{"id":6076,"date":"2017-07-23T04:00:17","date_gmt":"2017-07-23T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/?p=6076"},"modified":"2017-07-21T20:34:11","modified_gmt":"2017-07-22T03:34:11","slug":"can-you-count-online-friends-as-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/can-you-count-online-friends-as-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Online Friends Really Friends?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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batik on silk by Nicki Chen<\/p><\/div>\n

Most of the bloggers listed in the blogroll on your right are people I\u2019ve never met in the flesh. We\u2019ve never hugged or shared a cup of coffee. And yet, through our blogs, we know each other pretty well. And we care about each other, I think.<\/p>\n

So yes, I\u2019m going to say that my blogger friends are real friends.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I have to make a confession. Until a few weeks ago, I’ve neglected to put together a blogroll, one of the basic ways bloggers support each other. I should have done it a long time ago.<\/p>\n

Today in an attempt to make up for past negligence, I\u2019d like to tell you a little bit about some of my blogging friends, beginning with the \u201cAsian Connections.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2013 when I started my blog, I was looking forward to the publication of my novel Tiger Tail Soup<\/em> the following year. And since the novel\u2019s story takes place in China, I wanted to get acquainted with other bloggers with a China connection. By a stroke of luck, the first person I found was Jocelyn Eikenburg, who writes Speaking of China<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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photo courtesy of Jocelyn Eikenburg and Jun<\/p><\/div>\n

Jocelyn is at the center of a large group of Western women with Asian connections. Many of them live in China and are dating or married to Chinese men. She calls them AMWF (Asian men white female) couples.<\/p>\n

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Rose in Xiamen<\/p><\/div>\n

Finding and following those AMWF bloggers was real eye opener for me. My Chinese husband and I did know other interracial couples during our thirty-year marriage. But in most case I can think of, the man had left his home country before he found his Western bride. The idea of single women moving to China and finding Chinese husbands there was inconceivable because for many years, China was locked away behind the Bamboo Curtain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Times definitely have changed. One example of the change is Marta (Marta lives in China<\/a>). Marta moved to China from Spain in 2006 thinking she wouldn\u2019t stay very long. Eleven years later, she\u2019s still there, working as a translator and tester for a mobile games publisher. She and her Chinese husband live in Suzhou with their \u201cchubby\u201d golden retriever. Marta and C got married this past May. In this post<\/a>, she shares wedding pictures and tells all about their Chinese wedding.<\/p>\n

Timo (Crazy Chinese Family<\/a>) is one of only three men on my Asian Connections list. He and his beautiful Chinese wife live in Germany, but they met when they were living in Finland. One of Timo\u2019s favorite subjects is the antics of his in-laws, especially his mother-in-law. (I assume she doesn\u2019t read his blog. At least I hope she doesn\u2019t.) Since the birth of his son and, more recently, his daughter, the in-law’s antics have to share space with news about the kids.<\/p>\n

Constance, who writes Foreign Sanctuary, <\/a>is from a small town in Canada. In 1999 she moved to Taiwan, where she now lives with her Chinese husband and their toddler. Constance is writing a memoir. And she\u2019s a fantastic photographer. Here\u2019s<\/a> a small sample.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to tell you more about the blogs I follow, but that will have to wait for a future post. In the meantime, feel free to click on anything in my blogroll that strikes you as interesting and follow the link.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 Most of the bloggers listed in the blogroll on your right are people I\u2019ve never met in the flesh. We\u2019ve never hugged or shared a cup of coffee. And yet, through our blogs, we know each other pretty well. And we care about each other, I think. So yes, I\u2019m going to say that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[317,13,1340,1416,6],"tags":[1546,1544,1545,1543,981,1548,357,1547,630,925],"class_list":["post-6076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-china","category-expatriate-life","category-interracial-marriage","category-tiger-tail-soup","tag-amwf-asian-men-white-female","tag-blogger-friends","tag-bloggers-living-in-china-and-taiwan","tag-blogrolls","tag-crazy-chinese-family","tag-foreign-sanctuary","tag-jocelyn-eikenburg","tag-mart-lives-in-china","tag-speaking-of-china","tag-tiger-tail-soup"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Kn1e-1A0","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2264,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/favorite-excerpts-from-author-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":6076,"position":0},"title":"Some News about My Novel and More Short Excerpts","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"August 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Tiger Tail Soup: A novel of China at war by Nicki Chen For a long time I've been promising that Tiger Tail Soup would soon be available as an ebook. Now at last it is. For those of you who like to read on your Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "China"","block_context":{"text":"China","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/china\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"photo courtesy of Wootang01","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/3503514763_0b9ee8b500_n.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4937,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/translation-is-that-what-i-wrote\/","url_meta":{"origin":6076,"position":1},"title":"Translation: Is That What I Wrote?","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"April 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"My novel looks so different in translation. I look at all those Chinese characters and I wonder, is this really my novel? If only I could read Chinese! I did study it for a while. 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People bought it and read it and wrote reviews. And then--surprise, surprise--the publisher went out of business. What to do? I could do nothing and allow it to disappear from the marketplace. I could search for a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "books"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/IMG_2552-1-rotated-e1596057814667.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1719,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/writing\/tiger-tail-soup-the-novel\/","url_meta":{"origin":6076,"position":5},"title":"Have I Piqued Your Interest Yet?","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"June 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Have I succeeded, dear readers of my blog, in arousing your curiosity? Over the past ten months, have I been able to spark your interest in topics related to my novel? Have I stimulated your hunger for more? Because--I cannot lie--that's exactly what I've been hoping to do.First, I introduced\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "blogging"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"my cover, 5-27-14","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/my-cover-5-27-14.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6076"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6341,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6076\/revisions\/6341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}