression, they returned home more uncertain than ever of their abilities to fulfill the role of male provider.
This is where women swept in with a loaded shot of “beau-tox” to make men feel better about things. “How Feminine Are You to Men?” ran a 1946 survey in the Women’s Home Companion, which attempted to stifle any hidden urges women might have to let their nails go unpainted or discuss business and world affairs with gentlemen. By and large, women played along, argues Bailey, because the alternative—being without a man—was far less desirable. This gave men the upper hand in courtship, allowing them to virtually mandate the submissiveness of women by rejecting the unfeminine ones.
But let’s backtrack for a moment. China has not recently been to war. As previously discussed, there are actually 30 million more men than women of marriage age, as a result of the one-child policy and ensuing female abortions and infanticides. Why, then, are women still “playing along”?
Mandering
Professor Hu Deng teaches emotional psychology at Renmin University. Ratings show that he is one of the most popular professors on campus, largely because his classes offer wisdom in a subject area most twentysomethings are really eager to master: romantic relationships. In his lecture hall overflowing with students who can’t officially get on his roster, he is known to fire up slides featuring Robert Sternberg’s Triangle Theory of Love, which argues that love is composed of three qualities: passion, intimacy, and commitment. No relationship ever has all three of these qualities in equal levels, argues Sternberg, a point Professor Hu drives home by explaining to his students that traditionally, the majority of relationships in China are heavy on the “c” (commitment), but lacking in “a+b” (passion and intimacy). He mentions how during the Cultural Revolution, members of the People’s Liberation Army were matched politically, an arrangement that made them very committed to each other out of a sense of duty, but not necessarily out of desire or emotion. He then cites the hit blockbuster The Hangover as an example of relationships that are heavy on passion, but sparse on intimacy and commitment. That one can elope to Vegas and divorce the morning after is something a few of his students are mesmerized to discover.
Compared to most professors at Renmin University, Professor Hu is quite progressive. He speaks uninhibitedly about the mercenary marriages of revolutionary China, and warns his students that the marriage partners their parents and grandparents pick out for them are rarely going to make them happy. He presents his students with alternative marriage models—telling them of a Chinese couple that had two children out of wedlock, and after eleven years, finally got married. Something about marriage ruined their relationship, and it was only after their divorce that they were able to live happily again as a couple, explains the professor. For him to offer up this example in a country where having a child out of wedlock is illegal in almost every province, and where unwed mothers must pay “social compensation fees” that are sometimes six to eight times their yearly salary, seems very open-minded. But when it comes to sajiao, the professor is of a different mind.
We meet at his office, a Spartan room on the northern side of campus. His student
assistant offers me a glass of scalding water from the hissing industrial-sized hot-water dispenser in the hallway—a staple at every Chinese university. “If a Chinese woman today doesn’t know how to sajiao, it’s very unlikely that she’ll find a boyfriend,” says the professor. I look him intently in the eyes, half expecting to call his bluff, but I soon realize that he’s dead serious.
He explains that because China is highly populated and competitive, it’s increasingly difficult for Chinese men to improve their lot in life. This was easier to live with prior to 1949, when a man’s station at birth largely determined the rest of his life, but since Communism has begun to breed with elements of Capitalism, there has been greater pressure on men to excel. The problem is, the new opportunities have not been as great as the new pressures, which leaves many men floundering and feeling inadequate. If a woman can step in and artfully make a man feel esteemed, needed, and admired, she satisfies the feelings of achievement that a man can’t get from his work or from society. According to Dr. Hu, sajiao, then, becomes a “fix” for the flaws, injustices, and inequalities in the Chinese social system, and arguably even a means of ensuring social stability.
I explain Hu’s reasoning to June, who, though keen to do her part in contributing to the stability of her nation, remains incapable of mastering the art of the strategically executed temper tantrum. “I spent time over the weekend with some of my old friends from high school, and they all told me I don’t have a boyfriend because I don’t know how to sajiao,” she tells me.
Although I had seen many stunning sajiao performances on the streets of Beijing—a Chinese woman whining to her boyfriend is as common as a stoplight—I had never realized that it was all done on purpose, and more important, I struggled to imagine June engaged in the same theatrics. After watching an online tutorial for how to sajiao your way to dinner at your favorite restaurant (yes, these types of tutorials exist), June tested out her best performance on me, and I felt obliged to be honest with her—she looked like a circus bear suffering from digestive ailments. After a few more stumbles, it became clear that she was not put on this Earth to feign subservience. Sajiao wasn’t going to get her anywhere, but a seduction master class with one of Beijing’s most beguiling sirens? That sounded far more promising.
Seduction, 101
I decided to introduce June and Ivy over dinner at an upscale Sichuan restaurant near Ivy’s apartment. (It’s always easiest to meet close to Ivy’s home, as she is careful about where she is seen.) As June and I arrived, I spotted Ivy at a corner table with a jet stream of smoke above her head. Shortly after we sat down, a waiter came over and very politely—almost obsequiously—asked Ivy to put out her cigarette. She dismissed him coldly by saying that it was late, she knows the owner, there was nobody else in the restaurant, and we weren’t bothering a soul. She waved him away, and then seconds later summoned him back to bring her an ashtray. (She had previously been stubbing out her cigarettes in a bowl of fragrant rice.) He looked terrified—so startled into obedience, even the tips of his bow tie appeared to stand at attention.
