A Malaysian woman shares her experiences of being married to a Kiwi

Not only that, he committed a social faux pas during our Chinese wedding tea ceremony. I forgot to brief him on the dos and don’ts due to the stress of having to cope with two wedding receptions in two countries. During the ceremony, CK innocently held his tea cup with one hand instead of two when offering tea to one of our relatives. He was instantly rebuked (albeit quietly) by one of the elders in my family.

In view of the initial mishaps that CK had to endure, I gave him a crash course on all things Malaysian to ease him into our local culture.

His first lesson was to learn some simple phrases, for example, how to say “how are you?”, “good morning”, and “thank you”. I attempted to teach him how to speak Hakka first as it is my mother tongue. He successfully said, “Ma, sit fun” meaning “Mother, eat rice” before we started lunch or dinner as a sign of respect to the elders.

However, as we spent more time with my extended family members and friends, CK’s attempt at a second language quickly unravelled. He was astounded that Malaysians could switch so easily from one language to another, and use different dialects in one sentence. By this stage, CK’s mind swirled with confusion. In despair, he gave up learning the notoriously difficult tonal Chinese dialects and Mandarin.

He now speaks Bahasa Malaysia to my mother which delights her Indonesian maid too. Being the cheeky person that he is, CK joked that the maid is happy because she can listen to a lot more family gossip.

A common culture shock for Mat Sallehs is the squatting toilet. He had no problem with the squatting toilet at my family home but I forgot to tell him about the infamous Malaysian public toilets.

Imagine his shock when he realised that most public toilets don’t supply toilet paper. The first time CK needed to use a public toilet for business number two (Kiwi slang for answering the call of nature of the heavier kind), he was completely flabbergasted and had to run out of the men’s toilet to grab some tissue papers from me. This incident happened at one of the posh shopping malls in KL. Nowadays, if we are back in Malaysia, I simply remind him to take along his own toilet paper if we need to go out.

Back in New Zealand, CK received a lot of ribbing from his Caucasian work mates about having an Asian wife. This time it was my turn to face the racial stereotypes.

The most common jokes were “Is she a mail order bride?”, “Careful, she’ll dump you once she gets the PR and run off with all your money”, and “Is her favourite phrase ‘love you long time’?”

Of course, these jokes were mostly told tongue-in-cheek. We didn’t take them seriously and just laughed them off good-naturedly. I am really proud of CK as he often defended me against these negative stereotypes. He would say things like, “She is good in saving money, very hardworking and seldom complains.”

These days, CK is the envy of his colleagues because our mortgage has been paid off and he often gets to enjoy delicious Malaysian meals cooked by me. Most significantly, racial stereotypes make our marriage even stronger as we get to practise tolerance and acceptance more often than same-race marriages.

CK and I also had our fair share of arguments, mostly due to our unfamiliarity with each other’s cuisine and food. One such incident was CK throwing away my Chinese mushrooms. I felt really homesick during one Chinese New Year and decided to cook a few festive Chinese dishes. I soaked some black Chinese mushrooms and was waiting with eager anticipation for them to turn soft. 

He had never seen any Chinese mushrooms before. He took one look at them and decided they must be some nasty alien-looking jellies that had decomposed on the kitchen bench. So he threw the whole lot of my mushrooms into the compost section of our garden. When I discovered what he had done, I angrily scolded him for being a “dummy”.

CK replied that if I wanted the mushrooms badly enough, he would get them out of the compost and wash them for me. Well, CK did fish out the mushrooms and clean them for me, but the joy of eating the “rescued” mushrooms was gone for me. We now look back at this episode with much laughter and teasing.

In our journey, we have learnt to compromise, love and accept one another unconditionally. For us, love is action, a choice we make daily, not just a feeling that comes and goes.

Today, CK has become the custodian of Malaysian customs and food in our marriage. He enjoys cooking and eating the Sago Gula Melaka dessert. He insists on using chopsticks when we dine in Asian restaurants and loves to see me dress up in kebaya and Qipao dress. We are definitely enjoying the best of both worlds

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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