Many a time, we Chinese inflict all these ridicules, contempt and
scorns upon ourselves. Not too long ago, a bun-maker in China
China-bashing
is a fair game in the Western media. CNN’s Jack Caferty is most blatant about
it. During the height of the street violence against ethnic Chinese in Tibet
In
Australia, we have John Garnaut who writes a regular column on China in The Age in Melbourne. This chap is
believed to be stationed in China ,
yet little of what he has written is positive about China
But
Chinese are not helping themselves. Tune on to CCTV9 (Now CCTVNews), China’s
only international English channel, and you will understand what I mean.
Besides a few anchor presenters, most of their correspondents spoke
mickey-mouse or sing-song English. It is neither American English, nor
Australian English, nor English English. It is Chinese English! They read English in the manner as if the text is
in Chinese. It really irritates those who understand the nuances of English
language. On the other hand, take a look at the Al Jazeera presenters, you
can’t help feeling impressed.
A high degree of self-centredness
A sense of misplaced self-centredness appears to be particularly
strong amongst the Chinese. If you are ethnically a Chinese, you are likely to
be greeted with “Kei tor wei?”[1] when you enter a Chinese-run restaurant in
any part of the world. (You may also notice that it is not much of a greeting
either; chances are that the waiter or waitress is also nonchalant when he or
she says those words.) To a Cantonese, everyone who looks like him or her, or
is yellow in skin, is a Cantonese!
When you go for your yum-char[2]
[饮茶], do you
see that the restaurant will only provide a little plate of chilli sauce? It is for the whole table to share. Restaurants also seldom
provide separate spoons in the dishes they serve. Why? The Chinese are used to
sharing the dishes with their chopsticks and spoons. You can pick and choose
with your chopsticks and spoons even though they are laced with your saliva and
debris of food. Try asking them for separate spoons; they will think that you
are “par-pai’ (or almighty)! What so unhygienic about sharing your food?
And observe the way they dish out the plates to you; you might think that they
received their training in casinos! They dish out the plates like dishing out
cards!
.
It is evident that Chinese generally
do not bother to make a good attempt to understand their customers; they are
simply too presumptuous. The Japanese, on the other hand, will study every need
of their customers. The Caucasians, for example, have longer limbs than they do;
products meant for this market will reflect this knowledge with the most
intimate attention. We think everybody behaves like a Chinese! Of course, I
have to rest my case if any reader argues that this is efficiency – something
we should be proud about!
To
many a Chinese, every Caucasian is a kwai-loh
[鬼佬] (foreign devil); every native is a huan-knea [番仔]. Every one seems to be some kind of a kwai [鬼]or kwi (ghost), knea or chye (little fellow) to us. We are also very racist, aren’t we? We
should do some soul-searching. Are we that superior? Or are we just trying to
hide our inferiority complex? I think it is more of the latter. Averagely, we
are less articulate in the way we express ourselves; we are either more
over-dressed or under-dressed, and are either more over-groomed or
under-groomed. We are “less-straight” than Caucasians, are we not?
No comments:
Post a Comment