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When a Chinese auntie met the right uncle

Let me pick up where I left off in a previous column. On sabbatical in China, I was reeling from being pored over by parents…

By Samantha Johnson / June 13, 2026
Let me pick up where I left off in a previous column. On sabbatical in China, I was reeling from being pored over by parents at the Shanghai marriage market, and judged to be too old and overqualified. But if no vigilant parent would have me for their offspring, perhaps someone in my more permanent home of London would?

So I began again. Although nine months away from British dating apps had not changed them, something in myself had changed. The algorithms may rely on Photoshop and well-meaning friends who can window-dress bios, I figured, but some of the lonely hearts had to be real if they had friends. I was real, and surely people out there were seeking real persons too.

Instead of channelling a forever young and sophisticated Maggie Cheung Man-yuk or trying to reel in a silver fox in quietly luxurious Loro Piana, I thought I would proclaim my dumpling-shaped auntieness and wait to see who responded.

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And 18 months into swiping and sifting, I finally found a Jewish uncle. (To be sure, uncles aren’t exactly a native species in Britain, but that was the point: only someone with the ability to feel a sense of otherness would get my kind of Chinese auntieness.)

We began on Tinder with dad jokes and a mutual recognition of “here we go again” and quickly reached a practical agreement to get some food together, instead of flirting indefinitely.

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The first time we met, he thought I was American. One of my accents in London is a Californian twang from watching too many 1990s sitcoms; it allows me not to have to choose which level of posh or East End to align myself with in class inflection-obsessed Britain. Later on, we would joke that he could commendably see past skin colour, but not a cleverly concealed Singlish accent.

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