I attended the annual underclassmen award ceremony last night, and I guess I’m happy to say I got the Sophomore History Award. I was surprised considering the falling out I had with my history teacher over the whole project grade deduction conflict. The award was a book named The Chinese: An Insider’s Look at the Issues which Affect and Shape China Today by an American journalist in China, Jasper Becker. I read about 5 chapters last night, since I couldn’t sleep and was really annoyed by the book. First, it has a pretentious title by calling itself “an insider’s look”, when it’s really written by a Western journalist who have mostly only interviewed and experienced the life of the coastal cities of China. For full disclosure, I am Chinese and was born and raised until the age of 8 when I immigrated to America with my family. He exaggerates certain problems facing China and makes a lot of comparisons to the West. While in certain fields, the West does exceed China in, that doesn’t mean it’s the perfect model. America and Europe have their own problems and in no way are they really that much worse than those facing China. They’re just different. China has had stunning growth in recent years and has saved the lives of millions from starvation with the implementation of better agriculture techniques. While there is a class divide present in China, that doesn’t mean a democracy will solve it. In the US, CEOs are paid extraordinarily higher than the average worker. Also, Chinese history and culture is really misinterpreted. He seems to mock throughout the book the cyclical fashion that Chinese history has run and imposes a bias of the superiority of Western values on the Chinese culture. While these criticisms may seem vague, it’s only because my time to write is limited. This book is targeted towards Americans who still hold the Orient in mystery, but for someone like me who knows first hand through living in China and the struggles of the majority of my relatives there, this book seems biased and false.
On a lighter note, I was on Navasse, my nation state today and I got this issue (note the bold):
Click on picture for a better, zoomed in viewYeah my national motto is: “We tried, but then we failed. So now we try to fail.” It is still funny that it is the rallying cry of a fascist though.
Ideas for This Life and (Maybe the Next) 