How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia

by Shannon Young

  After what felt like an eternity, our salaryman/soothsayer folded up the piece of paper and handed it to Jay’s mother. As we slipped out of the house, or rather, his mansion—Korean fortune-tellers clearly had their bread well-buttered—Jay explained to me that he had chosen the 16th of April the following year for our wedding. Later, I would find out that this was Easter Sunday. It helped salve my guilt over the superstitious manner in which our wedding date had been chosen, and the fact that it wasn’t going to be a church wedding. Of course, it didn’t change the fact that April 16th was barely four months away.

  Another bride-to-be would have balked at that short time for preparations. Many brides I know are hands-on, obsessive-compulsive even, planning every detail of their big day, from the shade and texture of the paper to be used for the invitations down to the type of sauce for the pasta to be served at the reception. I was the complete opposite: I might have been a spectator at my own wedding. And in a sense, I was. I’d never been to a Korean wedding, and didn’t know how it was done. So I let Jay’s family take me to Lotte Department Store and pick out a dress for me to wear at the reception. I let his sister, a nurse, give me vitamins through an IV drip on the eve of the wedding, supposedly to get my skin glowing as befits a radiant bride. I looked away from the table outside the wedding hall where the guests formed queues to hand over cash envelopes to one of Jay’s relatives, who religiously recorded in a ledger their names and how much they gave—useful, Jay explained to me later, in determining how much to give when it was the guest’s turn to be married, or his son or daughter’s.

  Our wedding had two parts. For the "modern” ceremony, I walked up the aisle in a gown plucked off the wedding hall’s rack to the strains of Pachelbel’s Canon, the one aspect of the wedding that was mine, alone, to decide. It never occurred to me then to complain why I wasn’t asked about more aspects of the wedding. I guess, at the time, I was just thankful that there was even a wedding at all, since I wasn’t sure that Jay’s father would allow it. Years before, when Jay had wanted to visit me in Manila, his father had opposed the trip and Jay had left their home. This might also be why the proceedings held a vague sense of unreality for me, especially the traditional ceremony that followed.

  For this part of the wedding, I had to wear an embroidered red silk robe over my made-to-order hanbok, plus a headdress that made it impossible to do the ceremonial bow before my newly minted in-laws without the aid of two of Jay’s friends. Things got stranger and stranger as the ceremony progressed. Jay’s mother had to dance with a tray on her head. Jay had to carry me piggyback. My mother-in-law had to throw some chestnuts and jujubes over her shoulder while my husband and I stood behind her with a piece of cloth stretched out between us. My smile turned into a frown as the meaning of the ritual was explained to me: no, we wouldn’t be getting prizes for the three chestnuts and three jujubes that we managed to catch; the number of chestnuts that fell on the cloth was how many daughters we would have, and the jujubes, sons.

  The traditional rites left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was grateful that our friends, including some from our summer in Tokyo who’d flown in from different countries, were allowed to witness what was traditionally reserved for family members. This meant a lot to me since only my parents were there from my side of the family. And I could tell our friends enjoyed the spectacle, as if they were watching scenes from a Korean period drama. But I didn’t want our marriage to be a spectacle. I didn’t want it to seem any different from, even any more interesting than, other marriages just because Jay and I held different passports.

  I was relieved when the ceremony ended. I was eager for us to leave for our honeymoon in the Philippines, where, I felt sure, things would be different—normal, that is. By then, most of the guests had had their fill from the buffet, and after nibbling some morsels and having more pictures taken, we found ourselves in the silver Chrysler PT Cruiser a friend of Jay’s had lent to us as a gift, caught in a bottleneck of wedding cars bound for Gimhae Airport, where we were to catch our flight. Apparently, our fortune-teller had consulted the same almanac as hundreds of others in the business. Of course, you could say that they prescribed the same wedding date to hundreds of other couples because they were reading from the same stars. So we stood in the departure hall, surrounded by dozens of other newlyweds in their matching "couple shirts.” Jay did not insist that we dress alike, to my relief, as that would have been the point where I’d put my foot down.

  Looking back, I am struck by how acquiescent I was. Having seen my sisters and several friends plan their weddings, I know it’s usually the bride who runs the show, especially before "wedding planner” became an acceptable answer to the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?”. Perhaps I knew it was part of the package of marrying a foreigner in a foreign land. Or perhaps I simply didn’t know enough Korean to express my preferences or argue with anyone about theirs.

  Jay had majored in English Language and Literature in college and was posted on a US base in Seoul for his mandatory military service, so his English often surprised people used to the stilted English of most Koreans. The downside of this was that I wasn’t forced to learn Korean, and he, Tagalog, since we had a common second language to fall back on. To my credit, I took basic Korean as an elective in my last year of college, and attempted a few times to continue learning through books and CDs. But though I could attest to the simplicity and logic of the Korean alphabet, Hangeul, being able to read and write it to this day, speaking and understanding the language is a different matter. I’ve failed to progress beyond the basic greetings in that department.

