Ages ago, for reasons I no longer remember, I was wandering across Asia and decided to spend some time in Taiwan. The Chinese interested me, and Taiwan was then as close as it was practical to get. Then, as now, the Chinese were thought by many to be exotic, inscrutable, devious and unlike normal people such as ourselves. You know, opium dens, dragon ladies, assassinations by puff adder, that sort of thing. Given the importance of China today, the nature of these multitudinous people might bear thought.
As was commonly done in those days, I found a (very) cheap place to stay in the winding alleys downtown and settled in. Nice enough place, I thought, agreeable people, pretty girls. It is curious how unweird people turn out to be if you actually live among them, this being a principle I had discovered among the Thais, Viets, Mexicans, and Cambodians. I shared an apartment with another wandering young gringo, and a little Japanese mathematician named Sakai–”whiskey well” if I remember the characters of his name–and two young Chinese guys. One of them, Ding Gwo, played the guitar and wanted to be a rock star. The whole bunch were extraordinarily ordinary. The Chinese are in fact as exotic as potatoes. The kids act like kids anywhere, the women like women. They are not another species.
The girls dressed to be attractive and pretty, hardly a novelty among young women, and were often wildly successful. (Oriental women tend to appeal greatly to Western guys, the condition being known as “yellow fever” or “rice fever.” It is not a matter of sexual availability, the middle-class girls being less promiscuous than American, but just lovely and feminine. Chilly they were not.)
At night we sometimes went to a local hangout for the young, pretty much like any other though more innocent than the American today: Taiwan was decidedly authoritarian and being caught with drugs would not have led to a happy ending. Dim lights, soft drinks, Western rock, and considerable flirtation. It could have been Memphis.
Exotic murderess girlfriend Chin Ping distracts Fred with humor while temple dragon sneaks up behind to bite his hand off. It’s how the Chinese are, crafty, and hang out with concrete animals.
I studied Mandarin hard on the principle that most things are possible with a combination of modest intelligence and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and in six months could communicate reasonably and slog my way through a pulp novel with lots of help from a dictionary. A Chinese dictionary is an adventure all its own. The school was Gwo Yu R Bao,(romanization a jac-kleg mix of Yale and Wade-Gyles and god knows what else) literally Mandarin Newspaper, but it had a language school above. My teacher, Jang Lau Shr, was a mid-fortiesish woman who seemed quite old to me at the time. She was competent and likable, and not devious, sneaky, or mysterious. She probably didn’t have a single puff adder. I guess she hadn’t gotten the word.
When the government realized that I was a journalist of sorts, she was suddenly replaced by a very attractive young woman who I know damned well was from Guo Min Dang intelligence. Manna from heaven.
Sisters of Chin Ping the Wiley Murderess. You could almost mistake them for, you know, just kids, unless you knew of their eerie genetic affinity for puff adders.
Several things I noticed, young and dumb as I was (the two conditions overlap greatly). Taiwan was not Uganda. At the time all manner of countries in the bush world had Five-Year Plans or the equivalent. These countries usually consisted of a patch of jungle, a colonel, and a torture chamber. Decades later, they would still consist of a patch….
Taiwan, then in the Third World–whatever that is–had an equally ambitious program of advancement. Perhaps it was for five years. It included the Jin Shan reactors, a new port, a steel mill, a major highway, and so on. Thing was, they were actually coming into existence. Later, for the Far Eastern Economic Review, I would interview the head of the nuclear program. Harvard guy.Later, on a press junket, I would visit many of the projects, such as the steel mill, which was in production.
With my honed capacity for recognizing the inescapable, I concluded that these people could get things done. Things like industry, organization, technology. That sort.
At some point I had passed through Hong Kong and concluded that it was New York with slanted eyes. The Chinese; I judged correctly though young and dumb, could play hardball finance.
And in the US, Chinese students were reported to be doing very well at places like MIT. Hmmm….What if that great American ally, Mousy Dung, stopped paralyzing the mainland and the world had to compete with all 800,000,000 of them?
We are finding out.
I loved the language, the characters that seemed almost to dance on the page in old, old documents in the national museum, which was filled with wonderful works of art saved from the communists when Chiang fled to the island. I couldn’t begin to read them, of course. However, modern Chinese is remarkably easy provided you don’t want to read or write it, having none of the complexities of tense, mood, or person of, say, Spanish. It made people lots less mysterious to realize that they were not talking about the hidden Blue Jade Eye of God, worth millions and protected by a curse, but about Grandma’s congestive heart failure and what to do about it.
