Walking my dog yesterday was approached by two middle-aged guys who were screaming &*&# Japan and &*&# USA... at that point they started asking me in Chinese if I was an American helping Japan steal the Diaoyu islands... something like that. My dog who is a 38kg doberman got a little scared and started growling at which point they left me alone.
Anyone else been harassed...?
Not yet, but I really wouldn't want to be a Japanese person here right now...
I walked past a Japanese restaurant the other day - inside was a Chinese girl who looked like she had been crying and was looking outside very skittishly. I suspect they are getting a lot of harassment. Any Japanese people here that are having trouble at the moment? This ridiculous nationalist sentiment from Chinese people is making the country a bit more dangerous for all foreigners I suspect... its only a tiny island out in the middle of nowhere. Why don't China and Japan actually TALK first to sought out ownership instead of putting warships in the water??
That would require common sense.
Yuantongsi
(717 posts) •
At times like this you really start to appreciate the Chinese education system and how useful it is for the government.
If something more serious happens,,ie shots fired over these islands, then life here for laowai will start to get a lot more tense.
Hopefully there will ne no further escalation and people will be consumed with some other crisis/event. Too bad Apple might have to delay the launch of the iPhone 5, that will polarize people into a frenzy of consumerism!
i've been the victim of that sort of hostility in china, but not recently.
it's the oldest trick in the book for govts to brainswash people to channel their hatred towards foreign enemies so they don't notice how they're being hoodwinked in their own back yards.
and it's interesting that someone brings up the iphone coz that's precisely part of the whole thing. keep people buying useless garbage so they can stay stupid and be more easily manipulated. like an 18-year old japanese girl coming over to study chinese has anything to do with what's going on politically.
what new features does the iphone 5 have that the previous 4 versions don't? does it do your laundry?
@blobles, its not wise to share such sentiments out loud at the moment. To the Chinese its a matter of principle, doesn't matter what the value of the island is. It's the fact that Japan has violated Chinese their territory and is purposefully escalating the problem for a political aim. Think about how Americans are angry at Egypt right now for torching the embassy, same thing.
"Think about how Americans are angry at Egypt right now for torching the embassy, same thing."
Really, its the same thing? Maybe I'm wrong but I thought the American embassy in torched in one case, and in the other case the legal status of some uninhabited islands was altered.
In one case anti- Japanese protests sprung up all over the country, and in the other case anti- Egyptian protests didnt...
And didnt the actual "violation of territory" occur more than 100 years ago?
I'm not sure the "To the Chinese...." is 100% correct either. I know plenty of Chinese who don't see it the way you portray...so maybe more correct to say "To some Chinese..."
Isn't it funny (not really) that both things are happening when two major elections or the changing of the guard so to speak are going to take place. The elections in America and the changing of the leadership in China.
It seems the anti-US sentiment comes from our Post WW2 security treaty with Japan, which limits their military while shifting the burden of security to the US.
Also Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands are mentioned in the San Francisco treaty.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_San_Francisco
I think Japan nationalizing the islands was a bad move given the high tensions... but the response over here of trashing Japanese products and attacks on Japanese citizens living in China is totally unacceptable.
To me it's kind of a far stretch that the US is somehow orchestrating this nationalization of the islands by Japan. What do you think?
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