For the past week I’ve been in the Phillipines on business. But because I’m training call center personnel I’ve had to stay on Eastern Standard time. Which means I’ve lost all sense of time. I just spent a Saturday night/afternoon that started in a bar and ended in a jjimjilbang now it’s almost noon/midnight and I’m having a 4 course meal with a Bloody Mary before going to bed. Im pretty sure it’s still the weekend. Also it’s raining.
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Eh, I know someone who ended up spending six months in a random Indian village for no particular reason. Losing a couple of days is no big deal.
So, you are disoriented?
isn’t the medical term discombobulated?
I feel your pain as I’ll be in the air to Taiwan in a few hours on the red eye. That said, I’ve never had the experience of being in Asia yet work hours remain in the US. For my work, it’s basically two shifts anywy, work PST and at least have day asia time. When I’m in Asia, it kinda flips to half day PST and full day asia. YMMV
That right there is funny!
I thought we weren’t supposed to say “orient” anymore.
Technically, the OP would need to be disoriented from the Orient to become reoriented.
I’m sure the OP’s use was an occident.
Mao on a pogo stick, this rubs me the wrong way. If Asians don’t want to be called Oriental for whatever reason, it’s fine to follow miss manners and respect that. But to not be able to refer to things, place, objects ad nauseum as being in the Orient or Oriental, is a PC concept too far.
FFS, Swiss is cheese and do you want a bottle of whine with that?
Our Singapore office basically has their work hours in their own time zone, but many employees have to flex for calls or Skype meetings with other time zones. I have one colleague based there who is often speaking to people at 9 or 10 pm her time. Other regions are more likely to rotate that burden, but the culture in our Singapore office is unique in that regard. Every time I meet with that colleague, I offer to be the one speaking at a “weird” time, but she will.decline my invites and reschedule at a time that is more convenient for me and less so for her.
While of course each person gets to choose how they’d like to be addressed/identified, my Asian friends have expressed to me that they, personally, do not wish to be described as “oriental” nor would they describe another person thusly. Some objects they will still call oriental (e.g., rugs) and rarely places, but that’s more for consistency with the first point (i.e., why would you say someone is “from the orient” but then object to referring to them as “oriental”?)
It’s similar to every other human interaction, in my opinion. Call people what they wish to be called.
This is nothing to do with PC or politeness. “The Orient” just means “The East”, and it’s been applied to every non-European place between Egypt and Tokyo. It’s a vague word. Where are oriental rugs from? China? No, probably Iran.
Of course “Asian” isn’t much improvement, because it still includes every middle eastern country except Egypt.
If you’re in the Phillippines, just say you’re in the Phillippines, otherwise we’re left guessing whether you mean Japan or Iran. It’s no help to say “I’m east of Greenwich in a non-white part of the world.”
Honestly I’d expect a ‘ChinaGuy’ would already know this.
To clarify, I’m more than happy to refer to people from Asia by whatever they wish to be called and as far as I can recall have always referred to folks from these parts as Asian. And that carries over to refer to people from any ethnicity or culture or sexual orientation by their preferred term. It’s simply common courtesy. Asian is a fine default, and I have 3 Amer-Asian daughters.
For those that are actually interested in the subject, here’s a link to the 50th anniversary of "Asian American: “During that first session, the group coined the concept and the term, Asian-American, and officially founded the Asian American Political Alliance. Wong says they immediately looked around at each other and knew they had created something special and that they were representing more than just themselves.”
Ironically, I’m on a business trip in China right now, and some search results are blocked or I would cite some of the original coverage of the “Asian-American” founding.
Here’s a link, and a wiki(caveat, I am not able to access in China so have not read the content), and Karen Ishizuka’s researched book review on this history of the Asian American Political Alliance, the Declaration of Asian American Political Alliance 1969, biography of Richard Aoki, Asian American Black Panther, and if you care to here are some FBI investigation records into the Asian-American Political Alliance..
FWIW, personal anecdote, when I was in university in the US in the 1980’s, I studied Mandarin in the Oriental Languages department. At the same university, I also had an half Japanese half American Caucasian girlfriend, who together with her other Amer-Asian buddies referred to themselves as “ornamentals” on occasion. Harvard still has Asiatic Studies. But they are probably the only US university still using *that *term, which has a lot more baggage than “oriental”.
