The Chinese stereotype for the “Jewish way”

You hope it’s just a phase? That’s just burying your head in the sand. Admiration for these kinds of ridiculous stereotypes turn ugly when the economy goes south. This is NOT positive, not cute and not to be encouraged.

It’s like reverse Orientalism, but done by… (wait for it) Orientals. Anyway, I already wrote what I thought about the Post article — that it may be the worst thing I’ve read to come out of a major media outlet.

About 5 years ago, Taipe airport, a guy reading a book with something about Jews in the title and a picture taken from the worst kind of nazi propaganda on the cover. I step over and use my best mandarin to ask to see the book. He´s from Hong Kong, the book is one of those mentioned above (written by an jewish american..) and I’ve just tought him one of the Jewish strategies mentioned in the book – Chutzpa.

Every Israeli that’s been to China can tell you that Jews are “很聪明” (very smart) and very rich. Likewise in Korea, the name Einstein is a very powerful seller. I always tried to tell them that there are stupid Jews just as there are smart ones, and there are poor Jews just as there are rich ones.

Anyway, fascinating story. Israelis are currently benefiting from this prejudice, I just hope it doesn’t backlash one day. I have a feeling that it might.

I found your interesting website today while surfing the net looking for comments after watching David Ofek’s Ha’Ulpan at a local Israel Film Festival here in Los Angeles.
First, Qin’s Chinese is very odd – very tu’hua/方言. When she speaks with Dong, she has a lot of the Beijing Er endings the 兒化韻 (if you prefer jiantizi to fantizi, 儿化韵 – most of the posters seem to prefer fan-t’i [you were in T'ai-wan, so I guess I should use Wade giles , 太反动派的滋味兒 ;-) ])and yet the zhi/chi/shi is spotty.
But I think my perspective as so much older may be different. I was in China in 1982 studying at the former Beijing Foreign Languague institute Branch Campus now the Normal School (白堆子 section of Beijing) and the war broke out in Lebanon.
Just two short anecdotes on the attitude of the Chinese I met toward Jews and Israel – remembering of course the whole 請客/客氣 attitude was more in force at that time than it is today.
One day, one of my teachers and I were walking in the yard, and he said, “you’re not like the other Americans.” “What do you mean?”, I asked.
To preface, I was doing very well in his clas, the advanced intensive class in Chinese – the teachers knew but one word in English, potato. But I did well because I understood that their teaching method wasn’t Western. They weren’t interested in any independent thought on the texts until we could spit the text back at them nearly-memorized and answer every formal question they had. This was so much like what I’d heard yeshiva learning can be like at the lower levels that I easily adapted. So I did well.
Anyway,the professor said that my attitude was different. I told the professor (this was all in putonghua/hanyu/kuo-yü) that I was an American and he was welcome to look at my passport. He asked me if I had been born in the US. No, I told him. I was 14 months old when we came to the States but I’d been born in Israel, in the Sharon.
Ah- he cried, “(猶)犹太人很(聰)聪明!!”. I said, “No, you should meet my idiot uncle.” No, he replied – just look, Einstein, Freud, Marx (this was 1982). What was I to say? All I could say was “有的聪明的, 还有笨亟了的犹太人” and let it go.
Second, at the time of the invasion of Lebanon, while the local newspapers were critical of Israel, several of the Chinese students with whom I was friendly told me that they had a positive feeling toward Israel and were skeptical of the newspaper reports. When I asked why, they reported that many of the Westerners they had met and liked had been Jews – and as well, the concept of Zionism was positivie one for them.
The idea that someone born outside the land might have citizen’s rights on arrival is shared in China and for that matter, Germany, which gave Volksdeutscher full citizenship on application in Germany. The Chinese diaspora with the attacks and massacres on ethnic Chinese throughout Southeast Asia, the economic persecution in Malaysia (the mandatory inclusion of ethnic Malays in Chinese businesses is the same as the arisators in Slovakia and Hungary – the arierisierung in Germany) resonated with some educated Chinese who saw, in some ways, a kindred people in the Jews who were also as they said, an ancient people.
But for Zionism, the CHinese term was Youtai FuGuo Zhuyi 猶太復國主義/犹太复国主义 [maybe it's 運動/运动, it's been a quarter-century], which means the Jewish Land Restoration-ism (or movement). What’s bad about that? It’s a very positive idea. It doesn’t smack of ideology in quite the same way that the general “isms” do in the West. Just a thought.
Last, a simple anecdote. The Chinese were very accomodating to our group of students – there were a few confirmed vegetarians and the cooks simply added the meat later to many dishes and made them a few special things. I ate meat – I eat everything- but I was intrigued by what the vegetarians would get occasionally, so I decided to avoid meat for the nine days before Tisha b’av, and then to be consistent, to fast on the day itself. The day was easy – I took a book up to Jingshan park, looked at the walls of the Purple Forbidden city 紫禁城 and waited for nighttime. The anecdote section comes in explaining my temporary vegetarianism. The Americans, including some highly acculturated Jews, were skeptical – what? what’s Tishah b’Av? never heard of it, no meat or wine, but why is that again? For the Chinese, I just had to say that for the next nine days, wo chi zhai -我吃齋/斋. Done, no further explanation needed. I was lucky to have learned the word because Ramadan (齋月/斋月) was that time of year and they made a huge party with fireworks at the Niujie mosque for Id al-fitr at the end of the month. The only Communist side to all this was that when one of the professors, while we were on excursion to Taishan, asked me to explain why I was abstaining from meat for a limited time for religious or philosophical reasons, (the one character above, zhai says the same thing) I had to words like Roman Empire, Imperialism, destroy the nation, oppress the people which came up quite often in the political texts and newspapers we were assigned.

Anyway,I’ve very much enjoyed looking around your websites and the links have been interesting. 一帆風順.

And for Israelis who might feel superior, remember the phrase and the story – 夜 郎 自大.
JyVered Los Angeles, California.

You’re all missing the point.

There may be poor Jews as well as affluent ones, and academically slow Jews as well as achievers, but that’s not the point here. We’re talking about distribution curves. And the fact is that there are proportionately fewer slow or poor Jews and proportionately higher Jewish academic achievers and high earners, than are found in the general population. The point isn’t that there are NO dumb Jews or poor ones, but that there are relatively fewer of them than among other groups, and relatively more who do well. So providing anecdotal examples to the effect of “but I’ve met” or “I’ve known” means nothing.

That long comment above was very interesting, but he showed his own arrogance by not deigning to translate the Chinese quotes. Also, warning Jews about parochial arrogance is unfair, when you realize that pride, especially a little bit of pride, is no crime. Jews are so put down these days, that it’s not right to tell them they shouldn’t take pride in something. And there are lots of groups that show a lot more unexamined chauvinism than do the Jews. Give them a break!

Also, I’ve read that what contributes to bad or lack of good feelings about any group isn’t just the existence of bad images and associations, but the absence of good ones, however superficial. Instead of worrying that views that many Jews are smart may backfire, think of the effects of the non-existence of any positive attitudes towards Jews. Studies have recently shown this. Sorry, I don’t have the reference at hand.

Are Frenchmen more cultured than Americans? Are they better lovers? More sophisticated? Yes…and no. I’ve met many who weren’t. But the French do gain a more comfortable place in the world by being admired for qualities that, while not universal among them, still exist to a noticeable extent.