/lit/ - Literature

>>19622170
>>19622195
The notion that the CCP is responsible for all of China's much-hated sociocultural "quirks" is bullshit. Picrel was written in the early 30s and mentions several things that people like serpentza or laowhy86 complain about. Official corruption, wanton animal abuse, bystanders watching someone die in a road accident, scalping foreigners out of money, mobbing foreigners to get things, etc. These are longstanding Chinese cultural characteristics. Bear in mind that this book is pretty inflammatory and not too accommodating of the Chinese (except, funnily enough, in regard to the food, which Townsend says is the best he'd ever had). The CCP has done plenty of harm, but blaming them for causing all of China's problems is shortsighted and lazy. This is all coming from a huWhite Westoid who actually likes China a lot, has visited, and speaks the language okayish.

>>17224419
Based Sinophile. I've been studying Chinese language/culture/history for a few years now. Even visited for a few weeks back in early 2019 on a university-funded cultural exchange/trip thing. Assuming the border restrictions ease up somewhat by the time May rolls around I'll be moving there in a few months to teach English, which should be interesting. Currently reading pic, which is a neat (though not positive) look at pre-Communist China though the eyes of an American.
>>17225514
ehh I read this for 2 Chinese history classes in uni.

>>17208850
>What the book that's so toxic it makes verified blue check marks gasp?
Pic is a semi-fair semi-diatribe against Chinese people. From my (rather limited) experience of living in China as a white foreigner, it hits on several points that still ring true despite being written in 1933. One of the most common trends among China apologists is their claims that all of the societal ills in contemporary China can be directly attributed to the rougher communist days under Mao and the like, but this book completely disproves that argument. Regardless of the nuggets of truth throughout, Twitter leftists would definitely start convulsing after only a few pages.

>>11870384
>Wherever we look in Chinese history we find it characterized by this absolute meaninglessness of words, with the virtues of loyalty, reliability and truth all tumbled into a sterility of mere outward noise. A few centuries ago, when China was a nation enlightened to a greater degree than any of its neighbors in the matter of arms and munitions, Malay pirates were troubling the South China coast. The pirates evidently made raids now and then upon the coast villages, settled temporarily and then took sail again. To break up this practice, the Emperor of China issued orders that all Chinese residents along that coast should remove inland a certain number of miles. For, he reasoned in his instructions, if there was nothing valuable along the coast for the pirates to come after, they would cease to trouble the Flowery Kingdom. At that time, theoretically, China was the strongest power on earth, yet she withdrew in alarm before a few small prahus full of naked Malays. Had the pirates set up residence on the coast, Chinese talents could have met the problem handily - the Chinese could simply have outlied them and outbred them. But an issue of swords and spears, though the Chinese possessed many thousand times the resources of the invaders, filled them with terror. In the journal of a traveler of a century ago among the Mongols - frontier nomads of the farmer Chinese Empire - we find that the lament of the Mongols was that while the Chinese would not fight them, their wheedling traders, pawnbrokers and the like managed progressively by flattery, skilled deception and eternal thrift to reduce them to a state of impoverished subjection.

This was an interesting read, and a harrowing realization of how things didn't change.

How much of this is legitimate?
Was it the truth, was it pro-Japanese propaganda, or was it just someone's unique experiences that can't be attributed to the entire population of China?