ah, so the mascot wars have borne fruit (context)

sample image:

“this trifold only folds twice! false advertising” really kills me lmfao

thank you for posting chen weihua so i dont have to look at twitter 🫡

that’s his online handle… truck nuts mentality anyone?

further discourse for people interested: Can the Chinese Diaspora Speak?

linked article goes more into specifically chinese americans but I believe analysis should be applicable to other groups of imperial core diaspora. The article is already long, but I think more complete analysis would include mention more recent history & developments, such as dissident industrial complex [related to 6-4 and operation yellowbird, but also beyond], and prominence of FLG cult and integration with US right wing, as well as discussion of religion (per my own experience “church asians” are much more vehemently anti-China, and community or lack thereof is also related to recent decades shuttering of Chinese cultural centers while Chinese language churches have taken up their emptied niche as social centers)

finished the video and was a little bit annoyed because it focused on anecdotal rather than analytical, which the title suggested it would do. Please I know there’s a lot of content featuring domestic conditions in China, it’s good. But with that kind of title, I thought it would go more into the manufacture of sinophobia, how the sausage is made… because frankly, diaspora who hold the sinophobia torch in the west are under-discussed. From Ai Weiwei and Chai Ling to falun gong media empire (hi David Zhang) and certain YA novel authors, news reporters with a Chinese face spreading sinophobic tropes… I recognize that these individuals or groups have amassed credence and power in the west, but ! oh my god. Oh my god it is everywhere.

my observation as ABC is that most of my peers (other ABCs) can’t read Chinese and have fossilized speaking/listening skills, if they retain much at all. There is some “blame” on parents pushing kids to focus on English, or the education system or other society things, but the fact of the matter is at least for me anecdotally, Chinese language weekend schools (designed for native speakers) I attended start off with a lot of kids in the beginner/lower levels (30+) but very few sticks with it all that long. Grade 11/12 and HSK class we only had 7 people iirc, and this was more than 10 years ago. I didn’t even want to attend, being Chinese and doing culturally Chinese things were uncool and made it really awkward to try to make friends in white society, as well as took time away from socializing as a teen. I’m glad I stuck with it, however I will say that efforts towards Chinese literacy was more due to efforts I made as an adult, but I’m very grateful that my parents tried and it gave me a decent foundation.

Another thing is, even as recently as 10-15 years ago, China was still very much developing country, homeless could still be seen begging on the streets and income inequality especially with lots of migrant workers from rural areas - surface level observations but very visually prominent, which could lead someone to think that China is backwards or communism is a fraud or failure. Additionally during that era my relatives were abuzz about corruption in government officials and my understanding from them was that moving up in society was about who you knew 关系. So these things reinforced my left-liberal position for a long time, didn’t start shaking it off until the pro-dem HK situation in 2019 and atrocity fabrication in XUAR.