For a short time I taught a guy who was the head of UnileverJapan in Oceania, but it also included China. He said that because of cultural differences, attitudes towards safety were very different. In Australia and NZ, if a piece of fluff gets trapped in the machine, you close it down, then get the fluff out. In China, you’d show your dexterity and skill by reaching in to grab the fluff without shutting the machine down. You can see why the Chinese think we are wimps!
I read Paul Thereux’s The Iron Rooster when I was travelling in China - he notes that the Chinese think Westerners are stupid, easily fleeced as tourists etc. I did witness a Chinese American thinking she was savvy, buy a “jade” bracelet that was actually glass - I think it is just cultural naivety more than anything. I’d already reasoned that if it really was jade, they’d be asking for way more than they were. Also, the whole idea of barter is just something that Westerners don’t tend to do on a daily basis - the Chinese would think we are stupid if we pay more for something than others because we don’t know how to barter.
It’s heartening to read this. Here in Canada which is predominantly white, there is a common myth that white people are racists and no other race is. I get tired of hearing about how racist white Canadians are, but (for example) it is okay for Chinese immigrants to not want their kids to marry a Canadian. Good (?) to see that all races are just as racist as each other.
I guess this can be considered a hijack, but I’m always amazed at Letterman. He’s a multimillionaire, who probable doesn’t own a suit worth less than a grand, or shoes under several hundred, yet he seems to always wear white socks. I just don’t get it?
This list of stereotypes sounds like it’s written by overseas Chinese rather than people in China.
Caucasians all look alike
Hair is a funny color
How can you see with those wierd eyes
everyone is fat
everyone is rich
Do your parents know where you are
I have three office-mates; one chinese, one taiwanese, and one german. (We’re all guys.) I brought in a picture of my brother holding his newborn son. Both asians asked me if that was me… But so did the german, my three american housemates, and just about anyone else I showed the picture to. Ok, not a very accurate test, I’ll admit. 
However, before anyone in the office had seen the picture or said anything, my chinese coworker did mention that we all look alike to him. 
Do the Chinese/other Asians think that black folk look alike? Obviously a stereotype that exists here in the US that I used to agree with until I started working in a warehouse that was 99% black.
One of the strangest justifications for a racist belief I’ve ever heard came from, of all places, a Taoist study group’s literature.
It held that a requirement for a human being to achieve enlightenment was Chinese heritage. Non-Chinese could never hope to attain enlightenment in their lifetime – but if they were very diligent they could hope to reincarnate as a Chinese and grab the ring the next time around. The rationale was:[ul][li]High places are closer to the heavens[]The highest place on Earth is in Asia, so[]Asia is the center of the world, and[]China is the center of Asia, so:[]Chinese people are closest to enlightenment.[/ul]I’m not sure what boggles my mind more – that someone was able to come up with such a contorted and bizarre syllogism and take it seriously, or that they bothered to translated it from the original Chinese for their literature. (My guess is that language bias contributes a tiny bit to that belief, looking at the radicals for the ideogram for “China.” But I’d still bet that 99.99% of it has to do with individuals’ ability to be dumber than plankton.) [/li]
(When I asked them about it, the organizers said that they’d never heard of anything like that and weren’t sure how it got in there – which makes sense – most of them were Taiwanese, anyway. Probably about as Taoist as Pat Robertson is Christian.)
Ho. Well I seem to have been born with that thing missing in your brain that helps you identify people. I have had terrible troubles, mostly when starting new jobs. Here’s the worst: On my first day I meet a tall blonde who is wearing a pinstriped skirt with matching jacket and some kind of cast on her left foot. Later, in the ladies room, I encounter a tall blonde who is wearing a pinstriped skirt and a white shell but who does not have a cast on either foot.
I think she is a different person. I am wrong. She has removed her jacket, and since she’s going out to lunch she has also removed the cast. (Well, it didn’t look all that removable to me–it’s a thing she wears to correct some kind of chronic ankle condition and she doesn’t have to wear it all the time, but when I first met her I didn’t know that.)
And, in fairness, your first day on the job you meet lots of people. Although as it turned out I didn’t meet as many as I thought!
I had an Indian once tell me “I would like to move to America, but I don’t want to cheat on my wife.” He figured cheating was a matter of course here. I’ve also have an Indian tell me that Hawaii seems nice, except for the part where you commit adultry.
Since black people fall under lao wai (foreigners) I’d say yes, they also all look the same. My parents curiously don’t have that much trouble with faces, more with western names - they claim they all sound the same. That, and they can’t tell when white people are related. Recognising individual people is easy enough but they have been overseas for over a decade.
Is he kidding? That’s the best part!
Ah, the casual racism of Middle Aged Asians. It would be quaint if it wern’t so virulent. I have a cousin who is officially not allowed to date from any of the following “races”:
Black (Which lumps together Africans, South Americans, Middle Americans, Indians, SE Asians and Middle Easterners… because “it would make the babies look funny”)
Japanese
Korean
Russian
Polish
German
Spanish
Taiwanese
Hong Kongese (too greedy)
People who have at one stage, lived in Beijing or Shanghai
Scandinavians who are not blond and blue eyed (Even I don’t get this one yet)
I think the perception, at least among Chinese that I know is that Chinese people may drink a lot but they don’t get drunk like westerners. Sure, they turn red in the face and feel the urge to sing bad kareoke, but they don’t become belligerant and slap their children or whatever their stereotype of western drinking is.