Saturday, February 21, 2009

I am extremely terrified of Chinese people (well, just some of them).

I am extremely terrified of Chinese people who come to my city and march violently in the streets and physically assault people who have the audacity to protest publicly against brutal and inhumane Chinese policy concerning Tibetans, Uighurs, North Korean refugees, and others in the People's Republic who have no voice and are frequently maimed or killed directly or indirectly by Beijing policies, especially those Chinese people in my city who are angry that South Koreans and Japanese are so impudent as to speak out against their historical "Big Brother" China because, sure, they understand that the ignorant Americans and Europeans who attacked the Olympic Torch Relay and vilify China are at heart racist against a rising China and fear an Asia dominated by Beijing, but the South Koreans and the Japanese, well they should know better, dammit!

But I'm not racist

3 comments:

  1. You are a fucking racist. You are ignorant indeed. We don't trust the medias, but we never say bad words about other races.
    You are some kind idiot

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jianyu wrote:
    You are a fucking racist. You are ignorant indeed. We don't trust the medias, but we never say bad words about other races.
    You are some kind idiot


    Please calm down. I think you are missing some important nuance here. First, I am not saying something bad about all Chinese. In fact, I would probably say that 98% of all Mainland Chinese that I've met — and I've met a lot, as many of them are students at all three universities which I've attended in the United States and Korea — are good people I would never feel "terrified" of.

    This post was taking a common topic these days (the infamous Google story), and applying it to something that Mainland Chinese students did in Seoul, my home.

    Mainland Chinese students converged on Seoul, and while most of them were there just for the giddy atmosphere of the Beijing Olympic Torch Relay, some of them physically assaulted people who dared to speak out against Beijing policies, particularly about Tibet and North Korea.

    I did not read about this in the media; I had friends and neighbors who were there (my home is just one kilometer from Seoul City Hall where a lot of this occurred).

    I also know of similar incidents that happened here in Hawaii, where Mainland Chinese students heard from their seniors of a pro-Tibetan rally being held at a downtown park, so they went over to that same location to hold a BIGGER rally and drown out what the pro-Tibetan students were saying.

    I am not "some kind of idiot" for worrying about Chinese nationalism when it is being applied violently in my city. I am not racist for worrying that the Beijing government is whipping up its citizens into a frenzy that sometimes boils over and affects South Korea and China's other neighbors.

    I am angry at Beijing for doing this, much as I am angry at the Bush Administration for whipping up the American public into a frenzy to invade Iraq in response to the 9/11 attacks.

    I am angry at Chinese students for uncritically allowing themselves to get caught up in this and — in some cases — turning violent, just as I am angry at the South Korean government and media for whipping up the South Korean public against Japan about Tokto/Takeshima.

    I am no more racist against Chinese than I am against Americans and South Koreans.

    Jianyu, are you sure that what you have been reading in the Chinese press about the events in Seoul and Nagano last April are true? You say you don't trust the media, and that's probably wise.

    Are you dispassionate enough to look at this issue objectively? After all, you probably found this blog not because you are a regular reader, but because you Googled "extremely terrified of Chinese people" or used 18dao to find it BECAUSE you had read about this.

    In other words, you were angry before you even read this and you came here looking for a fight. And that has clouded your judgement about this post.

    I am not terrified of Chinese people, but I do think there is some state-sponsored thuggery going on in South Korea, Japan, and Hawaii, and that has me angry.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jianyu wrote:
    we never say bad words about other races.

    Who is "we"? You and the people you know? Or do you mean Chinese in general? Although most Chinese I know try to be sensitive to people of other ethnicities and races, I know for a fact that this is not true of all Chinese.

    It's not hard to find nasty comments about South Koreans, Americans, Japanese, etc., coming from Mainland Chinese. Of course, I could say the same thing about Americans, South Koreans, and Japanese: there are some (hopefully a small number) who harbor very racist sentiments about other groups. And, yes, some Mainland Chinese as well.

    ReplyDelete

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