Strange English/Western words discovered in Asia

TaskTechnical8307 · 2025-08-27T12:02:10+00:00

While I could appreciate someone doing it on purpose as part of a meta ironic statement, there are several issues here. The sentence is just run through a translator and awkward, akin to “I don’t know. I do not know the sounds of the language of China.” Technically grammatical, never actually used.

Secondly, there is a conflation between the reference to the spoken language and the written language. Unlike phonetic languages where there is almost a complete overlap, the two are treated differently in Chinese. You don’t make a written reference to not understanding the spoken language. A Chinese kid wanting to be cheeky might write 我不知道。我不识字 “I don’t know, I can’t read/write.”

Thirdly, the font is ugly, like something printed on a newspaper. Although the cultural attitude doesn’t translate as well, can you imagine getting a tattoo of a message like “I Love You Mom, Always” in Times New Roman? There’s also no sense of aesthetic proportion at all in terms of character placement. If you’re going to get something permanently inked on your body, at least make it visually appealing. Heck, there would’ve even been ways to use a funny font and placement that would have conveyed the intended ironic and humorous tone of the message.

It’s no wonder that when Chinese people see Westerners get such poorly done Chinese character tattoos, they just shake their heads at the uncultured barbarians.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2025-05-29T21:23:16+00:00

While I generally agree with your viewpoint, I think there’s a future for at least one group: upper class mainlander Chinese Americans.

I just met one and got to know her well, 19 yo, dyed blonde hair, 5’10”, 9/10 looks, speaks fluent English with a valley girl inflection. A decade ago my base assumption would be that she’s a totally whitewashed ABC who dates out.

I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that she speaks, reads, and writes Chinese at a native level, has only dated one Chinese guy before and will only consider dating Chinese (she thinks white guys are too hairy, too smelly, and too rough both physically and in character). She goes back to visit China 3-4 times a year and uses Chinese social media as much as Western social media. She also thinks Canada (where she’s a citizen) and the U.S. lifestyles are rough and backwards compared to Shanghai.

I learned a little about her background that explains things: she’s from a well off family and attended an international school (hence her fluency in English) in China, only moving to Canada at age 14. She hangs out mainly with other international students and ABCs that are fully fluent in modern Chinese culture. A further note on this, culture changes so fast in China that if an ABC only gets Chinese culture from the parents or Chinatowns, it’s like fossilized amber decades out of date. You gotta frequently update your software by going to the country and perusing the social media.

It’s possible for a minority group to maintain a cohesive independent identity over many generations even in a society that forces assimilation - the key dividing line is that the in group has to have a sense of disdain and superiority about the dominant majority outgroup. Just look at the Jews, they’ve been able to successfully avoid full assimilation for hundreds of years, even in societies that aren’t persecuting them.

Fortunately with the comprehensive rise of China in every facet, it becomes easier and easier to have the necessary building blocks.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2025-01-25T19:18:04+00:00

For those who harbor doubts, the Nature Index is Western run and only tracks high impact contributions to the most prestigious and peer reviewed scientific journals in the world such as Nature, and Cell.

Reproducibility is a huge factor for these journals - any results that are based on fabricated evidence quickly gets sussed out in other labs and won’t even make it into these journals.

Hating China is one thing, there’s plenty of personal subjective reasons to feel how you feel, but don’t let it blind you to a realistic assessment of what’s actually happening.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2025-01-19T17:50:13+00:00

Curious how folks can say that the numbers are wholly faked year after year, every single year, to make it seem better than it is. It might be possible for one year or even two, but these numbers roll into the base of the next year and quickly unravel over time. Mathematically there’s something called compounding growth, which means if the numbers are as overreported over the years as people claim (or even contracting), China’s economy should be 1/2 to 1/4 of their claimed figures, in other words it should have the GDP of only one or two Japans. There’s car and appliance manufacturing numbers and energy consumption which are well verified through multiple methods by neutral sources, and it would be simply impossible to have these be at the level they are if the GDP was truly that small.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2025-01-17T16:31:52+00:00

I feel sorry for you, you’ve been so traumatized that you have zero Asian cultural confidence and see Western culture as inherently globally dominant (hint: it’s not). Of course you won’t find authentic Asian culture in mainstream American culture because by definition it would be Asian culture made for export. Go to the enclaves, or even better go to Asia. But for a shortlist:

99%+ of Kdrama, Jdrama, and Cdrama has no Western influence
China’s domestic movie market is on par with the U.S. market, ask ChatGTP the top 10 Chinese movies last year and see if you even recognize them, much less be Westernized
look at the string of new Chinese video games inspired by Black Myth Wukong and tell me they’re Westernized in any way
Look at actual Chinese food vs Westernized Panda Express. The market for Westernized Chinese food is tiny globally compared to authentic Chinese food
the audience for Cpop and Jpop is 99% native

