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french lies posted:Seriously, don't continue this derail. Either take it to another thread or stop. The people in the villages would elect the first Chinese Santorum who promised to blow up Japan. Just talk to some of them and see. Remember how they got riotous over the mere shadow of an implication of a slight by Japan regarding the Fishing islands? Also, it's useful to remember just how power is distributed commercially and in the government in China (and always has been): who you know. It doesn't matter what all those org charts in the OP say, or what the contract says, or even who you are or where you came from. If you know the right person and are buddy-buddy with them, the entire world will bend to your desires. This the full blossoming of a problem that is just beginning to bud with such horrible results in the U.S. (rich people networks, lobbyists, etc.) and it undermines any attempt at creating the social institutions that democracy would need. Besides the problem of the rural villagers being fickle nationalists, the cities are just personal power networks which would be marshaled into voting machines for the person with the most money and connections. Democracy is not impossible in China, but it is impossible to implement a western style democracy at the current time without very unstable results. Who knows who would claw to power? Probably someone not as friendly to the west, Japan, (or even the Chinese people), and certainly not anyone as cool headed as the current leadership. Barto fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Feb 22, 2012 |
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Feb 22, 2012 03:59
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Electro-Boogie Jack posted:Because suzhi arguments are racist nonsense. If you want to talk about different conceptions of the self in relation to society or how 'western' democracy would work in China, then talk about that! Suzhi sounds a lot like American Civil War era slavery advocates saying that 'negroes are naturally developed for the position of slave, and are unable to hold any higher station in life.' It isn't being used as an opening to discussions of what Chinese democracy would look like, but rather as a rejection of the idea that Chinese are capable anything other than paternal, authoritarian government- an idea that has already been well refuted and shouldn't need consideration to begin with. Don't attack something for what it isn't. Racism is about race; the suzhi arguments are about the state of social institutions in China and the possibility for them to develop in rural vs. urban areas. The reason cities have grown is because of the huge number of rural workers who went and settled there (by which I mean they now have a hukou), and no one is suggesting that their children are not now better citizens for democracy than the ones in rural areas BECAUSE OF THEIR RACE. It's a question of background, social norms, and economic factors Additionally, the suzhi arguments are almost always made by and coming from Chinese intellectuals, and usually not pro-western Chinese intellectuals. And let's not even ignore the fact that rural areas are very pro-central government anti-local government- so even they would not necessarily disagree with many of the tenets of the suzhi arguments albeit put in politer terms. I think you need to stop using western ideas to understand a Chinese argument made in China about Chinese people that we are all viewing as outsiders- not as participants.
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Feb 22, 2012 07:29
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Electro-Boogie Jack posted:None of these factors are unique to China. The particular combination of them might be, but every country on earth is different, so why is it that we hear suzhi in relation to China? Over time suzhi arguments get vaguer and vaguer until eventually it's just 'yeah, Chinese people, they just can't deal.' I'd call that racism, but like Cream_Filling said, it's pretty undeniably classism. Is China the only country on earth with some uneducated people in the countryside? Is China the only country with some people that act like assholes? No? Then lets drop suzhi and actually discuss whatever it is people want to use suzhi as a proxy for. Look, man, I addressed all your points in my post. You can't just snip one sentence and repeat what you already said. Of course it's a classist argument, it's one class of people (city dwellers) vs. another (rural inhabitants): that is by definition a question of class. But they are the SAME people. As soon as a rural person is urbanized they stand on the other side of the argument and are accepted there: how could that even possibly be racism? Is it some kind of hosed up white guilt thing you're injecting into this because we're talking about this in English? This has nothing to do with colonialism, imperialism, or white people- don't think you're the center of the world. No one is saying governmental reactions to the issue are good, but saying that the problem is imaginary racism is cuckooland bleating. The problem exists, it's a problem involving two groups of Chinese people (of not different races), and pretending "these obstacles to democracy are just racist excuses" (???) is not only delusional, it is wrong. Here is how you could frame your argument reasonably: "The Chinese government argues that the problem of suzhi makes it impossible to implement democracy in China currently; additionally, many Chinese intellectuals concur. I do not agree because it would be possible to use policies A, B, and C to overcome obstacles D, E, and F." Now wouldn't that be a lovely post? Also, this is probably not something most westerners would be cognizant of, however in Chinese argumentation/philosophy there are several sets of key words (as opposed to western styles of philosophical discourse in which new words are created for new concepts) and these key words will not change, instead they will be reinterpreted as new arguments evolve; one could think of it as emptying and refilling of words, allowing the historically minded Chinese to hearken back to older ideas and concepts even as they move forward with an idea. This is quite evident throughout Chinese discourse. The point is, "su" is exactly one of those words. Some people have been translating it as "human quality", but this doesn't really appreciate or address the history and baggage of the word or the fact it is flexible. Each person