The Xenophobe's Guide to the Chinese E-Book

Song Zhu

• Herausgeber: Xenophobe's Guides
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Xenophobe's Guides
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Seitenzahl: 101

Beschreibung

A guide to understanding the Chinese which dispels or confirms preconceived prejudices with humor and insight.

Das E-Book wird angeboten von und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

Leseprobe

Contents

Title Page

Nationalism & Identity

Character

Language & Conversation

Attitudes & Values

Behaviour

Manners

Leisure & Pleasure

Sense of Humour

Culture

Eating & Drinking

Custom & Tradition

Health & Hygiene

Systems

About the Author

Copyright

The Chinese occupy a land that is about the same size as the USA but with five times the number of people.

There are 1.4 billion Chinese (which is 21% of the world’s total population), compared with 50 million English, 58 million French, 82 million Germans, 127 million Japanese, 144 million Russians, 307 million Americans and 1.1 billion Indians.

Nationalism & Identity

The Chinese have no need for xenophobia because they have no cause for envy. Not everyone has the good fortune to be born into the oldest unbroken civilisation on earth.

The name for China, zhong guo (the Middle Kingdom), was first used by the ancient Zhou dynasty who believed themselves to be the middle – or centre – not just of the civilised world, but also of the universe. A glance at the various names China has had through the ages reinforces this belief: ‘divine land’, ‘great land’, ‘prosperity’, and quite simply, ‘big’. While some nations may find the size of China overwhelming, the Chinese take pride in their vast rambling landscape – the bigger the better.

“Having always been at the very centre of things, the Chinese are a people who revel in the spotlight, in company, and noise.”

Having thus always been at the very centre of things, the Chinese are a people who revel in the spotlight, in company, and noise. Born to talk and eat (both in prodigious quantities), they are also very diligent and practical – that booming economy isn’t going to run itself.

Being a hardy lot, while others seek refuge in order or retreat into self-examination in the midst of chaos, the Chinese carry on unperturbed, and wait for the tide to turn. To be a zhong guo ren (Chinese person) is to be cast from the same mould as Confucius – wise, philosophical, stoical. What is there to be anxious about?

“Anyone who does not have the propitious fate to be born Chinese is a ‘foreign devil’.”

Behind the composed exterior, however, lies a fierce nationalism. To the sons and daughters of the Middle Kingdom, their country is an emotional issue, worthy of patriotic songs, red scarves, and rousing slogans. Even if you scratch a Chinese who is critical of his People’s Republic, you will expose a deep-seated pride in his ancestral land. No other nation is even remotely qualified to compare with the Middle Kingdom.

Outsiders should never be tempted into criticising China. The world wonders what might happen if a country of 1.4 billion decided to jump up and down at the same time. Better not upset them and put this to the test.

How they see others

Anyone who does not have the propitious fate to be born Chinese is a ‘foreign devil’. Large numbers of these devils have big noses and funny habits, of which eating smelly cheese is just one of many unfathomable oddities. In their presence the Chinese adopt the tone of a distinguished university professor greeting a disquieting student intake.

Of their Eastern neighbours, there is one thing that needs to be kept in mind when conversing with a Chinese, and it is this: the Chinese quite simply do not like the Japanese. It is a long story, several hundred years old, and mostly to do with war, rape, pillage, and the poaching of their language. To admit to liking them is at best suspicious, and at worst traitorous.

“The Chinese respect the Europeans for their history and culture, even though they do not stretch as far back as China’s.”

They regard South and North Koreans as little brothers, offering friendship and warnings respectively, and sometimes pocket money in exchange for co-operative behaviour and lack of nuclear temper tantrums. The Indians they see as having great computing brain power, in competition with home talent for Silicon Valley jobs. The rest of Asia is just that – the rest of Asia. They are either greatly influenced by China anyway, or are too insignificant to care about.

The Chinese respect the Europeans for their history and culture, even though they do not stretch as far back as China’s. With Americans they have a complicated love/hate relationship. They dearly love to defy that nation’s meddling, but are quick to import their capitalist ideas, branded goods, and TV programmes.

Russia, populated with muscular alcoholics, business tycoons, svelte gymnasts, and maths gurus, is looked upon as an ex-older brother. Although they are familiar neighbours with a lengthy shared border, China keeps an ever-vigilant eye on Russia – the result of lingering tensions from territorial wrangles during the Cold War. Nevertheless, united by their shared suspicion of America, they co-operate to veto any important-sounding policies that Washington may dream up.

“Although they are familiar neighbours with a lengthy shared border, China keeps an ever-vigilant eye on Russia.”

With many African countries they enjoy a chummy relationship, in a kind of third-world solidarity and graduate student exchange pact. Although the average Chinese may not know much about Africa, the government has sought to strengthen ties in these quarters under the guise of friendship, while flashing subliminal messages of ‘give all your oil to us and not the West’.

To the rest of the world the Chinese are sublimely indifferent.

Race

The Chinese are racist in much the same way as a child is inadvertently racist. They do not mean any harm, but as they don’t get the chance to see different races up close (except on TV), they are rather fascinated when they come into contact with them. They don’t hesitate to say what they think and gladly leap (where others fear to tread) into sweeping generalisations and stereotypes.

