Winton Dong

    dht620@sina.com

    FAMOUS Japanese Rio Olympic table tennis bronze medalist Ai Fukuhara tied the knot with her Taiwanese boyfriend Chiang Hung-chieh on Sept. 8. Chiang is also an Olympic table tennis player.

    The two young athletes, both 28 years old, registered their marriage in Tokyo. Fukuhara said she would continue to serve as a table tennis player after the marriage.

    As a four-time Olympian and national icon of Japan, Fukuhara once had Japanese boyfriends such as famous tennis player Nishikori Kei. But what convinced her to settle on a Chinese man?

    Firstly, it is still a Japanese regulation that if a girl marries a Japanese man, she must use her husband’s surname. Under this circumstance, no matter how successful Fukuhara is, if she ties the knot with a Japanese guy, she will be forced to abandon her own surname.

    Secondly, as an elite player in Japan, Fukuhara has taken part in the Olympic table tennis competition for four consecutive times since 2004. Japanese capital Tokyo will be the host city for the next Olympic Games in 2020. When being interviewed recently, Fukuhara expressed the hope that she would still serve the Japanese team in the 2020 match. However, if she was to marry a Japanese man, it would be virtually impossible for her to do so.

    Thirdly, after marriage, commonly a Japanese wife will likely quit her job and move in together with her husband’s family members. As a full-time housewife, she will be in charge of all the odd jobs such as taking care of her husband, children and the elderly, cooking, cleaning and sewing, among other chores for the family. For some successful Japanese women like Fukuhara, it will be very difficult for them to strike a balance between career and family.

    After analyzing the disadvantages of marrying a Japanese man, let’s say something about the advantages of being a Chinese wife.

    Firstly, Fukuhara will encounter no language and cultural barriers as a Chinese wife. As a sports celebrity, Fukuhara is very popular in China and fluent in Mandarin, where she played in the country’s top table tennis division Super League as a teenager since 2005. On June 10 this year, Fukuhara opened her own Chinese microblog account and has accumulated more than 2 million followers in China within only three months.

    Secondly, different from that in Japan, a Chinese wife gets at least the same status with her husband or even higher position in the family. She is free to continue her work after marriage, even after giving birth to babies. Meanwhile, many Chinese men, especially in big cities, nowadays regard being obedient to their spouse as a virtue. That may be the origin of the Chinese idiom — a lioness’ roar — which means, women take control of family affairs.

    Moreover, a recent survey conducted by the largest Chinese dating website Zhenai.com showed that among its 100 million members in China, 72.7 percent of men said they were willing to hand in their paychecks to their wives, and another 12.57 percent said they were reluctant to do so, but “would still like to give it to them if that makes them happy.” The survey also found that in our city — Shenzhen — as many as 83.33 percent of men were willing to surrender their paychecks to their spouse, the highest percentage among big Chinese cities.

    As a Japanese girl who has lived in China for quite a long time, Fukuhara surely knows the pride, power and dignity of being a Chinese wife.

    (The author is the editor-in-chief of the Shenzhen Daily and guest professor of Shenzhen University with a Ph.D. from the Journalism and Communication School of Wuhan University.)