How come women get blamed for these things? How about awkward white guys who are looking to trade up from their unattractive spouses?

Hmmmmmm, several issues here to discuss. First of all I know that not all reporters are corrupt but MOST are just looking for a story for some marginal motive. I am from Chicago and now live in China. As an airline Captain and part time stock trader (reader of WSJ), I will stand up and say that if a married man or married women cheat it has nothing to do with Asian women. One will cheat whether they are in the USA or China/Thailand. I will defend the Thai's/Filipinas/Chinese etc to last word. In general they are complete angels compared to American women. You should not turn American women against Asian women just because they are one thousand times lower maintenance and easier to please by saying they are predatory!! What a joke. Hate is an easy story to sell, and I think possibly that is your game. American women think they are the best,period. What a shame. In general, always wanting more and more, so hard to please. If they really cared they would be doing some charitable/christian work to help the poor single mothers overseas, right?!
In the USA, I do not advocate bad/abusive behavior by a man toward a women and a women should not stay with him.
So, in general, Asian women are prettier, nicer, and more peaceful. You can't blame them for wanting a better life. If they can hook up with an expat male then so be it. I don't advocate cheating. That is a personal "issue". Finally, there is good and bad everywhere. Kind regards, blessings.....

Really, "predatory" Asian women? How about "predatory" foreign men who seem to treat Asia as a world of easy lays?

I am shocked to hear about these predatory Asian women. If someone could give me the contact details of these women (preferably plus a photo) I would like to give them a good talking to!

Agree with the above comments, and could you come to China and write about anything less interesting? Big country, lots of people, a million stories in the naked city (and countryside).

I am so tired of hearing Westerners of both sexes wingeing about each other. Each side expects the other to meet their ideals, projections, fantasies and stereotypes, and if you don't you're an object of contempt by highly opinionated representatives of the opposite sex. It is such a waste of time and energy. Just ignore people whose personality and behavior you find unattractive and move on. Nobody is going to change because the opposite sex tells them they suck. Obviously, anybody who doesn't value you for the unique individual you are isn't worth dating let alone marrying anyway. Why waste an extra minute complaining about them?

I am thoroughly impressed by all of the comments above. Excellent!

lest anyone think otherwise without watching the video above, Karen Mazurkewich doesn't use the word "predatory," nor does she accuse asian women as being unduly or even commonly complicit in the failed marriages that she hopes to cover in her work.

Crampton baits her several times (no less than 3 times by my rough count) in an apparent attempt to score for his video a condemnation/characterization from Karen of asian women as predatory, but she never goes for it.

i'm hard-pressed to imagine from Karen's answers--in spite of Crampton's obvious attempts at provocation--that she'd be any less interested the stories of men leaving their wives for non-asian women or women leaving their husbands for other expats.

good for her.

and shame on Crampton for so crass a pass at controversy.

"opposite sex tells them they suck"?? Hee hee snicker snicker guffaw...

@slowboat

Thanks for taking the time to analyze me!

Yes, I do try to provoke interview subjects.

Makes for better watching.

For non-provocative interviews, avoid my videos and tune in to CCTV.

I take offense to the Orientalist portrayal of both life and relationships in Asia. First off, if Karen lived in Asia for such a long time, maybe she should use her Chinese skills to interview the third party--the predatory Asians--in this equation. As any *good* journalist knows, there are more than two sides to any story.

If she lived in Asia for a long time and doesn't speak Cantonese or Mandarin, she is perpetuating the stereotypes that she also planning to construct in her lame documentary of both Westerners who live in Asia and Asians. By creating and continuing to put forward the false dichotomy of East and West and looking for reasons (such as predatory Asian women) Karen and other journalists who work in Asia do a dis-service to those of us who work to dispel these type of Orientalist myths perpetuate again and again by foreign correspondents. It's redundant. It's lame and, frankly, it's racist.

Keep up the good work Karen.

Oh please people. I have seen with my own eyes, and there ARE predatory Asian women. To categorise all Asian women is a bit too presumptuous.

And I can tell you which particular Asian nationalities are particularly more predatory. Also, which particular sub-groups or social classes within the respective nationalities. Sadly, it is always the lower common denominators across certain nationalities who are the most predatory.