And, for a young man, there was practical Chinese: “Wo mei-you kan-gwo numma pyauliang-de syau-jye.”
On blazing hot evenings we wandered through the twisting lanes past rows of what appeared to be orange crates at which sat children doing their homework. Inside, they would have cooked. I thought this studiousness impressive, but had no idea how much it would later pay off at MIT.
A traffic overpass near where we lived had a steamy enclosed food market beneath with stalls selling just about anything edible and some maybe not quite. We would go there for sheets of fried squid–”you yu”–and fruit juice, the latter sold by a young woman who became a friend. We called her “Shwei Gwo Syau Jye,” or Fruit Juice Girl. Taiwan had not then become the economic Mighty Mouse that it is today and most people, though not hungry, were poor. She spent long, long hours in her stall with a small fluffy dog to keep her company. She had a subscription to Newsweek that she read to learn English and walked home with her dog every night, exhausted, to take care of a father of some eighty years.
She deserved better. There was a lot of that going around.
There were relics, fast disappearing, of the old China, more closely resembling the exotic image. In Wan Wha (“Ten Thousand Glories”) there was the street of the snake butchers, definitely memorable by night. At stalls live snakes, some of them deadly, hung by strings around their necks, if that is what snakes have. The proprietor on request slit a snake from head to tail, massaged the blood into a glass, squeezed the gall bladder into the mess, and sold it to, usually, a laborer to drink. Dwei shen-ti hen hau: Good for the body. Not mine, though.
At the time what was called Madame Chiang’s hotel was going up on a hillside. Most new buildings in Asia look like buildings in Philadelphia. This one was deliberately Chinese, and glorious. I had no idea that years later on a junket the Taiwanese government would put me up there, and several other reporters, for a week. Funny how things work.
I came to have immense respect for China as a civilization. Given the dismal record of immorality, poor judgement, and venality that is the baseline for humanity, China is impressive.
Madame Chiang’s during a junket. Not too shabby.
Among racial sites on the web today one frequently sees the assertion that Asians can copy but not invent. Maybe. There is a chain of thought that begins with “Screwed up like a Chinese fire drill,” then “Well, they can make pencils and toys,” (“Made in Japan,” remember?), then “OK they can make easy things like washing machines with white supervision,” then “Well, yes, they can assemble iPads, but can’t create anything.” Then it turns out, as it has turned out, that they are designing world-class supercomputers all of their own, oops, heh.
On the one hand, the condescension sounds like wishful thinking. On the other, in painting for example, there is more creativity between the Impressionists and Klimt than in centuries of Chinese painting, which usually consisted of making copies of past masters. We had better hope.
Street, Shanghai, a few years ago. China ain’t what it used to be. Getting rid of Mao did the trick. PhredFoto
Years later, on the junket aforementioned, my wife and I and our very small daughter came to Taipei and stayed in Madame Chiang’s. I don’t know how old babies are when they first sit up unaided, but that’s how old Macon was, because it is what she did. Anyway, we came into the lobby, Blonde Poof in arms. gorgeous vases on pedestals, columns in red lacquer, everything but the Empress Dowager, and they may have had her in a closet somewhere.
The staff, mostly young girls, came running over, charmed by anything so exotic and golden-haired. The Chinese can do many things, but golden hair isn’t one of them. They all wanted to look at this wonder child. A girl smiled and unceremoniously took Macon from my wife’s arms. The mob raced about the lobby showing their prize to everyone they knew, disappeared into the kitchen for a couple of minutes, and came back, delighted, and put Macon, uncooked, back where they had found her.
I have a hard time getting from there to weaselly, sinister, and devious.
We went to Gwo Yu R Bau to say hello to Jang Lao Shr, who was still there, and to the bridge to see Shwei Gwo Syau Jye, who also was still there. Still reading Newsweek, still working long, long hours. It was delightful. I never saw her again.
Interesting as always.
Obviously, China is one of the great civilizations of the world.
That being said. The path to Chinese hegemony is highly unlikely. First, their language is tonal and phonetic. Outside of East Asia, every other civilization has a phonetic language. Even more so, Chinese doesn’t have conjugations or tenses. I studied it for a year and got nowhere, and I speak 8 other languages.
