1 Chinese auntie, 5 apps, 60 first dates

Just before the pandemic hit, I emerged from a 10-year relationship – newly single and stuck with half a mortgage, a Brompton bike bought on an impulse and a high-maintenance ginkgo tree. After giving myself four months to recover, I bounced back into the dating world, not necessarily looking for a husband (yeah, right) but to conduct what I told myself was an anthropological experiment. So yes, this is about dating. On Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, all while donning the armour of a Chinese diasporic auntie in sensible shoes and with 40-something hang-ups. Too old for bars, I launched a three-pronged plan: swing dance classes (fun, but everyone was already coupled up from primary school), community centre craft sessions (mudslinging with lovely people – all born before 1955), and the intervention of meddlesome friends. “Divorce market is hot right now,” said meddlesome friend E. “Asian women are ageless! Just redefine ‘relationship’.” Her bold new suggestion? An agricultural economist who did Aikido. We met – I soon ran out of Aikido-related small talk. So I turned to dating apps. Five of them. Because I am nothing if not a pragmatic auntie maximising outcomes. OkCupid required personality tests that felt like I was giving away data to tech-bro moguls. Guardian Soulmates turned me into a part-time therapist confronting long essays. Bumble gave me the power to text first … and lots of lazy men who thought they were too good for the average woman. Hinge had charmingly random prompts that made dull men seem briefly profound. Tinder, despite its reputation, became my go-to because it had the biggest pool and allowed me to create my own, um, quality control filters. Religiously, I swiped with purpose a hundred times a day over my five-minute morning tea. Don’t judge a book by its cover, so people say – but there’s a lot one can actually glean from visual context. I’m not talking about the inclines of noses or toothiness of smiles, but red flags such as champagne flutes, beach shots, motorbikes, gym equipment (or even gym attire – or lack thereof), chihuahuas, over-applied hair wax and yachts. (Yes, I know I am also a snob. But I should add that after about 18 months of hard lessons, I eventually added “emotionally unavailable rugged war photographer type” to the blacklist.) My criteria were simple: multilingual, multicultural, good conversation. It was important to me that by the ripe old age of 40-something, the people I hung out with would have at least shared a similar level of double consciousness, or have an invested sense of curiosity or empathy that would have led them to uncomfortable, different spaces. As an Asian person in a white-dominant territory like the United Kingdom, I knew I would not be able to engage deeply enough with folk who for four decades of their lives never understood what it was like to be an other. Out of 100 swipes, there might be 50 matches. Of those, 10 might message, and one or two might be worth engaging with. My Japanese friend and wingwoman Y joined the fray. She dived into a site catering to white men seeking Asian women. “Fetish much?” I asked. She shrugged. “It simplifies some things in terms of expectations – and guess what – most men are on the site not because they’ve got yellow fever, but because they are, um, short.” Wait – what? I didn’t know how to process the intersectional and complex extrapolations of her comment around self-orientalisation, heightism (which, really, was sexism) and expectations of Asian women for desirable height in men. But this was just the tip of the race-tinged iceberg. I was asked – by complete strangers – if I could “please cook Asian food” and give “Thai massages with happy endings”. I was asked why I “speak English so well”. (Cue the classic line: “Sex is a universal language.”) I was routinely misidentified as Japanese or Korean and told I was “playing hard to get” when I said I was neither. Then, there were the lovely-but-mismatched information technology workers, accountants and unemployed artists. Sadly, no lawyer or doctor ever swiped right – imagine how my fretful traditional Chinese mum would flap her hands about if she knew. Still, I persisted. Not in desperate pursuit of “the one” (I don’t believe in that myth), but to find someone culturally curious, conversationally competent and (yes, pragmatic auntie speaking here) solvent. Weirdly enough, I found success, just not in the way I expected. Over three years, I went on about 60 first dates. No potential life partners emerged at first, but five connections became cherished friendships. One even moved to my neighbourhood in London for joint cooking, parallel dating therapy and late-night academic rants. Another became my matchmaking target (yes, I, too, became a meddlesome friend). So, what’s the moral? It’s not about being Chinese or 40-something. Nor is it about finding “the one”. Rather, it’s about meeting distorted reflections of yourself in others and rediscovering friends (in my case, the roles of wingwomen and wingmen were largely filled by people of colour, immigrants, LGBTQ folk and neurodiverse people). It’s about learning to laugh at cringe, navigate creepy and embrace bittersweet. And maybe – just maybe – it’s about discovering that the best love stories start with a cup of morning tea, and a healthy dose of curiosity for what strangeness the world will bring.

1 Chinese auntie, 5 apps, 60 first dates

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Looking for a life partner as a 40-something Asian woman in the UK, I found success in unexpected ways

Looking for a life partner as a 40-something Asian woman in the UK, I found success in unexpected ways