The Chinese are Nice?

I remember when I was growing up, I had a few Chinese friends and I thought they were all so nice. Everyone did. Their parents were also nice. They were friendly, shy and generous. I thought that all Chinese people were like that. I was wrong.

After 15 years living in China and Taiwan, I now see that most Chinese and Taiwanese people really are two-faced; they literally show the world two distinct personalities in an almost schizophrenic ruse.

The first is the over-generous, sometimes shy, sometimes friendly introvert that most Westerners see ... and like. However, the other face, the one you see when you have lived among them and been married to them and had children with them is quite different. That face shows their ugly, arrogant, selfish, self-centred, conniving and hateful side, and most of them have it. Once you start noticing this side of their personalities, you start seeing just how cruel and malicious many of them are. On top of that, many have anger-management and self-control issues (hence the unspoken epidemic of wife and child beating in these cultures, and the multitude of stalkers, public masturbators and peeping toms).

Their arrogance deserves some attention. Believe it or not, the Chinese believe that their culture is superior to Western culture. They look down on us as fools and believe that they can manipulate us because we are gullible. And if you look at the way Western people are gazing wondrously at China's rise, it seems to be working. They always seem to use their ingenuity to back up their opinion that their culture is superior. The truth is that yes, the Chinese invented paper and gunpowder etc. several thousand years ago but did pretty much no inventing (or any other original ideas, for that matter) after that. Almost everything that they desire, every status symbol, every piece of technology and comfort, was invented in the West. Look at science, art, music, cinema, architecture, philosophy, law, medicine, sport and almost every other field you can think of and you will see almost no noticeable contribution by the Chinese - even though there are more Chinese than Westerners, all told. You will also find that there are a lot more Chinese people learning English than Westerners learning Mandarin and many more Chinese people trying to get out of China than Westerners trying to get in. Heck, I think half of Taiwan has a US or Canadian passport - or it seems so. So if their culture is better, why does it seem that they are far more interested in the Western culture than we are of Chinese culture? Personally, I think that there is no foundation for their arrogance.

Then there is the all-encompassing money-lust - their willingness to literally do anything for money. People everywhere are greedy and many focus too much on money. However, the Chinese take it to a whole new level. Their lives are consumed by the rush to make money as, in China money gives you status and status gives you guanxi (connections that will do you "favours"). Children as young as 3 know that money is all-important and the rich flaunt what they have and horde what they make. The money they make is used to buy flashy foreign luxury goods like German cars, the latest American gadgets and Italian handbags, all of which are paraded for the world to see. 

The money-lust is also why they cut corners and can't seem to do anything properly. Hence the constant flow of news about food and toys made with poisonous ingredients, gadgets that don't work properly and so on. Yes, there is corruption everywhere, but not deliberate corporate criminality that results in children or pets being poisoned. And it happens regularly in China and Taiwan, even today. Only a month ago, Taiwan was rocked by the scandal of a factory owner who substituted DEHP (some sort of plastic derivative) for approved clouding agents that were used in everything from fruit juice to yoghurt to children's candy. This was not a mistake. It was deliberate and done so he could keep more of the money for himself.
In the big earthquake in China a few years back, most of the schools that collapsed (burying thousands of children alive) did so because corners were cut in their construction and money pocketed. To date, no-one has been arrested for this.
The cutting of corners extends to not paying taxes or dues. A friend's Taiwanese wife was annoyed that she wasn't going to get a refund from the tax department last year after declaring only a fraction of her earnings and getting away with it. Apparently, she usually got money from the tax department.

