I conclude this chapter by reconstructing a conversation that I overheard in a Chinese restaurant in Toamasina, Madagascar’s largest port city with a great presence of both Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking Chinese people. A Mandarin-speaking Chinese man was sitting by the table behind me with two young Malagasy women. It was hard to gauge their relationships, however, my guess based on how they talked to each other and how the girls were dressed was that one of the two Malagasy girls worked as a translator for the Chinese man doing business of some sort and the other girl was a friend of the translator. The Chinese man, between drinks of Three Horses Beer, blustered in Mandarin Chinese:
Us, Chinese men, unlike your man [Malagasy men], we are men of responsibility! Once we marry a woman, we take responsibility and take care of our family, not only our wife, children, but also our parents, our wife’s parents. We respect our marriage and we are loyal to our family. But your men are always promiscuous. A
man can screw around, have a baby with one girl and abandon her, go to find another girl. You see, very few Malagasy men actually validate their marriage, because they simply do not want and need to.
Similar stereotypes about Malagasy men being unwilling to take the legal responsibility associated with marriage can be found among other Mandarin-speaking Chinese men I met in Madagascar. A man at the sugar plantation told me:
We always say that Madagascar is a paradise for men, because men do not need to get married here. Malagasy men live and travel light. However, Chinese men are always tired, burdened by responsibility associated with our marriage and family. It is reflected in the administrative system here. For example, the company provides free medical care to all male employees and their extended family members, including their wife and their domestic partners. The way to prove a domestic relationship is very simple. They just need a certificate from a
community administrator proving that the couple have been living together for a short period of time. You see Frederic, my driver, he has two wives in two different towns. And my deputy, every time he is paid, he distributes the money into five portions, each of which to support one lady. I do not understand why they are doing this. I will only use my hard-earned money on my own family (Conversation with Chinese man B).
As discussed above, “Malagasy men do not tend to marry, Malagasy women want to develop intimate relationship mainly for the sake of money, both genders are habitually promiscuous” is the stereotype of morality that Chinese men usually use to demarcate cultural boundaries between Chinese and Malagasy people. As Robbins (2004) argues, for those caught living between two different cultural systems, morality is likely to provide the window through which they can see the contradictions with which they live. Robbins defines the moral domain as “one in which actors are culturally constructed as being aware of the directive forces of values and of the choices left open to them in responding to that force” (2004:315). About their extramarital affairs with Malagasy women, many Chinese men have developed an ambiguous standard of morality that has developed under the mixed influence of their yearning to join China’s “new rich” where masculinity and personal achievement are manifested through extramarital sexual encounters, traditional Chinese values that define a model husband by his faithfulness in marriage and his responsibility to family, as well as a social environment in Madagascar where mutually satisfying sexual relationships among Chinese men and Malagasy women are easily developed.
As discussed in chapter 1, for China’s emerging middle class and those who dream of joining the “new rich” club, social networking and social environments are often gendered. There is a well-known humorous Chinese expression – jia li hong qi bu
dao, wai mian cai qi piao piao – that translates as “the red flag at home doesn’t fall, the
colourful flags outside are fluttering.” Presumably, “the red flag” is a metaphor for a man’s wife and “the colourful flags” for his partners in extramarital affairs. This expression is often used to describe a man who is successful in satisfying both his wife and his mistresses without causing any trouble. Many men consider the situation described in the expression as something to be proud of since it proves that they are
attractive enough for the “colourful flags” while rich enough to support both the “red flag” and the “colourful” ones. Due to wealth differences between Chinese men and most of the local Malagasy people who live and work nearby, Chinese men in Madagascar have the opportunity to enjoy the privilege of having both “red and colourful flags” at once. However, once they go back to China, the wealth they have accumulated by working in Madagascar is hardly enough to win them a place among China’s elite. As one man described the situation: “we are almost like the upper class in Madagascar, however, once I land in the airport of my hometown, I am nobody. I am just like a migrant peasant worker who does not even have medical care” (Conversation with Chinese man A).