making their individual argument will imbue this sort of word with their own viewpoint- so it's rather pointless to address the entire concept as a whole, because the word is a sum of arguments and viewpoints, and just how we are to discuss it depends on whose utterance of it we are talking about. This might be a difficult conversation to have here- but what I want to point out is that there's a very real danger of super-simplification of the idea and the arguments surrounding it to the point that its real position in Chinese discourse is misunderstood. My personal feeling regarding this word is that in a general sense, it is not an immutable state, but rather a measure of how well one acts- something that by definition can be improved- and is not discriminatory but rather a sort of measurement. Of course, this definition will change and shift depending on its use. I just want to point out that Chinese really doesn't have the sort of politically correct language or loaded terms that English does, at least not in the same way or the way some here seem to suggest it does. But in this case, what the CCP means by it is "Those yokels can't even read the newspaper, why should we let them decide who gets to run the economy?" (they have a point) Edit: I also figured I should add something here. If you care about the people in China in any genuine way (not just as a rhetorical exercise for democracy or whatnot), then there are many, many problems that need to be adequately resolved before democracy could be approached- indeed, most Chinese people don't care about democracy as much as they do about these much more immediate problems that stand in the way of it: for instance, the hukou problem, dialect heritage & education issues, housing prices, job stability, pollution, judicial reform, local government corruption (most people are extremely OK with the central government) etc. As to whether the best governmental system to quickly overcome these issues is the current one, a democratic one, a Turkish system, or something else, is an open question. The answer to that question requires a careful evaluation of policies and options and how to achieve each goal, as well as evaluating what the CCP has done and whether similar goals could have been achieved under a similar system. Considering that similar problems exist in the west currently (and to a much more severe extent during the same economic stage that China is currently in), I believe that this question does not have a foregone conclusion and that many of the issues which concern Chinese people the most might benefit more from different systems of government in each specific case, thus requiring a balanced and objective approach to the entire range of issues in our discussion. Barto fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Feb 22, 2012 |
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Feb 22, 2012 18:23
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hitension posted:At risk of repeating the argument you had~ Take a popular show in China right now, 北京爱情故事. Now take all the subtitles for the show (Chinese shows always have subtitles) and translate it into pinyin How much of it is still legible to an average Chinese person? Probably not as much as you'd think- the characters are pretty important. If you get rid of them, humor, literature, colloquialisms, etc. will all have to be destroyed and reinvented: it basically amounts to linguistic genocide. It would change the language in huge ways totally apart from cultural issues. Additionally, people with different dialects can all enjoy Chinese television and media now via subtitles, but if you don't have the characters, language issues will immediately and severely come to the fore.
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Feb 23, 2012 15:54
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french lies posted:Right. Here's where I play devil's advocate and ask you: which are these colloquialisms, specifically, that would not get through in pinyin subtitles? And are these slight subtleties really worth suppressing the literacy of the poor? Does a dirt-poor peasant who can barely read signs really care about whatever word games are used in bourgeois popular culture? If there's enough money for nine years of education, then there's enough money for them to learn Chinese characters. Furthermore, they all learn pinyin by the first grade, if they need to write something, they can use pinyin and everyone will be able to read it (insofar as pinyin is readable by itself). Of course, they can't read, but if you're a sustenance farmer and that's the reason you don't have time to go to school- then it won't be helpful to you if the entire world is in pinyin because you still wouldn't have had time to learn the words. Characters are essential, you would have to destroy so much for so little a return, that no one takes the idea seriously in China- in fact they're considering moving back to traditional characters gradually. But if you want a specific example, as of a few hours ago I have a good example for you. Today I participated in a linguistic study by the Chinese Second Language department at Taiwan Normal University, the test is given to both foreigners and native speakers asking them to listen to sentences and repeat them. The tester was chatting with me afterwards, and mentioned that my score was exactly the same as a native speaker- and that I had made the same mistake. What was the mistake that both myself and native Chinese speakers tend to make? Names. We chatted about it for a bit, and it's basically that names in Chinese are not easy to hear and then repeat accurately unless you know or see the characters, so during the test this portion would always produce a bunch of funny results as people stumbled to repeat names (native speakers!). I've seen this a bunch in real life too- when people introduce themselves, if they don't specify what characters, embarrassing mistakes from others often result (unless the name is common like 小王，雅婷，辛夷，or something like that). Names, man, if take away the characters that's not some middle class issue- that's a huge problem. And there are dozens more just like it. I've lived in Taiwan/China for about six years now, and I wrote my master's thesis, all 100,000 words of it, in Chinese. That poo poo ain't happening in pinyin. Another point is, the 1.3 billion people in China are not all speakers of Mandarin. For the ones that are picking up the characters is not as difficult because it is their language- for the others it is a problem. However the issues of dialects vs. languages is not the same as that of characters vs. a roman alphabet. It isn't fair to ask hundreds of millions of people to give up their language and change the way they communicate for the dubious benefit of others who aren't even really speakers of the same language. The only real issue here is getting enough funding to rural areas for 9 years of education. Once that happens, literacy will be widespread and the problem will be moot. Destroying the characters will probably hinder that more than it would help. Barto fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Feb 23, 2012 |
