Afterword

Afterword

No country is perfect but China can, at times, be downright horrible. A friend told me sometimes, your days will be great, sometimes, from the time you wake up, you’ll end up crying in your cornflakes.

People are people everywhere and by and large, we are all the same. But there is something drastically wrong with many things in China, Chinese culture and the Chinese themselves. Chinese people will often tell foreigners, “Even though you’ve lived here a long time, you can never fully understand China.” They use this statement to shut you up if you say something bad about China, claiming you are at fault because you do not understand.

Before, it did shut me up. Now, I tell whoever says this that because I have lived in different countries and experienced other cultures, I can often understand Chinese culture better than even the Chinese. Whereas those who are only acquainted with Chinese culture have nothing to compare it to, and thus cannot observe it properly. A foreigner can gain insight into a culture in ways that a local who has been brought up and ingrained into that culture can't.

Another “attempt to shut you up” line is that China has a very long history of 5,000 years. You hear this so many times, you start wondering if your grandfather can justify anything as well just because he has had a long life.

“Do you think that what China is doing in Tibet is acceptable?”

“Oh, well as you know, China has a very long history of 5,000 years.” While they will kick up a storm about what Japan did to China in the 1930s and act the innocent party.

I suppose I should just be quiet and hope the Chinese never find out that they actually have a history of 7,000 years or perhaps even longer.

But okay, so you do have a long history. Yet, you would think that according to the laws of evolution, societies and nations would become more civilized, just as animals and plants better themselves. The UK certainly has evolved from 1066 and bettered itself, and though the sun may have set on the British Empire, Britain remains a strong nation today. China has taken the opposite course, against the expectations of evolutionary theory. A high level of culture was achieved in the Tang Dynasty and other dynasties, but now Chinese society has slipped back by possibly millennia. And for those who disagree, they can venture into a toilet cubicle in which the toilet has been used but not flushed and is full of stinking shit, and see if that changes their opinion.

Chinese culture is so very complex that it is so often incredibly stupid. But it doesn’t have to be like this. It is like this because the Chinese have a strong tendency to bypass reason and resist change. Even though they can see a better way of doing things, they will still do it the old way.

There are some Chinese who are immaculately clean and who are very polite and honest. But they are few and far between. I have traveled and lived in seven countries and the Chinese are the dirtiest, most impolite and dumbest people I have ever seen. Dirty- litter, pit, a lack of hygiene with food; most impolite – pushing and queue jumping, and terrible driving; dumbest – inability to think, following dumb customs that make no sense nowadays, and just doing things that are stupid. As the saying goes: common sense is not so common, but generally, the Chinese have the exact opposite: stupid sense.