用户配置文件: Alien

用户信息
  • 注册时间
  • 认证Yes

论坛帖子

0
Forums > Living in Kunming > Do you have local friends ?

@yankee: Right, so now you know the cause (lack of proper social conditioning) you can just give up with a clear conscience.
Sorry non-american/non-English English is so painful to your ears - what does American sound like to others?
Now I'm dropping out of this conversation because it's all just more examples of what I've been hearing from people living outside their original culture most of my life and I'm beginning to lose patience with it ('The Spanish do this wrong, the Nigerians are all scam artists, the Chinese don't know...' whatever it is - but I'm smugly the objective and unconfused judge of all of their faults...)

0
Forums > Living in Kunming > Do you have local friends ?

@liumingke: So you want to change the cultural history of the world to produce a different linguistic situation in the present, one that you can handle? It's not anybody's fault that we're not all the same in everything (thank god), you know. Pointing out real difficulties (no, I can't handle Kunminghua either) is no excuse for not dealing with them.
Or you can just give up, like the people I know here from elsewhere who have apparently decided that, because they know they'll never be perfect in speaking Chinese, decide never to learn anything at all.
Now how much sense does that make?

0
Forums > Living in Kunming > Do you have local friends ?

Xiefei's got it.
For Pete's sake, just talk to Chinese people as you would anyone anywhere, remembering, of course, that most people don't share whatever your own cultural background is and that you are going to have to respect the rules & manners of their culture just as you would do if you went to France, Pakistan, Nicaragua or anywhere else, and just as you'd expect foreigners to do in your own country. Oh yeah, that's right, a lot of Chinese people perhaps haven't spent any time in your country, so they may find it a bit difficult to deal with your perspectives or your language, whatever they are. But that's the way the world is and it's about time we got used to it. You don't have to deal with or even like everything about the country, which you can't pretend to fully understand, but you need to be able to deal with the person in front of you and not expect her/him to conform to whatever standards you imagine and/or that you, or he/she, think should be in place for the whole universe. There's no excuse for not understanding that nobody, including yourself, is able to communicate with complete clarity, but if you handle the problem one person at a time you might be able to pick up a few clues, despite whatever general judgements you want to make. I would guess even marital relations are like that. Not everything is a matter of 'us' (whomever that is supposed to be) vs. 'them'.

分类广告

No results found.

分类评论

Tell it to Steven Hawking. A person's physical stature does not limit his/her potential for work that does not rely on his/her physical stature (e.g., English teaching, as well as physics). The cultural attitude that those who are discriminated against because they do not fit the culturally desired norm should be outcast or should be provided for by special environments that can be sold as entertainment venues to those who will not deal with their own prejudices is a cultural attitude that perpetuates discrimination against all who are 'different'. The problem here, as elsewhere, is a matter of dehumanizing those who are 'different' - prejudicial culture that regiments anything that deviates from its standards, rather than dealing with the prejudice itself. Why not have a theme park within which 'foreigners', with all their funny habits, can be kept, so that they do not disturb the 'normality' of cultural prejudices? Actually, there could be many: one for 'black people', one for Tibetans, one for Japanese, one for gay people, one for Han Chinese people who have given up their 'traditional' clothing for 'western-style' clothing (e.g., the great majority of Chinese, over the past century or so) - in fact we could subdivide and subdivide until nothing was left but mutual nonrecognition. All these would help to maintain the narrow identities of 'normality' that can be relied upon to advance support the cultural attitudes that promote the continuing inability of people to recognize each other as human, and to celebrate and accept their differences - not as entertainment items, no matter how 'cute', but as full human beings. How different is all this from apartheid?

This effort to maintain prejudice can, of course, be profitable to those who invest in it, and convenient for social engineers and political elites who want to maintain an elite power status by reliance on it.

The place is an insult to our common humanity and a spotlight on cultural attitudes of exclusion. Those who find that they enjoy such displays should take a good look at the nature of the culture that has formed them so narrowly. Cultures change; cultures have always changed; cultures are presently changing and will continue to do so; there is nothing sacred about cultural attitudes. Our common humanity is an ongoing project, and those who imagine they are not part of such a project are simply contributing their own blindness to it, and limiting themselves in the process. It's not the 'dwarves' who are the problem, its the people who will not accept them as within the boundaries of 'us'.

See John Israel's EXCELLENT book on the history of the university:

Israel, John. Lianda: A Chinese University in War and Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998

Books about universities do not normally strike me as exciting, but this one is.

John has lived in Kunming for several months per year over the past 10 years or more.

Modern nationalism is a manipulative ideology to manage global capital, and nationalist blindness to actual human beings leads to the punishment of innocents. China is not a communist country. People who murder in Pakistan cannot be extradited to China to be judged for murders of people in Pakistan, even if they're Chinese.

评论


By

Not quite what you'd call a jumping place, but not bad at all for rather standard US-type meals, not overly expensive, and with a really good salad bar that's cheap, or free with most dinner dishes after 5:30PM. You can get a bottle of beer or even wine if you really want to, but I've never seen anybody do it - maybe that's just to take out. Chinese Christian run, and they hire people with physical disadvantages, who are pleasant and helpful. Frequented by foreign (mostly North American) Christians and Chinese Christians - was started by a Canadian couple associated with Bless China (previously, Project Grace), who are no longer here, but no religious pressure or any of that. Steaks are nothing special, and I avoid the Korean dishes, which I've had a few times but which did not impress me.

As a shop and bakery, it's very good bread at reasonable prices, of various kinds (Y18 for a good multigrain loaf that certainly weighs well over a pound. Other stuff too, like granola and oatmeal that is local, as well as imported things, including American cornflakes and so forth, which some people seem to require.


By

Large portions, seriously so with the pizza, which is Brooklyn/American style, I guess. Convivial, conversational, good place to drink with good folks on both sides of the bar, especially after about 9PM.


By

Really good pizza and steaks. The wine machine fuddles me when I'm a bit fuddled, & seems unnecessary. Good folks on both sides of the bar.