( Twenty minute read)

Let’s face it, stereotypes are common in this day in age, resulting in preconceived notions about people and their culture.

Whilst stereotypes can provide some sort of understanding of another’s culture, they are generally unhelpful and misleading, creating bad first impression that can lead to so many misunderstandings.

Oh, you’re Asian? Are you Chinese? if you are Asian, you are automatically Chinese.

You cannot distinguish one Chinese person from another they are all brainwashed.

Chinese are by far the most complicated individuals to understand, founded as an agriculture – based society formed on the Yellow river 5000 years ago.

Almost a century before Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus made voyages that kicked off the era of European colonialism, the Chinese admiral Zheng the greatest explorer that the world had never heard of, brought back maps that helped to develop European cartography. With his description of Japan setti a definite goal for Christopher Columbus in his journey in 1492.

The author Gavin Menzies even found success publishing “1421: The Year China Discovered the World,” a best-selling—claims that Zheng actually circumnavigated the globe in his sixth voyage discovered. Chinese ships had reached America 70 years before Columbus & had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan.

(Historians have rejected Menzies’ theories and assertions and have categorised his work as pseudohistory.) Whether it is or not, it is a fascinating read, suggesting that Marko Polo meet Zheng, who give him a map of the Americas, which he subsequently gave to the Vancian, who doctored it so Columbus would make the discover.

Anyway, recorded by Polo was widely used in the late 15th and the 16th centuries, during the age of the great European voyages of discovery and conquest. He was among the first Europeans to describe many of the advanced technologies found in China.

Like Menzies he is say to have been a bit of a fibber, as he never mention seeing the wall of China.

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If you’re doing any sort of analysis of China, it pays to remember that until relatively recently, China was an isolated country closed off, with little substantive contact with the rest of the world.

China was and still is a bit of an outcast of the world.

One of the oldest cultures in the world, known throughout the world by the middle of the 19th century. There were many other central Asian states that coexisted with the Chinese dynasties, different kingdoms, states, and empires all existing at the same time!

Including the Xiongnu, Tibetan Empire, Zunghars, Mongols, Manchus, and others.

Ranking as the eight oldest country in the world, with thousands of years, behind the Great Wall of history, its unbroken culture has spread itself over centuries, through out East Asia.

The Chinese population is now four times that of the United States. It is the fourth largest country in the world, with about 56 different ethnic groups, with over 300 languages, spoken, in 22 provinces, with the world’s longest continuously used written language.

People have lived in the area we know today as “China” for at least 1.7 million years.

 One in every five people in the world is Chinese. 

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The venue of the worlds oldest lifestyle, it is no wonder that they view foreigners as inferior, corrupt, decadent, disloyal, and volatile – the devils. You would too if you had to pass 1.4 billion other people and get to where you’re going. 

It is not a country of ping-pong players, full of bamboo eating Pandas, rather a country that will have 36 per cent of its mobile customer base on 5G by 2025.

You got to realise there are others live on this planet too!  China personify this.

However its fair to say, they (more than likely) view their imperial glory of the world in decline, disintegrating, having succumbed to materialism, and consumerism, has changed the stereotype.

Most of us have never been in China, but we all have met a Chinese in our lives, so stereotypes linger in the minds of those who have never been to China.

To understand them the most important influence on their way of life is Confucianism based on unequal relationships between people, diametrically opposed to British or American ideas.

Even with one child per family up to recent times collectivism is very strong in China where the extended family is seen as more important than the individual. Chinese traditionally believe that every person turns one year older on the New Year and, thus, that day is considered to be everyone’s birthday.

The bicycle is now the primary transportation for millions of Chinese.

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In the last two posts we’ve already mentioned the role of Hollywood has had in reinforcing the stereotype – Russian and American, China it is no different, with movies casting Chinese actors, as glasses-wearing nerds and mathematic geniuses smoking opium, with kung Fu, small with slanted eyes with shaved forehead and long braid down the back, shovelling rice into their mouths with chopsticks, or eating cats and dogs and rats, openly urinating, grinding rhino horns for medicine, carving elephant trunks, running around under mile long dragon effigies, letting of thousands of lighting lanterns, while the woman shuffle around serving tea in traditional Hanfu and garments with binding feet (euphemistically called “golden lilies”) squashed toes, to a Emperor seated in the Forbidden City, surrounded by Eunuchs.  ( The Forbidden City was so named because commoners were forbidden to enter the city. Any commoner who saw the emperor was killed.)

(The dragon is typically seen as an evil creature in Western culture, it holds first place among the four greatest creatures in Chinese mythology, including the phoenix, tiger, and tortoise. It is typically associated with the emperor.)

Of course any self- respecting Chinese would be abhorred with the above image and rightfully justified to totally reject such an image.

