Are eurasian couples on the decline?

[admin]

www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2012%2F04%2F14%2FMNB41NSOR1.DTL

[rob]

(Article isn't visible to me from current location )

This may or may not be related, but at least in the few cities where I spend alot of time (Hong Kong, Singapore, Vancouver)...... eurasian kids are fast becoming a cliche.

There's throngs in HK and Spore these days.... and they're invariably from upper-middle-class families, never worked a day in their lives, don't speak the native tongue, often self-absorbed and quite spoiled. There's a certain lack of humility and faith. And those that fall outside the 'expat brat' category seem to have taken up the liberal arts, a neo-marxist activist agenda (environment, sustainability, poor ppl in africa) and rolling doobies with aplomb. Every EA these days seems to be a f*cking cliche.

Amongst us older EAs, I think there's serious scarcity value, kinship and character...... we weren't as coddled and never had the EA mutual admiration society at our disposal. Some of us are genuinely aggrieved.

The EA young generation (23 and younger) really really turn me off.

[admin]

Asian Americans buck trend of interracial marriage

RACHEL L. SWARNS, New York Times

Sunday, April 15, 2012

When she was a philosophy student at Harvard College eight years ago, Liane Young never thought twice about all the interracial couples who flitted across campus, arm and arm, hand in hand. Most of her Asian friends had white boyfriends or girlfriends. In her social circles, it was simply the way of the world.

But today, the majority of Young's Asian American friends on Facebook have Asian American husbands or wives. And Young, a Boston-born granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, is married to a Harvard medical student who loves skiing and the Pittsburgh Steelers and just happens to have been born in Fujian province in China.

Young said she hadn't been searching for a boyfriend with an Asian background. They met by chance at a nightclub in Boston, and she is delighted by how completely right it feels. They have taken lessons together in Cantonese (which she speaks) and Mandarin (which he speaks), and they hope to pass along those languages when they have children.

"'We want Chinese culture to be a part of our lives and our kids' lives," said Young, 29, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College who married Xin Gao, 27, last year. "It's another part of our marriage that we're excited to tackle together."

Interracial marriage rates are at an all-time high in the United States, with the percentage of couples exchanging vows across the color line more than doubling over the last 30 years. But Asian Americans are bucking that trend, increasingly choosing their soul mates from among their own expanding community.

From 2008 to 2010, the percentage of Asian American newlyweds who were born in the United States and who married someone of a different race dipped by nearly 10 percent, according to a recent analysis of census data conducted by the Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, Asians are increasingly marrying other Asians, a separate study shows, with matches between the American-born and foreign-born jumping to 21 percent in 2008, up from 7 percent in 1980.

Asian Americans still have one of the highest interracial marriage rates in the country, with 28 percent of newlyweds choosing a non-Asian spouse in 2010, according to census data. But a surge in immigration from Asia over the past three decades has greatly increased the number of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes, giving young people many more options among Asian Americans. It has also inspired a resurgence of interest in language and ancestral traditions among some newlyweds.

In 2010, 10.2 million Asian immigrants were living in the United States, up from 2.2 million in 1980. Today, foreign-born Asians account for about 60 percent of the Asian American population here, census data show.

"Immigration creates a ready pool of marriage partners," said Daniel T. Lichter, a demographer at Cornell University who, along with Zhenchao Qian of Ohio State University, conducted the study on marriages between American-born and foreign-born Asians. "They bring their language, their culture and reinforce that culture here in the United States for the second and third generations."

Before she met Gao, Young had dated only white men, with the exception of a biracial boyfriend in college. She said she probably wouldn't be planning to teach her children Cantonese and Mandarin if her husband had not been fluent in Mandarin.

"'It would be really hard," said Young, who is most comfortable speaking in English.

Ed Lin, 36, a marketing director in Los Angeles who was married in October, said that his wife, Lily Lin, had given him a deeper understanding of many Chinese traditions. Lily Lin, 32, who was born in Taiwan and grew up in New Orleans, has taught him the terms in Mandarin for his maternal and paternal grandparents, familiarized him with the red egg celebrations for newborns and elaborated on other cultural customs, like the proper way to exchange red envelopes on Chinese New Year.

"She brings to the table a lot of small nuances that are embedded culturally," Ed Lin said of his wife, who has also encouraged him to serve tea to his elders and refer to older people as aunty and uncle.

Of course, race is only one of many factors that can come to bear in the complicated calculus of romance. And marriage trends vary among Asians of different nationalities, according to C.N. Le, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Le found that in 2010 Japanese American men and women had the highest rates of intermarriage to whites while Vietnamese American men and Indian women had the lowest rates.

The term Asian, as defined by the Census Bureau, encompasses a broad group of people who trace their origins to the Far East, Southeast Asia or the Indian subcontinent, including countries like Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippine Islands and Vietnam. (The Pew Research Center also included Pacific Islanders in its study.)

Wendy Wang, the author of the Pew report, said that demographers have yet to conduct detailed surveys or interviews of newlyweds to help explain the recent dip in interracial marriages among native-born Asians. (Statistics show that the rate of interracial marriage among Asians has been declining since 1980.) But in interviews, several couples said that sharing their lives with someone who had a similar background played a significant role in their decision to marry.

[jefe]

Rob, funny, but I put the cutoff point @ somewhere around those born sometime after 1977-1979, after it started to become more common and a few years after the Vietnam War ended.

I suspect there is another cutoff age older than you where EAs make up a different sort of group -- maybe those born in the post-WWII generation, but before the Vietnam War started.

Then there are the ones born before WWII - another group altogether.

[joanna]

I saw an interracial couple in a store one time about 10 years ago. I couldn't stop staring even though I knew it was rude. I wanted to walk up to them and say "wow you look just like my parents". They had a kid with them as well. I was so excited I wanted to yell "hey she's just like ME!".

I knew I was so emotional that I'd get tongue tied so I let them walk away without a word.

I totally stare at the photos in this group. It's like confirming the existence of nessie or bigfoot.

[taiping]

Joanna,

In Beijing interracial couples are very common, I see them nearly everyday picking up their children at my school. Although interracial couples might be on the decline in the west, they are skyrocketing in China, with young western expatriates moving to China for employment and marrying local Chinese.

One couple I would mostly want to see is a Eurasian one, but I've never seen one in my life...well apart from myself haha (my girlfriend is Eurasian).