Net net, I have passing personal, linguistic and academic familiarity with both the terms Asian American and Oriental. So I trust I have clarified that I have no issue referring to Asians (instead of Oriental), but take umbrage at statements such as “we weren’t supposed to say “orient” anymore”.
Perhaps it’s an improvement in the sense that it doesn’t define the region based on its position relative to Europe. But that reasoning doesn’t really hold up, since (as China Guy pointed out) it’s not generally seen as offensive except when describing a person.
The offensiveness of racial terminology is not usually about the intrinsic properties of a word, it’s about the cultural baggage that it comes with. In the U.K., “paki” (etymologically just a contraction of Pakistani) is highly offensive because it has been used as an ignorant slur by racists for anyone from the Indian subcontinent. The objection to “oriental” (in reference to a person) is probably along similar lines, historical usage as an ignorant monolithic descriptor by Europeans with a colonialist mindset.
But why the umbrage? Setting aside the racial baggage for a minute, isn’t ‘The Orient’ a totally useless term just because of the ambiguity? I mean, a term that could cover both Egypt and Japan is pretty worthless, isn’t it?
I’m going to guess that there are not many people in the world who have described their Saturday afternoons in such a fashion! 
Oxford still has an Oriental Institute/Faculty of Oriental Studies, as does the University of Chicago. Orientalism grew in popularity in the West during the 18th and 19th centuries, but also before. The unfortunate history is that this was somewhat contemporaneous with the rise of modern racism and imperialism. However, one might imagine that many of the serious Oriental scholars in the West accepted and embraced the cultures of their interest as fully on the same level and depth, and peers of, their own.
Oriental studies continue today, often with a name change like Asian studies or Eastern studies, or including named sub-disciplines like Egyptology, Islamic studies, Jewish studies, Assyriology, Sinology, etc.
It’s a compass direction. Once you get to China, you’re in the Middle Kingdom, not the “East”. The aforementioned research institutes are, naturally, organized into sub-faculties: at Oxford you currently have the Middle East + South/Inner Asia + East Asia. (So Filipinology does not even count as Oriental at Oxford; I guess that’s already Austronesian. Go far enough east and you end up in the west…)
True… are we not in agreement that, whether you call it Oriental or Eastern or Asian, it’s just generally weird to have a category “East Things”, and that it would include the stuff you mentioned above?
To my understanding, “oriental” as a racial slur came from California, and Brits don’t understand it that way because it also includes the “Near East”. Brits also don’t understand American use of “Asian”, which to them could include India and Pakistan.
Obviously we’re not going to throw out tons of recent history and usage just based on my analysis here, but is it not clear that “Oriental” and “Asian” are, at best, useless in casual conversation?
I essentially agree — I think it is just a historical artifact of Western academics and artists. Like, say at the university they had one guy who knew Hebrew, one guy who knew Chinese, and one guy who knew Sanskrit. In the late 19th/early 20th century,“Oriental studies” became a new buzzword, presumably to distinguish them from Western arts and letters, and they were subsequently all dumped into the same faculty.
Can’t say that they come up. I hear about Buddhist theology, Tuvan singing, Hong Kong politics, Vedic literature, Persian poetry, and so on.
Perfect example. Ambiguous terms are used all the time such as the West, Western Civilization, etc.
Oriental as a racial slur is a modern construct in the past few decades. Personally, I’d call it more of an archaic term with baggage than a racial term stemming from phrases like “inscrutable Oriental” or the “Oriental mind.” The term Asian-American as one can learn from the links in my previous post only started to become mainstream in 1969.
Older generations may have never got the message that it should be Asian American or shortened to Asian. My father was a WW2 pacific theater and Korean war combat veteran. “Oriental” was not a slur to his generation. If he wanted to use a slur when talking about Asians it was “gook”, “Chink” or “Nip” as in “there were gooks everywhere when they poured over the border and caused the longest retreat in US Army history.” He certainly never once used “chink” in my hearing when referring to my family, studies or travels. So, I for one, find it odd that “Oriental” has become a racial slur when there are plenty of clearly racial slurs out there to remove any ambiguity.
Maybe it is somewhat akin to “negro” and “black”. There are still vestiges of “Negro” being used such as the United Negro College Fund.
Again, Miss Manners suggests using whatever term an individual or a group wants to be called.