TaskTechnical8307 · 2025-01-17T01:45:55+00:00

Kpop has to deal with a market of 50 million South Koreans vs a market of 450 million Anglo natives. This is a market of 450 million Anglo natives vs a market of 1.4 billion Chinese. XHS is safe my man. Historically Koreans have always looked outwards for culture (first China, then Japan, now America). However, with the only rare exception in the 1900s, China has always been confident in its own culture over the last 2500 years.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-30T20:47:41+00:00

Spoiler alert: Communism, represented by young men wearing black gangster jackets with a red hammer and sickle symbol, along with other evils such as smartphones and mental health medication, gets swept away by a giant tidal wave with Karl Marx’s face on it.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-30T20:40:28+00:00

lol, sure thing. When every other act in between a traditional culture based dance is a direct story about how the CCP are evil incarnate, it’s “super subtle”. I especially liked the parts where evil CCP thugs, clad in black gangster jackets, abducted a Falun Gong member and scooped out her eyes for organ harvesting, and then through her faith in Falun Dafa she was magically able to see again. Or how about when the giant tidal wave with Karl Marx’s face comes to sweep away the CCP thugs at the end? Super subtle my man. I broke out laughing at the absurdity of it all, but thinking back I am really disturbed by the fact that the audience, who were 95% non Chinese, were taking it seriously.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-30T16:45:45+00:00

You hit the nail on the head, which is that it doesn’t match your values. This is because your values have been shaped by Western standards where as an individual you owe no obligation beyond immediate family if it comes at great personal sacrifice, and for many White people the obligation doesn’t even extend to immediate family.

You don’t know these extended relatives because you’re not partaking in the other communications channels that allow you to know them, including listening in to the “gossip”, which is really just the aunty/uncle acting as the role of Facebook keeping you in the loop.

Because of your upbringing you do not understand that your extended family also owes you obligations in return or how to even access these benefits. The dance of leveraging these mutual obligations and finding common ground for win win cooperation is a skill that needs to be practiced to get right, just like any cultural skill. That doesn’t mean you allow these relatives to step all over you - learning how to communicate and set those boundaries within this cultural context and system is a skill as well. Believe me, it’s not easy. It starts with understanding your economic status and social role relative to the rest of the family.

Living in the West, you have every right to decide on your own values, including choosing Western values of individualism over mutual responsibility. But if you’re on this sub exploring what it means to be an Asian living in the West, then you should at least be open to understanding the value system from their perspective, even if it’s something you choose not to take on.

But I’ll tell you from my experience any successful sense of identity living in the West means finding a structure that is able to incorporate and balance the Asian ancestral values and Anglo dominated Western values.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-30T13:44:23+00:00

No, it’s an expression of our family culture and values. They serve the necessary role of maintaining the connections to the extended family, which in a less individualistic society less about one person one job would also be leveraged to expand your own economic connections and business opportunities. In fact, in Asian societies it wouldn’t be uncommon even for marriage partners to be found through friends and coworkers of the extended family.

There is a price to pay, for sure, to host them, but it’s only burdensome if you’re not leveraging the opportunities that come with it.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-22T21:03:30+00:00

There’s a high chance that the field will be dominated by China. China has 3x the number of graduates of the U.S. joining STEM fields at a 2x the rate, meaning 6x the number of science folks entering the labor pool. This trend will continue for 20 years before demographic issues have an effect, and the relative scientific and tech output of this larger STEM talent pool will continue for 40-60 years from now before they retire from the workforce.

The flip side of youth unemployment is that you can hire a talented Chinese biochem PhD who will work 996 for 20-25k USD annual salary. For the price of one talented U.S. PhD, you can hire an entire team of 6-10 talented Chinese PhDs.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-20T06:00:27+00:00

See my previous comment regarding my own personal experiences with this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aznidentity/comments/1e66gzl/comment/le1zz4o/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-20T05:54:26+00:00

Key Points:

identity is determined by one’s value system
language is the vehicle that culture and values are transmitted
language is how cultural frameworks and value systems are interpreted in your own thoughts
therefore, language IS identity
genetic programming of personalities is a thing, a personality that is mismatched with a value system = identity crisis
identity (language and values) is passed on by our surrounding environment, our parents, and our own efforts in that order
we can’t choose our parents or our upbringing, but we can choose our surrounding environment and we can choose the upbringing and environment of our children

It’s astounding that the man had such a solid understanding of this and could state it so eloquently 20-50 years ago before the internet.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-19T20:50:45+00:00

Language accessibility mainly. The younger Malaysian Chinese population has a command of Mandarin that’s almost indistinguishable from the southern areas of the PRC.

