Ming's approach to jealousy.........
Whenever we are in the company of other people, especially where there are women...both Western and Chinese, I can tell she is always weighing up my reactions to them !! She would never come straight out with a comment on jealousy, but I get many "trick" questions about hair styles, dress sense, size of boobs etc
...to which I always respond by reinforcing that she is the best of them all !!!!...it saves a lot of angst. I know she is fiercely jealous of any potential threats to her position from other women.
My approach to jealousy..........
I am content if other Men around us pay her attention....but she is free to do what she wants. If she decided to go off with another Man, then that is her business....I cant stop it and it is pointless to try. Whilst our relationship is strong, any interaction with other men (at work or socially) is harmless. If ultimately, our relationship is weak, then she might stray......it's really out of my hands. To screw my brain up constsntly with fears/concerns about her fidelity is an excercise in total frustration and I wont play that game.
Ming's approach to "face"
This is critically important, she constsntly measures many things in terms of better or less than better face.......what car, what sort of home, what sort of English skills, what sort of job. Almost all character traits in friends and aquaintances is quickly measured in terms of face. She ends up with poor opinions of those who (in her estimation) have lost face by what they have or what they have or have not done. It took me quite a while to come to grips with this because in my terms it is a shallow and peripheral way of judging a person........but I now understand it is far more subtle and profound than that !!!
In any environment you might well notice that a Chinese person is never wrong, there is always some external force or event that caused a problem...never themselves, because to admit that would cause a loss of face. So much of how Ming behaves in front of other people is all about the preservation and enhancement of face.
A liitle "for instance":
We have our main TV (64 inch LED, 3 D capable) in out home Theatre, with all the surround sound, bells and whistles.
In our other lounge room we have a small old fashioned TV that was built into a cabinet that is part of the room furnishings.
When one of her friends came round for tea, she was awed by our home Theatre...but when she saw the ancient TV in the lounge room , she commented that such a TV is now obsolete......Ming flew into panic when she had left and insisted that we got (and she paid for) a modern TV in this room....to be in possesion of the old TV was a flaw in the image (face) of living a wonderful life in a beautiful home.
I know this seems shallow and trivial, but I have begun to understand how the Chinese mind works and it is easier to go with the flow and accept it, than create hell to try to change it.
Face assumes gigantic proportions in the Chinese mind...however it is manifested and I dont think Westerners can fully understand it...or can change it !!!