“Younger generations are more familiar with other races, even going so far as to mix with them.”

World summits are a delight for the Chinese, who do not separate participants geopolitically into countries, but anthropologically into races. Thus the bai ren (white people) are being extremely meddlesome as usual; the zong zhong ren (brown people, including the South Asians and Latin Americans) are probably thinking about dinner; the hei ren (black people) have wandered off and are not paying the least bit of attention; leaving the huang zhong ren (yellow people) with all the serious work of displaying the appropriate gravitas.

Younger generations are more familiar with other races, even going so far as to mix with them. As a result they are much less intrigued and much less racist. But they still think they are the best race, being none of the following: lazy, smelly, crude, unfilial, backward, cruel, or loose.

Ethnic minorities

“One of the worst insults for a Chinese is to be called a ‘banana’ – yellow on the outside, white on the inside.”

92 per cent of Chinese are ethnically Han, which means that more than 9 out of 10 people can blend right in and get lost in the vast homogeneous mass. This is what the world typically thinks of as ‘Chinese’. The rest of the Middle Kingdom is carved up between 55 ‘minorities’ who earn their keep by adding a splash of colour to the Chinese ethnic tapestry. They sing, they dance, they twirl, they whirl, they frisk and frolic, prance and cavort, all the while dressed in eye-catching costumes with clashing colour schemes. They beam and are happy to be part of the mighty motherland. Since there are so few of them, relatively speaking, they are exempt from the One Child Policy and are given the green light to joyfully go forth and multiply. One wouldn’t want them to die out – then everyone in China really would look the same.

Anyone doubting their national importance may visit the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park in Beijing, a cross between an amusement park and an anthropology field trip. Some 5 million square feet are devoted to exhibiting their exotic culture and architecture. You will probably recognise some of them – the Korean, Mongol, and Russian tribes look remarkably like the Koreans, Mongolians, and Russians.

The Chinese diaspora

Chinese who are born or who grow up abroad are divided into two factions:

1. the commendable ones, loyal to the motherland, who still speak the ancestral tongue; 

2. those disreputable heartless traitors who no longer can or never could in the first place. “What are you? Chinese? What, you can’t speak Chinese? Ai ya, what a disgrace! A black mark upon your nation and family!”

One of the worst insults for a Chinese is to be called a ‘banana’ – yellow on the outside, white on the inside.

Expatriates are sorted into a hierarchy of worthiness:

– those who are able to speak Chinese as a first language are greatly admired and endlessly wondered at (a just reward for all those after-school tear-fuelled lessons);

– those who can partially speak it (to the standard of a foreigner) are commended for trying to keep it up;

– those who have lost it but attempt to relearn it are gently pitied but encouraged;

– those who cannot speak it but wish they could are disapproved of (slothfulness);

– those who neither can nor want to are written off entirely and deemed unworthy to have been divinely bestowed with a Chinese face.

If one looks Chinese, one clearly is Chinese wherever one goes, regardless of birthplace, nationality, culture or influence, and one has a cultural obligation to speak the language of one’s predecessors. Looks and speech must match up. This is why the Chinese become so disconcerted when foreigners open their mouths and Mandarin starts to flow.

How they see themselves

“The 2008 Beijing Olympics showed the world that China could not only put on a gargantuan show but also smugly command homage from every distant land.”

Deep in their hearts the inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom, now well rid of their dynasties and sons of heaven (emperors), believe that they are still at the core of things. If there was ever any shadow of a doubt that this was so, the 2008 Beijing Olympics showed the world that China could not only put on a gargantuan show (rivalling North Korea for clockwork military precision), but also smugly command homage from every distant land. This was a show no-one dared to snub, thus publicly confirming what China had secretly suspected all along – its superiority over less physically-synchronised civilisations.

Celestial sons and spectacular choreographed showmanship aside, primarily the Chinese see themselves as a practical, stoical, harmonious, and hard-working people, capable of great things, and contributing significantly to the world. They are inordinately proud of having invented, among a whole host of other things, the compass (without which the world would have got lost), paper (without which books would not exist), the printing press (ditto), porcelain (no pretty matching chinaware), silk (no decadence), pasta (what would the Italians eat?), the wheelbarrow (how would civilisation have fared without it?) and the bristle toothbrush.

“They are inordinately proud of having invented, among a whole host of other things, the compass, the printing press, porcelain, silk, pasta, the wheelbarrow and the bristle toothbrush.”

Taiwan and Tibet are regarded by the Chinese simply as part of China. In fact Taiwan is thought by mainlanders to be more Chinese than Hong Kong, filled as the former British colony is with foreign devils. However, everyone has much more pressing things to attend to than geopolitics, like bending over backwards to ensure their only child trumps other only children in the Chinese game of life.

How they would like others to see them

Exactly as they see themselves. A benevolent, wise, beard-stroking, Confucius-reciting force to be reckoned with.

Character

Loud, direct, inquisitive, expressive, opinionated, clan-orientated,