Scary heart disease (ie Love) coming this way

Love and other dangerous non-Asian concepts

By Nury Vittachi

*

The Western concept of lurrve as an amazingly all-powerful, all-conquering emotional bond between one man and one woman (San Francisco excepted) has no relation whatsoever to the Asian idea of love, which is much more practical.

           On this side of the planet, love is more like a Provisional Sales and Purchase Agreement. The buyer has a brief look at the goods on offer (prospective daughter-in-law), tries to decide whether they are compatible with what he already has (dissolute son), and then plonks down the money.

        Recognizing this practical, finance-based attitude to love, a company in Jilin Province, China, started a Dad Rental service.

         Single parents in Changchun city (most of whom are women) can hire a man to be “the missing role model” for their children at weekends. No lurrve necessary.

         The guy’s job is to turn up on Saturdays and do what Asian husbands normally do at weekends. By my understanding, this means they are being paid to drink local beverages, belch, and fall asleep in front of the television. I’m posting my job application this afternoon. Why should I continue to do all that for nothing?

           But apparently there have been complaints. The guys they signed up are single and have never been dads, so they don’t know what an Asian father’s actual role in child-raising is. I have news for them: neither do most Asian fathers.

           In my family, the generation above me included a family group with four sisters. Three had Asian-style arranged marriages and got on fine. One (my mother) married for lurrve and her marriage broke up. I have three children and when they want partners I will do it the Asian way, by paying large fees to headhunters at an executive search firm.

In Asia, love not only starts with practical considerations, but ends with them. In Japan, you can pay for the services of a wakaresaseya – a Professional Breaker-Upper.

Is your spouse/ boyfriend/ girlfriend madly in love with someone at work? Pay a small fee (well, often quite a large fee) to the wakarasaseya and he will use a variety of methods to break up the happy couple, including shaming, intimidation and bribery. Sometimes Professional Breaker-Uppers even boast that they can make the Other Woman or Other Man pay back all or most of the cash spent on them on chocolates, dinners, cinema visits and so on.

It’s a useful service to have, and I think uniquely Asian. But having said that, I remember writing about an interesting case in Osaka. A Breaker-Upper was hired by a wronged wife to stop an affair between her husband (he was a good catch, because he was a company president) and one of his staff. The operatives promised to not only part the pair but make the woman “kowtow for mercy and pay some money back”.

But after four months of attempting to split the twosome as energetically as they could, the Breaker-Uppers went back to the wife and admitted defeat. There was some curious bond between the two which could not be broken by any threats, enticement, financial inducements, or anything else, they reported.

It was a strange and bizarre phenomenon they had never encountered before.

Yes. It could only have been that strange Western concept, now invading Asia. Lurrve. Be very afraid.

Comments

[Lisa]

Nury, have you ever interviewed a HK girl about her concepts of Lurrve and dating?

A very HK local female colleague of mine once decided to have a girly talk during our coffee break.

GF: "So, um, are you dating?"
Me: "Yeah, I suppose you could say so."
"Ah, then you have a boyfriend."
"Eh? No, I date but that doesn't make the guys I date my boyfriends, does it?"
"Of course it does, la."
"Then what if I just date them once and not see them ever again?"
"Oh, it means you broke up."
"I see. I guess I must have a lot of boyfriends then. Does that make me a slut?"
Thus, I discovered that if you date a guy, he's your boyfriend. As your boyfriend, he is expected to give you an allowance (spending money for shopping sprees and money to put aside in an account for your "future together"). Because you are now an item, you must now introduce each other to your respective parents, take the mothers out for tea, etc. Then you start to talk about auspicious dates for weddings and so on.

It explains a lot! I suddenly realised why the local guys would propose on a first date. They always looked hurt and confused when I laughed in their faces, or ran, or both.

[Spikey]

I think it really depends on the local girl. I remember talking to one girl a while back who, explaining the various phone calls she'd ended with 'I love you', told me that she had both a boyfriend and a girlfriend.

Somehow I don't think she'd introduced them both to her parents. Though I'd like to think that an allowance from both would be rather nice.

[Mike the mechanic]

interesting, lisa, you should write c olumn about dating asian girls, we would all log on for advice

[francess]

"On this side of the planet, love is more like a Provisional Sales and Purchase Agreement. The buyer has a brief look at the goods on offer (prospective daughter-in-law), tries to decide whether they are compatible with what he already has (dissolute son), and then plonks down the money."

Mister Bob...you're lovely! i subscribe to your blog& never comment because i'm a very quiet person: but this post~ i had to say something. I wish you were writing about me -in the above-! Yes, duly hit by "lurrve", someone's "dissolute son" is taking his sweet time! Your post just made me decide to just hover for a few more years for 'my' Asian guy ;-p Thank you for the post and for the hope. You are a very funny person [frankly, the only blog i subscribe to] and I do hope that God blesses you in all the good ways possible. Especially with the writer's association and your literary prize "project". Yes, I have a few of your books. :-) Be healthy always!

[Nury]

Dear Francess, thanks for one of the loveliest messages I've seen. I agree with what you say -- guys take way too long to make these important decisions. And then when they finally do get married/ have kids/ settle down etc -- they kick themselves and say "why didn't I do this sooner?" But what can a girl do? Patience and a fair degree of bullying, my female friends advise!