Sadly too, they have to be Southeast Asian. Let me tell you that these same women never hesitate for a moment to raise a stink or even start a fight in public. Whilst as FOREIGN GUESTS in my country. Read: Whores, regardless full-time or part-time.

And j.b being a man, surely he would list all the advantages of the Asian women. Either he chooses to ignore or is blissfully unaware of the cunning ways on how these women nabbed the unsuspecting White man.

But he is correct to say about how SOME Western women -- not necessarily American -- greatly believe they are the centre of the Universe.

I am an "Asian" woman myself, and I observed all these whilst enjoying my pint of Guinness on the weekend. And for some reason or other, your typical waste-of-space Trailing Expat White Spouse tend to classify me with lowest common denominator amongst other Asian women.

By virtue of my appearance. How stupid can some people be?

By the way, Asian does not necessarily equate with Oriental. That means, not each and every Asian person speaks Mandarin. South Asians, Malays and other Southeast Asians do not. Not only it is a tad offensive to suggest otherwise, it is also mischievous.

really, why DO people talk to journalists?

Speaking as a (Mandarin) Chinese-fluent white male expat, I don't think that making the observation that white foreign men are viewed as exotic and a good catch by a visible portion of local women is the same as the flaws in thinking pointed out by Edward Said. However, it is certainly possible that the philandering men this documentary seeks to interview engage in such stereotyping.

I think it was Danwei that referred to 'predatory asian women'--I think Karen only mentioned 'regional temptations'. I think she means women.

I wish Karen well, but I get the impression she hasn't really wrapped her mind around this story. I'm afraid global labor arbitrage extends to relationships and dating, so those of us who grew up in the US have to adjust our expectations of romance accordingly. That means that guys who are 'geeks' (engineering degree, Ph.D., etc.) in the US are rock stars in asia, where education is seen as desirable and is respected. It also means that people with very ordinary incomes in the US are considered rich in asia (and india, africa, south america...) Finally, maybe Karen wants to look at how being rich affects dating in the US... do professional athletes or wall street tycoons also experience 'regional temptations'? Do we complain about it?

Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I think she's got a shot at making something good... but not if she just goes to Thailand and says 'look at all the 'regional temptations'

I agree with slowboat, crampton was baiting Karen to say stuff that crampton might want to say himself. Predatory Asian women? Sure some, heck I'd even argue many Asian women are predatory, but not less or more predatory than you average white woman in the west.

I agree with Rebecca McKinnon's comment, especially the part about projecting.

Thanks for the advice, Thomas, I will certainly follow your suggestion to the letter.

I agree completely with slowboat. Karen had to work much harder than she should have to explain her project's concept, as Thomas Crampton kept interrupting her and trying to put words in her mouth.

You can see that Karen is being a good sport about it, but the irritation was pretty clear. She had to keep starting over, and kept saying, (paraphrasing) 'Well, no, not exactly...'

I watched the video in order to find out what her project was about. Too bad Karen had to fight through Thomas's poor interviewing technique to (barely) explain it.

Perhaps someone will provide a link to a place where I can get better info on her project. I will not be going to Crampton's blog to see if he provides it.

Bets that he didn't? He certainly didn't bother to provide a link for Karen here...

I couldn't think of a more uninteresting, stupid, and boring topic for a documentary if I tried.
Why is this alleged seasoned journalist lady wasting her time on this sh*t?
Who gives a rat's ass?
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb topic.
Who is going to watch this crap?
Not Sgt. Slaughter. No Way.

This topic seems to take up far too much of expat conversation. I'm a white woman who has lived in Asia for the past 9 years. This whole "Asian chick lures white boy away from spouse" is bull. Cheating is a supreme form of disrespect, and it doesn't matter what race the person is cheating with. If someone's going to break their marriage vows, they would do it at home as well. A lot of white chicks have a hard time dating in Asia. Many don't bother to learn the language, are not interested in local men or expect men from their home countries to only be interested in them and see interest in local women as some form of betrayal. They want to blame their lack of a significant other on someone other than themselves.

I dun get why Thomas Crampton always loook like he's on metho???

Is it worth pointing out that every marriage is different, and that generalizations about "expat marriage" are as silly as generalizations about "expats"?

Can marriage survive?

Answer: more than half the time, no it cannot.

What does "survive" mean, anyway? Marriages "survive" right up until they end.