  Still, my schooling in Korean culture continued, conducted by means of sign language. Omonim, my mother-in-law, showed me how to make cabbage kimchi, and cook doenjang jjiggae, japchae, and bulgogi. I grew accustomed to drinking barley water instead of plain water and snacking on rice cakes instead of pastries. I became an expert at using metal chopsticks and eating off a low table with my legs tucked beneath me in a way that wouldn’t give me pins and needles. I learned to keep my camera and film rolls—before I went digital—off the floor, lest they get toasted by the piped-in ondol heating.

  I met dozens of Jay’s relatives, who scrutinized and discussed me openly. At the wedding, it was as if I was in a bubble, beyond their reach. But now, I would be sitting with Jay and I would hear my name spoken loudly by someone across the room. I would turn, thinking they were calling me, but they would simply carry on their conversation. I could have taken umbrage, but it was done so candidly, I could see no reason to take offense. The truth was, part of me was charmed by these people, how unabashed they were, how uninhibited.

  Of course, these were the same qualities that feed the image of the ugly Korean. The tourists who chatter (and dress) loudly. The ones who get drunk and curse. With more Koreans coming to the Philippines, I’ve heard people grumble how rude, coarse, and arrogant they can be. And when they learn that I am married to a Korean, they either pipe down (to resume their ranting later with someone else) or complain louder, as if I were personally responsible for the faults of my husband’s compatriots. Even my own relatives had their reservations. Is it true Korean men hit their wives, one of my aunts asked me. Don’t they often get smashed? So not only did I have to convince people that my husband was not a Moonie, but also that he wasn’t a hooligan.

  It makes me wonder if Jay, too, finds himself constantly having to explain me to other people, and if this is something that afflicts only cross-cultural couples. Having married a foreigner, I wonder what it would be like to be married to another Filipino. Is it necessarily simpler, automatically easier? Or do the individual qualities of the other person outweigh, in the end, what his ethnic and cultural background brings to the marriage? But could you divorce the two? Isn’t a person what his social milieu makes him? When I come home loaded with grocery bags and Jay does not make a move to relieve me of some of them when he opens the door, I think that a Filipino husband
would surely know better. Ditto when we cross the road and he walks on the safer side instead of nearer the oncoming traffic. At the same time, I’m sure there are also times when he slaps his forehead and thinks he should have married a fellow Korean, like when I put too much salt on the kimchi or let it ferment for too long.

  But I would be exaggerating if I overdramatize my marriage. The truth is, it is pretty boring if you compare it with what you see in those Korean TV dramas. This surprises, and disappoints, a lot of people. They expect something juicier from an international marriage, nothing short of a culture clash. And when they ask me how we manage it, all I can tell them is that it suits us, me and Jay. There’s a word for it in Tagalog: hiyang. It means simply that there are people who are naturally suited or inclined towards certain things. Me, I happen to be hiyang to a mixed marriage.

  There was a proverb my dad used to tell my sisters and me when we were young, which I did not take to heart until I got older: love me, love my dog. And the dog need not be an actual four-legged creature that barks and sheds fur; it is anything that each person brings into the relationship, consciously or not. What is marriage, after all, but a version of those reality shows where they throw people together to see how long they can stand each other? Looking back, I guess this is why I behaved the way I did at our wedding: I was starring in the first episode of my very own reality show.

  And in that show, it isn’t so much what you are—Filipino or Korean, Martian or Moonie—that matters, but how much maturity and responsibility you have to deal with the consequences of choosing each other for company, instead of someone else. You can call it coexistence, or you can call it love.

  Catherine Rose Torres’s prose has appeared in anthologies and periodicals in the Philippines, Singapore, and the United States, including The Philippines Graphic, TAYO Literary Magazine, Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction, and Motherhood Statements. Her work as a diplomat has taken her to postings in New Delhi and Singapore, together with her husband, Sohn Suk Joo, a Korean scholar and translator, and their son, Samuel. She is at work on her first collection of short stories.

  HUANGSHAN HONEYMOON

  By Jocelyn Eikenburg

  If rain on your wedding day is bad fortune, then what about rain on your honeymoon?

  The rainfall began after we checked into a hotel at the foot of Huangshan—Yellow Mountain—in China’s Anhui Province. By 9:00 pm, we could still hear the steady drip outside our window. And forecasts expected the rain to last for several more days, well after we had planned to climb the mountain.

  Just as the wet weather dampened the landscape outside the window, so it dampened our prospects of actually seeing the mountain. My heart sank every time I imagined the foggy mist surrounding Huangshan, blocking panoramic views of its jagged granite peaks. This ethereal scenery, often captured in classical Chinese paintings, was the epitome of beauty among China’s mountains—so much so that according to a Chinese saying, after visiting Huangshan, you need not visit China’s Five Great Mountains (or any other mountain, for that matter). Thanks to the showers outside, chances were I would never get to experience Huangshan in all of its beauty.

