I'm an English teacher in Taiwan, and teaching adult conversation sometimes things actually get interesting. Today I learned an old chinese proverb that I thought belonged here: 騎驢找馬 (Qi Le Zhao Ma) Riding a Donkey to find a Horse.

A women was in class talking about how her boyfriend saw a flirty text message she got from a co-worker last weekend and hasn't spoken to her since. She asked me if I thought it was bad if she has a somewhat "ambiguous" relationship with a coworker. She said it was, so far, non-romantic but she never plans on getting married and her boyfriend knows that, so what should it matter? She went on to explain that she is one of three women working in her office with 30 men and that she enjoys all the attention she gets from the men at work, who are often a bit younger than her, and because of this she doesn't tell them if she is dating someone.

I mentioned that sometimes we compare women to monkies swing from tree to tree, they don't let go of one branch until they are grabbing the next- and if that is what she is doing then its not a good thing. Then a another guy in class said there was a similar proverb in Chinese, and that it sounds like she might be "riding a donkey to find a horse", just dating her boyfriend until a better one comes along.

I then explained that she might look young and cute now, but already being in her 30's (typical asian girl, still looks like she's 25) pretty soon she's going to 'hit the wall' and all that attention won't be so easy to come by once her looks start to fade.

The guy then speaks up again and says that in Taiwan there is another saying "A women in her 20's is like a basketball, all the men want to grab her; but a women in her 40's is like a soccerball, all the men will kick her away." Ha!

To this woman's credit she seemed pretty receptive and open to these insights and we actually had a pretty fun/productive conversation on dating and sexuality in Taiwan. I'm pretty sure the same conversation back in the US would have been quite different.

Edit: a letter in romanization