Last week, a friend of mine who works at an online newspaper in Beijing tagged me in a Weibo message. The tag was attached to a screenshot from the People’s Daily, the newspaper previously (and rightfully) venerated for their daring report on Kim Jong-Un’s world ranking on the scale of physical attractiveness. Needless to say, I couldn’t let the words of such a fine publication cross my screen unread.
The sign of a good newspaper is a title that grabs the eyes and excites the mind. So when I saw the title of the piece, I knew that the People’s Daily was upholding the standards to understanding of American culture that their citation of the Onion had shown. The piece was announcing a new regular column in their paper, entitled:
“Morally Bankrupt and Untrustworthy Americans.”
Tricksy Americans overseas? Intriguing! I read on:
“Morally Bankrupt and Untrustworthy Americans”
Disgraceful treatment of Chinese Passengers; America’s United Airlines refuses to apologize
In the eyes of the vast majority of Chinese, Americans are seen as responsible, friendly and reliable people of strong morals. However, anyone who lives in America long enough will experience deception. Today, we are starting a column that we call “Morally Bankrupt and Untrustworthy Americans.” By this, we do not mean that all Americans are untrustworthy people of poor morals; rather, we hope to show everyone another side of America through interacting with people and events in America, all in the interest of better understanding America and Americans. Readers who encounter issues of this type are welcome to write their own stories and send them to us.editor@people.cn, or to send us leads to stories that our reporters can follow up upon.
After finishing the piece, I was immediately relieved. I was glad to hear that in the eyes of most Chinese, America and Americans were still highly respected. I was also glad to see that the People’s Daily decided to ignore this fact in order to pursue a second truth, one we might not have noticed if it had not been pointed out to us. The pitch: Americans are nice, except for when they’re not.
The simplicity of such a statement underlies its genius. The willingness of the People’s Daily to disregard the vast majority of positive US-China interactions in order to focus on an extremely narrow and purposefully upsetting subset of situations is exemplary because it shows the desire to perform the hard journalistic task of uncovering truths so well hidden they might as well be forgotten if they were not brought back to life.
I had taken the sort of superficial cultural misunderstandings the column hopes to cover to be a part of our countries’ past, dead and buried. But this column reminds us that dead issues, like dead things, sometimes turn into zombies. Zombies, like most pressing threats, must be dealt with immediately and publicly, and everyone knows that the best way to deal with zombies is to dig them up at the cost of great energy and expense and display them prominently, so they might remind us of the terrors we have felt in the past, and allow us to remain vigilant and on guard even in peacetime.
The People’s Daily has also taken the opportunity to remind us that petty issues, if taken sufficiently out of context, can indeed serve the purpose of summarizing macro International Relations issues. Take, for example, the alluded to story about a Chinese national and her run-in with United Airlines. What can be more telling about how Americans view Chinese than to tell the story of a Chinese passenger on an airline treated poorly by an American company’s service department? The story is all the more poignant in my mind because of the reputation of sitting on an airplane as an environment that breeds understanding and patience amongst peoples of all nations.
What better way to understand the complicated relationship between two countries that to extrapolate wildly on a series of hazy causal connections? A perfect setting for a control test of a clash of cultures: Do we find each other so intolerable that we are left looking for the emergency exit at 30,000 feet?
The best part about media is that it encourages discussion, and ultimately this may be the most valuable part of the whole endeavor. Finally, a forum to discuss the times I had been mistreated by Americans in America! I immediately wrote up my own piece and sent it off to the editors.
编辑好，
我住在北京，但在美国生活了二十多年，在美国读本科工作。很多文化冲突的来源都是语言错觉，但因为我在美国呆了这么多年，英语水平还行，跟美国人沟通也不成问题了，所以我知道与美国人遇到的文化冲突肯定不是因为语言方面的障碍。
我想给观众分享我在美国生活的一个经历，这个并不代表所有美国人的行为，但这件事情对我还是有巨大的印象。
我在美国买了一辆二手汽车，美国品牌福特的，但美国车的质量不怎么样，到一天车坏了，发开不了，无奈之下把车拉到修车站。那里的老板十分活泼，性格开朗，看起来有一点像韩豆先生。他对我非常热情，一个小时之内把车都修好了，但结帐让我大吃一惊。这么小一个火花塞怎么值100美金呢？因为我对修车一无所知，我就没办法了，把一张100美金纸币交给他了。
· 回家时，上了淘宝，发现那个火花塞网上价格才是40人民币。我是否被骗了？有没有上过他的当呢？看发票才意识到了：虽火花塞不贵，但还是有80美金的所谓的“服务费。”难怪美国人都很有钱，一个小时能赚我的辛苦钱八十美金！
·
当时心里感觉很受伤。这肯定是美国人素质低的一个很明显的表现。我希望我的经历不代表美国人的全面。希望咱们有机会住在美国的能够克服这种困难，创造更好的未来。
(Dear Editor,
I live in Beijing, but I have lived previously in America for over twenty years, studying my undergrad and also working. Many cultural understandings come from linguistic misunderstandings, but because I have spent so long in America, my English is very good and I have no issues communicating with Americans, and so I know that the cultural conflicts that have occurred in my time in America are surely not the result of language barriers.
I want to share with everyone something that happened to me, something that does not represent the actions of all Americans, but it was something that had a big impact on me.
I had purchased a secondhand car in America, a Ford, an American car. However, the quality of American cars is not very impressive, and one day it broke. I had no other choice and had to get the car towed to a repair shop. The repairman was a very lively person with an open personality who looked a bit like Mr. Bean. He was very nice to me and had my car fixed in less than an hour. But when I got the receipt I was shocked. How could a small spark plug cost me $100? Because I have no expertise in automobiles, I had no choice, and took out a $100 bill and paid him.
When I went home, I went on Taobao, and discovered that I could purchase the same spark plug for 40RMB. Had I just been cheated? Did I fall into his trap? It was only when I looked at the receipt that I noticed: Even though the spark plug was not expensive, the repairman had charged me an $80 “service fee.” No wonder Americans are so rich, they earn $80 an hour of my hard-earned money!
It had hurt me to see such a thing happen, and this is surely an expression of Americans’ moral bankruptcy. I hope that this is not a complete representation of American society. I hope those of us that have had the chance to live in America can fight through these experiences, and work towards a better future.)
I have full faith that the underlying logic of the People’s Daily column—that airing petty grievances publicly over large print-run media will inform a sophisticated readership—is not only true, but vitally important for encouraging the subtle social understandings our world needs in order to reach a better tomorrow. I can only hope that the People’s Daily agrees and publishes my piece.
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