Stereotypical

I have to admit, China people do not give a very good impression to a lot of people, especially to the Chinese people who are not from China.

If you have been following my blog, you will find that many years ago, after a trip to China, I told myself never to step foot into China ever again.  Until I married a husband who is a pure Chinaman.  Fate!

Since marriage, I have to spend more time in China and have been trying to understand my frustrations towards China and it's people.

Don't get me wrong.  I am not racist.  You can't be racist against your own race, right?  I am a Malaysian Chinese, born and bred in Malaysia.  My grandparents were from China, migrated to Malaysia seeking greener pastures.

My maternal grandfather was married to an older Chinese woman before he left China for Malaysia.  I heard in the olden times, it was customary for a family to get an older woman to look after their children and match them for marriage, so that their son will have someone to look after.  But, I also heard that he was sold as a coolie to work in Malaysia.  

Anyway, he met my grandmother here in Malaysia, married and had 10 children.  Few years after my grandmother passed away, he went back to China to look for his first wife and children.  They had 2 children, my China uncle and China aunty, before he left China many years back. During the 80's, China tighten its immigration rules, that makes it difficult for Chinese people to leave China.

To cut the long story short, grandfather found them, then frequently visited them and when China relaxed the laws, grandfather tried to get them to Malaysia.  On the eve of their arrival, grandfather passed away and they were very sad.

So many years later, my mom and her sisters decided to visit them in China, in a small village somewhere in Guangdong or Guangxi.  I tagged along.  This was 15 years back, before the 2008 Olympics, before some form of modernization.

So, I had a bad experience there.  I almost drank water with a dead Daddy Longlegs (spider), ate cili padi that burnt my mouth so badly that I had to run out of the house to spit it out (I could not see the cili padi due to the badly lit house), house toilet with no lock on the door (you know cowboy salon door, exactly the same), China grandmother came in the middle of the night to talk to us, when we were all in bed and soundly asleep, she touched everyone of us!

Wait, there's more!  I heard a pig slaughtered, its cries of pain, gosh, never could forget that sound.  It's customary in that village, that when important visitors come, the family have to slaughter their family pig and invite the whole village for a feast.  Everything from the pig is used and no wastage.  Everything including the blood.

The men ate in the living hall and spat the bones on the floor, while the women ate in the kitchen hall and spat the bones on the floor.  Imagine the amount of flies later, and decaying food smells everywhere!  Not only they spat bones, there were other things as well!  I know, super disgusting!  The women cooked, ate, cleaned while the men just sat and chit chatted.  I could not get use to this lifestyle and felt really demeaning to the women.  But it's Chinese culture, that they preferred men to women.  I was literally invisible when I was there while my cousin brother who also came with us was the superstar!

The wok in that household was never wash as they believed a washed wok doesn't cook as good.  They used firewood stove and if we wanted to boil some water, start your own fire.

So I lost my appetite, but when hunger strikes, I had to steal some Malaysian biscuits that we gave to them as gift.  No food, no drink due to Daddy Longleg experience, I was literally starving.

The only consolation was when we headed to town for some grocery shopping and mom bought tonnes of instant noodles.  But again, bad experience while we were there, we were given change of fake Chinese yuan  of RMB100 and mom was pretty upset!

We were there for a few days, but I really can't wait to leave.  I tried my best to accommodate and I know they did their best to keep us comfortable, in their own way.  Somehow, I could not stand their culture, spitting everywhere and I began to wonder, how does one have so much of phlegm?  Women were not respected at all and expected to do all kinds of things while men worked to find the dough.  Women were expected to give birth, to do all the housework, to cook and clean, to serve men.  

It was like that in my mom's family here in Malaysia as well.  My maternal grandfather was like that.  He treated all his daughters like that, giving them degrading names like pig and dog until his educated sons changed them to better names.  He sent all his sons to school until university, but his daughters only up to Standard 6 (if they are lucky, otherwise no education).  He almost gave away my mom to the neighbour because he deemed her as bad luck, but grandmother rescued her and brought her back.