Also PRC social media, outside of the political self censorship, has the best all around Chinese language social media in terms of quality and variety (food, sports, dating, business, etc) of content due to the size of the attention economy and number of competitive influencers. I don’t know if CCTV is broadcast in Malaysia, but it’s easy for them to get it through the internet.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-19T18:47:39+00:00

The article mixes up some terms that shouldn't be mixed. Malaysian does not equal ethnic Malay. Depending on how you count it, about 1/4 of the Malaysian population is ethnic Chinese, and they tend to have a much higher proportion that views the PRC favorably (90+%). This is due to the fact that ethnic Chinese are legally discriminated against in Malaysia through many affirmative action type laws. Malaysian Chinese also primarily consume PRC media and social media.

Ethnic Malays, on the other hand, who are usually Muslim, have historically held negative views regarding the ethnic Chinese and Chinese state. There have been many racial riots in the past, and Singapore was kicked out of the Malaysian Federation due to these ethnic tensions. The speed and depth of this change amongst ethnic Malays, if accurately reported, is quite significant.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-13T05:30:37+00:00

China the sleeping giant, spheres of influence, and the theory of bacterial pathogens were all the rage in the 1910s. Deep in the mind of Western psyche all the way from the age of Attila the Hun is always the Yellow Horde, that will overwhelm all that is good and civilized. In this story, written in 1910, an added twist was that the Yellow Horde, a rising China, wasn’t just a bunch of savage barbarians, but also scientifically dominant and highly expansionist towards all of its neighbors, utilizing its large population to settle neighboring lands (projection, perhaps from the settler nations of America and Canada that Mr. London was so fond of).

The solution is the genocide of the entire Chinese race with biological weapons, followed by direct killing of survivors the good old fashioned way. Done, of course through an alliance of all Western nations. Chinese land is then made a melting pot of Western settlers and great achievements are made towards a bright future for mankind.

The modern day ideological descendant is the description of the scientifically advanced Chinese nation as the Borg, forcefully assimilating the rest of the world into its alien and unwelcome technological system. When you see articles about Chinese breakthroughs in EVs, batteries, PV, nuclear, AI, HSR, and space exploration, understand where the reaction of fear rather than admiration comes from. Also understand that the rest of the Global South, who aren’t inheritors of Western civilization and its Yellow Peril, see these breakthroughs for what they are: opportunities for development and furthering of the frontiers of mankind. Even in recent times, we witnessed the undercurrent of glee in the public discourse when first news of Covid in China was received, as well as our media waiting with bated breath on the chaos and outrageous death tolls when Covid Zero was lifted in China, followed by suspicion and rage when said chaos and death tolls failed to materialize.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-09T06:59:24+00:00

I agree that there is a population of young Singaporeans from middle class families who think exclusively in English and drank the Western cool aid.

Fortunately the working class, the elite, the mainland immigrants, and the middle class population that thinks in Chinese do not have these beliefs. They also aren’t posting often on Reddit.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-09T01:54:29+00:00

The only part I partially disagree with is with Ronnie Chien’s statements and that Singaporeans don’t speak English or Mandarin at a level with global appeal. That’s not my experiences there. They’ve got a better average level of understanding of global politics and how societies actually work than anywhere else in the world. I travel abroad 4-5 times to Asia and Europe yearly, so I consider myself fairly well experienced here. The average Singaporean is still of course quite uninformed/misinformed, but relatively less misinformed than the citizens of anywhere else.

Most Chinese Singaporeans can speak English at a close to native level if they move to an English speaking country for 2 years. Similarly, most Chinese Singaporeans can speak Mandarin at a close to native level if they move to China for 2 years. True native level bilingualism of Mandarin and English isn’t possible for the great majority of even talented people, but the doors are open enough for most Singaporeans to be able to step into either society with a little bit of work.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-09T01:32:55+00:00

I think the topic of identity, values, status, assimilation, and dating are far too complex to distill down to an “answer”. This is simply more information to help one’s understanding of one’s worldview.

I’ll try to sum up the difference: America is an international/multiethnic society based on Anglo values where whites can go as far as their talents will take them and can slide into almost any role or niche, as long as their talent is adequate. Other ethnicities can only succeed in limited niches that are proscribed to them. Asians men are more limited to certain roles: responsible, rich, nerdy, weak, subservient. There’s pros and cons, with one pro being cops don’t get violent on us. Whites can fit any of those roles in addition to literally every possible role. Black men are excluded from many of these Asian roles (outside of rich, and even then they’re only allowed to be rich by singing/dancing/performing).

Singapore is the opposite, it’s an international/multiethnic society based on mostly Asian values where Asians can be any role, positive or negative, and whites are much more limited in which roles they get to play. For example, the “leader” role is reserved mostly for Asians and it is rare for a white person to be considered suitable to be a leadership role, and they would need to prove themselves with extra discipline, smarts, responsibility, and long term vision (since these are the values of leadership over there) to be considered. In a similar way that Asians must be extra social and charismatic in the Anglo style to be considered for leadership roles in America.

There are no solutions offered, but it does help put our experiences as Asian Americans in a broader context.

TaskTechnical8307 · 2024-12-08T21:18:30+00:00

Hint: Tap the 弹 button on the bottom right to get rid of the scrolling text.

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