She then turned sweetly to June and me, and we began our conversation. We learned that Ivy is the daughter of a Chinese civil servant and a dancer from Inner Mongolia, which explains her untraditional beauty. Her eyes are larger than those of most Chinese women, and her face more almond-shaped. Her hair is collected in loose tendrils under her ears, a bit like Marilyn Monroe’s, only it’s so black, it’s practically violet. I realize that there is an air of glamour about her, but also of mystery. She seems to have the ability to trigger innocence on command, morphing seamlessly from demanding patroness to charming conversationalist. If she were a cat, she’d most certainly be a Siamese.
We also learned that she loves to gamble. This year alone, she’d lost over US $50,000 playing poker, but that hasn’t kept her away from the tables. I suspect some of the gambling might be related to her day job, as increased government crackdowns on bribes and corruption are prompting several companies in China to move their wheel-greasing efforts abroad, to Las Vegas, in particular. She’s been there at least twice in the last ten months, “but my favorite thing to do is play mahjong,” she says—imagine grannies engaged in a jovial battle of tiles and wits—in an about-face to innocence.
It was fascinating to watch June and Ivy interact. Though our meeting had been set up primarily for June to benefit from Ivy’s prowess with men, the evening took a surprising turn. As June listened—simultaneously riveted and smitten by Ivy’s alluring presence and all of the freedom and seductive power she seemed to command—I sensed that Ivy was being generous with her knowledge because she genuinely seemed charmed by June too.
Until meeting Ivy, June had been struggling in the man department. She had agreed to go on a few dates upon her mother’s insistence, but was having trouble finding a polite way to taper off contact with one particular man she had met in person after her mother had chatted him up on a dating site, posing as her daughter. He was a lieutenant in the military, mid-thirties, well placed in his career, but a bit square and prone to sharp mood swings. She met him for a few dates, each time a bit less enthusiastically. “I felt like I had to keep meeting him just to come up with an excuse to stop seeing him that my mother would accept,” June explained.
“I can’t say he’s unattractive—she’ll just say that won’t matter in ten years,” said June. “I also can’t say there’s no chemistry or that I’m not attracted to him; she’ll just say I’m being shallow. In her eyes, all problems fade away with time.”
It took four more dates for June to come up with a more concrete excuse that her mother might actually accept: the man she was seeing was a passive-aggressive sociopath!
“You know when someone is trying really hard to be nice, but deep down you can tell they’re angry?” she says. “Well, since I didn’t really like this guy, I started showing up a little late to our dates. He tried not to show his annoyance, but it came out in really odd ways. He’d start asking me about my career, the demands of my job, and if I had any plans to scale back. I told him no. Then he asked if we could text more to establish a closer relationship. I also told him that would be difficult because I was very busy. Then his eye just started twitching. He somewhat aggressively reprimanded me for my long work hours, telling me that they would render me less tender and womanly, but then very politely asked me to a movie.”
After explaining this to her mother, June discovered that she still wasn’t off the hook. “He’s trying to make a good impression,” her mother said. “It’s normal that he’s struggling to hide his true feelings!”
June’s main problem—according to Ivy—is that she is not a hua ping, or “flower vase,” as most men in China like their women to be. Despite being very beautiful, she is lively and self-assured in a way that men don’t always appreciate. Continuing her very thorough analysis, Ivy infers that as an exceptional student from a very young age, June is also probably most comfortable learning new skills by studying or researching them, which—when it comes to men especially—is not the most winning strategy. As is true for many men and women in China, she has grown up with few examples of what dating should be like because after so many years of parentally orchestrated relationship brokering, the mores and manners of modern dating are still being established.
In a sign that class was ending, Ivy shared the bawdy details of her latest tryst with a heinously wealthy real-estate mogul. She paused for a few moments before explaining that although she has been generously compensated for her services, her line of work is also very exhausting. “I will retire soon,” she said, to our astonishment.
“I’ll start looking for a husband in the spring,” she added. By “retire,” she actually meant that she planned to get married.
Ivy then explained that she has made wise investments for her future knowing that her market value as “the other woman” will tank the older she gets. In fact, she has never been fully dependent on mistress activities for her livelihoo
d, and right around the time she became a mistress, she was already working in film and television distribution in China—a job she continues to hold. Regularly attending star-studded film premieres and brokering deals for industry fat cats, she began moving in a social circle very distinct from the one she was born into. As her commissions started to roll in—supplemented by her first few escapades with moneyed and often married men—she was able to operate with greater confidence. In an industry where appearances are everything, she was suddenly able to dress her part, expertly accessorizing with designer handbags and, eventually, a glittering white Porsche Carrera. Now that she’s achieved a significantly better life—for herself, and for her parents, with whom she has been very generous—it was time to think about the bigger picture.
“Do you worry about fidelity with your future husband?” asked June, the ever-inquisitive student.
“He will cheat,” said Ivy. “Men of status always do. The trick is finding one who will be savvy enough to keep it a secret from you. In my experience, a bad man fools you once; a good man fools you forever.”
Given all I had learned about Chinese marriages by that point, I couldn’t decide if Ivy’s logic was extremely tragic, or extremely wise. For her, infidelity was so much a part of marriage that after years of being an adulteress, she was fully prepared to turn a blind eye to her future husband’s ineluctable philandering. Perhaps this was her self-imposed penance for years of transgressions—an attempt to make amends with karma? Either way, June wasn’t sold on it.
“I just don’t think I could ever accept that,” she said firmly.
“When it comes to marriage, we all have conditions, standards, requirements, and responsibilities,” replied Ivy, in her characteristically unflappable manner. “You just need to know very clearly which ones you value most, and prioritize accordingly.”
“But what happens if you become interested in a person who doesn’t meet any of those conditions or requirements?” asked June.