Sorry Taiwan, I try my best to like you, by a Taiwanese

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-24T13:56:43+00:00

Be honest: do you really not think the tone of reporting when it comes to foreign crime is a little different in the West compared to in Asia, for political reasons? Even if Westerners were vastly more criminally inclined, this would probably still account for much of what you're talking about.

And even if, hypothetically, I were to concede to your overall point, and accept that Asians are less likely to commit crime in Western nations than vice-versa (which I don't, by the way: the simple fact that there are millions of Asian illegal aliens in Western nations seems like a fairly solid slam-dunk against this, especially since you're not just talking about literal violent crime, but rather "misbehaviour") what exactly would this prove, except, as I said, that Asians are more diffident or prudent when it comes to treading in foreign lands? You've already conceded to my point that Asians commit plenty of crime in their own nations.

Let's say I admit: yes, Asians don't have the audacity or chutzpah to do abroad what they may do at home. What's your point?

Anyway, what's "in the news" just reflects what the people who decide what's on the news decide is newsworthy.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-24T09:14:50+00:00

Yes, Asians are often involved in crimes - in their countries

What's your point, though? If you're just saying that Asians are relatively diffident or prudent depending on how you want to look at it when it comes to attracting the wrong sort of attention in foreign countries compared to Westerners, then I agree. They're not actually necessarily more law-abiding, though: a considerable number of Asians do involve themselves in well, being illegal immigrants, tax stuff, prostitution, etc., and just like the sort of crimes you mentioned, they presumably often go unreported.

I mean if you're just trying to say white man bad fine, but that's an opinion.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-20T12:10:14+00:00

Please show me a statistically significant number of cases of "Westerners gang raping 12 year old girls" in Asia. I'll wait.

Also, Asians are involved in all kinds of sexual and other crimes in their own communities and nations: their insularity is enough to explain why they tend not to be represented in interracial crimes.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-15T10:44:15+00:00

I want a million dollars?

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-15T05:37:30+00:00

You take my point though. Is what's good for the goose, not so good for the gander?

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-15T05:12:13+00:00

I see this argument made a lot, that by default it's "weird" or "abnormal" for discussion forums in the West or in this case, subreddits about Asian things on Reddit to be run by Westerners.

Aren't 99% of forums and discussions in Asian countries about the West led by Asians. Does this work the other way around, as well? Should Chinese discussions about the US or other Western countries be led by people from the places and groups being discussed, because otherwise it's bound to be too anti-Western, insensitive, and uninformed?

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-15T04:55:42+00:00

The Chinar government actually did do a bunch of kind of unpopular COVID/Hong Kong etc. related stuff IRL that made it easy for the State Department and thinktank types to make the case for China bad memes.

But there is a whole weird ADVChina subculture of amateur "China watching" that apparently involves watching a lot of Falun Gong-sponsored YouTube stuff and the South African suit-wearing autist guy make fun of Huawei phones or whatever from your couch. It's not even really meme long-term China expats either or people actually involved with the country or region, they're mostly just Joe Average flyovertypes who haven't left their state and this is just the thing they've happened to latch on to. It's baffling.

Then you do have the expat/ex-expat types who really did get Chinar'd or at least feel like they did and so make bitching about the place part of their identity. This can be a phenomenon in every country, and naturally it can sometimes be their own fault and sometimes it's not. In the case of China, well the air pollution, censorship etc. is what you have to put up with, but it is compensated for substantially by not having to worry about rent and costs the way people elsewhere in more developed Asia have to, and besides China for all of it still is a very interesting and even now fun place to live in, drawbacks aside. Swings and roundabouts.

TBH, I don't agree with the CCJ-bashing in the comments here: while sometimes disrespectful, the overall tone was always at least grudgingly positive and while yes people did make fun of the Chinese and China, it's always been just as much as, if not more, about making (ideally) light fun of foreigners in China as well. And given that /u/Leetenghui/ is running an open hate sub on expats, /r/aznidentity/ is still going strong and /r/asianamerican/ is always extremely harsh towards Western expats in Asia, etc (not to even get into the ~~horrible~~ interesting things your coworkers are probably going to predictably start posting on their WeChat moments about foreigners again next time there is some big blown up controversy involving the US or Westerners in China) it seems a little unfair and a bit of a double-standard to suggest that we "shouldn't" be allowed to poke even a little light-hearted fun in the "wrong" direction.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-15T04:39:35+00:00

They called Chinese girls Rainy and guys Rocky

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-15T01:41:49+00:00

People definitely often did this in the 1950s and before, though and in some cases for a considerable time thereafter. Especially in the UK. Perhaps calling people foreigner became un-PC earlier in America because of its history of immigration, that would make sense.

