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Seriously China does not like our culture or even our society the only reason why we get along with each other is because our economies are so intertwined, to where we currently need them as much as they need us.
Yeah that’s why a Brown 4 door Buick is the most coveted car of status one can have in China.
Because they hate us so bad…
I am not saying they're out to get us, I am just saying they just tolerate us, it's not like we're buddy buddy or even close allies. But just like the U.S they're also vying for power.
Done!
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2010 Aug 28, 5:39am
Do you know why most Asian horror shows have a White pasty face ghost that comes out of the dark to get them?
Like religious fanatics worry about God watching them, Asian cultures worry about their Ancestors hanging over their heads watching them and judging them. Ghosts, but not just any Ghost the Ghost that haunt them are their ancestors. That is the Asain Boogie man, and is ancient as the first Chinese characters. All of our boogie men are 20th Century inventions.
Ironically the only derogatory word Asians have for Americans, is "Ghost". Now from an American Racist point of view it is easy to write this off as to "Oh that's because Americans are White".
But many Chinese are more pasty white than we are.
The Chinese respect us, and want to be American in every way. They work 12 hours a day to make our cheap crap and put all of their money in the bank to loan us money, so we can buy that cheap crap.
That's a good solid prudent way to make money and they have been. They spent decade admiring us, and we spent a decade spending like drunken sailors. When our house of cards fell, we looked East and snarled at China, like some pasty faced Asian cinema Ghost that wants to come out of the dark and get them, because they still have money, and we're broke.
Of course there is Toxic dry wall and other toxic goods, that have came out of China, but really the fault lies clearly on our import regulations, and inspectors to allow these damaged good through. I'd say it's 99% our fault, for every toxic Chinese goods we've ever gotten.
The average person on the street in China is enamoured with the US and all the goodies we have. The currency of choice when tipping is still the dollar (right, Patrick?). They now have a problem (for the first time in their long history) of what to do with their parents when they need help and so old folks homes are proliferating. Female babies are adopted out of country. Male babies are kept (and in some cases, kidnapped and sold at the other end of the country to families who want a male heir). Factory jobs are disappearing (mostly to the inland where the wages are cheaper). They value education. I met more Chinese who could speak English than spoke Mandarin. What do they think of our political system? It's a non-issue for the average person. What do they think of their political system? Another non-issue, part of which is the fear of being reported as a dissident (altho I did meet one person who stated uncategorically that he hated Mao). That watch-granny on their block though does offer some benefits to the average resident--a low burglary rate.
I laughed when I read the comment above about whites being called "Ghosts." Look at the San Francisco newspapers from the 1800s. What were the Chinese called who were transported to work on railroads? Being different is always labeled.
And you want good horror flicks? Try those from South Korea.
Done!
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2010 Aug 29, 2:23am
I laughed when I read the comment above about whites being called “Ghosts.†Look at the San Francisco newspapers from the 1800s. What were the Chinese called who were transported to work on railroads? Being different is always labeled.
That was my point, we "White Americans" have always been disproportionately Silver tongued, against other groups that aren't like us.
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Hello all, I was recently in China, and tried to comment on a post, and it was blocked. Not a computer problem since the same laptop works here. Patrick noticed that I commented on the blockage and suggested that I write a post about what I saw with the Great Firewall.
The Great Firewall blocks less than in years past. You can get to pretty much any media site that I tried; CNN, NY Times, Fox. I didn't see any problem with the various Google sites, even though it was reported that news.google.com was blocked. Ironically, I saw the news item about the news.google.com blockage on news.google.com. Sometimes there is context-specific blockage, so an article about Tibet could be blocked on a page that's otherwise visible. And apparently they do the same for CNN tv - if you are watching it in a hotel, then it might just black out for 2 minutes, then come back.
Blogs are most frequently blocked. Everything that I tried on blogspot for example, even innocuous items like camera information. I suppose this is because of the more free expression. But blogs on microsoft live.com are open. And some sites for churches are blocked, even if the church is located in the US, and not particularly controversial. Patrick.net was visible, but I could not post to it. I don't know for sure that it was a specific block, or some technical trouble along the chain of routers from US to China. Burbed.com was open as well, and I could post to it.
Facebook.com is blocked, and so is Multiply, another social networking site. And youtube. There are Chinese equivalents of these, so the blockage may have a protectionist aspect as well. The Chinese equivalent of youtube has no compunctions about copyrighted video posted up.
I was not trying to probe the limits of what is visible as I did not want my hosts to get into trouble. Perhaps I'm over cautious, but you never know.
The other interesting thing is - most people that I know don't care about the blocks. In fact, some think it's good - "the government should protect the people from things that could cause social unrest, including overly violent or sexual movies." And this comes from people who have lived in the US.
Furthermore, people who really want such info know how to use proxies, so it's not clear to me how effective this really is.
Summary - China is much much freer than 10 or 20 years ago, which is noteworthy. There's still much less freedom than in the US. But the people that I know (reasonably affluent urban dwellers) are satisfied with the current situation.