Second, Chinese culture doesn’t respect intellectual property, such as copyrights, trademarks and patents. Thus, there is no incentive for anyone to create. Why create if your neighbors can just copy what you do and not have to pay you a royalty? The Chinese invented printing and gunpowder, inter Alia, and went nowhere with it.
Third, Chinese culture prizes uniformity and conformity. “The nail that sticks up must be hammered down” and all that. Chinese mathematicians are great at Real Analysis but not so good at Probabilty, Combinatorics or Statistics. Their society does not reward it.
What you have said here was something of a revelation to me. It puts into concise language what I have observed of people from Asia. Exceptions are those from South Korea and Japan, who have embraced Western values.
Work with Chinese companies in electronics for nearly a decade. At start we have had to tell them anything like a beginner. But the learned and improved year after year. Now they are world class with o tenth of the costs over here. Highly automated. They realized the concepts i suggest to companies over here (because it was the obvious next step). Nobody did or were even interested. They are all gone.
The controllers i use beats anything from the west ( except Intel/Amd/Arm high wich were also made in CN ) in price/performance at an unbelievable rate. Production time is way faster, delivery the only trade off.
None of them ever called me toxic white old man, none of them bombed my gas supply and none of them tries to kill my sons by driving us in an useless war in 2 flight hours away.
Thank you Fred. In my nearly forgotten early youth in the Mid-West, our next door neighbors were Chinese. Almost unheard of at the time. I remember them as very high quality people. Kind people. I’ve had a permanent pro-Chinese attitude pretty much ever since.
The world of whirling dervishes, opium dens, and dragon ladies is long gone. Instead, it’s a world of pretty fruit-juice girls selling drinks and reading Newsweek to learn English. Of the 30+ countries that I’ve visited, I’ve also found the people “are extraordinarily ordinary,” as Fred says.
I married an American-born Chinese gal. Like so many pretty Asian gals, she had and has a demure and calm personality. She’s educated and ambitious. As I grew older, I found these extraordinarily-ordinary fruit-juice girls are quite ideal.
My daughter of the cultural Revolution (1968) Chinese National wife (Liaoning province, PRC) is probably as conventional and conservative as they come. When she first came here, 20 odd years ago, she couldn’t believe the government would give money and provide resources to people who didn’t work. It would prove embarrassing in check-out lines at the supermarket. “If they want to eat, they should work!” Who could not love that attitude?
Never been to Formosa but have always enjoyed my trips to the mainland. Watching it change this last quarter century has been remarkable. Maybe they are not so good in the initial idea department (0 to 1), but from there forward they are formidable. ‘But they copy!’ Why reinvent the wheel? They should pay me for what I think, you say. They are much to practical for that.
As I remember it was still under marshal law. It was very organized and restrictively peaceful. Great people! Great! Valued learning and work and saw a positive future. Marshal law is now gone. The quality of the people and life there is still great. I hope we don’t go to war and ruin it.
One of my concerns re: China is the apparently deliberate flooding of the U.S. with military-aged males, illegally crossing our borders sans family, headed to parts unknown, for purposes unknown.
What I DO know is
1. men who illegally cross a nation’s borders are not here to follow our other laws
2. they are not here to pick our vegetables.
3. Due to ruinous social demographic policy (one child policy) there is a relative dearth of available females for these 20-something males.
3. Since it is not so easy for Chinese males to leave China, I infer that many or most of them are being sanctioned by the CCP.
4. They seem to be disciplined, neat, orderly and they keep their mouths shut. Again, military.
So, why are they here? (And don’t give me that “here for a better life for their families” BS, ’cause there are no “families” in sight).
I know an illegal Chinese guy, quite young, who has been here about a decade. He got a job in a Chinese restaurant(where else?), got married to a Chinese gal and had two kids. He works his butt off. He’s not a spy or in the military. Caution is good but your theory is far fetched.
