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Interesting read: Ray Dalio’s view of China over the past few decades. I didn’t know that he has been so involved for so long - his son Matt lived and studied there for a year, and founded China Care Foundation to help Chinese orphans with special needs https://t.co/1PI54dU94B
Reading this has gotten me curious about my own oral history of my own relationship with China and Chinese culture. It’s not “substantial”; I’ve never actually been to China (my wife has) - but it’s interesting to think about
Lots of people outside of Asia mistakenly assume that Singapore is *in* China, which is a very frustrating misconception to have to deal with over and over again. Singapore is in Southeast Asia, ie east of India and south of China https://t.co/X0JZqyZYl2
SG’s population is majority Chinese, ethnically. But that doesn’t mean that you can think of Singaporean Chinese and mainland Chinese interchangeably. Sourceland/diaspora relations are always complicated, but in my experience most Singaporeans think of ourselves as Singaporean https://t.co/4xG78Iu2PG
It gets complicated though. I’ve heard that some Chinese Nationalbros (you know the kind,,, they come in all colours all over the world) think of all Chinese people everywhere in the world as temporarily displaced Mainlanders; saying things like “Singapore is a *Chinese* country”
Here’s a fun quote from LKY to Deng Xiaoping: “We are only the descendants of illiterate, landless farmers in Fujian, Guangdong and other places, but many of you are the descendants of officials and scholars.” Goh Chok Tong retold it in 2009 https://t.co/qMv9tmgkoL https://t.co/nmMuQkaYOD
Still, it’s undeniable that a city-state that’s majority ethnic-Chinese will have a certain Chinese-ness about it, even if it’s not *THE* Chinese-ness - and that is where I grew up. I can understand some Mandarin, and Hokkien, and when I’m homesick I want Singaporean Chinese food https://t.co/mFKgfDOmoT
It’s also interesting to think about the Chinese media I’ve inadvertently consumed just by hanging out with ethnically Chinese friends (for the first 20+ years of my life basically 90% of my friends were Chinese) Journey to the West is wilder than LotR Ro3K is wilder than GoT https://t.co/7IaI4AqcJb
(One of the things I’m looking forward to doing, if I get the chance, is to check out SF’s Chinatown, to see if I can discern any differences in the nuances between SG Chineseness and SF Chineseness) https://t.co/h7ApQ8HSj2
Here’s an obvious difference, for example. SG Chinese are the dominant social group in SG, and so they don’t know what it’s like to be marginalized and caricatured in a way that hurts. Things that upset Chinese-Americans have no power over SG Chinese https://t.co/AMAaiKtZrv
I was thinking about this again because I saw this font used by Chinese Singaporeans on marketing material for Chinese New Year - which I thought was funny and interesting because there’s no way the Chinese would’ve come up with this font on their own https://t.co/WPXGTU9YiS
when you try to attack the dominant social group in a particular social order by insulting them the way you would insult disenfranchised minorities: https://t.co/hvg32vr3T6