In fact, stereotypes about Chinese food choices are so entrenched that many non-Chinese readily brought into the notion that the Coronavirus had been caused by the Chinese predilection for bat meat!

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China is a country that is not founded and ruled by Anglo-Saxon people. This is a communist-led country, that dares to succeed economically and materially. However you would be a brave man to say this was achieved through democratic and liberal ideas of individual freedom and rights.

The Boxer Rebellion between 1898 and 1901 in northern China was against Christian missionaries, foreign diplomats, and technology by a secret group called the “Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists” (Yihequan or I-ho-ch’uan) so named because its members practiced weapon less martial arts as well as secret rituals. Westerns called it “shadow boxing” and the members “Boxers.”

All Chinese are masters of Martial arts have deep roots in Chinese cultural history; forming an important part of Chinese cultural identity.

The Taiping Rebellion is known as the bloodiest civil war in human history, and the largest conflict of the 19th century.

China and the West were in contact more than 1,500 years before European explorer Marco Polo arrived in China, before the formal opening of the Silk Road. ( Many people think the Silk Road is a real road from China to the West. Actually, the term “Silk Road” was invented by a German mapmaker who was making a map of Asia in 1877.)

Qin Shi Huang lived between 259-210BC and became the first emperor of a unified China. His tomb (200 times bigger than Egypt’s Valley of the Kings) .discovered in 1974 with his Terracotta Army, the Acrobats and the bronze sculptures, were inspired by ancient Greek sculptures and art.

The modern word “China” most likely derives from the name of the Qin (pronounced “chin”) dynasty.

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China was the first country in the world to use an iron plough.

Toilet paper was invented in China in the late 1300s they invented paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing.

First to use stirrups.

By the fourth century B.C., the Chinese were drilling for natural gas and using it as a heat source, preceding Western natural gas drilling by about 2,300 years.

The Chinese were using the decimal system as early as the fourteenth century B.C., nearly 2,300 years before the first known use of the system in European mathematics. The Chinese were also the first to use a place for zero.

Chinese coins had holes in them to be carried easily.

The crossbow was invented and first used by the Chinese. They were also the first in the world to use chemical and gas weapons, 2,000 years before gas was used in Europe during WWI.

Tea was discovered by the Chinese along with  Gun power.

China’s Grand Canal is the world’s oldest and longest canal at 1,114 miles.

Suspension bridges were invented in China in 25 B.C, 1,800 years before such bridges were known in the West.

The Chinese were the first to invent the waterwheel to harness water in A.D. 31—1,200 years before the Europeans.

In A.D. 130, Zhang Heng, an astronomer and literary scholar, invented the first instrument for monitoring earthquakes. The machine could detect and indicate the direction of an earthquake.

In 1974, a group of farmers digging for a well in the Shaanxi province uncovered some bits of very old pottery. They discovered the tomb of Qin (259-210 B.C.) the first emperor who united China. The tomb contained thousands of amazing life-sized soldiers, horses, and chariots.

During the first half the twentieth century, Shanghai was the only port in the world to accept Jews fleeing the Holocaust without an entry visa.

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games were estimated to cost a whopping $40 billion.

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To day:

China’s national flag was adopted in September 1949 and first flown in Tiananmen Square (the world’s largest public gathering place) on October 1, 1949, the day the People’s Republic of China was formed. The red in the flag symbolizes revolution. The large star symbolizes communism, and the little stars represent the Chinese people and their respective social classes.

The United States is increasingly using China as a “frame of reference.”

There’s probably an element of fear. China’s success threatens to undermine America’s globally dominant position.

China’s military strength has also improved greatly, and the US no longer can afford a war with China.

It’s saying US you can continue to be the No.1

With the drama of  balloons there’s a real schizophrenia going on about China in the US which leads to no coherent foreign policy objectives, when it comes to the second largest economy in the world..

Because their is now a profound shift in the global balance of military power is under way. It has the largest navy in the world, spending more on its armed forces than any country except the US with 1,000 warheads.

China is now fully committed to developing “intelligentised” warfare.

 Is China moving away from non-confrontation towards a more threatening stance?

The risk of war far exceeds any fool’s imagination.

Russia as its invasion of Ukraine nears its first anniversary and fresh concerns have arisen about the possibility that China may be getting ready to support Russia in the war effort.

China is probably the only external actor that could put effective diplomatic pressure on the Russian president. 

Democracy is not about letting people die in pursuit of profit. The understanding of democracy by Westerners has already been distorted.

I don’t know when the concept of democracy became the private property of Westerners.  

There is a saying.  Keep them in the dark and feed them Shit! 

In 1996, China produced 600,000 tons of mushrooms, making it the world’s leading producer, and it has 60% of the world’s mushroom varieties.

“Let China sleep, for when she awakes, she will shake the world.” – Napoleon

Unlike the United States.it is certain that China has no intention of policing the world.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

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