The propaganda messages the government here delivers to China's youngsters through school textbooks are not always as glaringly obvious as the stuff I was dealing with last week ("Train is THE BEST way to travel, because it's so SAFE.")
This morning, I had to record a dialogue ostensibly about the merits of exercise, and the different forms it could take. One of the speakers claimed that his father swore by a cold shower every morning, and this method of "keeping fit" was then accepted and warmly praised by both speakers.
Exercise? Really? I rather think this has more to do with bolstering the One Child Policy.
7 comments:
You should hear what they have to say about wanking (ahem)- something to do with zinc deficiency leading to the visionaries of tomorrow lacking in the brain department. Lord knows where I read that, some article about the Chinese equivalent of Scouting For Boys; I certainly can't find the link now unfortunately. If anything though, I guess this 'advice' would be counter-intuitive as far as the One Child Policy goes!
Gosh, John, how do you come to be so knowledgeable about China if you've never been here?
And you still haven't joined in our What's your unusual super-power? thread over on The Barstool, have you?
By the by, on my first visit here - nearly 18 years ago - I saw a man skinning a cat in a public park in Wuhan. I charitably assumed that he was short of cash, and having to rely on eating - or selling - stray pets to survive... rather than that he was working out some sort of psychotic grudge against cats in general, or this poor cat in particular. Whatever the reason, it did seem odd - creepy - that he would be choosing to do it in such a conspicuous spot.
Sorry, my last comment was briefly duplicated. I found myself embarrassed by a typo, and excised it.
I suppose my unusual super-power is tracking down obscure crap on the Internet? These days I truly believe that thanks to it you can live almost entirely through second-hand experiences; hang on, that just sounds incredibly sad. But you do have to admit there is an awful lot of information out there (if you have free roam of it of course ;) ), it's a case of being open minded and not letting bias cloud your judgement. Chinese people on QQ Messenger (I had a stint with it, no more) were always telling me I didn't know anything because a) I'm not Chinese and b) I've never been to China but I have a nagging suspicion that if I were to fulfil either criteria that I would be none the wiser to where I am now, probably even less so! It is one of their well-worn retorts to a lot of things after all (or so I've read!)
However, if you were adding yourself to the ranks of those who say b) in your comment then I respect you enough to concede to that stance somewhat; you are one of those whose second-hand experiences of China has formed my opinion of it after all! It was just something I read once; I'm sure it's indeed a case of half of the Chinese readers of it will be so conservative (rural?) as to agree with every word and the rest have a more modern view and see it as the archaic side of China (and some in between).
Personally in general, the whole of the "far East" to me is an alien culture which I start out as finding fascinating but once I learn more gradually grow to hate. This applies to Japan, Korea etc. as well as China. They are so very different in almost every way it seems and when you think you find a common bond (e.g. family values) you can be guaranteed to read something that will cloud your judgement once more (e.g. family constantly badgering children about exam scores and such up to the point that everyone hates each other). I'm starting to go on now but I don't believe that what I have read (and watched) over the years has been deliberately skewed towards the negative although I do admit to preferring to read the bad stories over the good. I guess this fuelling the negative fire isn't good for me so I try to remain compassionate; it really is a morbid fascination little old me has though, I hope it doesn't bother you too much.
Not at all, John - I wouldn't disparage or interest in or knowledge about China, or your right to form opinions on it. I was just impressed that you'd managed to glean so much purely from online sources.
Has your obscure-crap-tracking abilities led you to my early post onThe League of Health and Strength? I think that is the only occasion so far on which I have touched on the topic of Onanism.
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