Seeking truth from whatever...

From Jottings from the Granite Studio, a great Chinese scholar's blog. The last conversation is hilarious, and I have had innumerable conversations like it myself. (Qiu Shi, btw, means "seeking truth." For those of you who have never been to China, this is what happens when you're not taught culturally to think critically. Chinese people think, with few exceptions, that if they could just explain things correctly without the pesky western journalists lying and distorting things, everyone would love them. Shadow projection? Recently having lunch with my Chinese mom, she said to a friend about Japanese people, "they just don't like Chinese people." That's how I translate it, because that's what she meant. Literally, though, she said, "they just don't understand Chinese people," as if that would automatically turn them around.

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For what it’s worth, David Bandurski and his team at China Media Project absolutely rock, and today’s commentary and translation of a bit of whiny blather from Qiu Shi on “people being mean to China” or some other such spray of sputum and self-pity is just the latest in a line of great posts. For what it’s worth, someone desperately needs to alert the editors of Qiu Shi as to the dangers of inadequate nutrition…poor sods seem to be suffering from a serious case of irony deficiency.

Leaving aside the whole point that very few people in the Chinese government understand, are willing to understand, or even want to understand how the media actually functions outside of PRC…the mother of all “dead horse” topics…There is this blissful piece of ineffable twaddle:

But in developed nations like the United States, some people now voice surprise at seeing that Chinese have mobile phones just as they do, and they ask ridiculous questions like, “You Chinese use mobile phones too?” Their understanding of China is trapped in the 1970s.

Yeah, maybe…but for every nameless American who “expresses surprise at Chinese using mobile phones,” I’ll give you 10 Beijingers who can’t wrap their skulls around the notion that a foreigner could read/speak/understand Chinese or is able to use chopsticks without jabbing themselves repeatedly in the eye socket.

A: “Oh, you can use kuaizi!?!?!? You are really lihai! Did YOU knOW that “kuaizi” is what we Chinese people call chopsticks!”

B: “Why thank you. In the nine hours I just spent at the Number One Archives going over a decade of Qing Dynasty court documents, the word kuaizi did not appear once. Thank goodness you told me that because otherwise I’d have had to eat with my toes.”

A: “Really, how did you read the material? It is all in Chinese!!!!* Did they translate them into English for you?”

B: [sound of head banging against table repeatedly]

(And yes, I’ve had this EXACT conversation. Many times.)

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*I’ll save the reaction when I say, “Yes, it’s in Chinese, but the really GOOD stuff is in Manchu” for another post.

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