Chinese men in the eyes of Western women

Chinanews, Shanghai, Aug 8 ?For once, Chinese female film stars, like Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi, have set a good image for Chinese women in the world with the charm they display in their films. compared with Chinese women, Chinese men's image is not fairly good in the eyes of Western women, the Shanghai Evening Post reported.

In March 2006, Zhang Jiehai, a doctorate holder at the Sociology Institute of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, led a research team to investigate how Western women looked at Chinese men.

The survey shows that many Western women think Chinese men are mostly noted for their care for the family. Chinese men, as the Western women say, are willing to spend money for women and when they fall in love with a woman, they are serious about the romance.

In regard to their shortcomings, Western women think that Chinese men do not have gentleman manners. Since they do not take much exercise, most Chinese men do not have a good figure. Chinese men lack individuality. Nearly every Western woman respondent to the survey mention about the bad habits that some Chinese men have-spitting everywhere, keeping nails and long hair, picking their noses and ears, and not cleaning their teeth thoroughly. These bad habits make many Western women think that Chinese men are averse to personal hygiene.

The survey was conducted in two ways, by questionnaires and interviews. More than 100 Western women answered the questionnaires and 20 women discussed the issue in details in the interviews. All the respondents are white women and have either worked or lived in China.

For French women, Chinese men, especially men in Shanghai, show much tender loving care for the family-they look after their children and show their loving concern for their wife, too.

Many American women respondents say that although China had not experienced any Feminist Movements in history, many Chinese men do know how to respect women. They open the door for women and carry their handbags for them. Every time when these American women went back to US, they realized how they had been spoiled by men in China.

To these American women, Chinese men's bad image in the world is largely attributed to Hollywood films. In many Hollywood films, Chinese men usually do not have a good image. In recent years, however, the situation has changed somewhat. To a large extent, such change has been prompted by Hong Kong film star Chow Yun-Fat. After the Chinese film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was showed in cinemas in the United States in 2002, many Westerners began to change their impression about Chinese men.