Domestic lives of foreign women with Chinese mothers-in-law

French woman Emilie Gutowski (left) and her Chinese mother-in-law, Li Jian'en. Photo: Courtesy of Li Jian'en

By her own admission, Ember Swift has never conformed to her Chinese mother-in-law's image of what a wife should be.

A peripatetic singer-songwriter from Ontario, Canada, Swift moved to Beijing in 2008. A year later, she married fellow musician and reggae band Long Shen Dao frontman Guo Jian. Ever since, said Swift, she has been trying to get into her mother-in-law's good graces.

"Dealing with one's mother-in-law is never easy, in any country. When you add cultural differences into the mix, my mother-in-law and I have more hurdles to overcome than most," said Swift, 40. "There's a constant struggle for control in the family. In the West, it would be taken for granted that I have right to run my family as I see fit. But my mother-in-law disagrees. She thinks it should be her right."

The domestic arrangements of cross-cultural marriages like Swift's have become a topic of interest in the Chinese media in recent weeks, following the publication of a story in Jiangsu-based newspaper Modern Express about the marriage of 26-year-old French woman Emilie Gutowski to a Chinese golf instructor by the name of Kevin Xie this month.

The story attracted thousands of comments on Sina Weibo, for challenging contemporary Chinese attitudes toward courtship and marriage. Besides the fact that such cross-cultural marriages in China remain relatively uncommon, it was Gutowski who took the initiative to "pursue" Xie romantically. A quote made by Gutowski to the publication particularly galvanized public reaction: "I don't want a house, I don't want a car, I just want to be with you." In China, many see having a car and a house - symbols of material stability - as prerequisites for marriage.

Since 1982, around 29,000 marriages between Chinese and foreign nationals have been recorded in Beijing, according to a Beijing Evening News report last September.

The report went on to note that the number of such marriages is increasing annually.

Power struggles

After moving to Beijing in anticipation of the birth of their first child in January 2012, one of the first actions Swift's mother-in-law took was to clear out Swift's kitchen.

She replaced all the ingredients with which Swift had stocked the pantry with her own.

"I was mad. I couldn't find any of the ingredients that I wanted to use," said Swift. "I even yelled at her, which made her angry. She has a brittle temper, like me."

Another thing that bothered Swift was that her mother-in-law would routinely enter her and Guo's bedroom to rearrange their wardrobe.

"I think it's a matter of privacy. In China, people associate privacy with secrecy. But where I'm from, privacy is not about keeping secrets from someone, it's about having one's private space and time," said Swift. "Although I knew a bit about Chinese etiquette, my mother-in-law knew nothing about Western etiquettes or customs."

Swift said she frequently got into fights with her mother-in-law over such issues, but after a while, she decided to take a different tack.

"Later on, I tried to avoid having direct confrontations with my mother-in-law. I began to adopt a milder approach," said Swift. She gave the example of her mother-in-law telling her children that if they behave badly, they will be taken away by a big, bad wolf. Swift disagrees with telling children such fibs to win their obedience, but instead of confronting her mother-in-law about it, Swift said, she now simply speaks to the children in English, to tell them that there is no wolf, but their grandmother's intentions are good and that they should be good girls.

"These tactics are more effective," said Swift. "[My mother-in-law] knows that I have different opinions to her, but a softer approach is easier for her to accept."

Great expectations

Militonyan Nune, originally from Armenia, married her Chinese husband, Deng Zhonggang, in 1996. They had met the year before, when Deng went to Armenia to work as a farmer.

After giving birth to a pair of twin daughters, Deng persuaded Nune to move back with him to his hometown, a small rural village in Weihai, Shandong Province.

Immediately, her mother-in-law expected her to contribute to domestic chores and to work in the fields.