Staying Single 3/5 | Asian American Features

STAYING SINGLE
PAGE 3 of 5

Mr and Mrs Right

or any driven career person determined to make a mark in the professional world, finding the time to meet people of the opposite sex is hard. And for Asians, there's another complication added to the mix: most of the eligible people they meet are Caucasian, leading to a choice whether to marry outside one's race and risk alienating one's family or simply to keep looking until a suitable Asian partner comes along.
"But I prefer more independence, more conversation, more of an equal partner, so it doesn't work out."
     "I think for women, especially women of color, you're given much more choices these days, and choice causes delay," says Hermie Lee, 30, a history teacher at one of Los Angeles' most exclusive private high schools. "It's more acceptable now for Asian people to marry Caucasians, so that makes for even more choices."
     Lee, a Korean American, has been dating a Caucasian man for several years, but the question of whether to marry a non-Asian and concerns about whether she's ready for marriage have led to paralysis.
     "I have to know myself very well to know what I want, and that's taken me a longer time than I ever would have thought," she says.
     Asian men, too, are caught between an interest in Caucasian women and family pressure to marry within their own ethnicities.
     Derek Lin owns a business teaching computer skills for entry-level clerical jobs. He is a good-looking, financially stable young man in his 30s who would genuinely like to share his life with a woman, and most single women would probably consider him a great catch. But his voice cracks with frustration as he describes the pressures and confusion of the Asian American dating scene in the '90s.
     Lin, who grew up in Taiwan, is disgusted with the American school system and would prefer to return to Asia when he's ready to raise children. Obviously, that means it would make life easier if he married a Chinese woman. But, other than the women his parents occasionally try to set him up with, almost all the women he meets and dates are Caucasian. And he finds he's simply not interested in most of the traditional Chinese women his parents pick for him.

"These women are beautiful, so I can't complain," Lin says. "I guess it gives me an extra avenue that perhaps other guys don't have. But I prefer more independence, more conversation, more of an equal partner, so it doesn't work out."
The tradition of arranged marriages has been carried over to America, especially among recent Asian immigrants. But for people like Lin, who have come to adopt American cultural values, the traditions that might have worked for one's parents are no longer viable. And there's nothing quite so embarrassing as answering the questions from anxious family members about every aspect of one's dating life. PAGE 4

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