It's a disgusting custom, but thank God, in Malaysia, because we lived among Malays and Indians, we learned to respect one another.  Some people told me Indians does not like girls as well due to the dowry problems, but I find Indians treats their children better compared to Chinese.  

Anyhow, after years of avoiding China, now I can't avoid it any longer.  When I first announced my marriage , first few questions that my friends and relatives asked me was "Is he true to you?  Will he cheat your money?  Will he cheat your feelings?"  I can't blame them for asking me these questions.  Chinese people are known to cheat.  To be honest, in the beginning, I have my fears too.

My marriage changed my opinion towards China and its people.  My husband is the most honest and simple Chinese person I have ever met, so much so that I have to ask him whether he is really a Chinese.  I came to learn that not all Chinese are cheaters.  Some are, unfortunately, but generally, they are not.

Then I came to understand why they have to cheat.  They lived in a culture where 'Every man for himself'.  Yes, that's pretty much everywhere too.  But in some other cultures, in order to live in harmony, we respect one another and give way to others.  We learn to be good to others as to how we want others to be good to us.  We learned manners from the British.  But not their case I suppose.  I traced back to their history.  

From the time began, Chinese men ruled kingdoms.  Chinese women are only for child bearing purposes and to serve men and housework.  Chinese wants to have descendants to continue the family name, to continue to rule.  Overtime, people came and conquered and Chinese learned to survive on their own.  

When Chairman Mao ruled, Cultural Revolution destroyed lots of culture, the good ones especially.  It was quite unfortunate and my husband doesn't like me to talk about it because they still deeply respect him.

What happen now is over the years, the conditionings increased and not only men looked down on women, women looked down on themselves too.  People are harsh to each other, their only way of surviving.  Who is the loudest wins.  Then materialism hits them and in order to be rich, cheating became their way to survive.  One have to polish your way up the corporate ladder and I mean apple polishing.  Women sell their body for money.  Teenagers sell their kidneys for iPhone.  Some women resorted to marrying older rich man in order to have a better life and even becoming their mistresses.  Money became their main form of survival and everything is money, money, money.

Despite all these, I have looked deeper into their hearts, and I understand their pain.  They had all come a long way.  Controlled and freedom is not for everyone and over the years of struggling to survive, they became hard.  Especially the older generation.  

The younger ones, especially those better educated, learn to be more civilised.  Many young ones are educated overseas and they are better behave, except some spoiled brats that I came to know recently due to the one child policy.

And of course, Sahaja Yogis are a whole different group of people.  I find Chinese Sahaja Yogis very pleasant people.  They have so much of love in them and so much wanting to be deeper in Sahaj and create and find ways to be deeper.

My Mandarin teacher is from China.  She is a young, educated and beautiful lady with so much of gentleness in her.  I don't see her as a cheater or a mistress.  I see her as one of us.  

So I came to the conclusion, although I must try not to generalise, that China needs lots of love.  Men have been ruling and are not  known to be gentle creatures and many women in China lack motherly love.  So, they don't know how to love.  So, the heart became hard and people became spiteful.  If only love can penetrate them, look at the Chinese Sahaja Yogis, they became beautiful people, flourished from Shri Mataji's motherly love.

Then again, Chinese population is so much and Sahaja Yogis only comprise a small percentage of them.  And impression will forever be left as a deep imprint in people's mind, unless they met people who are like the Sahaja Yogis.  And I must say, lots of people like to generalise including yours truly.

Like when there was a documentary about Ganges River in India, all people can remember was how the bodies of the dead was cremated and float along the river and not how beautiful and auspicious the river is.

When anyone talk bad about China and its people in front of me, and knowing that I have married a Chinese man, they always apologised to me, thinking that they have hurt my feelings.  I don't feel hurt.  But I wish people can try to understand them and not generalise them as a whole.  And I feel China is already changing.