Two days without email

On Wednesday I went out with my work colleagues for a Mid-Autumn Festival lunch (apparently mid-autumn is worth not only a few days' holiday, but a free lunch, too!). Afterwards, I was drowning in post-feeding fatigue, and suggested to my friend at work that we go and grab a coffee at Starbucks. I'll have you know Starbucks is almost the only option for takeaway coffee in most of Beijing, lest you think I would actually choose Starbucks coffee of my own volition. Anyway, my colleague, being Chinese, is not really a fan of coffee, so I'm a bit surprised she has accepted my polite invitation. 

Soon, I find out why. She wants to talk about her personal life. She's having some issues with her husband, who is currently in the USA with work. My colleague has seemed a bit quiet all day, and now I'm starting to find out what's the problem. She asked him to email her every day while he was away, she says, otherwise she might get worried about him. And he promised he would. Two days went by without an email (which, she says, she didn't even really notice because she herself has been busy), and she suddenly realised he hasn't kept his promise. She started to get annoyed that she hadn't heard from him. So, she wrote him a nasty email saying she was hurt by his actions, or lack of actions as it appears. He wrote back saying he was tired, very busy, had taken on someone else's job in addition to his own because his colleague is incompetent. She wrote back with more nasty words, and then a few days later logged on to his email account (why does she have access to it?) and saw he hadn't even opened her most recent emails. How to exact revenge on this horrendous crime? She changed his email password, the same one he uses for business communications. 

I always wonder in this situations whether you're supposed to coo and soothe the girl, or whether you should give her the straightforward opinion that is forming on your tongue. But at this point, I can't help but exclaim how ridiculously childish her actions are. She admits she knows this, but can't help herself. She's an only child and is used to getting her way. Her husband has an older sister (the one child policy actually only covers about half of Chinese families—fodder for another post!), so he's used to sharing things, sharing a person's attention, and sharing his email account, perhaps? 

She changed his password back after a few days of making him stew over it. Then, realising she was a bit grumpy with him, he tried to call her 20 times in one morning, from the other side of the world. She didn't answer, and still won't talk to him.

She says she thinks they are not suited to each other. They come from different backgrounds. Her father is rich and has nought to spend his money on except for his darling little girl. Her husband's parents are not so well off, and he doesn't like the idea of her father paying for everything, including their house. Actually, he doesn't like to talk about money at all, in complete contradiction to most of his Chinese mates. She can't understand why. She thinks you have to be practical about these things, and the reality is that money is all that matters in China these days. Money, and family. She doesn't like to cook or clean and feels like she's not a 'good wife' to her husband, but she still needs his undivided attention at every point, otherwise she feels lost. If they were not married, she says, they would certainly have split up. She doesn't want to divorce him because it would hurt her parents.

There's more to it, obviously. You can't summarise the complexities of a marriage in one conversation at Starbucks. Still, I can't help but wonder how much of this is common across China, a nation of single child families, of strong family ties, of vastly unequal gender expectations, and of marriages that must last forever. Throughout the conversation, in response to my wide-eyed surprise at her actions and feelings, my colleague conceded this must be hard for me to understand because of cultural difference. 

But the lesson I'm taking away is: you men at home (you know who you are), when you think your girlfriends or wives are being too needy, should spare a thought for the poor Chinese man whose wife may divorce him because he was too busy to email her every day.

:)