Then there is the way they bring their kids up. Most Taiwanese kids (and more and more Chinese kids) spend all day at school and then have to go to extra lessons (cram schools that in many cases are nothing but money-making scams) most evenings and even Saturdays. Weekends are then spent doing homework for school and the extramural classes with perhaps one outing with the family per weekend. The parents maintain that they send their kids to these classes to help their studies, but my personal opinion is that many just don't want to be bothered with their kids. Housewives bundling their kids off to extra lessons and going shopping instead of spending time with their offspring is not uncommon. There is very little emphasis on sport or a balanced lifestyle in these countries, and this leads to many kids having emotional problems because they have no way to release pressure or vent frustration. What is more, most couples are expected to have children, with male offspring still being preferred, and more and more of them are spoiled, obnoxious weaklings protected by overbearing, pushy parents. Often, boys are fawned over by parents and girls merely tolerated. Few parents bother teaching manners or common courtesy to their children and leave it up to someone else (the schools or after-school care). This way, they think they can't be blamed.
And talking about kids being obnoxious and without any civility, how about this; imagine being a forty-five year old father of three walking along the street and having a fifteen year old (standing with his friends and obviously showing off) blurting out "Go fuck your mother!" at you just behind your back. Or being called a son-of-a-bitch to your face by a teenager emboldened by the presence of two or three friends. This has happened numerous times to me and most Westerners I know who have lived in these countries for a while. Back home, the kid would get his nose and/or jaw broken. Here, even grabbing and threatening them would most probably result in you being arrested and either imprisoned or expelled from the country. Kids here have not been taught even rudimentary manners, which is not a cultural difference. I know this this because I have met people who are civil. Those that aren't just couldn't care, I guess.
There are some good parents, however, but from what I have seen they are in the minority.

Finally, for this post at least, there is the racism. Yes, many Chinese people are racist. One example is where white, American-looking males get teaching jobs quite easily in China and particularly in Taiwan. However, blacks or even dark-haired Westerners struggle as they are not really acceptable in the eyes of most school owners (who in turn reflect the views of their customers, the parents who support the "school"). Then there's the staring and the rude remarks uttered at Westerners all the time, things that would not be tolerated in Western countries. But the racism isn't just leveled at us "round-eyes". Many of the Chinese I have dealt with hate the Koreans and Japanese and Taiwanese too. And the Taiwanese I have spoken to about this hate everyone except the Americans (after all, they think Taiwan is America's fifty-first state, or they act that way, and they just loooooooooooove the US). To see the racism in action, do anything to upset a Chinese person and they will tell you quite plainly to get out of their country. In other words, stay in Taiwan or China as long as it suits the locals but then get out when we don't need you any more. This is something we should apply in the West.

Yes, it's their culture I guess and were it confined to the Far East, I would so no problem. But as more and more Chinese people pour into Western countries, the people living there must realise that their opinions of their new neighbours does not necessarily gel with the reality. And yes, this might seem like a racist rant - and perhaps it is - but if you are a Westerner and have lived in China or Taiwan and been part of society there, you will know it's all true.

WTF - Crime in SA

When Zwelinzima Vavi, the commie boss of the Cosatu trade union, starts blaming colonialism and that old chestnut, apartheid, for the high number of serial killers and violent murderers in South African society, almost saying "it's not our fault, the whites made us so", he is again showing how the ANC and their bosom-buddies Cosatu will stop at nothing to take cheap shots and play the blame game to infuriate the non-whites of the country, while at the same time blatantly working against any hope of reconciliation.

There is obviously no proof that apartheid and colonialism were the causes of the murderous trend - there never is any proof when they make these inflammatory statements. I am sure that both colonialism and apartheid didn't help the situation but to suggest they were the cause is ridiculous.

To start with, South Africa was not the only country to be colonised - most of Africa, Asia and the Americas were colonies. So why are their murder rates so low compared to ours?
Vavi's argument on this point holds no validity, so can be discounted. Apartheid was less benign, but it was hardly the sole cause, but I will get to that later.

So what if we look elsewhere? What about at the black cultures themselves? Perhaps the violence inherent in the tribal cultures of South Africa may be part of the problem.  Rural boys are brought up engaging in stick fighting and are later sujected to brutal circumcision that claims lives every year. Even the belief system of angry ancestors, of witchdoctors' curses and muti killing all contributes in some way. Granted, more and more South African blacks are forgoing these traditions, but I am not maintaining that all blacks are murderers. I am maintaining that the high violent crime rate is not the fault of the whites.

When the coloninizers arrived in South Africa back in the 1400s, did they find the black people just sitting under trees enjoying their utopian, stress-free existence and then proceed to start butchering them? No. They encountered warlike tribes that were bent on massacring the other tribes around them. Vavi should do some reading about the history of his people before opening his mouth.

