Yellow Fever

A Man’s Perspective to Yellow Fever

I have had yellow fever in one form or another since I was in high school, maybe even earlier I don't know. It started out simple enough with just wanting to learn more about Asian culture, history, and language. Like most things I started as an armature in all areas and started with stereotypical information that later gave way to factual thoughts and into a deeper understand of how these things came to be while in college. When I was a high schooler I was attracted to western girls, but after I did my first college visit I was infected with the yellow fever that turns so many men off for the ladies of the home countries that it should be recognized by the CDC as a class one cotangent. Anyway from that moment on I was slowly growing more and more Asian as my friends said, so much so that my entire friends circle changed from the cool but strange geniuses who act dumber than they really are, to a 90% all Asian. Mostly Japanese and Korean and Thai. My first taste of true Yellow Fever came when I laid eyes on the Korean exchange student (who later became my roommate) that I was sent to pick up walked through the departure gate at the airport and I suddenly found my self unable to say anything intelligent. For the next 9months I spent every free moment trying to learn anything and everything about Korean and Korean culture from her in hopes that something might develop. To my misfortune I was completely out of my league, and anything that I had learned about women up until that point became moot with the exception of "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." I later would learn that the true version of this is "Hell hath no fury, like a pissed off Korean woman."

From that moment on I was more careful not to be stricken with the stupidity that comes with this chronic disease, and I did pretty good until I met the most interesting Taiwanese girl/woman that I have EVER known. She took my mild fever from a 99.2 degree fever to a full blown case of yellow fever that burned like the sun its self. Ahh those days were some of the best in my life, but again I was completely out of my league. Even though this time I had grown up a lot and was much more mature about the whole thing I was still powerless against her charms. So much so that I found myself packing a light suit case and moving 7700miles around the world to land where Yellow fever is born. When I arrived she was the only girl that caught my interest and was the only one who could make my heart beat like it was going to blow out of my chest. After being together for nearly a year she decided that I wasn't good enough to tell why we broke up or whats going to happen next. So for the next year I was living in a place where my libido should have caught fire from all the external stimuli, but instead it was put in neutral and I just went through the daily motions of going to class, going to my tutoring sessions, going to the pub for food and a pint, and going to bed. That is until my friends decided for me that I had enough staying home and playing Xbox in my underwear and eating pizza in the dark (not that I actually did that mind you), and forced me to go out and meet other girls. So I started pseudo-dating Taiwanese girls. It wasn’t all good. I dated some women that weren’t pretty or even interesting at first. Next was pretty and uninteresting. Finally, after my 2nd year I was able to speak enough Chinese to tell if she was interesting and the yellow fever was taking care of the looks department. I started to notice their frilly little blouses, the cuteness and innocence, that some girls were like bubbles (pretty to look at but empty on the inside), and others where more like the cute little sister that is in a lot of Japanese manga who falls for her older brother. At first conversation was a little thin but I felt it was my fault because I couldn’t keep up, both in vocab and with the speed that the talked. Many were probably feeling the same way about the shallow depth of conversation. Still that was just the challenge for me to learn and I began to feed off of it growing more and more. I think that challenge is what changed things from curiosity to fever in the first place. Once my mandarin level was at a certain level Taiwan cracked wide open and I fell in love with more than just the hotties that were now suddenly everywhere, to the culture and the people themselves.

I have been here 4 years now and I still struggle with the language, but they say it takes 10 years to master it so I am half way there. Even though my Chinese has improved by leaps and bounds, and I can read quiet a bit of Chinese at will, can hold a semi intelligent conversation, and carry on daily conversations, I still find it hard to compete evenly in the dating game. I do have an unfair advantage of being the proper blind of westerner with just the right height to catch the interest of the type of girl that I am mostly looking for compared to some of my Taiwanese counter parts. Even with this charm I seem to only have the ability to make friends with the type of Taiwanese girl who can be called a carrier or patient zero of the yellow fever. You know the type, tall, cute in all the right places, properly developed in the important places, and a personality that can make an uninfected western man fall victim in just minutes. Anyway, even though most of these girls come crying to me when their jerk a$s boyfriends cheat on them, and cuddle up to me for comfort while they spill out their hearts in a mix of English, Mandarin, and some form of Taiwanese (usually Hakklo, or a bastardized Fujianese) telling me how much nice and kinder than their boyfriends are and how they wish they could find a decent guy like me Blah Blah Blah, I just can't seem to hook one for myself. With my current ex-girlfriend-girlfriend (if that makes sense) confusion going on it would be a great distraction between her and the next good girl if I could figure out how to land one of these level 8 hot girls.

Well my advice for dating in Taiwan if your a man is to be aware of the fact that you are for the most part just a curiosity for a lot of the girls and that a lot of Taiwanese girls have western fever the same as you have yellow fever. So if you are looking for a long term steady no BS relationship your going to have to wade through a lot of confusion, empty conversations, culture shock, meeting the parents for the first time, meeting the family for the first time (which can be scarier than meeting the silent father who ONLY speaks a blend of Taiwanese and Mandarin), and wondering what the hell does that guy have that I don't have before you find the right girl who will click perfectly with you and you end up being one of us who shed their Western views an standards and blend into the fold.

Well thats all I have for today.
I'm chububobcat and this has been my random thought.