It’s hard to imagine how anyone who has spent time close to traditional patriarchal societies could do anything but. I’m a man and I hate men forever. :mad:
To me, the expression “to be an old X hand” or “to be an old hand at X” (meaning “to know X very well from long experience”) is a reasonably common one. I’m surprised that someone even moderately well read would not know that phrase. Maybe this is just a case of my having read or watched different things than other people here, but I’m baffled that someone here should not know this expression. In any case, it now appears to me that the term “old China hand” has a more specific meaning:
Keep in mind that English is not my first language. This board is the first place I’ve ever heard the expression “China hand”, and even “old hand” is not something I’ve heard often if ever, though I’d probably figure it out from the context. And:
Now see, that’s why I was asking. I gathered “China hands” probably referred to Westerners familiar with China (as opposed to Chinese people themselves), but in some contexts it appears to refer particularly to a certain group of Westerners in China. That’s interesting to know.
The Soviet Union had a similiar setup to China’s. Moscow and Leningrad (& the Baltic republics) were extremely desirable places to live and the residents made extremely desirable marriage partners because of this. People even engaged in platonic “in name only” marriages just to live there (& also it was easier to be assigned housing if married).