Hi Winston,
Name's Funlife. I just passed my 35th bday, and am facing a big decision in my life now, and would love your opinion on this.
I am a Chinese born and raised in Hong Kong, and immigrated to the US when I was 18 to attend university there. I was lucky that I do love my job: video games business development (took me 1.5 years and 2 moves across country to break in). I am a bit chubby and short (5'4"), so I studied PUA when I lived in SF and LA, but yup, didn't work. From time to time I get dates, but the only GF I had was an Albanian immigrant (and only lasted 1 month). Living in SF and Seattle didn't help either due to tech boom and super high male-to-female ratio.
I moved to Beijing in late 2013 for work and also hope to find a GF. Unfortunately Beijing (and most of China) women fall into these 2 categories:
1. Very conservative, boring women who demand you to stay in Beijing for the rest of your life (e.g. I enjoy drinking good wine and whisky with my friends every weekend, but my date is a Cinderella and always left by midnight, since she did not enjoy nightlife). And I don't want to stay in China for rest of my life due to pollution, poor food safety, internet censorship, high real estate price, very long working hours, cut-throat work, competition, bad office politics, etc. And most US game companies are not doing well in China due to Chinese protectionist policy. And traditional Chinese women can be very demanding after marriage anyway.
2. Women who are fun, outgoing, and extroverted, who are exactly my type, and are willing to go to the US, but they always choose Caucasian guys only (yup, was seeing a super cute Chinese girl for 2-3 months, but lost her to a white guy
)
So my Beijing adventure of 3.5 years did not work out.
I then moved to Hong Kong (my hometown) in 2017 to work on my video game startup. I get many dates here, but unfortunately all the local girls want to stay in Hong Kong for rest of their life too (usually due to family ties), which is impractical since HK is extremely expensive to live (especially real estate). My startup later failed, and since there are no video game jobs in Hong Kong, I have to leave HK.
The tricky part is for the video game industry, the biggest opportunities are 1. the US, and 2. Mainland China. I don't want to go back to Mainland China for the reasons stated above. I know if I go back to the US, I will make good money but my dating life will suck again, since most jobs are on the West Coast with super high male to female ratio (I may focus on dating immigrants from China, HK, Taiwan this time rather than American women this time, but Chinese immigrants also skew heavily towards male).
Are there other options? I love playing video games and the game industry, so don't want to quit yet. On the other hand, I am also exploring blockchain jobs which let me work remotely, but it is tough to break-in.
Thanks!
Funlife.