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China Elevator Stories
6 things I’ve learned in 2 years of being in a cross-cultural relationship with my Chinese husband
This is what being in an intercultural relationship has taught me.
04/12/2014
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
1. Respecting Your Partner’s Culture is Essential
When you’re in a relationship with someone from a different cultural background, respecting their culture is key to making the relationship work.
I try to respect my husband’s cultural background, and he does the same for mine. While I don’t understand all the traditions, and neither of us believes in all the superstitions, we still embrace these things as part of our life together. They’ve shaped who my husband is today and play a role in raising our child (such as the Chinese ritual for 5-day-old newborns).
2. There’s Much More to Communication Than Language
Language is only a small part of effective communication.
People often ask if my husband and I have communication problems because we don’t share a common mother tongue. While we do sometimes face language barriers, there’s so much more to communication than just words. Sometimes, our fights have led to deeper communication, and that’s a good thing.
Here are three examples of how my husband and I communicated without words in the delivery room:
- During labor, I was incredibly thirsty after each contraction. A small gesture with my hand, and my husband knew I needed another glass of water.
- When our son was born, my husband cried. He was the first person our son looked at. I had never seen my husband cry before, and I knew how overjoyed he was. We still joke that I cried at our wedding, while he didn’t, and he cried after our son’s birth, while I didn’t (exhaustion, anyone?).
- After giving birth, I felt weak when getting up from the toilet. I told my husband, “I think I need to lean…” and then collapsed. He caught me mid-air, and though I only hurt my knee, I woke up to see his worried face. I knew how he felt without him saying a word. He instinctively pressed the emergency button, and the nurses were there when I woke up.
These are only a few examples of how we communicate without words. Of course, being in the delivery room is an extreme example, but it works the same in everyday situations.
3. Handling Red Tape Will Become a Big Part of Your Life
If you’re with someone from another country, dealing with red tape is inevitable.
When I studied abroad in Kunming in 2009, I thought the bureaucracy was overwhelming. Today, handling red tape has become second nature. From gathering documents for marriage to applying for visas, it’s a big part of our life.
I’ve learned that with patience, things usually work out. Whether it’s getting a Chinese police officer to register me in their system, securing a 5-month visa for my husband instead of the usual 3 months, or getting our son a Chinese travel permit, we’ve tackled it all.
4. Marrying Someone with a Different Citizenship is Expensive
Before I married my Chinese husband, I had no idea how expensive it would be to marry someone from another country.
Registering our marriage in Austria was relatively inexpensive, but getting the necessary documents, translations, and apostilles was not. When my husband applied for his first Schengen visa for our wedding in 2013, he had to travel from Shenzhen to Beijing for the interview. Having children born to parents of different nationalities is also costly. For instance, translating and notarizing our son’s birth certificate cost 170 EUR (about 210 USD or 1300 CNY). And that was just one document.
5. Being Married to Someone from a Different Country is Challenging
Being married to someone from another country comes with its challenges.
It’s challenging because of the legal issues you must resolve to stay together. It’s challenging because you sometimes can’t express your feelings well in a language that’s not your mother tongue. It’s challenging because you live in a country that’s so different from the one you grew up in. It’s challenging because there are different cultural expectations for raising children. It’s challenging because, as someone married to someone from a different country, you’ll often feel caught between two cultures.
There are times when you feel alone because your family and friends can’t relate to the struggles of being in an intercultural marriage. You may feel desperate when you’re not sure if you’ll get the necessary documents in time, or worried that the baby will arrive before your husband does.
6. All the Challenges Will Be Rewarding if You Love Each Other
Despite all the challenges, my husband and I face them because we love each other. We take on these challenges so we can wake up next to each other every day. Most of the time, the challenges don’t weigh us down. The positives far outweigh the negatives.
It would be nice if I could apply for a 1, 2, or even 5-year residence permit in my husband’s hometown (currently, I get half a year, and then 1 year at a time). It would be great if I could work on a spousal residence permit. And yes, it would be wonderful if more people could relate to our situation.
But when I look at my husband and our son, I don’t think about the “what-ifs.” I see the positive aspects of our life together and the things we’ve already accomplished.
I feel blessed to have two places we call home, two languages and cultures for our son to grow up with, both Chinese and Austrian holidays to celebrate, a variety of favorite songs to choose from, and plenty of children’s stories to share. I rock our son to sleep singing Bruder Jakob (the German equivalent of Brother John). He’ll grow up singing Liang Zhi Laohu (两只老虎, “Two Tigers”), a Chinese children’s song with the same melody but different lyrics. Our breakfast includes bread and congee, cheese and pickles, coffee and soy milk. We fight in Chinese and swear in German.
We live in a colorful world. And despite all the differences, at the end of the day, we’re just humans who happened to fall in love with someone from another country.
Seeing my husband cry after the birth of our beautiful son? I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything in the world.
Have you ever been in a cross-cultural relationship?