I understood that saying Lunar New Year in the first place is preferable to Chinese New Year because the latter subsumes various cultures into China inappropriately (Vietnam and Korea, in particular). The PRC slappies would probably prefer everyone call it Chinese New Year.
East Asian Lunar New Year?
You are attempting to be inclusive. Obviously you hate China and are partially responsible for any crimes committed against all Asian-Americans.
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I understand why the PRC would like to call it “Chinese” new year but for people from south Asia who celebrate different lunar new years at different times of the year (not this one) - to call the “Chinese” new year lunar new year feels like erasure. As an Indian who lives in the US, I feel that the term “lunar new year” as used erases my culturally observed new year which is a full 2 new moons after this one.
Also @Mendoza’s implication that any opposition to calling it lunar new year in general must come from a locus of PRC propaganda - that’s not very nice. I don’t disagree that this would be the PRC party line here but is it fair to assume that there is only one reason/motivation behind why someone takes a particular position on an issue.
I have no problem with people saying “Chinese New Year” in any context, and in the context of the Chinese celebration of Lunar New year it makes perfect sense. “Spring Festival” is overwhelmingly how it’s referred to here but I’d have zero qualms referring to the holiday being celebrated here as “Chinese New Year”, just as it would be absurd to be bothered by “Tet” in Vietnam.
That’s what makes this nonsense so pathetic, and equivalent to being outraged over Starbucks using generic wintery holiday cups that don’t specifically mention Christmas. Perhaps an even closer analogy would be taking offense at wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and not specifying Christians.
Also, because of course:
https://twitter.com/MrSeanHaines/status/1617351586694447104?t=Ki_RirWzZL02hO1paoCGIg&s=19
Met a guy last night who was previously in the PLA. Told me that of course the only moral option is for Taiwan’s political future to be a question for the Taiwanese people alone.
Heartwarming
Soon after found out a fellow foreign teacher at the high school that’s hired me has a tattoo dedicated to his fondness for sleeping with asian women.
Not heartwarming
Also, how a foreigner describes their ability to speak Mandarin remains undefeated as telling you whether or not there is any reason to look on them as a serious person.
Kinda curious what you mean by this. How would an unserious foreigner describe their Mandarin in your opinion?
Is it a tramp stamp with the Chinese characters for “yellow” and “fever”?
The traits that lead someone to genuinely put in the work to speak Chinese at a high level (even on the foreigner scale) correlate with being humble and cognizant of how far away they are from anything approaching fluency etc.
In almost a full decade in China and Taiwan the people I’ve met who aren’t full-time Mandarin students and fit that description are in the single digits. (I don’t make the cut fwiw)
Also there’s the constant compliments from Chinese people if you successfully communicate something very simple and not convincing yourself that they actually think you’re Chinese is amazing. I genuinely think this contributes to the amazingly low bar white guys internalize for what being able to speak Mandarin means.
Serious people qualify they’re language skills regardless of their level, non-serious people think they’re showing off by successfully telling the taxi driver where to go.
IMO “My Chinese is ok” should at least mean your pronunciation ignoring tones is correct (at least for the vast majority of pinyin sounds) and your tones on relatively basic vocab is done right. None of these guys (let’s face it, this is 90% a male thing) would describe a Chinese person’s English as “ok” if they had a short list of vocab and phrases they can botch but would not be able to follow the simplest English conversation.
It’s a pet peeve and relates to the overall sub-mediocrity-mixed-with-excessive-confidence you find in the foreigner population here
I love the scene in The Staircase where the Chinese-American forensic scientist testifies and defends writing a complimentary note in a copy of a book by a forensic scientist he’s attempting to trash on the stand.
It still being inappropriate and a huge red flag for a teacher aside, I would respect this.
I was curious because I lived in China for 3 years and always described my Mandarin as terrible. I never put in the effort to take classes because I kept thinking I was going to leave as I was there year-to-year. So I said a few words and was just honest about its shittiness despite the number of positive comments I received.
The number of foreigners I ran into who spoke fluent Mandarin was in the single digits also. I only met one American who was fully integrated into the country (married to a local, kid, fluent Mandarin etc). However, he would complain that despite all that he was always seen as the foreigner because he was white. Eventually, he moved with his wife and kid to America and I lost track of him since.
Are tattoos still frowned upon in China? I had colleagues who had to cover theirs up in order to stay employed since they’re associated with seedier elements of society there.
I feel like I see tattoos all the time here. I’m sure they’re still way less common than in the US and I was asked in job interviews about “visible” tattoos but hard for me to believe there’s a big stigma.
I’m sure like everything in China (and the world) people’s mindsets are different in big cities vs elsewhere.
Of all the white foreigners I meet in China (or Taiwan) I tend to respect South Africans the most. They just seem the closest to people you’d meet back home.
Without touching on sensitive topics I’m not in a place to say anything smart about, their reasoning for coming to China is less likely to be seeking out the most privileged life possible or it being Sex Disneyland and more just “situation back home is difficult…go abroad”.
Just like in most languages, if you’re less than fluent the proper response to your language skills is to say I speak ‘a little’ in that language. Yidiandian. Easy. Although in China they will applaud you for pronouncing it correctly haha.
The classic blunder of thinking truth beats ridiculous propaganda.
This video is amazing. Definitely worth a watch.
Some interesting facts from Adam Tooze’s substack. (Received via free email sub on Feb 5.)
On the basis of census data, Rogoff and Yang estimate that 43 percent of all homes in China had been built since 2010, 68 percent since 2000 and 88 percent since 1990. If you put this in relation to total population it implies that in a single generation, China has built enough homes to house a billion people. The fabric of domestic life has been completely churned over in a matter of decades.
It is the demand for concrete and steel generated by this giant construction boom that has made Chinese growth so dirty. It is important to emphasize this point. As a driver of energy consumption, the rehousing of hundreds of millions of people, dwarfs China’s role as an exporter. It is important, of course, for Europeans and Americans to remind ourselves that in the course of globalization we have exported a substantial chunk of our pollution, much of it to China. But to imagine that it is our out-sourced emissions that drive China’s massive surge in energy consumption and CO2 emissions is to succumb to anachronistic Western-centric thinking. It is domestic forces that drive China’s growth.
…
The stakes are immensely high. The housing boom in China since the 1990s is probably the largest single driver of wealth accumulation the world has ever seen. Stopping it was an audacious act of policy. Managing the fall out is a severe test for Beijing. If it were to succeed, it would be an example of macro-prudential economic management on a truly world historic scale. If it fails, the “China dream” promised by Xi is in jeopardy.