I've been contemplating recently about what being Chinese meant to me. I realize that there are both negative and positive associations that I have when thinking about my culture. There are of course things I identify with and things I keep at a mental arm's length.
Negative aspects of what being Chinese mean. Propagandistic cartoons from post 1950's when red, rosy-cheeked girls and valiant, stocky guys raise their clenched fists in the air and clutch their little red book of Mao sayings while the headlines cry: Long live new China! Long live the revolution! Ugh. Tacky to the extreme. Other negative associations: bad teeth, poor fashion sense (my hope is that one day the Chinese will be seen as trendy cool people like the French or the Japanese or the Italians), Bruce Lee and his warblings, Chinese school, taiwanese politicians fighting each other and embarassing themselves, Chinese middle aged men - I don't know many attractive ones, maybe Andy Lau and Tony Leung are the two exceptions, or little asian punks who want to be ghetto (just silly), plastic bags, sallow complexion, jaundice, slanty eyes, being cheap, bad Chinese food, fortune cookies, dumb Confucius says sayings, being perceived as sneaky, enigmatic, scratching oneself, spitting in public, wife beaters (the shirt), rickshaws, bad toilet conditions, greasy stringy hair
Positive associations: lyrical grace of martial arts, the ribbon dances from Tang dynasty, calligraphy with a large sweeping brush, elegiac weeping willows set among the mountains in a Chinese painting, Andy Law crooning his undying love, Chicken soup, pandas, pretty stationary from Taiwan, night markets, asian snacks, dumplings, pan fried onion chong you bing, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Steve Chow, bowl and chopsticks, slender twiggy girls, straight jet black hair on asian school girls, school uniforms, books with cute typography, pictures of formosa, history of China, being passionate, being nationalistic, full of ideology, Sun Zi Bing Fa, Dream of the Red Chamber, poetry, noodles, silk embroidered cheongsams, In the Mood for Love.
I know this all seems rather random and quixotic. I went to a History of Medicine lecture today and was treated to an hour of posters produced in China regarding public health. One poster showed a man squatting over a hole in the ground, simultaneously vomitting and diarrheaing. Yeah, gross. It's a poster information on Cholera. It got me thinking of the power of images and the associations that come with the images. I realize too that when I think of the word Chinese, my mind, in a matter of nanoseconds, processes several hundred different images and associations, some of which I mentioend abvoe. But rest assured folks, these are just the tip of the iceberg. I have had 27 years to cultivate these mental associations after all.
12 comments:
Don't forget all Chinese people look alike and 95% of chinese people are unattractive. That percentage could be exaggerated. It might be closer to 97%. Chinese women have no curves. Chinese people are short. Chinese people have poor hygiene. The Chinese language is harsh to listen to. Chinese accents are very unattractive as opposed to other accents. Oh, and China is dirty. More to come!
At least I have positive associations with being Chinese, Jason. With thoughts like that, your self-esteem must be negative 10000000.
Ah, and there it is. The source of my misery.
how can you be happy if you cannot like who you are?
I agree with the last sentence in particular.
Yeah, Chinese people from HK are definitely not the same as the ones from mainland. I don't really think I have that much of a negative image of myself. In fact, I think I'm plenty self absorbed. I'm one hot stud and everyone knows it =P
I'll tell you one thing though. I do love the fact that I don't have any chest or back hair.
you are one hot stud. you are also judgemental and negative. thus, you're not yet a groovy stud.
I think after all these years of spending money on traveling, school, papers, cute professors to enrich our experiences, at least we know the pitfalls of such stereotypes. Stereotypes are half-truths, but some of these are just purely false(e.g. "Chinese people have poor hygiene"). I'd not use the word "chinese" (or japanese, french....) this such a way to reinforce the stereotype(e.g. bad bathroom, that's not chinese, that's a common problem in 3rd world countries. some places can't even afford having bathrooms at all), after we had spent years to learn those characters, semesters watching Zhang Yimou's films, and 30 page paper on a single character "Red" and all its symbolism in chinese lit, when we know even for Chinese in China today, "Chinese" means differently for ppl from different provinces and social economic background.
It does show the diferences in our upbringing, the environment that we grew up in and how time has changed.
Emily will let everyone know what my opinions on 3rd world countries are.
wendy, your gentle rebuke is well taken. i think it's been too long since my liberal arts education. i'm becoming more narrowminded as i age.
Liberal Arts != $$
you don't need to rag on liberal arts Jason just because you didn't get to have one. i think you would be a very different person today if you went through Columbia's core curriculum. a more open-minded person perhaps? not so quick to form opinions, hm?
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