Just to give a deeper insight into the actions, the event took place in a downtown area of a city that stands at approx. 5 million in a developed part of China.
China has had a deep history of invasion and treachery dealing with "foreigners" that has been firmly planted with propaganda. Let's remember that the Chinese mentality is again anyone that is not Chinese (more specifically Han Chinese), is either looked somewhat of a separate group or considered a foreigner.
When I mentioned problems with foreigners, I meant in general, if you look at their wars with Europeans (Opium Wars), Japan, even ancient wars with places like Mongolia. Their mindset is "A foreigner is a foreigner." As I mentioned in a previous post, many Chinese will travel outside of China, Canada for instance and STILL call Canadians "wai guo ren" while in Canada.
Chinese people can be very kind, yet also very ignorant and gullible. It's very easy to invoke hate and rage in them. Chinese men that drink have VERY bad tempers, more so in general than many other places I have seen. There is a lot of bottled up angst and all they need is some good reason to let it out.
There are no excuses, we all deal with anger and find better outlets to deal with it. This was a petty, cowardly attack. This was NOT in some pig sty, this was not a ghetto gang attack. This attack was due to uncontrollable rage.
During the problems with Tibet last year, I saw videos of Chinese students in Korea attacked Tibetan students. They were demanding an apology from the Tibetan students and chanting out "hit him to death" in Chinese. Not to mention the recent riot that results in the death of over 100 people and injuries of far more was blamed on "foreigners outside of China".
The government is fully aware of the explosive anger of their people, why do you think they frequently block such social networks as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. If you are in China now, you know what I am talking about.
Controlling the pent up anger, rage and frustration of 1.3 billion people is not easy. The foreigner was escorted by the police because they feared the mob of people at the event's finale was beat him to death.
I have a lot of proof to back up this mindset, not to mention that a group of three foreigners were attacked by about 20-30 Chinese people in a nightclub in Xi'an for dancing with one Chinese man's GF.
Just handle yourself with poise and caution, when you come to China you are not the enemy. But you can truly become the enemy very quickly if you aren't careful. Learning to speak Mandarin, and learning their psychology/customs can truly change your life in China from a horrific nightmare to a great adventure.
- Re: A Serious Event - FTs Please Read -- Migrant Worker -- 2009-08-10
- Re: A Serious Event - FTs Please Read -- Fox Tamer -- 2009-08-11