Of course the ‘best’ form of Goobermint is a benevolent dictatorship. This so-called ‘democracy’ doesn’t work too well when there is a stratified populous. I believe it was one of the ‘Founding Fathers’ that commented that the only way it would work is with an intelligent & moral populous……we have neither. It appears to me that the Chinese (a homogenous population) have learned this lesson & have a Goobermint that works well enough so that the vast majority of the citizenry is satisfied. The ‘rebel-rousers’ are then ‘dealt with’ but they are a fringe minority, no matter their issue de jour. We, on the other hand, pontificate about ‘democracy’ when in fact this country was founded & is supposed to be a democratic republic. True ‘democracy’ would be a terrible way to go. Over the years I have been on numerous Big 10 college campus’s & found that when the bell rings between classes, the streets are filled with oriental students. One can only hope that they don’t go back home with the bullshit that is currently taught in these ‘institutions of higher learning’ because it serves no purpose other than to foment ill feelings & chaos. We all have our faults & the Chinese are no exception, but for a fairly densely & homogenous population, their system seems to working…….at least they didn’t have to endure their version of Joe Biden. Never underestimate the ignorance & stupidity of the American people. I love my country, I just despise our government.
The Chinese are not smarter than us, but they are more disciplined. Americans, especially young people are increasingly undisciplined, especially our young men. Only 25% of our young men are fit for military service. Obesity, drug use, psychological problems, etc, render the other 75% unfit. Do we really want a war with China?
When you say ‘disciplined’ check out when Georgecorgi had to say.
The Nazis were ‘disciplined’, so are the Norks.
The major vulnerability of China, regardless of who rules or what system, is the lack of resources to feed their people and support their economy. While this puts them in the same constrained position as Japan, circa 1930, it also means that they likewise cannot sustain a prolonged war.
We would be wise to avoid putting them in a desperate situation that might prompt rash action seeking a quick victory. We also must maintain enough of an edge to discourage such action.
I’m so glad we have wise rulers and a stable government in the USA who can navigate this delicate situation and … uhhh
I first visited Asia in the 70s as a sailor. I ended up marrying a Taiwanese gal about 10 years later, but oddly enough, we met in San Diego where she was already living. Almost 45 years later we are still going strong.
I’ve been to Taiwan many times now, and the Taipei of 2024 is unrecognizable compared to what it must have been like back in the 70s. Thoroughly modern and IMHO a very enjoyable city. And I’m not in general a fan of big city living.
References:
Online pokies with payid australia real money payid pokies aus
References:
Play pokies with bpay bpay pokies real money
References:
5 dollar deposit pokies payid hedgedoc.ludos-disciplinarum-misi.fyi
References:
Klarna sofort casino https://dancewiki.site
References:
Casino sofortüberweisung 2026 https://dok.kompot.si/XpLaExbIT9u-5ASlNlzNGQ
References:
Seriöses Sofort Casino http://gjglm.com/home.php?mod=space&uid=189187
References:
Sofortüberweisung casino https://test-sida.noads.biz/?462530
References:
Online Casino Klarna https://www.nlvbang.com/home.php?mod=space&uid=3238379
The phrase “Yellow Peril” deserves careful historical scrutiny, since it reflects how fear and racial stereotypes were used to frame Asian communities as a supposed threat. Examining the assumptions behind that language is essential to understanding the period’s politics and propaganda.
References:
Legit osko pokies australia http://www.88m2.com
References:
No verification payid pokies australia https://write.frame.gargantext.org/ertJs-M4RjOu2xVO5JtXCA
References:
Instant withdrawal payid pokies liberalwiki.space
References:
How to play pokies with bpay http://l1ae1d.творение.москва/
References:
High roller payid pokies 1 dollar payid pokies
References:
Bank transfer casino Australia https://chesswiki.site/wiki/Best_Online_Pokies_Australia_2026_Top_Games_to_Play
References:
Payid pokies sign up bonus http://x.kongminghu.com/home.php?mod=space&uid=971462
References:
Osko withdrawal times casino http://bbs.sdhuifa.com/home.php?mod=space&uid=1252544
Auszahlungen mit Sofortüberweisungen sind generell nicht möglich. Zwar kann man problemlos Geld einzahlen, allerdings wird keine https://mark-down.de/paperless/d/73-casino-mit-sofortuberweisung-und-paypal-sicher-zahlen zurück auf das eigene Konto angeboten. Daher müssen Auszahlungen mit anderen Zahlungsarten vorgenommen werden. Wer im SOFORT Online Casino Geld auszahlen möchte, muss für die Auszahlung leider eine andere Zahlungsmethode verwenden.