Don't judge December-May romances
Raymond Zhou China Daily  Updated: 2006-02-11 06:32

Come Valentine's Day, shop windows and magazine covers will display perfectly matched pairs happy in love. And one of the "perfections" is compatibility in age.

Simply put, the guy should be slightly older than the gal. As the old saying goes, "if the man is older by three years, there'll be golden nuggets in store for the couple."

But we live in an imperfect world. Or rather, the "imperfections" make our world so colourful. Extreme conformity usually signifies terrible things.

That doesn't mean everyone accepts May-December affairs - those between an older man and younger women - without raising an eyebrow now and then.

When 82-year-old Nobel Prize winner Chen Ning Yang married 28-year-old Weng Fan, it made a tidal wave in a teacup. Even those who usually refrained from being judgmental could not help jumping in the fray.

A 54-year gap may be a bit hard for many to swallow, but in recent years the male lead in age is expanding way beyond the three-year golden rule of thumb, as wealthy people who have made it, usually in their middle age, marry those much younger.

Whispers of trophy wives or gold diggers abound. But the phenomenon is by no means confined to present-day China. It is a throwback to the old days when men with money and power took in concubine after concubine whose age barely put them over the legal limit.

When someone reverses the May-December formula to December-May under this social background, it takes on a revolutionary simulacrum and subverts male-domination in sexual politics.

And the celebrities in the entertainment industry are the ones who have blazed the trail in the past decade and made "jie di lian" (love between an older woman and a younger man) an acceptable - or at least not unthinkable - notion. Fay Wong's on-again, off-again entanglement with the iconic Nicolas Tse, which lasted longer than many had predicted, helped turn "jie di lian" into a trend.

In the US, no fortune-teller forecast longevity for Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, with a 15-year age gap, whose two-year courtship culminated in marriage. When they first started dating, the consensus opinion interpreted it as a publicity stunt.

When people date out of their "age league" so to speak, eyebrows are always raised. What's the motive? How could a man young enough to be a woman's son want her to be his lifetime Valentine? Is it her money, status, power?

And as for her, why does she want a boy-toy when she could have someone her own age? Is it an attempt to capture her fading youth, an illusion of mistaking wealth for sex appeal or simply a disguise of keeping a gigolo?

Some of these questions are legitimate, but only for family members and close friends to ask. As long as the two people involved are consenting adults, they know what they are getting into, pitfalls and all. What rights do we, as outsiders, have to play God or psychoanalyst, for that matter?

When we pass judgment on an unconventional relationship, we are using either a set code of conduct that we deem decorous or lessons from similar stories that happened in the past. But one December-May fling embedded in deceit and exploitation does not mean all such pairings are like that.

And who is in a position to decree what reverse age difference is befitting? The old saying is sometimes turned around to accommodate an older woman dating a younger man. But who says the cut-off has to be three years?

Love, just like deceit and exploitation, finds itself into every possible combination of age, height, hobby and status. But the stigma surrounding love still seems to be different.

A survey shows that single women over 30 have the hardest time finding a spouse, especially when they have successful careers. A quote by a survey participant illustrates: "He has to be older than I am, even by one day. He has to be taller than I am, even by one inch, and he has to make more than I do, even by one yuan."

The cruel truth is, men who qualify for this ideal beau tend to be either happily married or looking for May-December amours. For these women, who reportedly account for 70 per cent of the reluctant urban singles, a December-May match should not be a self-imposed taboo. They should follow their hearts and take risks, and who knows, love may blossom in the most unlikely places.

E-mail: raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 02/11/2006 page4)