Talking with my Taiwanese friend about NYT's report on the Duke freshman Grace Wang incident

Last night I read the report "Chinese Student in U.S. Is Caught in Confrontation" on the New York Times website. According to the report, there was confrontation between Chinese students and pro-Tibet people on the Duke campus on April 10, when Grace Wang from Qingdao, China tried to get the two sides to talk but was labeled "traitor" by her fellow Chinese. She was slandered on the internet and received threats.

This morning I got two emails asking for my comments on this. One of the emails came from my Taiwanese friend. In fact, if there are two major "traitor" incidents on both coasts in April, she was caught right in the middle of the west coast one. She said：

“I don't understand why Chinese people do not tolerate or listen to other voices. To be honest, I don't understand how China can gain Tibetans or Taiwanese' hearts by doing so.”

Here is my response:

Hi XX:

Thanks for the message. I read this news last night before you sent me the link. I think the treatment Grace received from some of the Chinese people is unfair and unfortunate. Many posts on the 163.com discussion board on this topic range from pathetic to downright evil, and I believe posting her home address, parents' information and other sensitive data is illegal. You can also see some people calling for the more extreme ones to calm down. Birds of a feather flock together, the internet routinely magnifies irrational sentiments to an intolerable extent. I, for one, wouldn't bother to argue with these people on their turf.

I agree with you that China cannot win either Tibetan or Taiwanese heart with people like this.

One of my best friends is at Duke and I will call him to ask for some alternative accounts. In controversial contexts like this, I tend to have more confidence in individual accounts than the news media. Overall I think this piece of report is in keeping with NYT's relatively higher standard of journalism ethics. But it is not free of problems.

The reporter quoted indirect remarks but shunned from recording the opinions of Chinese students who are sympathetic with Grace and think she didn't do anything to deserve such heinous treatment. My bet is that there are plenty of such people, but NYT wouldn't let them talk because that undermines the stereotype it tries to convey to the American public: "200 of your own fellow nationalists yelling at you and calling you a traitor and even threatening to kill you." As Chinese I know this is a grossly inaccurate characterization of the Chinese student population at Duke. But an average American would have much less trouble in assimilating this stereotype and think: "Geez, even the most highly educated Chinese are like this. The Chinese at home must be so hopelessly barbarian and they haven't changed much since the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Cafferty actually got it right in calling them 50 years' of 'goons and thugs'."

On a more technical note, one quote from an email “If you return to China, your dead corpse will be chopped into 10,000 pieces” is a literal translation of the Chinese idiom "碎尸万段"(Sui4 Shi1 Wan4 Duan4). Chinese idioms, mostly composed of four characters, have been in existence for hundreds of and occasionally more than one thousand years. These idioms come from an age when the human beings were indeed much less civilized, and when used in modern context they often lose the literal meaning. By translating this idiom literally into English without noting its origin as an ancient idiom, the writer imposes on the e-mailer a near-terrorist image which I don't think he/she deserves.

Chinese media did similar things to convince the Chinese that many westerners are the same bunch of "goons and thugs" (from Jack Cafferty, CNN Situation Room, April 9) that invaded and humiliated China for 100 years. That is how misunderstanding and animosity between East and West deepened rather than alleviated throughout this whole event.

In recent centuries, the West has achieved a higher level of civilization which many of us admire from the bottom of our hearts and come a long way to learn from. In recent decades, the Chinese are making quick progress, both economically and mentally. The mental progress is subtle and calls for great endeavor to appreciate and measure. From the vantage point of a higher level of human development, the West should recognize and encourage the progress in the Chinese mentality, because that signals the its sincerity to welcome China to the same level of civilization. Manufacturing stereotypes, on the other hand, signals its fear, insecurity and deep-seated bias.

It is my sincere hope that these subtle mental progress would materialize in the form of fundamental institutional changes, and together they would someday come to fruition that Tibet won't find it necessary to rely on the West to preserve its religion and culture, and Taiwan won't have to turn to the West to defend its democratic values and security. That is the day we can all call China our home.

I am doing my bit of job to make that happen and I'm sure millions of others are doing the same thing too.

Best,
Zhan