Flagrantly holding hands with a foreign devil, and other crimes

In Foreign Parts: Beijing

I married a "foreign devil". In China that term refers to all foreigners, regardless of nationality. In my case, the devil is a Scottish one.

I married a "foreign devil". In China that term refers to all foreigners, regardless of nationality. In my case, the devil is a Scottish one.

Sometimes I wonder about the origin of the term. Growing up in China, I never felt there was anything wrong with it. History lessons taught how we Chinese were bullied ruthlessly by evil foreign powers, from the British Opium Wars to the Japanese invasion. The isolation of Communist China from 1949 did not help to change the image of foreigners.

Not even in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself marrying a "foreign Devil". The Chinese believe in yuan, roughly translating as fate, the invisible force that plays a decisive role in one's marriage. In our case, it must have been something pretty powerful that brought together a Scottish farmer's son and a Chinese worker's daughter in a queue for ice creams in the Forbidden City.

It was a fine summer afternoon in 1988. Calum was travelling on a "year off" before going to Oxford. I was taking time off from a business trip to Beijing. Romance blossomed properly a year later, when we travelled along the Old Silk Road in north-west China. At the end of 1990, I left China for England as Calum's fiancée: at the tender age of 21, he was too young to marry under Chinese law.

When news of my engagement to a "foreign devil" spread round my parents' neighbourhood in Nanjing, eastern China, the rumour mill started up and all the prejudices come to the fore. Calum was black, American, at least 60 years old and a millionaire who would sell me into slavery as soon as we touched down in the US.

The rumour mill might have spun more slowly if my fellow villagers had actually seen him. To avoid trouble, Calum hid under a heavy raincoat whenever he cycled to visit me, even on the sunniest days!

I was not the first Chinese from our neighbourhood to marry a foreigner. A waitress at the best hotel in town endured daily pressure aimed at preventing her from marrying a Japanese businessman.

Until a few years ago, it was widely believed that having sex with foreigners was illegal. No one knew for certain whether there was such a written law. But plenty of women suffered for their relationships with foreign men.

On the eve of her marriage to a French diplomat in 1981, the artist Li Shuang was arrested under the charge of "damaging state dignity", and sentenced to two years in a labour camp.

I had been lucky by comparison. In 1989, I was picked up and interrogated by police on a crowded train, after a fellow passenger had reported my "inappropriate behaviour" - I had been flagrantly holding hands with a foreign devil. Stony-faced policemen questioned us about our identities and relationship, asked if I knew Calum's political views and threatened to hand me over to the national security police.

Yet China had already come a long way. For many years, it was political suicide to talk to a foreigner, let alone marry one. During the Cultural Revolution, people with foreign spouses were forced to divorce, thrown in jail as "imperialist agents" or even tortured to death. Today, China's open-door policy is perhaps best symbolised by the rising numbers of Chinese and foreigners taking the matrimonial plunge.

Outside large cities, we remain the subject of great interest. People speculate openly about our relationship. Presumably because of my unremarkable looks, they used to conclude that I was Calum's interpreter, until we had children. During train rides, people often touch his hairy legs since most Chinese boast little body hair.

Amazement greets minor miracles, such as Calum's ability to use chopsticks. "We foreign devils are humans, too," he explains, in Chinese, to their amusement.

The first question Chinese friends ask us is what we eat. He prefers Western food to Chinese, and I am the opposite.

Result? We take turns with both cuisines. Calum still jokes about my pigs trotters. Shortly after I arrived in Oxford, he came home to find two large bloody pig feet sitting in the wok! It was just my craving for home cooking, and he restrained the urge to bin them.

Living in the United Kingdom certainly helped me appreciate better the clash of our proud civilisations. Overall, my marriage to a foreign devil is not devilish at all, though differences remain. We argue over issues great and small: financial matters, Tibet, how to raise our children. In fact, the term "foreign devil" has gradually given way to lao wai, (old foreigner), which is almost a term of endearment.

Maybe we Chinese have finally realised that not all foreigners are devils, after all.