From the Readers

Not entirely true

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-22 07:53

Comment on "EU exchange creates knowledge gap" (China Daily, July 13)

Many of the observations in the article reveal the extent to which educated Chinese do not understand how the rest of the world works.

The author claims that educated Chinese are well informed about Europe. This is not generally true. Most educated Chinese are obsessed with some caricature of the United States as representing the rest of the world: Hollywood and Wall Street, and maybe some European brands when they go shopping. Western cuisine to them is hamburger or fried chicken. Moreover, even describing the issue as a "cultural surplus" as measured by trade and the volume of activities exposes a further peculiarity of how many of the educated Chinese see the world.

Real people-to-people interaction means paying less attention to who represents what collectivity, and who is winning and losing, and how balance of influence are working out. And real contact means remembering you are a human being, and forgetting what you have been taught about nei wai you bie.

Laowai, on China Daily Website

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(China Daily 07/22/2010 page9)