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Feb 23, 2012 16:27
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french lies posted:How do you know, have you tried? I've read longer texts in pinyin and it was completely understandable to me, even when broaching more complex and academic subjects. And the problem of naming could be solved quite easily by annotating with characters, something akin to what's done in Korean. Characters would not be abolished completely, but relegated to the situations where they are necessary. Basically, I think you're hugely exaggerating the difficulties of transitioning to a full pinyin system. The problem with names is a hearing issue. But even if you annotate it with pinyin, how can you sort out the names of 1.3 billion people with just pinyin? It's difficult now even with characters. How about scientific texts? Specifically chemistry and physics. Chemical elements are suddenly a lot more difficult to deal with... Also, I am quite certain -quite certain- it's impossible to write an academic Chinese thesis/journal article as they are written now in pinyin. It would be such a huge mess, I don't even dare to think about it. I consume a lot of media in Chinese, I read a book or two a week and watch all the popular shows. They just really wouldn't work without characters- and the show I just mentioned is something that even people in the sticks love watching (and many can watch despite dialectical differences because of the characters!). I guess it's theoretically possible to get rid of characters, but I can't see any real advantage to it. And why is it always western people who suggest this? I mean...I know characters used to be a big deal for me way back when I started studying, but now they're just as natural as anything and I don't even notice them- I just use them. I think foreigners blow it out of proportion because of their own learning difficulties. I asked my friend (currently doing Chinese language learning research) if it would be a problem for them if there were no characters, this is their local take on it in any case: Would it be a problem?: 會 會非常不方便XD 就無法分彆同音字 尤其在聊MSN的時候 再加上 漢拼無法展現中文的詞 例如我的名字 lilirong xihuan chi pingguo 就有可能是李力融洗貛吃蘋果 Would it change how people write?: 嗯會壓 這樣只能寫橫的 不能寫直的 也會影響文學吧 還有我們的春聯也是直的 Is it a bad idea?: 是阿 會增加辨識困難 還有 有的時候漢拼連在一起 反而難分 huanjing 你猜我要說什麼 Me: 环境? 湖安靜! Summary: Yeah, it's a problem. Yes, it would change how people write. Is it a good idea? They don't think so. Barto fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Feb 23, 2012 |
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Feb 23, 2012 17:09
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Cefte posted:I can't help but bring to mind Uncleftish Beholding... Yeah, that's about what I think would happen too. The language as it is now would have to change a lot.
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Feb 23, 2012 17:28
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french lies posted:You know, there's a proverb one could use to answer that question. I guess it sounds like bragging, but if your Chinese is good enough you will understand why you can't get rid of them; that's why Chinese people won't do it. Just today I went to the trouble of getting opinions about it from two researchers in Chinese Second Language Studies for you and they agree too. Maybe you can go read more academic papers about it? Anyway, I don't think you got my point. Maybe you can reread it (or not), I can only offer my own opinion and those of the experts I know. So I will leave it at that. I feel my point has already been made substantially. Barto fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Feb 23, 2012 |
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Feb 23, 2012 18:42
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whatever7 posted:Probably nothing major. Chinese navy is inferior right now. So the longer it waits, the better it is for China. But you can not avoid confrontation too much to be seen as coward from the internal pressure. Probably send a few ships over to circle it a few time to state the Chinese claim and maybe even touch the blumpers of the Japanese ships. Which forum do you hang out at? I'm shopping for some Chinese-flavored time wasting.
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Sep 13, 2012 16:17
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VideoTapir posted:Japan isn't one person. Actually all the nazi officials from WWII slipt back into power quite easily after the war- that led to a huge crisis of conscience for Germany's young people in the 60's/70's didn't it? (And still the ex-nazis remained)
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Sep 19, 2012 02:45
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Daduzi posted:Do you mean the equivalent Chinese notion or a translation of the Western mediaeval concept? For the equivalent Chinese idea, m (ren2, "benevolence") is probably the closest, though it's really closer to paternalism in exact meaning (since it applied to families as well as the state). For the translation, I have no idea unfortunately. Ren or Ren'ai isn't the equivalent Chinese idea. It definitely has changing implications moving on from the Spring and Autumn period, especially starting in the Tang-Song eras, but it's not about obligation except in the general sense to do good. Paternalism is 父愛主義 (fu4ai4zhu3yi4) which is much more related to filial piety than Ren'ai. Noblesse oblige is a very specific ethical/legal construct that did and could not exist in ancient China. All power flowed from the emperor to those below him. The emperor is spiritually and physically connected to nature and Heaven which has given him power at the head of the natural order. There is no obligation or duty, there is only a fulfillment of what is correct. I would suggest di4wei4gao1 ze2ren4zhong4 (地位高则责任重) as a possible translation.
