There's not enough room on the internet to fully discuss the existence of, and reasoning behind, the superiority, patriotism, narrow-mindedness, racial prejudice, and cultural ignorance of the Chinese people [yes, I know this is a generalised blanket statement about a race of people]. There are a lot of reasons for why the majority of Chinese people think the way they do, and I'm not in any way saying they are bad or mean people. I just fail to understand how they can blindly follow what they have been told their whole lives, even when presented with conflicting evidence. The only thing I can compare it with is religious faith.
Here are some examples of what I'm talking about (please bear in mind that China has made
a ridiculously big deal about the swine flu pandemic, and has somehow convinced most of the locals that there are no threatening cases on the mainland):
- At dinner with a couple of coworkers (one American, one Chinese), American co-worker (ACW) made a joke that the guy at the table next to us had swine flu, because he coughed. CCW said that it was impossible, because he was Chinese. She backed up her argument by saying that there were no cases of swine flu in Shanghai (totally false statement).
Problems with this: a) We had no proof he was Chinese. b) Even if he were Chinese, and there were no cases in Shanghai, there was no proof that he hadn't been out of the country, or been in contact with anyone who had recently been out of the country. c) It was a ridiculous statement.
- A friend's date did not want to go to a restaurant with him after she found out they served Mexican food. She thought she might catch swine flu from the food.
Problems with this: Pretty obvious, even if you didn't know that the disease isn't foodborne. We are in Shanghai, not Mexico! The food did not get shipped from there.
- While watching the men's Wimbledon final on TV, CCW said 'chocolate!' every time she saw a black person in the crowd. Apparently Chinese people call black people chocolate, and it's not meant as an insult. I'm not sure if she was joking when she started calling the white people 'milk'.
Problems with this: Fairly obvious in this super-PC world. I call myself a banana, but still. Not the same.
- People around here seem to think that the definitions of 'sushi' and 'sandwich' are what you get at Family Mart, Kedi, or any number of other convenience stores. These things are highly processed, and involve far too much mayonnaise and pork fluff, and not much else. When you actually take a local to a place to get decent Japanese food or a high quality sandwich, they get confused and often don't like it. Locals seem to base whole ethnic cuisines on very limited, very low-quality food, and then decide to write off the entire culture. It's quite sad.
I could go on, but I actually just wanted to mention a blog post from
Disgrasian. An American study has shown that, apparently, sharing a room with someone of a different ethnic background from you can make you less racist. Unless you are sharing with an Asian, which actually
makes people more prejudiced. We're so good at racism!
Oh well, at least we make
cute babies.