Even after colonisation, the back-on-black violence continued. Just talking to people who lived in the townships during the apardheid era will give you an idea of how much violent crime was being perpetrated by the black population against their brethren back then (although nothing like the violence that followed the ANC take-over of the country). Again, the blacks were not just sitting around being victimised by the apartheid government thugs or even focussing their violence of the police and soldiers sent into the townships to keep the peace. A majority of the violent types were preying on the weak and the innocent. I re-iterate my point that apartheid was a contributing factor but it was not the sole cause.


I would suggest that another, more compelling reason for the high violent crime rate is the encouragement of violence by the ANC, SACP and PAC during the apartheid era as a means to overthrow the government and the violence of their cadres against those suspected of being police spies or not towing the line. Can anyone forget the images of people being "necklaced" by psychotic, ANC and PAC inspired mobs? The townships were ruled by the gangsters and their revolutionary overlords (who now run our country). They were the ones that flooded the townships with assault rifles, many of which were used against innocent black families in murders and robberies, and then later were used in murders and robberies in post-apartheid South Africa. Yes, apartheid was the catalyst but the root cause was the irresponsibility of the people who now govern the country.


And when apartheid ended and the police force fell apart, many of the "freedom fighters" (terrorists) were repatriated from their bases in Africa where they had been training to fight the SADF. Promises to these trained killers of jobs, money and homes as reward for their sacrifices never materialised as the fat cats plundered the state coffers and enriched themselves. Disillusioned, many of these ex-soldiers turned to the only thing they knew; violence and killing, thus aggrevating the crime situation.

Finally, the lack of jobs, hopelessness and lack of guidance by many families and the state are further contributing factors. And these can be laid squarely at the door of the ANC government and even organisations like Cosatu. These organisations and the others like them have not changed from their struggle mentality to one of constructiveness. They are still destructive, trying to break down a non-exsitent enemy and place blame instead of admitting to the problems, engaging the resources they have and starting to build the country up. They are not planning and leading. But then it's easier to bitch and moan than get down in the trenches and do some work.

In my view, all of these things contribute to or at least exacerbated the violent crime, Comrade Vavi.
 Apartheid; yes. Black culture; yes; ANC/PAC/SACP policies; most definitely. Corruption and lack of delivery by the ANC government; oh yes! Colonialism; not really.

I understand you, Vavi. I understand how you are thinking here, and it is common to most ANC leaders. It would hardly be inflammatory to the masses if you told the truth. You would lose your power if you could not enrage your followers by pointing to an external enemy, even if you have to create a phantom foe, lest they turn around and say "Hey, what exactly is Comrade Vavi doing to make our lives better?"

WTF - Little Girl's Womb Cut Out While She Is Still Alive

No surprises that this happened in good ol' SA. Yep, some piece of shit, named Brian Mangwale (may he rot in hell for eternity), is being tried for abducting a 10 year old girl, and murdering her in the most terrible of ways (Article Here). Although he has made conflicting statements, he and three of his buddies apparently rape her and then while his cronies hold her down, he cuts out her womb and then slices off her one breast to be sold to a witchdoctor for muti (a medicinal potion). He CUTS OUT HER WOMB while she is alive. He plunges a knife into her little abdomen, slicing it open and then proceeds to hack off part of her innards. She, naturally, dies and he is arrested.

I don't care who you are but if this doesn't make you sick to your stomach, you have a problem. The kicker is that he is complaining that he was tortured in police custody! This filthy vermin has the audacity to commit so heinous a crime and then he winges when he is assaulted. I wish the cops had tied him to a car and dragged him down a tarred road until he came apart at the seams.

So no, because South Africa is a constitutional democracy, this horrible creature will be tried and sentenced like a human being when he is quite obviously not even close being human. To call this murdering turd an animal would be an insult to animals. Actually, calling him a turd is an insult to turds. He is a vicious abomination that should be sumarily executed. His very existence is an insult to the rest of us.

