Clowning around
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When Thomas Derksen, who was born in Gumersbach, Germany, in 1988, went to the Snake Artificial Island in the suburb of Shanghai to fish with his Chinese father-in-law, he thought it was a good opportunity for the two to improve their relationship, as his wife Zhu Liping suggested. They got married in 2014.
On the one-and-half-hour journey to the island, Derksen’s father-in-law, “old Zhu”, who’s the manager of a local driving school, called five of his friends one by one, promising to give them each two fish, in addition to the two he had promised to his wife.
However, it proved difficult to catch more than the two fish which Derksen hooked, and the unhappy father-in-law and the nervous sonin-law barely exchanged a word. In the end, to honor their promises, they went to a nearby market to buy a dozen fish.
Derksen recounts this funny anecdote in his German book, Und Taglich gruBt der Tigervater: Als deutscher Schwiegersohn in China (And the tiger father says hello everyday — As a German son-in-law in China) based on his love story with Zhu Liping. The book, having sold more than 20,000 copies in Germany, has been translated into Chinese titled Meet the Tiger Fatherin-Law and published by Tong ji University Press early this year. The first run of 5,100 copies has sold out.
In 2017, Thomas Derksen and Zhu Liping had became popular online in China for the funny videos they created, mainly about the culture shock between China and Germany. By watching the Derksens’ videos, the Chinese audience got to learn more about Germany and how German people see Chinese culture and society.
“I was thinking of how to let German people learn more about China. My friend suggested that I write a book. I wrote down all the funny things that I experienced in China and, to my surprise, the publisher was interested in it,” Derksen explains in a video about the book.
The book was published in Germany in April 2019 by Heyne Verlag, the publisher of Hugo Awardwinner Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem. Derksen’s book was popular for its vivid and amusing details about Chinese people and culture, as well as the culture shock he experienced.
“Many German readers like my tiger father-in-law. They say he is very lovely. The story of our marriage sounds true for them and through such a humorous story, they can better understand the German and Chinese cultures,” Derksen says in an interview with China Daily.
The Derksens were interviewed by various German newspapers and appeared on the radio and TV shows, one of which — and arguably the most famous — was Markus Lanz’s talk show.
At the show, Zhu Liping was asked some questions based on the book, and one of them was: “If you want to marry a Chinese woman, is the father the most important person?” Liping said in German that, in their family, it was the case.
In another video, Derksen asks his father-in-law in Chinese about his first reaction at their dating.
“I didn’t like the idea very much ... because you had no money, no apartment and no car. You were just a poor student. How could I like you? I didn’t want you to date Jolie (Liping’s English name),” old Zhu says.
Derksen says he understands the father because Liping is his only child and he wants her to live a comfortable life. However, after Derksen and Liping had been seeing each other for a year, old Zhu told him that if they love each other, nothing else matters.
“After your hard work, and after often hanging out with you, I got to know you and found you to be a nice person. People need time to get know each other, just like you know me or I know you,” old Zhu said.
Knowing and understanding are key to the mixed marriage of Derksen and Zhu Liping. So is the communication between people from different cultures. Despite the convenience of the internet and social media, it is common for people to harbor stereotypical impressions of other countries.
For Derksen, it is common for German people to be viewed as serious, somewhat humorless people by Chinese.
“Why do my Chinese friends all think we don’t understand humor? Actually we like telling jokes. Lame ones!” he says.
Derksen’s parents, as he writes in the book, believed there was dearth of decent food in China, and since watching a video in which a Chinese couple get married at McDonald’s, they were relieved to know there were at least American hamburger restaurants.
However, when they came to China for the first time for their son’s
Chinese wedding in Shanghai, they changed their minds.
“Now they have a very good impression of China after paying several visits. If it were not for the
COVID-19 pandemic, they would have come this year. My mother loves Chinese massage the most,” he says.
“To change people’s stereotypical
view of another country, one of the best ways is to visit the country in person, to take a look and to experience the local customs and traditions. People often change their minds quickly when that is the case,” he says.
Derksen started learning Chinese at high school about 15 years ago. Two years later, together with 65 other students and teachers, he paid his first visit to China.
“China was completely different from what I imagined,” he recalls in a video. He remembers that when he saw a lamb-shashlik vendor in Beijing, he went to buy some. The vendor asked him where he came from, and after finding out that Derksen came from Germany, he named the German soccer players he knew.
“Although I could barely speak Chinese and he couldn’t speak German, we had a quite smooth communication,” he says.
After graduating from high school, Derksen started working at a bank and, unable to stand the boring work, he quit three years later and applied to university. The memory of learning Chinese and the visit to China came back to him, and he decided to study Chinese language and East Asian politics and economy.
In 2012, he came to Tongji University in Shanghai on a summer exchange program and met Zhu Liping at a party. Her beauty and confidence immediately attracted the shy, bookish German. On the other hand, Zhu found the shy young man very cute, claiming to have fallen in love with him at first sight.
However, Derksen, a poor student from a total different culture thousands of miles away, had to meet the challenges of culture shock, as well as from Zhu’s tiger father, who, like many dads, wanted his daughter to live a life of comfort and happiness.
Now, though, Derksen is close with his father-in-law. The Zhus and Derksens are popular in China through their online videos. Derksen is followed by more than 2 million people on Sina Weibo.
“I love every video. We created them with passion. I want to record every experience about local life and people in China and show them to my family and friends in Germany, but they are also memories I keep for myself,” he says.
“I’ve gained too much from the creation of these videos, such as the interviews in Beijing at 3 am or the one about the taxi driver in Shanghai who comes from Jiangxi province. I can see different facets of society in them and understand China more profoundly,” he says.
“They also let me see that I should not complain about the small difficulties in my life.”
Derksen and his team also add English subtitles to the videos.
“My family and friends watch them all the time and, when they are interested, they will come to me, and I will explain and encourage them to come to China and see it for themselves,” he says.
“I hope people from China and Germany can understand and find greater tolerance for each other and that our relationship will become increasingly close. To that end, I want to contribute my part,” he says.
To change people’s stereotypical view of another country, one of the best ways is to visit the country in person, to take a look and to experience the local customs and traditions.”
Thomas Derksen, from Germany