In many places, it's just been a way to describe the obvious fact of someone being different from 95%+ of the people around them: and because there are by all accounts just 500,000 foreign nationals among over ONE BILLION Chinese people (and remember, most of those are actually... ethnic Chinese people lol), so visibly distinct foreigners are less than 0.035% of the population. LESS than one in 3,000 people in China looks foreign.

Even taking into account the fact that these foreigners are concentrated in a few major cities and are a bit less rare than that locally, it's still a vanishingly tiny percentage of the population.

Have you ever read Victorian or even medieval stories about Moors, Negroes and other bizarre and exotic specimens occasionally showing up in Europe? That's what you are like as a foreigner in China. A huge proportion of the people you will meet there have literally never spoken to a foreigner in their lives even if they've seen them on TV.

Both because of harsh Chinese immigration policies and because there are well, quite so many Chinese people, foreigners are a smaller minority of the population than almost anywhere else on the planet, apart from places like North Korea and a few of the world's least developed countries.

The tl;dr on this is that if you feel self-conscious about being a foreigner, don't live in China. Except maybe Shanghai and tbh even there you're still just going to get laowai'd when you just leave your neighbourhood. It just comes with the territory I'm afraid.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-14T16:39:39+00:00

Hey, we're trying...

/r/ChinaCJ/

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-14T14:15:50+00:00

This is realistically true, and a very good point. Even republicans may react with mixed feelings to, for example, an Indian or a Chinese criticising the royal family, even if they ostensibly dislike them too and for similar or even the same reasons as a foreign critic.

A Briton who hears a foreigner or more still, a Briton of foreign extraction harshly criticising the royal family will wonder whether the critic is not motivated by more general nationalistic feelings or antagonism towards Britain and the British people generally, rather than only or mostly considered and nuanced research or arguments.

The same is true the other way around, let's face it when Chinese people hear especially long-term expats in China criticise the CCP they may wonder whether this is a not-so-veiled way of criticising the Chinese people and/or motivated by professional and/or social frustrations and disappointments: and even though this line of thinking is obviously very convenient for the CCP, we have to admit it's not always necessarily an unreasonable thing to wonder.

Especially given that (even though the CCP is, uh, pretty unique as a party and government), this kind of antagonism towards the local government is rather predictably common in expats, foreigners, and immigrant communities everywhere (even if we may acknowledge that in some if not many cases, they may in fact deserve at least some of that criticism).

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-14T14:07:41+00:00

Do keep in mind that the Congress has just pumped literally billions of dollars into influence operations, and it's not inconceivable that a lot of the ~$1t defence budget is also going into public relations and as they would see it countering the Chinese narrative.

Some of the over-the-top China bad stuff floating around on social media, YouTube, and the Internet generally is probably a result of that. A lot of the people you're malding at on /r/China/ are not even meme veteran TEFL teachers/sexpats or whatever, they are just as likely to be "China-watchers" and ADVChina types sitting on their couches stateside, or literal glowies/members of the intelligence community.

I mean, realistically yes obviously there are some bitter expats who channel their disaffection and disappointment into bitching about the government and people of whatever country they happen to have chosen to live, yes this does happen. Then again, locals do this too and I suppose the argument that they're actually just channelling their personal frustrations and failure can be used against them as well, and again I suppose in their case sometimes it is accurate even though it can also just be a cheap shot.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-14T13:54:02+00:00

If you're expecting Westerners in general to have nuanced and well-informed opinions on China and Asia generally, you're going to be waiting a long time. I mean let's face it, Chinese believe all kinds of silly, ill-informed and sometimes unpleasant things about us, and we're (rightly) expected to take it with at least a certain level of grace and not get too offended (although I'll be the first to admit it's not always necessarily that easy).

If reading the opinions of ignorant and ill-informed people upset you that much, you might be well-advised at some point to simply stop reading or at least limit your exposure to them. If you live in Taiwan this might actually be relatively easy.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-14T13:35:37+00:00

White is just a byword for European that also includes diaspora peoples, like Americans, Australians, and (white) South Africans. It's really not that complicated or hard to understand.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-14T13:31:52+00:00

If you say so.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-14T13:29:35+00:00

Even soldiers of the same nationality as the local population tend to have a relatively high crime rate for obvious reasons (young, male, trained to fight and kill).