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Dec 16, 2012 03:57
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Nighteyedie posted:I've never really studied Chinese History, but isn't there the "Mandate of Heaven" where rulers are supposed to earn the heaven's favor by actually being good rulers? Being the ruler means having the Mandate of Heaven, once a dynasty is overthrown it has lost the mandate. This is based on the idea of "all things" (wan4wu4) having an order or system. If you follow the system and your place in it, everything is fine; if you don't respect this order, you will have problems (no matter whom you are). The Chinese emperor was rarely a true despot, depending on the dynasty, good rulership was the point of the emperor's existence. This entire transfer of dynasties is based on the cycle of the 5 elements (water, earth, fire, etc.) and each new dynasty usually tries to place itself in relation to the previous one as part of a cycle, i.e. if Qin was water, then Han was earth, etc.
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Dec 16, 2012 04:34
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Spiderfist Island posted:My Chinese Political Art History teacher from last semester argued that the Mandate (which apparently could also be translated as "contract," and was in the 1700s when translating it into English) was actually a form of popular sovereignty theory at periods in China when it wasn't feudalistic and hierarchical (such as in the Tang). The contract translation is wrong. 命 (ming4) has six common meanings in classical texts. (as a noun) an order such as in Zuozhuan: 左傳˙成公十三年：「寡人帥以聽命...」 Zuozhuan, the 13th Year of Duke Cheng: "Our men heed the ~~command~~." Fate ordained by heaven: 論語˙顏淵：「死生有命，富貴在天。」 The Analects, the Yanyuan Chapter: Life and Death are ~~fated~~, wealth and fortune are at/come from Heaven. an existence/life 文選˙李密˙陳情表：「人命危淺，朝不慮夕。」 Literary Selections, Li Mi, Thoughts Presented to the Emperor "Human ~~life~~ is short and brutish, in the morning think not of evening." (as a verb) to be ordered out on a mission 唐˙柳宗元˙始得西山宴游記：「遂命僕人過湘江，緣染溪。」 Liu Zongyuan: Record of the first banquet on Westmount: "[I] then ~~~ordered~~~ my servant across the river, where green stained the brook." And also, to believe [of oneself] or choose a name. 命 (ming4) does not have the meaning of contract. China has had contract law from a very early time, so if it meant contract or had that meaning it would be evident from the literary corpus. Secondly, your professor has made a big mistake of using evidence from the Zuozhuan in order to talk about the idea of 天命 (tian1ming4) in later times because in the Zuozhuan it's being used in a general sense of noun/verb, not as a specific philosophical concept as developed by Xunzi/Dong Zhongshu, etc. Trying to suggest that there's no spiritual element in the mandate philosophy is rewriting history. The Chinese during the Han had a very nuanced idea about the spiritual world and their relation to it. But this world and understanding of it is not equivalent to the western/modern/orientalist or even modern Chinese understanding of the situation- at all. I think "The Early Chinese Empires" by Lewis and "The Age of Confucian Rule" by Kuhn are good places for non-Chinese speakers to get into the subject. Barto fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Dec 16, 2012 |
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Dec 16, 2012 07:04
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Arglebargle III posted:That thing about 命 reminds me why I never want to read another word of classical Chinese, especially not with a 14 volume paper dictionary! Chinese dictionaries. Jesus. (Can't save us)
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Dec 17, 2012 18:26
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:Isn't it classical Chinese that gave us the treasure that is The Lion-eating Poet in the Stone Cave? Ehhh, that was a joke essay written relatively recently as these things go, it doesn't actually make much sense even in written form.
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Dec 19, 2012 18:54
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whatever7 posted:So? Change the law if you dont want to see kids poo poo on the street. These mainlanders also bring in alot of tourist dollars. How can the tourist city so hateful on the people who bring in the business. Pretty sure HK has all the first world "don't poo poo in the streets laws" you'd like. Hell, Beijing and Shanghai probably do too... That don't stop 'em none though.
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Jan 25, 2013 15:18
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whatever7 posted:Even though you hide yourself behind what "other people told you", this is still racist poo poo. I think he means the locals told him that. And it's a common (humorous) sentiment, because I live in another Asian country over here and the locals say that all the time "I need rice with every meal!" Applying PC standards to this is doubly humorous, because even the most educated people in Chinese speaking countries tend to consider Americans unable to resist the siren sound of burgers. And they enjoy telling me that...repeatedly. and after living here a few years, I need rice with every meal too. So whatev's yo
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Feb 9, 2013 03:49
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What's this celestials thing?