Many Chinese men consciously made a moral choice by maintaining their
relationship with their Malagasy partner while financially supporting their family at home. It is deemed a compromise between the need to be rich and the need to keep a family together. One argument shared by many Chinese men who self-claimed to have behaved morally is that although many Chinese wives have been kept in dark, men should be excused from their extramarital sexual encounters so long as they generously provide financial support to their wives and families at home. This proves that their heart is still loyal to their family even though their body is not. Someone who has a Malagasy partner occasionally without spending too much money seems acceptable. However, if someone treats his wife at home badly and spends too much money on his Malagasy mistress, it is something to be despised. Chinese men also make the distinction between “true love” (zhen ai) and “emotional attachment” (gan qing). In this context, “true love” is interpreted with emphasis on the responsibility that comes with the bond of marriage,
including involvement in family affairs and unconditional financial support to family members, whereas “emotional attachment” is caused by physical and emotional
involvement and is akin to the stage of dating. The Chinese men I spoke with assume that “true love” is more valuable than “emotional attachment,” and most acknowledged that there is hardly any “true love” in their relationships with their Malagasy partners since almost all of these relationships were initially motivated by the primal physical drives of Chinese men and the demand for money from Malagasy women. In relationships that last longer, it is undeniable that Chinese men and Malagasy women have developed mutual emotional attachment. However, for most Chinese men dating Malagasy women, “emotional attachment” can never transcend to “true love.”
Some Chinese men supported their Malagasy partners out of mixed motivations of sexual attraction and beneficent sympathy for their dreadful economic situation. It is worth mentioning that the relationships between Chinese men and Malagasy women was never a single-sided effort. Many Malagasy girls understood that the wives of the Chinese men are too far away to fulfil their husbands’ needs so they take advantage of the
sympathy of Chinese men to make the most out of the relationship, especially with a clear goal of financial gain.
As working and living in Madagascar provides an “escape” for the Chinese men from their banal adult life in China, many have adopted an attitude of “live in the moment” by neglecting the possible future consequences. As many men mentioned to me, they are actually living a bachelor’s life in Madagascar, at least sexually, which both constrains them and sets them free. The narrative of one man captures how he has made his ambiguously moral choice:
I kept my abstinence for two years when I first came to work in Madagascar until I had my first sexual encounter with a girl. It was ten o’clock at night when she came to knock my door, asking for some water. I opened the door and let her in. But once she came in, she started to take off my pants. It was my fault that I couldn’t resist it but what else can I do? And this kind of thing, you know, after you do it once, it changes everything, and it does not matter anymore if you do it again, so you just kind of give up fighting the desires and let yourself go.
However, I love my wife. When I married her, I promised her and her family that I would be responsible for my family for the rest of my life till death do us apart. I kept my promise and I bought a nice apartment in a major city in Southwest China and moved my family from the rural town where we are from to the big
city for better education and living environment for our son. She can spend as much money as she wants even though she does not have a formal full-time job. I never spend too much money on girls in Madagascar. I try to keep my sexual encounters to a minimum. I have been keeping every penny I earn and send all money home. When I go home for vacation, we spend good time together as a family and we seldom quarrel with each other. She will be mad at me if she knows that I have slept with Malagasy girls. So I would rather not tell her to keep her happy the way she always is. I have never doubted the meaning of my
marriage. My responsibility as a man in my marriage is the only reason that I came to work in Madagascar in the first place – to work hard and make more money so that my family can have a better life” (Conversation with Chinese man D).
In Malagasy, casual romantic relationships are often referred as misoma, meaning “playing games.” The intimate relationships in Chinese-Malagasy encounters, especially those involving Chinese men and Malagasy women, bear resemblances to “games,” as actors participate in (or sometimes, refuse to participate in) the mutual construction of these relationships out of their own needs and deliberate calculations (whether related to physical, emotional or financial interests). Through the “allying and betraying” (Ortner 1999), manifested in the stories of Malagasy women and Chinese wives, the dynamics of women’s romantic relationships or marriages with Chinese men are processes in constant making and remaking. In this sense, many of the intimate relationships considered in this chapter share features of “serious games” together with other kinds of Chinese-Malagasy encounters described in this research. In the following concluding chapter, I will
highlight the commonalities among the different kinds of encounters addressed in this thesis and their broader implications for a deeper understanding of China and Africa in the contemporary world.