Chinese people LOVE me! (23)

"Chinese people love me because.... I endure harangues with remarkable good grace."

China (and here I am using the country to stand for its people), as I must undoubtedly have mentioned many times before, is one of the most insecure nations on earth: its people all seem to feel desperately ashamed and inadequate because they are so far short of being the No. 1 Country In The World they feel it is their birthright to be, and they have huge chips on their shoulders about being patronised and dictated to by outsiders; particularly by the colonial powers during the so-called "century of humiliation" from the 1840s to the 1940s, although they are intent on seeing this as a trend that continues to the present day, and thus - viewing all foreign relations through this prism of historical resentment - they are apt to be very suspicious and hostile towards other nations at all times. And every once in a while, they will vent this hostility on any old representative laowai who comes within range.

It is quite astonishing the ease with which the Chinese will take personal offence at the actions or statements of foreign politicians, very disconcerting the vehemence with which they will express this sense of offence, and positively flabbergasting the inappropriateness of the targets and occasions on which they will choose to unleash one of these rants.

Although I like to tease and provoke sometimes in the anonymous haven of this blog, I assure you that I am much more circumspect in my relations with Chinese friends and colleagues, and seldom or never do anything to invite such outbursts. But still they seem to come my way pretty often.

The other week, I was having dinner with a group of Chinese lawyers - all well-educated, well-travelled, mature professional women. And one of them just went off on one at me for about 10 minutes (with her colleagues intermittently joining in a slightly more muted supporting chorus of "Foreigners don't understand China, why don't foreigners keep their noses out of Chinese affairs?").

"Er, well, as a Brit, you know, I don't really associate myself with any remarks made by officials of the US Treasury Dept......"

All that stuff about the Chinese not liking to display strong emotions in public..... well, I think that's mostly bunk. In my experience, they pretty routinely get furiously angry..... over nothing.

But I'm very good at dealing with it. Oh yes. I stay calm. I respect their point of view. I talk them down ever so gently.

I would much rather, though, be able to enjoy a dinner without being subjected to one of these rants.

I relish a good debate, and I'd love to be able to discuss issues of the day with highly educated Chinese people like this. But.... it would be nice to find Chinese interlocutors who were open to alternate points of view (sadly, that is a bit of a rarity). It would be nice if they didn't get so hyper-emotional about these topics. It would be nice if they didn't take things so personally all the time. And it would be nice if they had the good manners not to launch into one of these tirades in the middle of dinner. Oh yes, it would be so nice......