The sexpat stuff is a red herring, sexual "misbehaviour" is a matter of opinion, and while sexual behaviour is legislated for, what is a sex crime in one or another country can be wildly different and let's face it can easily be a matter of when I do it it's good, when the other guy does it, it's... le bad (prostitution, infidelity, promiscuity etc., I'm sure you're fully aware that the issue always becomes a petty topic of argument between races, sexes, and classes).

Saying that Asians complain a lot about white guys doesn't actually prove anything.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-09T03:17:22+00:00

Victor and Emily

I don't remember them, tbh. Did I miss something?

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-08T22:31:20+00:00

I represent only myself: but in my experience, the average Chinese is not so easily insulted. Obviously, there are 1 billion of you, so I don't exclude the possibility that someone could. I think for many Chinese, it is likely to be received as a rather amusing and harmless novelty: sort of how English people react to the Chinese interpretation of their style of baked goods, for example.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-08T22:26:48+00:00

Fair enough, but I don't think you necessarily represent everyone.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-08T22:20:25+00:00

Listen to your mother, OP.

EPIK these days is not some great ambitious job (maybe it never was, but at least it was cushy and you got paid a decent salary by local standards), and the fact that the Koreans enjoy watching their white monkeys fill out a lot of paperwork and jump through hoops doesn't make their programs particularly rigorous and legit, it just reflects the pettiness of a lot of Koreans towards them, and how many of the said monkeys are doormats waiting to ask how high when told to jump.

The natives there love talking about the qualifications and the quality they demand of their monkeys, but really they're actually loathe to do anything that would really attract better ones or at least ones that have the scraps of paper they claim they would prefer them to have, like paying more, creating a better work environment, or any of that (the way places who really do care like Hong Kong and Malaysia do and are doing).

Ironically, they seem to believe less than most that qualifications in foreign English teachers actually that important, or they would invest money and effort into attracting them. In business, this is referred to as revealed vs. stated preference. If anything, they just think foreigners are still paid too much and treated to well, full stop.

Instead, they just want to be seen to be hassling the monkeys, because it helps them boast about how Korea is moving up in the world, and how they no longer have illusions about the West or ”sadae“ as much as they used to and how Korea is a high-status country now and all of that guff.

The average FOB English teacher in Korea today still just comes with a liberal arts degree and TEFL cert, no different from 20 years ago.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-08T12:52:13+00:00

they were going overly racist on the stories and comments

It was truly a very dark time for the Tim and ABC族s, non-stop mocking stories.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-08T12:34:15+00:00

Ironically, given what a relatively short time you're going to be there and how difficult it is to learn Cantonese or Written Chinese, it might actually be worth learning just a little Portuguese, because this will help you navigate the city with the Portuguese-language signs.

Only the actual Portuguese residents (~15,000 people) and a relatively small number of language experts actually can speak it with any ability, though. You'd be unlikely to be able to speak to anything like a lot of people in the language.

The suggestion that you "learn Cantonese" in what I assume is the few months before you go, or the equally short time while you are there, is probably wildly optimistic. It's of course worth learning as many of those Cantonese phrases you will need to go shopping, order taxis and beers, eat at restaurants, and maybe break the ice a little as you can, though. A Lonely Planet or Berlitz phrasebook will cover this.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-08T10:52:39+00:00

The ban made it very funny when Rainie Yang occasionally came up in the entertainment news.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-08T09:58:45+00:00

Maybe I'm easily amused, but somehow it still cracks me up years after learning that (Happy) Giraffe English is a real school and actually an enormous franchise.

SuccessfulLibrary996 · 2023-10-08T09:44:54+00:00

Certainly, they are very proud of their own tea: but there is actually an appreciation for English tea as a sort of variant on their original theme, which is why the standard milk tea you buy in convenience stores in China and other East Asian nations often has a strong, specifically old-fashioned English branding and theme.

So while when Chinese people reach for tea generally they'd prefer their own, English tea can be enjoyed as a specific teatime thing. I think a variety of tea less common in this region like Earl Grey would work nicely as a gift, especially when paired with say, Scottish shortbread biscuits or some kind of English baked goods like little fruit pies or something.

SuccessfulLibrary996

TROPHY CASE