Chinese families that immigrate to the United States often end up with an American marrying into the family. For some, having a blond-haired, blue-eyed Westerner for a son- or daughter-in-law is a mind-boggling prospect. American parents are just the same in that respect, though. In the movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, a young white woman engaged to a black doctor brings her fiance home for dinner and sets off a family crisis.

In the United States, and especially in New York, many families experience interracial marriage. Our son once had a classmate with the blood of four different races in his veins! The parents of this tall, wavy-haired boy with light-brown skin were from Cuba. His paternal grandfather was Hispanic, his paternal grandmother Chinese, and his maternal grandfather was part Indian and part black. The boy was like a palette which an artist had used to mix together all sorts of beautiful colors-white, yellow, red, and black. I think it would be no exaggeration to describe New York as a "racial dying vat." Hop on the subway headed to the borough of Queens and you will become part of a rainbow.

Chinese people tend to be conservative, and children of mixed race are often called "half-breeds," which is an extremely offensive term in Chinese. During several millennia of feudal society, purity of lineage was highly valued, and today we are all affected to some degree by this attitude. I, too, hope that my daughter can marry someone Chinese, but she has her own ideas, and asked, "Dad, how many Chinese students are there in an American university? Do you really expect me to choose a boyfriend from such a small pool?" I didn't have a comeback for that one, because what she said made good sense. Love is a feeling, and can't be forced to fit in with preconceived plans or notions. How can I require that the person she falls in love with meet fixed specifications? I'm lucky, however, to have a very loyal daughter who understands how I feel. She hasn't gotten serious about anyone yet. Her mother, in the meantime, is quite anxious about the fact that our daughter is nearing university graduation and still doesn't have a serious boyfriend. She complains that my insistence on a Chinese husband is to blame.

I can't change the way I think, though. I came to understand from early on that interracial marriage often leads to heartache. After the war with Japan ended, the older sister of one of my junior high school friends got married to an American pilot and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Johnny. When I went over to my friend's house I really liked to go outside and play with Johnny. He was very happy to be taken out to play, too, because by the time I knew him both of his parents were no longer around. After Shanghai was liberated his father left China and never contacted the family again. After waiting in vain for several years, his mother hanged herself. Johnny was ostracized in the neighborhood. Lots of kids refused to play with him because his father was an American pilot. Those years coincided with the Korean War, and it was hardly surprising that Johnny would get the cold shoulder when Chinese soldiers were fighting against the Americans in Korea. Later, I heard that Johnny got into trouble with the law. Fate is truly a fickle master, and life can be very unforgiving. If my classmate's sister hadn't married the American pilot, she might still be alive today.

Last month I went to see Miss Saigon on Broadway. It is a story about the tragedy of a Vietnamese woman who falls in love with an American soldier who already has a wife and family in the United States. She doesn't find out about the soldier's other life until the man's family comes to Vietnam in search of her and her child. In grief, she ends her life with a gun. Although the story is set in a different time and place, it is strikingly similar to what happened to my classmate's sister-unhappy love ends up costing the life of an unfortunate Asian woman.

The Chinese and American people have very different views concerning love and marriage. We Chinese feel strongly that a husband and wife should stay together all their lives, while Western couples feel that if their relationship isn't going well they should break it off. We stress patience and resolution of differences. Westerners, on the other hand, do not look upon divorce as anything especially out of the ordinary. Some Americans simply take up cohabitation just to avoid the expense of a divorce. We hope our daughter will marry a Chinese because we worry about her getting involved with this type of "anything goes" American.

We recently met an older Chinese couple, and hadn't been talking long before they began to vent their frustrations with their American son-in-law. It turns out that they had two highly accomplished daughters, both of whom had gone to university on scholarships-one to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the other to Harvard. Whenever these proud parents met anybody, they invariably bragged about their daughters, but they were not prepared to hear the shocking news one of them brought home after graduating from Harvard-she had been in a serious relationship for several years with some American guy, and was now living with him! Oh my! For these two old Chinese intellectuals, the news hit like a bolt out of the blue. Although the boyfriend had been the valedictorian in his graduating class at Harvard, the parents were unable to forgive their daughter for not telling them about the relationship sooner. Worse yet, the daughter was pregnant and preparing to get married immediately. On top of that, the custom in America is for the bride's family to foot the entire bill for the wedding and reception! The parents didn't know what to do because they didn't have enough money. With a baby on the way, they had no choice but ask their friends to loan them money, but it wasn't enough. They eventually had to swallow their pride and explain their difficulty to the boyfriend's family. The latter immediately promised to pay for the wedding.

No sooner had they gotten through one emergency than another followed on its heels. Not long after the wedding, the husband found a high-paying job, so he asked his wife to stay at home and be a full-time mother. This was another blow to the parents, who had always expected their talented daughter to have a brilliant career. Instead, the four years of Harvard education went totally to waste and the daughter became just another housewife.

There is an old saying that aptly expresses the high hopes Chinese parents have for their children: "May my son become a dragon, and my daughter a phoenix!" The couple wanted their daughter to take up a career and make her mark in society. She could have had a nanny take care of the child. Their daughter, however, preferred to take care of the child for a few years and start her career later, as many American women do. What could the parents do? Powerless to change a thing, all they could do was begrudgingly acknowledge that they had lost out in their battle against American culture.

We tried to comfort them, reminding them that "when in Rome, one must do as the Romans do," but that just got the father going again. When their son-in-law was planning to visit his in-laws at their home for the first time, their daughter told him that according to Chinese custom he should give her parents a cake as a gift. When he got off work and hurried over to their home, however, he forgot all about the cake and showed up empty-handed, which really irritated their daughter. The Harvard whiz slapped his forehead and quickly came up with a little white lie: "Ah! I forgot the cake at home. Next time I won't forget it, I swear!" It struck me as a very funny story. Laughing, I asked the man, "Do you ever see Americans walking around with cake boxes in hand on their way to visit someone? If you insist on your Chinese ways, you're just asking for frustration."

It's easy to preach, though. If our daughter married a Westerner, I'm sure that I would also have a hard time coming to terms with him.

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Urged on by the wedding guests, the American bridegroom removes his bride's sexy garter and kisses her on the ankle to show his love.

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Whether Chinese or American, the happy expression of a grandmother holding her grandchild is the same in any culture.

Whether Chinese or American, the happy expression of a grandmother holding her grandchild is the same in any culture.