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Feb 9, 2013 08:35
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Fojar38 posted:I've heard a great deal about how Mao was a lovely person but this is new. I figured that the decline of Chinese culture began when they were conquered by the British/Dutch and then conquered again by the Japanese and THEN Mao came around and further hosed it. It was Mao. The Japanese mucked things up, but their own culture is basically mutated Song dynasty Chinese culture so... The British and Dutch didn't do anything like what Mao did.
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Mar 7, 2013 17:22
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WarpedNaba posted:What I gotta ask is if anyone in China believes the 'Peaceful rise' bullshit that's been spouted for a while. Annexing Tibet, Strongarming Taiwan, aiming missile radars at Japanese ships - Is there some misunderstanding as to the translation of peaceful that I'm not clued into? And Rome thought it was welcoming barbarians into the bosom of civilization, and Greek colonists thought they were following in the steps of Hercules...And "the US consumer" thought they weren't hurting anyone by buying cheap clothing and computer products made by slave labor. Basically, everyone throughout history is always hurting some other group of people- and they NEVER are fully in touch with the fact that they are just as bad as everyone else. "gently caress those Romans, they're assholes, not like we Carthaginians!" etc. So Chinese people might have a bit of a national myth, but they're not especially deluded for believing it. It's convenient and useful for them to believe it.
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Mar 9, 2013 01:32
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VideoTapir posted:I was thinking more her daughter's plans changing. You assign far too much autonomy to the richkid-bot.
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Mar 30, 2013 01:19
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Some Guy TT posted:How do you know the bolded bit of information? It's one thing to make an easily verifiable claim about the educational system- it's quite another to claim that you know what goes on in the standard Chinese household. As to your larger point, it's very difficult for me to believe that Chinese culture, which contains a great deal of erotic poetry, art, and traditional beliefs and stories in regards to sexual matters, is "repressed" in the Western sense of the word, which seems to be what you're implying here. I think you're pretty wrong about this. I don't know how easy it is to get material on this sort of thing in English, but you can look at the reaction to Shanghai Baby, or read some of Yu Hua's commentary on China to see this. Personally, I've talked to a lot of Chinese people from both generations and there is a huge difference at work here. All the erotic poetry, art, and traditional beliefs and stories were censored heavily through the 80's and early 90's.
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Apr 14, 2013 16:22
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Some Guy TT posted:Casual unmarried sex has been a Chinese tradition for millennia. gently caress me, you're wrong. Look, casual unmarried sex was OK for literati MEN of a certain class in certain situations only. Normal people in China, aka peasants, have never had this view point.
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Apr 14, 2013 16:40
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Some Guy TT posted:Words are cheap. Give me a citation. I gave you two upstairs. You're wrong, talk to some Chinese people, talk to a scholar, read a book, jesus. Or read one of Lewis' monographs on the Tang or Song dynasties.
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Apr 14, 2013 16:43
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Some Guy TT posted:I have. Evidently different ones than you, which is why I was hoping for specifics. If I must explain why your initial response to me was flippant and useless: Dude, there's no point engaging with you on this because you're wrong. 100% completely wrong. The very fact you said "but blablabla sex was always casual in China for thousands of years" without even knowing...for one half of 1% of the population with prostitutes... is just absurd. Do I really have to explain that the majority of people lived in rural farming communities and their viewpoint was quite a bit more conservative than the city dwellers (who are a minority in any case)? Or that the normal city dwellers didn't exactly have time/access to the pleasure quarters in the same way the literati from money did? Do I really have to point out that ancient and pre-modern sources are almost always about the 1% at the top because they're the ones writing it and it's not reflective the general population at large and this is repeated again and again by any historian you care to read? Do I? Because you brought up thousands of years and that's bullshit. So get over it. Hell, they used to have little dolls having sex in a box they'd give to kids as a hint on their wedding day back in the day because the parents didn't want to have the talk with them. I just don't know where to go next. The classic texts you're talking about, first, they weren't commonly read by the population at large because literacy was always an upper crust thing- especially in China right up to the Xinhai revolution in 1911. And then? Decades of war and communism in 1949. So when do you think all these literati day dreams drifted down to the normal people? The general population had never-ever-had it available to them generally until recently, and some things are still officially banned. That's why even in the early 2000's Chinese professors in the US would tell their students not to buy these texts, like Dream of Red Chambers, from the mainland, which were usually censored heavily but get them from Taiwan or Hong Kong instead. You know that Kangxi and Yongzheng and Qianlong et al commonly had book proscriptions targeting pornographic texts, ne? That's why they're not exactly easy to find. If you'd actually read Yu Hua's 10 words on China or, like, Brothers, you'd figure out pretty quickly just what we mean in this thread about repression, because I'm talking about the stories he tells. So you didn't read it (or understand it) that's fine too. Shanghai Baby caused a ruckus for a lot of reasons, and one of them was that the older generation didn't like confronting the new generation's sexual license. Isn't that what got you touched off? That's the point. Anyway, I'm sure the other people in here who live/work in China will chime in that people are pretty repressed there and that things are changing rapidly.