  But the rain was just one more symptom of something gone wrong. It was like my runny nose and headache that had started that evening, the first signs that I had caught the flu, and the odor of sweaty socks that invaded our three-person suite. I felt our bad fortune stemmed from the fact that we had asked Jun’s father—who only brought one pair of socks for the entire trip—to join us on our honeymoon.

  As I lay in my twin bed that evening, not even my stuffy nose could shield me from the stench of clothing that desperately needed a good wash. I grimaced with every breath.

  "This room smells.” I said it in English so that the man we both called Laoba, the Chinese term for father that Jun and his family preferred, couldn’t understand.

  "You’re tired. You should sleep.” My husband Jun always saw beyond my crabby moods to the exhaustion, illness, or even PMS hidden behind my words.

  "I can’t. I feel horrible… this room feels horrible.”

  He picked up the box of Tylenol from the nightstand between our beds and handed it to me. "Here, take one.”

  My husband, who usually cringed when I took painkillers for premenstrual cramps, wanted me to have the Tylenol? I popped a pill out of the package. As I reached for a glass of water, I glanced towards the far end of the room, where Laoba sat on the edge of his bed watching a Chinese news show, still wearing a cheap polyester polo shirt the color of dirty cement. The glare of the TV reflected off his face, still smeared with the sweat and oil that he hadn’t bothered to wash off yet. Salt-and-pepper stubble protruded from his upper lip and chin as if he hadn’t shaved for days. The very sight of this man in our room, a man who couldn’t be bothered to bring more than one pair of socks on a trip, made me burn with frustration. The pill might relieve my symptoms for the evening, but no pill could ever relieve me of a father-in-law who piggybacked on our honeymoon.

  I still couldn’t believe I had agreed to this.

  In China, the government allows every married couple a two-week honeymoon away from work. Jun and I had decided to take our official honeymoon just after he graduated from his master’s degree program in psychology in June 2005. But we had been living together since March 2003 in Shanghai, where I worked as a copywriter and we shared an apartment like a married couple. By the time the summer of 2005 arrived, we had already enjoyed our share of honeymoon-like excursions during China’s week-long national holidays—from lounging on islands in the azure waters of the Gulf of Thailand, to snorkeling in the ocean off Bali’s pristine white beaches. We had also already registered our marriage at the Shanghai Marriage Registry Bureau by then, the equivalent of an engagement to his friends and family, and expected to plan our official wedding ceremony in China in the next few years. So with all of the time we’d spent together, and all of the romantic getaways we already savored, I didn’t take our official two weeks of state-sanctioned honeymoon all that seriously. That’s why I proposed that we spend our honeymoon a little closer to home, in China. And I suggested Huangshan, a mountain I had been longing to visit from the moment I first moved to China in 1999 to live and work—years before I even met Jun.

  But the moment I mentioned it, my husband said, "We should take Laoba with us.”

  To Jun—and his father—Huangshan wasn’t just one of China’s ultimate mountain experiences or another big tourist destination to cross off your bucket list. Huangshan was something personal. Laoba could trace his ancestors back to Huizhou, the cultural region that includes Huangshan, and had even grown up in what you could arguably call the foothills of Huangshan. The importance of this was obvious to anyone who visited the family home. In the foyer, flanked by photographs of Laoba’s father and mother, hung a gaudy Graceland version of a Huangshan landscape with Day-Glo cranes and the wizened silhouette and windswept branches of the Welcoming Guests Pine. To Laoba and his son, visiting Huangshan would be like a personal genealogy tour, where part of the thrill came from rediscovering the very lands their predecessors once called home. So how could we possibly travel there without Jun’s father?

  The American side of me seemed skeptical about this bride’s nightmare—taking your father-in-law with you on your honeymoon. Who would actually allow this?

  But certain traditional Confucian values weighed upon me. When you’re married to a Chinese man, you soon learn the importance of filial piety, perhaps the most pervasive of these values in modern China. Filial piety roughly translates into respect for your parents and ancestors. This value is why it’s almost unheard of for Chinese children to put their parents into nursing homes in their old age. It’s also why you might hear of sons in China who send money to their parents to support them. But supporting your parents depends on what they really need in life. While Laoba received a generous pension after his retirement from teaching, he rarely had the opportunity to travel—a favorite pastime
of his not shared by his wife, a woman prone to motion sickness who preferred staying at home. Jun understood that offering a chance to travel, especially to a place so close to his heart, was perhaps the most filial thing we could do for Laoba.

  Instead of protesting Jun’s suggestion, I tucked away my American doubts behind a smile. "Yes, what a great idea!”

  The truth is, my past with Laoba weighed upon me as much as filial piety itself. I thirsted for an opportunity to prove to Laoba that I could be a filial daughter-in-law. The memories of three years before still haunted me—a time when this man had serious reservations about my relationship with his son.

  I’ll never forget the way Jun bounded into our apartment in Hangzhou, China back in September 2002. He had just returned from a week-long stay with his family, who lived in a rural village in Zhejiang province only hours away from Hangzhou.

  "I’m so glad you’re back,” I said as I hugged him. "So, how did it go?” I thought I didn’t even need to ask, certain I could read the answer in his grin.