WTF - Rhino Slaughter Continues

The slaughter of rhinos continues in South Africa to feed the demand created by a Chinese superstition. 333 rhinos killed in 2010 alone! 333 of South Africa's rhinos! My rhinos! And by March 2011, the figure was standing at 71. According to the Wildlife Society of South Africa, the white rhino population has increased from just over 5000 in 1991 to nearly 20,000 today. So what if 300 are killed a year I hear the Chinese say. There are plenty more. That's not the point. The point is that 20,000 rhinos are not enough and even if it were, these noble animals are being cruelly slaughtered to feed an archaic, moronic superstition that has no validity. Scientific tests have shown that rhino horn has no effect on the ability of under-endowed Chinese men (or the rest of the male population either) being able to get their little pi-pis up.

Yes, greedy South African farmers and poachers are the triggermen and deserve as much of the blame and should be dragged behind a bakkie down a tarred road or something. That'll teach 'em! But like the drug war in South and Central America, the demand is the root cause of the problem. And in the case of rhino horn, it is not addictive.

We have tried to be nice about it, but anyone who knows the Chinese (and many other Asian nations), knows that many of them are so self-centred and shallow that they don't give a flying shit about the environment or nature - or anything else except their own self-importance and what they wring out of the world for themselves. You just have to take a trip around their country to see that this is in fact the case. Air that is poisonous, dead rivers ... Yes, many of them have realised that this is a problem and are trying to educate their brethren but by the time they get the message through to the newly moneyed peasants who believe that rhino horn will help their flagging libidos so they are not embarassed in front of their slutty girlfriends, the rhinos will be gone. So solly. Well, not solly enough my little droopy friend.

 Photo: Reuters

However, if drastic action is taken now, we can do something to save the rhinos. I like the idea of poisoning the horns. It doesn't affect the rhino but kills the mother fuckers fuelling this crime. However, the bleeding heart liberals say its too cruel. After all, in their eyes, they are only rhinos, and definitely not worth the life of a single money-grubbing little Chinese pervert who has done nothing for the world except help make at least one species extinct. I disagree.

Another alternative and something at will strike closer to home is to put out a hit on one panda for every rhino killed. We can start a rumour that if you grind up their paws and spread it on toast it is delicious - as inane a reason for slaughtering pandas as their reason for killing rhinos.
The Chinese love their pandas and will see this as such an affront that they might be jolted into seeing things from our perspective. Either that or they will declare war on us.
It's not very nice when uncaring foreigners start killing off your natural treasures is it? In any case, there are over 1800 pandas around. Losing 10 or 20 won't do much to their numbers. I have nothing against pandas but it justifies the shooting of a few to save our rhinos from extinction, in my view.
Click. Boom! Oh no! Why you do this?
Because you have been killing our rhinos.
Oooooooooooh. So solly.
This way the Chinese will start policing their own backyard in this regard, seeing that our pleas to stop the slaughter have fallen on deaf ears. Sometimes you can't talk nicely to people. You have to kick them in the balls. And for anyone saying that this is cruel and stupid, I agree - it would be better to shoot the horny, small-penised, peasant-minded, self-important turds that are the cause of the problem.

WTF - Smoked Osama

Jubilation in the streets of Washington and New York as the devil incarnate, Bin Laden himself, is shot and killed. Now, I have no love lost for Bin Laden and people like him deserve to be fashionably outfitted with bullet holes to the cranium, but I cannot get over the naivety of many members of the American public, thinking that they were the innocent victims of a criminal mastermind's campaign of terror. The entire Iraq fiasco is testament to the reason 9-11 took place. And I notice that even after his death, details emerge that Bin Laden pulled a woman in front of him to act as a human shield before he was shot - no doubt to make him out to be a spineless coward. I am not saying that this did not happen but it's all a bit "Hollywood" for my taste. The "burial at sea" was a nice touch.

Unfortunately, Bin Laden is now a martyr (which is exactly what he wanted) and the war against terror, I fear, is far from over.

Talking of 9-11, what really, really pisses me off are those whinging "families of the victims" who are always on TV whenever 9-11 comes to the fore. From the mosque that was going to be located near ground zero to every event that is even remotely related to the destruction of the Twin Towers, these people are grovelled to and stroked and pampered as if they are the only people ever to have lost relatives in unwarranted military strikes. And if anyone dares upset them, they launch into a tirade about how they are suffering and how dare anyone else disagree with them as it dishonours the memories of those killed. But what about the families of the innocent Iraqis killed by American bullets and bombs - and there are a crap-load more of them than the whinging families of the 9-11 victims? No-one gives a rat's ass about what their opinions are because they are not American. And the Iraqi civilians wanted to be bombed and shot just as much as the people in the Twin Towers wanted to die on September 11, 2001.