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Apr 14, 2013 17:11
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Some Guy TT posted:So your evidence that the Chinese peasantry is historically ignorant of sex is that there's no evidence because all the sources we have only describe the uppermost classes? That's not terribly persuasive. Didn't you say earlier you don't know much about China? Maybe you should have stopped there.
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Apr 14, 2013 17:34
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Some Guy TT posted:It may surprise you to learn that I come to this thread to learn about China, not circlejerk over how smart I am. I'm quite open to hearing new points of view, if you would consider giving me actual information instead of condescending to me for not already being a China expert. Someone said that parents apparently don't talk to their kids about it- he said apparently and you started asking for citations and made a positive claim about sexuality in China for "thousands of years." First, he said apparently- his impression by definition. Frankly, that's also my impression, I've specifically asked lots of people about it at one time or another and families generally don't talk about it. I'm not being an rear end in a top hat when I say read some novels about the last 20-30 years in China, because you can really get the feeling for what's going on better that way as an outsider. I don't think there's any really good studies on it, because why would the government let someone poll kids on this topic? They won't. So deal with apparently and impressions because that's really all there is. Although I'd say the rising rate of STDs is pretty nice evidence of what's going on. When you brought up the thousands of years thing, I admit I got a little peeved. I understand where you're coming from, because at some point you leafed through some classic lit and said "Oh, China's not repressed like everyone thinks, look at this!" But like I said at length above, these things that you mentioned is not representative of Chinese sexuality. It's not even representative of sexuality for the entirety of Chinese history for the literati because their sexuality changes a lot from epoch to epoch too- nature of the game, my friend, things change. Zhuxi's doctrines codified Confucianism and made people A LOT more conservative than they had been previously and that's something that's still happening today. Now communism introduced a lot of western style conservative repression too, so it's a complicated question and worthy of discussion. But on the other hand, you seem a little strident- after all you were attacking the guy for saying something obviously true to any of us living here- and we can't cite everything. Mostly I read books not internet (the good stuff on China is all in print not net) so I can't really help you besides pointing you to texts. Barto fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Apr 14, 2013 |
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Apr 14, 2013 18:04
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Some Guy TT posted:
Yes, I'm sure I came off a little too excited, so no hard feelings either way I hope. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/hiv-aids-china-cases-rising_n_2203294.html For STDS, I'm sure you've seen a lot of articles like this one. They usually come up every few months and then disappear. There's no real discussion of STDs in schools and people have a lot of prejudice toward sufferers (of any STD) There was a popular TV show 3 years ago called Narrow Dwelling (Woju) which actually had an episode deleted because the authorities were afraid it would make people dislike Hep-B sufferers or something like that. I haven't seen the episode obviously, so it's hard to say, haha. So it seems the authorities know there's a problem and don't want to encourage prejudice. They want to deal with it, but at the same time people refuse to talk about it(you see this in Japan too, people will sometimes avoid going to get testing done out of fear/shame...but I suppose that happens everywhere). AIDs used to come a lot from dirty needles, a couple areas got huge epidemics via dirty needles used in blood selling (Yu Hua talks about this a lot, the blood selling part, since it seems like he knows some people who were involved with it). Lately, kids are having more sex but they really don't like condoms...no one does, but (anecdotally) young Chinese guys are running roughshod on their partners over the issue to really deleterious effect. I think like any big social issue in China, the government is afraid to talk about it openly. But the rate is going up- it's even going up quite a bit neighboring Taiwan which likewise has a Chinese society with little to no sex education- so it will continue to rise until the government can't ignore it anymore. It's a problem... If you ever go to a Chinese hospital- make sure they use a clean needle. So, people are afraid to talk about it, a little prejudiced toward sufferers, not much government support on the issue, and a lot of ways to get it due to environmental factors+pressure. I personally hear Shanghai nightclubs are the worst for this. But then Shanghai is it's own little world too. Edit: I forgot to add, I don't trust the rates the government reports at all- they must be much, much higher. Barto fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Apr 14, 2013 |
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Apr 14, 2013 18:41
