Over the past few weeks that I have been in China, I have been really impressed at the people’s patience here, friendliness and desire to help. The locals here, despite maybe laughing a little, are very tolerant of foreigners’ tone-deaf attempts at mandarin. They are very proud of their heritage and offer their advice when they can. It made me laugh at the conference this week, when a rotund cigar-smoking Chinese man, who was bemused at my indecisiveness at choosing a soft drink (I couldn’t choose because all the names are in Chinese characters, so I have no clue what is inside). He reminded me of the hookah-smoking caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, as through rings of smoke he recommended an iced green tea to me. Another example of people’s friendliness here, even though its just a little thing, is when I went to Nanjing road last weekend on my own, I was struggling to get the lid off a bottle of iced Jasmine green tea and a little old Chinese man came over, opened it for me, smiled and walked away. Here, the language barrier, color of skin, difference in nationalities or race meant nothing. Little things like this really make me feel welcome in China.
However, in contrast, first thing on a Monday morning, after being devastated by the travesty in Japan over weekend, Miguel and I were discussing the impact this would have globally and the safety of Japanese friends we both have. (Luckily everyone we know appears to be fine, but we are still not sure of the safety of their parents). My housemate’s brother works in Tokyo, and whilst this is an area that was not hit too badly, they are still very low on resources such as clean water and electricity. This is obviously an atrocious and deeply upsetting natural disaster – one of the highest in recorded history – so can you imagine my shock when one of my managers at work strolled in this morning, with a big smile on his face and said: “Congratulations for quake in Japan!...Exciting!”
Baffled, we presumed he was lost in translation and had made a mistake, however the beam on his face as he casually told us about taking his children to the zoo over weekend, left us even more bewildered.
We asked him to explain what he meant about it being ‘exciting’, suggesting maybe that he had meant to say ‘emotional’ or ‘tragic’, but he went on to explain…
“Japan attacked us 70 years ago. They didn’t say sorry – still. We never forgive them. This is karma!”
Absolutely dumbstruck, he continued to explain that his grandfather taught his father to hate the Japanese and he will teach his son, as this vendetta should be passed from generation to generation!
As this mornings CNN news fell into place “Even China are helping out with this disaster!” my boss continued to tell us that on China’s version of Google, (BaiDu) if you type ‘Congratulations for earthquake in Japan’ (in Mandarin) there are 8 million entries!! This is the equivalent of the entire population of London (plus around a million more) writing an entry!
Apparently one TV channel in China even wanted to have 24-hour coverage of the ‘Congratulations earthquake’! I was completely and utterly blown away by this. Whilst trying to protest and mention the death toll and livelihoods and homes lost, my colleague shrugged and said ‘yeah, this is called karma’. THANK GOD China and England are friends.
*This did get worse, but I have deemed it too bad to blog about.
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