This post of mine is likely to upset many Indian friends and readers of my blog. However, I hope they will take it with an open mind. All cultures have their own traits, ingrained upon us through upbringing, which manifest in the way we behave without self-consciousness or awareness but deem incorrect or ridiculous in the eyes of other cultures or norms. Maybe it is through feedback like this that we truly know what other communities really think of us as a race or community and how we should help overcome their perceptions.
Being a 76-year-old with few things
to care, I tend to troll the apps in my iPhone like an addicted teenager –
especially YouTube and TikTok. Some may ask why I am using an iPhone instead of
Huawei since I have been writing so chauvinistically on China. The truth is, I bought
a Huawei pad before, but only to discover I could not make good use of its many
features, since I am practically pinyin-illiterate and no longer able to write out
Chinese characters even though I know them fairly well. When Huawei relaunched
its smartphone two years or so ago, I booked to buy one only to lose my deposit
– because I found I would not be able to use it to download some western apps
which I needed to use. I have also been quite frustrated with my spare Samsung
phone, which uses Android, which I think is too clumsy for an old man like me
to use. So, no choice but iPhone! (I heard Huawei’s boss Ren Zhengfei also carries
an iPhone with him.)
In a recent troll, I chanced
upon this handsome young man. He calls himself 凯叔
[Kǎi-shū
– young uncle Kǎi]. I was very impressed by his narratives. In one of
them, entitled三哥, 鹅, 泰迪, 阿Q之间的关系 (The
Inter-relationships between Sān-gē [Third
Elder Brother], É [geese], Tài Dí [泰迪] and Ah
Q), he explains a prejudice or the way we Chinese tend to think of or stereotype
the Indians.
In
the video, he is talking about the May 7 air battle between the Indians and Pakistanis
over the sky of Indian-controlled Kashmir in which six Indian aircraft, three
of which were the French-made Rafales, and an Israeli-made drone were wiped out
by Pakistan’s PL-15E fired from its J-10Cs, both of which were, as we all know,
China-made.
Even
though the loss had been reported by the mainstream media, albeit with “It is
believed” or “yet-to-confirm” tags, Indian prime minister Modi went on to order
a nation-wide, 10-day, victory celebration. This euphoria certainly looks very ironical
or strange to the non-Indian world. There is a lady Indian news anchor who went
on to flatly claim that the impotency of the Chinese fighter jets had resulted
in the loss of their missiles in the incident. She also claimed that the share
price of the manufacturer of these J-10Cs plunged after the incident. Another
VIP there blatantly screamed that Chinese were incapable of flying state-of-the-art
aircraft. I really could not believe my ears!
All
these syiok sendiri (Malay slang; self-gratification) talks are most
bewildering to Chinese, since no Chinese was actually involved in the fight,
except that the Pakistani system in its entirety was procured from China. Why
are they going after the Chinese?
China-India relationship has been a very
complex one. It is said that the Indus Valley civilization existed
from approximately 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE. Historically, Chinese called India
Tiānzhú [天竺], which means "Centre of Heaven". Chinese Buddhist monks travelled to India, often via the
Silk Road, to acquire Buddhist sutras and scriptures, a practice that
significantly shaped Buddhism in China. Notable examples include Faxian,
who embarked on a pilgrimage to India in 399 CE, and Xuanzang, who travelled in
the 7th century.
India was amongst the first to recognise the People’s Republic of China after Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan. Jawaharlal Nehru was fond of China; strong relationship was cemented during the 1955 Bandung Conference – a non-aligned movement of the newly independent Afro-Asian countries. Relationship turned sour over the McMahon Line and in 1962, they fought a brief war in which the Chinese forces prevailed. There were several skirmishes after that.
Apparently, India has never accepted they have lost in any of these encounters, including the 1962 war.
Indians have always harboured a certain complex over Chinese. They will always want to benchmark against Chinese, not others including their formal colonial masters English. I was told that this is a common parent-to-children or teacher-to-student exhortation amongst the Indians: “If you don’t work harder, the Chinese will soon catch up with you!” We have to ask the Indians to confirm if this is in fact true.
This Kǎi-shū gentleman was trying to explain this Indian “phenomenon” and I thought he did it very well, including the concept of "loss" in Indian minds.
I suppose there is no need for me to explain who or what Sān-gē’s [三哥, Third Elder Brothers] are, suffice to say that commentators in Taiwan love to refer to Indians as Sān-gē’s.
Kǎi-shū’s use of the second term É [鹅geese] is an eye-opener to me. He says he used to be chased by geese when he was young. He could understand that, since he was physically small. But when he was already an adolescent and therefore much taller and bigger in size, the geese he met each time would still see fit to peck him. After some research, he came to know that to the geese’s eyes, all objects look small and are game for attack! I do not know how far this is true, though. To him, therefore, Indians see everyone as inferior to them, hence the geese syndrome or phenomenon!
I did not know his meaning of the term 泰迪 [Tài Dí ], save to guess that it is a somewhat derogatory term. I consulted DeepSeek, which immediately produced – I thought – a good answer but only to disappear almost immediately with this message: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else." How disappointing! I tried ChatGPT, and it confirmed my intuition. It says the term literally refers to “Teddy”, as in a Teddy Dog (usually a poodle groomed in a teddy bear style). It has developed derogatory connotations in some Chinese internet slang and social contexts – something to do with promiscuousness, manipulativeness, superficially charming but not trustworthy, etc. Now I understand why Kǎi-shū is using it here! I think readers can also understand his subtlety.
The last term Ah Q [阿Q] is a
character used by great author Lǔ Xùn [鲁迅] to remind
Chinese of a certain aspect of ugly Chineseness. His novella The
True Story of Ah Q [阿Q正传,
Ā
Q Zhèng-Zhuàn] talks about a
poor, uneducated, and yet self-important rural peasant, as he navigates the
hardships and injustices of his time in China – with misplaced self-exultation
over often sour-grape encounters.
This young narrator was not talking about the inter-relationships of these terms per se; he was in fact trying to epitomize Indianness with the essences of these terms.
I suppose it is very hard for Chinese to understand the hostility between India and Pakistan. Ditto with the Russians and the Ukrainians. Are they not of the same people? We Chinese want to fight to unite, like what we want to do on Taiwan. These peoples fight to divide! To Chinese, nationalism based on shared identity – which can take many forms, like ethnicity, history or destiny, etc – is supreme. On the other hand, faith is a personal matter, and cultures are largely community centric. There is room for everyone!
End
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