All of us will "survive" ---- right up until the moment we die.

Life: a terminal disease that everyone has. Marriage: a permanent institution defined by its impermanence.

One generalization that _is_ true about expats: instead of reading the Sunday papers and writing angry letters, we read the Sunday blog posts, and...

Thomas Crampton - there is a difference between provoking your interview subjects (good) and lying about their response (bad) in your introduction.

This is not the first time you have done this on your blog I notice. The chap from Marketing magazine was quite surprised how you changed his actual comments into something entirely that misrepresented him.

all very tabloid, but I'm sure your page clicks are up so congratulations

On the one hand, Karen's going to have to work hard to get an original angle on a very tired topic.

On the other hand, Cramp's interview was crap. Cramp, you got called out fair and square.

"For non-provocative interviews, avoid my videos and tune in to CCTV."

Take your medicine like a journalist, or pussy out like an amateur. Your choice.

No doubt she will get lots of interesting tales, including the less aired ones like the bored expat taitais who sleep with their Chinese yoga teachers. Certainly the economic imbalances combined with the bizarro life habits that most expat-type foreigners live is a cauldren that makes the apocryphal "white man poached by his Chinese secretary" cliche so common. Also, viewing sex and marriage as a way to climb the socioeconomic ladder is much more pronounced in China than in already-developed (and not just Western) countries. Additionally, while infidelity is still frowned upon in China, it is much less of a taboo than in North America.

The joke I've heard is that foreign men in China have the "three wife plan": first is white, same age, married in 20s; second is the high-maintenence urban Chinese woman who poaches him from family/wife #1, usually when the man is in his late 30s or early 40s. Third, the second wife tires of him and leaves, and he finds a cowed and grateful rural, working-class young woman. First is a classmate, second is his assistant, third is his Ayi. It is a pattern, we've all seen it happen, and if you're not a dumped wife it's rather hilarious.

@WIss

Amusing that you recommend "take your medicine like a journalist."

Who is posting anonymous comments here? Not me. I have fully identified myself.

I have six western male friends in China who have married local woman, and all except one are losing their hair over the differences in culture and expectations. Regardless, (older) white men with (younger) asian women is both commonplace and widely acceptable these days. But, what about white women with asian men? My ex was Chinese and nearly ended up imprisoned because of me. My current fiance is Asian; during a trip to China two months ago, I was referred to as "his Russian hooker" several times. I'm not Russian, but perhaps being a white chick with an Asian dude is rather whorish. What scandal.

Yeah Cramp, I called you a pussy. Don't worry, though-- I'm no journalist, this is just one citizen's opinion. You are a journalist however, and your "interview" sucked, and this is the Internet, so I get to call you a pussy to your face, sitting here pantsless in the US, eating Cheetos. That is the nature of your endeavor.

For non-provocative feedback, avoid the Internet and stick to print.

To drop the hyperbole for a second (now that the cat's out of the bag...) what offended me about your interview was less the video itself than the unprofessional fucking up of another journalist's work, followed up by your unprofessional conflation of the above video with a news interview.

First, Karen was a colleague who's looking for delicate material from people, and you chose to ham it up, fucking with her job. How many potential interviews want to hear "are foreign men running away with Asian mistresses?" or "Are you exploiting these people?"

So that was shitty, but hey, we all do shitty work sometimes, and to be honest, it was hardly what we'd call a journalistic endeavor: there's no "story" to you filming a call for interviews, it's just a favor for a colleague. If it was just the video, I wouldn't have said anything. But then you get pissy with slowboat and drop the "Yes I do try to provoke interview subjects" bullshit.

Karen's call for interviews is not a story.

Karen is not an interview subject in the same way that Dick Cheney is. There is no headline, Canadian Documentary Maker Very Diplomatic About Expatriot Divorce. Your being provocative in this context is Tom Green provocative, not Bill Moyers provocative.

You can be either one, but you have to choose-- you can be a comedian, in which case I'm free to heckle you for being unfunny, or you can be a journalist, in which case I'm free to heckle you for being a comedian. And if you do think of going full-time into comedy, let me tell you, you need a better comeback that "go watch CCTV" and "I have fully identified myself".

Stick to print. You are unsuited to this internet thing.

just look at those advertisement hanging around this website. HUGE market of introducing Chinese girls to foreign bachelors.