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Some Guy TT posted:All right, the source is Through The Chinese Looking Glass. It's old, maybe fifty years, but as it deliberately describes the culture in broad strokes I've found it an interesting reference: Oh yeah, ok, I get where this is coming from. All those things it says are true, but it is simplifying things a bit and mixing up time periods. Like the last part, the poem from the Book of Odes- those poems are talking about a time period way back when, during the mythical beginnings of China. At that time, people had families based on the women's uncle. Men would wander around and have sex with women (who were stationary) and the uncle would raise the child, so parentage was not clear and there's a whole lot of anthropology and hypothesis about this period of Chinese history- 1500-2000 BCish. So...Not good evidence for later stuff, but a true situation and common in many cultures at that stage of development. Sometimes in Chinese literature from the Spring and Autumn/Warring States period you get references to stories about people getting pregnant by stepping in the footprint of a god or whatever. That's a tradition based on moms thinking of ways to explain to their kids where they came from (Or so says Lee Wei-tai whose lecture I am taking this from). Ok, that's pre-Confucianism, so also they're eating people at this time and doing human sacrifice, and etc. So I think we can say this doesn't quite apply to all of Chinese history (hehe). In fact, there's a couple big divides in Chinese sexuality that the piece above is mushing together. You've got the morph from Warring States (many different cultures with many different approaches to...everything, like France and Russia levels of different) being smashed into a Confucian-Daoist-Legalist system dominated by Liu Bang's Chu (southern Chinese) heritage which really sets the stage for what comes later. In the Tang, women are doing pretty well for themselves there's equality of sorts (in the upper classes) because of property rights and the family name but that situation changes in the Song when Neo-Confucianism makes people a lot more conservative. The reason for the decline in the status of women is linked to changes in marriage customs. During the Tang, the great houses still held prestige but sometimes little else. The prestige was enough and men would spend a huge amount of money to obtain marriage with the scioness of a great house. In contrast, they usually avoided marriages with Tang princesses because the princesses could do whatever drat thing they pleased including divorce, which wasn't pleasant to the Tang dynasty male psyche. In any case, the great houses power is based on their name prestige. The Tang emperors were actually steppes barbarians so they didn't like that and eventually forced a link between status in government and "nobility" and this was eventually tied to the exam system. This changed the way kinship relationships worked and by the Song dynasty something had changed. Men no longer paid money to a women's family, rather they expected a dowry. In effect, women had lost their leverage. The Tang had also seen the introduction of legal concubines for the "common middle class man" further weakening the status of women. The status of concubines was in between a wife and a maid, but by the 17th century Qing the legal status between maid, concubine and wife had blurred significantly- which was a bit of a nadir for Chinese womenkind. Anyho, it was all the fault of that damned test or so some theorize. Of course during these ups and downs this really changes things for People Having Sex. So guys can get their rocks off in the pleasure quarters, yes, if they have money and time. But normal people are usually stuck in traditional relationships and to be fair in centrally controlled society like China where the patriline is all-important and your relationship network with others in your area is all important...what sex with another person in your group means changes a lot. It's a lot more serious. If you're just a peasant, you can't go and bang the girl next door because that means something for how the entire village system works. Also, things are a lot more stable at this point in history for how the peasants are controlled and etc. Things get crazy conservative as we go past the Song though, even in the upper classes. So, I'm not saying that piece is wrong, I'm thinking that it's trying to make a point and not considering the entire situation for women, prostitutes, literati, peasants, different regions, etc. Is it fair to say "The Chinese man..." etc. etc.? Probably not, right? Anyway, I hope that kinda shows where I'm coming from on this.
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Apr 14, 2013 19:29
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ReindeerF posted:It looks like Sinica is still monitoring this thread, because next week's episode is about - drum roll - sex in China: It would be best if H7N9 can be worked into the question.
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Apr 15, 2013 19:23
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Arglebargle III posted:
還 huan/hai are the same character, so ya, gimme back my Kunming! (take it! take it!)
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May 5, 2013 12:04
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Bloodnose posted:Speaking of American comedians being played in China Conan is so much funnier than that Chinese kid.