In fairness, I am sure that many families of the 9-11 victims do not rant and rave but a few get off on the power. Those that do, however, make everyone around them feel guilty, as if it is the rest of humanity's fault that we all do not feel dispair and anguish every single day about those lost on 9-11. They love the attention because now they are important and their opinions count. It's a pity that they don't see that although the events of 9-11 were terrible and tragic and no-one deserved to die that day (except maybe the hijackers), shit happens and when it does, you either take a gun and go and shoot those responsible to get closure in a biblical way or you mourn the dead, put it behind you and move on. You don't start whinging and make it all about you so you can get onto talk shows and get book deals. I know that we will never hear the end of 9-11 until something worse happens to the Americans but I hope that those families of the 9-11 victims who are using the deaths of their loved ones for self-serving reasons will have some dignity and let the deceased rest in peace.

WTF - Tax in South Africa

If there is one thing that takes the cake in South Africa it's the high rate of tax that we pay and the little we get back for it. I am not averse to paying tax. After all, if you want services, you need to pay for them. But we pay a high rate of tax and get absolutely nothing back. And if you add up income tax, VAT, the petrol tax, rates and taxes and so on, you will find that the average middle class person, upon which the economy is built, is giving more than half of everything they earn to the government. And what do they get for working over two weeks every month for that government? Barely anything worth mentioning. If you want to be protected from the rampant crime, you have to pay extra for private security because you can't rely on (or even trust) the police. If you get sick, you have to pay extra for private hospital care because if you go to a public hospital, there is a good chance that you will end up worse off than when you went in, if you aren't robbed or assaulted or insulted by those who work there. If you want a decent education for your kids, you have to send then to a private school where the Mathematics pass rate is not 30% and where 23 year old thugs aren't running drugs from the playground. In other words, for the basic services that every democratic government is supposed to provide for its people, security, health and education, South Africans have to pay extra if they want just a decent standard of service.

So, the ANC South African government fails to deliver to all (perhaps there is some equality in the country after all). What is more, and adding isult to injury, the government ministers use our tax money to take themselves and their comrades overseas on luxury trips. They go on "fact-finding missions", on "brain-storming sessions" and on "promotional tours", all involving a lot of sightseeing and shopping and staying in five star hotels and precious little else. They also award themselves high salaries and get to drive luxury cars, shamelessly snapping at any who dare criticise them and waving the Rules of Parliament or other such document about in their chubby little hands to justify their actions. And, obviously, if we complain, we are called elitist white racists. Yes, I know that the ANC government has built a million or two free RDP houses for the poor and provided water and electricity for many who didn't have. But I don't care. I am not part of their struggle for freedom. I am a tax payer and a citizen and whether they like it or not, they have a duty to provide what they undertook to provide. I have my own needs, as does every South African, and it is their job to see to my needs. And that includes decent security, health and education for my kids. I have as much of a right to those services as the poor black person in the boonies afforded a free RDP house. But they don't get that. They don't get it that they have responsibilities - that they are public servants. That's right Jacob ... you are my servant. You want respect, you earn it by doing what you are supposed to.

Imagine you were paying a company for a service to be delivered. Imagine that the company you were paying had as poor a record of service delivery as the South African government. Customers would take their business elsewhere and the company would go out of business. So why do we have to put up with the ineptitude and blatant wasting of resources by the government? Surely we could withold taxes? We pay them to do a job and they aren't doing it. So why pay them?

Imagine we all stopped paying taxes. Imagine the panic as they try desperately to start doing the jobs they are supposed to but don't even know where to begin. Imagine the chaos as they desperately figure out how they are going to afford to pay their bloated salaries at the end of the month.

Perhaps witholding taxes would be going too far but the people of South Africa need to start making their voices heard and demanding action from elected ANC officials. Our country is crumbling into disrepair and it will soon be a ruin like most countries in Africa unless we get the ANC government to do what they are supposed to do - serve us, the people.