Dating, Sex, & Relationships

Dr. Greg,

I've just completed my first semester teaching in China on a one-year contract. I'm in my mid-thirties and single. Although I've been flirted with and even had a proposition or two thrown my way via text messages by some of my (mostly female) Chinese students, I've observed the rule, whether written or unwritten, against becoming romantically involved with one's students.

The city where I live is rather small by Chinese standards and my Mandarin is still at a beginner level, so I have not had any real possibilities for romantic contacts with local women. I'm also aware of the ethical dilemmas of getting involved with students, so I've taken the high road hitherto.

Alas, one of my coworkers in his late-20s has not. We live in the same building, so it's difficult to hide the obvious, and he admitted it to me recently over a few beers. My feelings are extremely mixed. I feel like a sucker for not following up on some of the offers thrown my way. I assure you this is not lasciviousness so much as loneliness. At the same time, I resent him for behaving unprofessionally.

The college that I teach at is third-tier private, so it's also easy for an unscrupulous fellow to use his sexual charisma as a weapon against another teacher. I feel that he also uses course humor in his out-of-class discussions. To be fair, I've heard that he usually behaves professionally in class.

I'm feeling knots in my stomach, because I don't want my relationship with my students (and their sensibilities) to be poisoned by a seductive playboy. Evidently, the whole "save your virginity" thing is quickly dissipating. Today I walked by a kiosk displaying various sex toys near an area of campus where students usually eat. The same coworker told me a story about how he recently drank a virgin's blood!

I actually read this forum soon after arriving in China and assumed the young girls here really were very scrupulous about their virginity and their partners. For the record, the coworker has no interest in these girls outside of brief encounters and even is planning to marry a woman in another part of China when his contract expires. I don't think the girls are under any illusions either.

Can you offer any advice on my predicament? This is really distracting me from simply doing my best to be a good teacher. I strongly think that a teaching relationship should not be sexualized, but gossip spreads fast and soon the whole environment is corrupted. Does this cross a threshold of crudity where the FAO needs to be made aware of it?

I agree that there has been a very gradual decrease in the relative importance of female virginity at marriage since the chapter on Dating Etiquette and Sexual Relationships in China was first written back in 2007. Nevertheless, I do believe that the overall advice is still generally true today. In addition, greater social acceptance of premarital sex among young college students should not be misconstrued to mean that one-night stands, casual sex, and a history of multiple sexual partners prior to marriage are currently normative and acceptable: they are not.

Most of these girls that your colleague is sleeping with will face the terribly unfortunate choice of either entering future relationships with Chinese men with a lie by omission or remaining forever unmarriageable. Han chauvinism is increasing in intensity and prevalence throughout mainland China by the day and the vast majority of Chinese men will simply not even consider a girl as a future mate who has had a foreign boyfriend. My point here is that all this premarital sexual activity with students is not without potentially very serious consequences to these girls whether they appear to be voluntarily consenting without future expectations or not.

If you took it upon yourself to report this colleague's sexual behavior with students to the University’s administration, it could very well backfire on you (particularly if none of the girls were willing to come forward and it is very unlikely that any of them would). If he continues to have indiscriminate sex with his current students, trust me on this, a time will eventually come when he will have to pay the piper. Women scorned are dangerous in any culture and jealously vindictive Chinese girls should be especially feared.

The widely accepted ethical guideline at Chinese universities is that there is nothing unethical about dating university students if they are not your current students (and while this is also technically true in the United States, professors who date any of their university's registered students make themselves vulnerable to criticism and scrutiny). If you were to date a former student, or any current student who is not a student of yours and will never be, just as long as you are entirely transparent and honest about your feelings and intentions, you are not breaching your ethical responsibility as a foreign teacher in China.

You have written about sex, relationships and Chinese women. In one post, you wrote: "Most of these girls that your colleague is sleeping with will face the terribly unfortunate choice of either entering future relationships with Chinese men with a lie by omission or remaining forever unmarriageable."

If I recall correctly, you have noted that for the Chinese woman, entering a marriage based on a lie of omission would be psychologically painful.

I would like to know why you think that. The Chinese people that I know, men and women, by and large, seem to feel no guilt about lying, especially lying by omission. My sense is that many young Chinese women have sexual experience but do not disclose this fact upon marriage, because of the strong preference of Chinese males to marry "untouched" women. I sense that this is extremely common and provokes little if any guilt among the women who choose not to disclose their pasts. So I'm note sure why a past involving a foreigner would be any different. Of the young women who have dalliances with foreigners, I'd say the vast majority later marry Chinese men, tell the guys nothing about this history, and never look back.

In fact, I find that lies permeate all aspects of Chinese culture, but guilt does not. Perhaps you are applying a western template of morality where it does not fit?

If you go back and take a careful look at my above reply, you'll see that I don't specifically state that the act of lying by omission would be "psychologically painful" for all Chinese women.

It is true that there are very different cultural norms in regard to interpreting distortions of the truth for the distinct purpose of saving and giving face. In the West, anything but the truth is a lie regardless of intent or motivation. In China, a lie is only a lie if the intent was to deceive (as opposed to saving or giving face). If a subordinate praises his supervisor for his "outstanding" English language skills, this is not viewed as a lie--even if the supervisor can't speak more than four words of English--because both parties understand what is intended by this gesture.

To state that most Chinese women can lie to their future husbands with total impunity, i.e., without any guilt, is simply incorrect if not racist.

I treated one Chinese woman who had a very "colorful" sexual history with men and made a point of lying about it to each new beau in her life. On the other hand, I also worked with a 33-year-old woman who had once been engaged to an Englishman back when she was 25. The relationship ended after two years and as each subsequent Chinese male prospect learned about it, that relationship too would end. She had loved this Western man very much and refused to lie about or denounce him to anyone even if it meant staying forever single. This type of scenario is not nearly as uncommon as you might think.

Finally, face-saving strategies are quite different with husbands and wives than they are with casual acquaintances and coworkers. For example, a girl might completely deny ever having had sex in front of her girlfriends (without one iota of guilt) but will honestly disclose that fact with a future husband, albeit in the least damaging manner possible and, very likely, in a way that makes herself come across as a victim, e.g., "he told me he loved me and that we were going to get married" (assuming, hypothetically, that this was untrue in that the sex was intended as casual).

Many object-relations theorists believe that sociopathy is a subset of low-level (closet) pathological narcissism and it is true that narcissistic personality disorder is disproportionately overrepresented in China. These sociopathic (antisocial) tendencies were tragically put on international display quite recently when a little 2-year-old girl was run over not once but twice while bystanders watched and did absolutely nothing to help her (see Bystanders’ Neglect of Injured Toddler Sets Off Soul-Searching on Web Sites in China). Nevertheless, we cannot argue that all or even most Chinese are sociopaths.

Believe it or not, there are decent Chinese women out there who value honesty in their relationships.