Serious girls

[Jeff S]

Piet-gorilla brought up a good point that I thought deserved its own thread, or at least I was curious how you guys reacted to it - the seriousness of a lot of Asian women. I believe there is a drive in a lot of Asians ingrained by their cultures and family training, to excel at whatever they do, whether it be study in school, follow their career, or be a great wife. This is one of the attractive things about Asians to me. I'm not talking about a lack of humor, but more a mandate to make today better than yesterday in every way, not fritter their lives away with trivialities and only good times, but rather to accomplish what they set out to do. I know both my wife and daughter have it. My daughter is irritated at he co-workers who'd rather chat and gossip than get their jobs done.

Some of the younger people in the more affluent places in Asia are losing that responsibility, I think. An example is young Japanese girls from well off families. They're growing up like American kids, without a sense of responsibility with only an interest in using daddy's JCB card to buy the latest Louis Vitton purse, without a care in the world about tomorrow.

Everyone in the world has this drive to some degree, but it just doesn't seem to me to be nearly as prevalent as in Asia. Maybe it has to do with opportunities and affluence. In rich countries, there are no worries about succeeding, and in really poor countries there is little hope to get ahead, so why bother, but in Asia there are opportunities - even in the poorer countries, and people seem to realize that it's only through their own efforts only that they can take adavantage of them - but then again, maybe it's cultural and family training. Contrast rural Mexico, where mamma and pappa teach their kids to relax and enjoy life, and hey, a 2nd grade education was fine for them, so it should be good enough for the kids, there's always manana, to rural Viet Nam where children are pushed to be educated, and are driven to continual improvement.

Thoughts?

- Jeff

[flipflop]

I agree, my wife is Philipino by nationality and Chinese by blood, her parents immigrated to the PI. She excelled in Chinese schools and ran the family business in Manila 12-14 hour days for 13 years. Right now shes a 4 point accounting major at the local university and it isnt because shes smarter its just that she out works her peers. In many classes she setting the curve and she is not happy with a 95 on a test if somone else got a 96. Ive really had to work with her and help alot on the domestic things because this tends to fall low on her list of priorities which are in this order God, our 2 children, School, me and herself. But I dont mind because her future looks bright as she keeps her priorities in order. One domestic function that she has handled very very well is the cooking and cleaning of the kitchen. Shes turning into an excellent cook and after some instruction can detail a stove until its immaculate. Its stuff like vaccuuming, dusting, laundry etc that I have to pitch in and I dont mind because she really is busy (we both are) and her efforts will pay big dividends in the long run. Also as time goes by we learn what we expect of each other and function better as a team.

As far as the seriousness in which she appraoches things of a high priority there is no doubt that something in her cultural upbringing pushes her to achieve. And she does consistantly

[Ray]

Good topic Jeff.

I believed for a long time that Asian people as a whole were highly intelligent, very motivated to succeed, and were excellent students. After spending 20 years traveling through Asia, working with Asians, and studying alongside of them in college, I have somewhat refined my thinking on the subject.

I found that Asians were generally hard working and pressured by their families to excel in their educational endeavors, including pursuing advanced degrees.  I was very surprised to learn the real secret to their success in school. Cheating!

The Asian students I studied with, primarily Vietnamese men and women, mostly possessed a high degree of aptitude in math. But in my Science, Engineering, and other general education classes, I saw so much cheating among the Asian students that I was actually shocked. As a group, the Vietnamese students were probably the biggest cheaters except for maybe the Iranian students who were more openly blatant about it.

A large percentage of the students in my Electrical Engineering classes were Vietnamese, but I would say that probably 80% of them were in the wrong major. They seemed to have a lot of trouble in courses that required a lot of critical thinking. As an example, in one of my Engineering computer programming classes, virtually every one of the Vietnamese students (approx 15?) were caught cheating on a midterm exam and again on a term programming project, where they all submitted programs that had the same bug, making it obvious that they all copied the same code from a student from the year before who also had the same bug in his work.

I also found that a high percentage of the Vietnamese students who did graduate with an Engineering degree never worked in the field. In fact, quite a few ended up working in the family business, usually restaurant-related, as waiters or managers. Of the Vietnamese engineers that I have worked with, some were very knowledgeable and highly motivated, but those were almost exclusively the males. The Vietnamese female entry-level engineers seemed to have a lot of trouble grasping the basics, probably a direct result of having largely cheated their way through school.

The Filipino students in College mostly dropped out in the first two years, especially the males. Not many Filipinos in Engineering so I wasn’t usually studying with them directly. In my daughters’ high school and in other schools in the local school district, the suicide rate was extremely high among Filipino female students. From what I learned, these students were under tremendous pressure from their parents to excel in school and the pressure was just too much in some cases. The Filipina girls in high school were usually forbidden by their parents to date or participate in many of the social activities available to most other students, probably due to the conservative traditional values that their parents grew up with and tried to pass on.

For the male Filipino teenagers, they were mostly spoiled rotten. Unlike the girls, they were pretty much allowed to do as they wished. Maybe half were very good students and the other half goofed off too much. Filipino male teenagers were usually not required to do much of any work around the home while the girls were expected to do more in this area. You rarely ever see an Asian teenager cutting the grass or working in the yard. Most of the Asian male teenagers in my area drive new cars, a lot of Acuras and Hondas. Their parents buy them new cars as soon as they are old enough to drive, while the parents often drive old junkers. The girls don’t usually drive until they are several years older than the their brothers.

I do admire the Vietnamese “boat people” who were settled here in Southern California after the war. They came here with virtually nothing and worked hard to improve their lives and provide a good education for their children. One interesting trait of the poor Vietnamese refugees who came to San Diego was their lack of that sense of entitlement from the government that you see here among poor Americans. Many of the Vietnamese who were placed on government welfare after they arrived here stirred up a lot of controversy when they insisted on repaying every dollar of those welfare payments after they got on their feet. I believe the county social services had to change their accounting system to accept paybacks when those folks insisted on repaying. Amazing!

Anyway, these are mostly generalizations based on my own experiences and observations.

[Tim]

Generally speaking, I agree that Asian women are definitely more serious than western women. The trouble/challenge for us is determining the true motives of their seriousness.

For example, is she serious because family and loyalty are paramount in her value-system, or is she serious because her life-dream is to immigrate to the USA? Both those are deep motivations that can manifest seriousness in her demeanor. How can we ever root out the truth during our courtship?

Don't look at me, I don't have the answer to that. However, years of observation clearly shows this fact: the more quality face-time we can spend getting to know them before making a commitment, the better odds we have of learning the truth of their seriousness.