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May 8, 2013 05:08
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dilbertschalter posted:Victor Mair, a general Cool Guy with interesting things to say about China and the Chinese language in particular, had a nice take on the incident: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4637 Why is he putting it in pinyin? That is so damned annoying. Also 100 some years later, we can stop talking about where those loan words came from and how they're not native China words or blablabla. drat, a year is enough to make a word, those words are all Chinese completely and totally now. It's an interesting thing to note, but it doesn't explain that kid's attitude, ie, the kid was nitpicking because he was offended. The origin of the word nation is not relevant. Everyone in China uses it with the same flexibility as the English word. Barto fucked around with this message at 16:41 on May 23, 2013 |
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May 23, 2013 16:33
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dilbertschalter posted:Well, given that in the actual original post the student goes on about the difference between nation and country and gives a couple examples as "proof," he regards it is an important/significant distinction, even if he is just using that as an excuse to be angry about other things stated in the speech (certainly possible). Reading that post gives the impression of misunderstanding, so I'm not quite so sure why you're so quick to dismiss that based on things that are not related to this actual incident. It's just like people in SA sometimes go off the rails on definitions about words (while normal people just go about their day using them normally). The kid is just sperging and has no point. Biden's usage wouldn't bother anyone in China and like a lot of comments on that guy's blog post say, the Chinese media also uses the words interchangeably. I was just tut-tuting the dude's masturbatory attempt to bring etymology into it- like Chinese people were confused about the concepts because their words for 'em were borrowed via Japan a century ago. This is a purely White Guy Talking About China Thing. Chinese people know what they mean. Or don't mean. They play as fast and loose with the words as we do in English. Which just goes back to the point, the kid was being dumb. Barto fucked around with this message at 17:27 on May 23, 2013 |
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May 23, 2013 17:24
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Arglebargle III posted:Not to dis on Qui Jin but women's rights was a thing in the west starting in the last three decades of the 19th century. By the time they got the vote in the early 20th century there had been women agitating for a long time. I don't think every reference to wind and rain is necessarily sex, old sport.
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May 30, 2013 02:20
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WarpedNaba posted:I'd hate to see the weather from where you come from. Stormy. 
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May 30, 2013 02:52
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Maybe Hong Kong needed another century of British rule. Racism should be done politely- as the nobles of the realm would have it.
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Jun 6, 2013 08:51
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Mozi posted:Hero is a good example because it's a sympathetic portrayal of the most cruel, murderous, anti-culture Emperor ever. That's not actually true. The only substantial historical records for that period of history are in Sima Qian's "Shiji," and Sima Qian was a historian of the western Han- the dynasty directly after Qin. Sima Qian had a bit of a grudge against the Han dynasty, but it was obviously impolitic to say so directly, so basically he used Qin as a punching bag to point out Han's problems. This wasn't a singular incident either, because Jia Yi's famous "Guo Qin Lun" (which Sima Qian appends to his work in the appropriate location as a footnote of sorts) does the exact same thing. In fact, this sort of sideways criticism is common in Chinese historiography. A careful reading of the "Shiji" reveals that the Han actually continued all of the bad things Qin was doing- and made it even worse and more effective in some cases. This also goes to show that, well, Qin wasn't that bad. The reason Qin fell apart so quickly wasn't its brutality (after all Xiang Yu who helps overthrow Qin buries an entire army of Qin soldiers alive...), but because of complex regional-political issues that we don't really have access to anymore. Sima Qian basically says this. And actually, this entire issue was hashed out by historical commentators in the Song dynasty (the Chinese loved writing about historical writings), and you have Ou Yangxiu and the Su Father/Brothers saying, yeah, basically when they're talking about Qin they mean Han. So , I know people love to say that poo poo about Qin, but it's not really a useful or true or even been accepted in Chinese historiography for like a millennium. So Hero isn't a bad film for that particular reason. At least, the sympathetic portrayal isn't anything more outlandish than the vast array of Chinese and Taiwanese dramas portraying the Qing emperors as nice guys. PS I also want to point out an issue that anyone can go check directly in the Book of Han or Shiji, which is that the Qin Emperor did not "burn the books." He collected them in his capital. His capital was captured by Liu Bang (founder of the Han), but he was temporarily forced to give it to his rival Xiang Yu, who then burnt the poo poo out of it. The books were burnt at that time. Barto fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Nov 28, 2013 |
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Nov 28, 2013 18:11
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Hong XiuQuan posted:Good good. Thought it would be a bit weird back and forthing about orientalism without any Chinese voices. I had a friend from college in Taipei recently come up to me and say, "Have you read Edward W. Sad's book?" And I was like, "yeah, parts." He said, "Because I realized that all the things that westerners do to us, we also do to them. Maybe more so these days. I feel really uncomfortable now, but I don't know why." And thus, "Chinese guilt" was born.
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Jun 7, 2014 10:44
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GlassEye-Boy posted:I don't really think that can be used as any kind of metric. I know quite a few that take their faith in Buddhism quite seriously. Especially some of the Taiwanese. Taiwanese aren't exactly Chinese for all practical purposes- they're normally quite religious (as religion goes in East Asia). They all typically go to the temple at one point or another during the year, believe in traditional fortune telling practices, and a ton have their own personal shrines to their ancestors. Every ghost month, there's a ton of people outside burning paper money and you can see most businesses and homes giving sacrifices to the 地基主 (the house god) on the regular. Barto fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Jun 9, 2014 |
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Jun 9, 2014 07:12
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