Posters across Beijing are warning Chinese women to beware of handsome foreign men who might be romancing state secrets out of them. You can see the full comic-style poster and read about it here and here.
As the consensus most shuai guh (handsome guy) among the students and teachers at my university, I should state now that the only secrets I blazed abroad were the open secrets: that China is a rotten, awful country deserving of universal censure, a place of proverbial lawlessness and pollution, with foul-mouthed pushy masses of people fouling the earth with their trash, spit, and excrement, and the cars, buses, and bikes on the streets destroying any peace with their recklessness and blaring horns, and all the selfish, crowded ugliness happening under the sagging smog of the dishwater-colored sky.
But back to the story of the comic, one thing I’ve never understood is how so-called handsome foreign men are even persuading local Chinese women to date them. All my small talk fizzled out before it ever got flirtatious.
Me: So, what do you like to do?
Aggressively Introverted Chinese girl: I LIKE… WATCH TV.
Me, smiling solicitously: Okay. Do you like anything else?
Her: JUST WATCH TV.
Me, giggling nervously: Okay, that’s good. Do you like TV dramas? Prison Break?
Her: …
Me, after a deflating pause: Do you like sleeping?
Her: YES. I LIKE.
[END CONVERSATION AS BOTH LOOK AROUND FOR SOMETHING TO DISTRACT THEMSELVES WITH.]I learned to assume that everyone in China counted sleeping or dreaming as a hobby. One girl took being a cold fish to an extreme though and told me she had no interests, nothing, even despite me pressing her if she liked the staples of sleep and TV. In a way, that’s a lot more interesting than saying “JUST WATCH TV.”
So, I have no idea how the few foreign guys I saw in China with Chinese girlfriends got that way. I assume they wore it on their sleeve that they were looking for a Chinese girlfriend and they found their inverse half in a worldly metropolis like Beijing.
And- hold everything- since when was it that foreigners were spying on China and not the other way around? Is there a single piece of military equipment, a single automobile, computer, clothing line, or Chinese toy that was not blatantly cheated and copied from foreign sources? A friend of mine works as an engineer for a car company and he’s told me how his management has issued real warnings- not simple cartoons that are getting laughed at in China and abroad- about sharing too much data with Chinese clients because of the now obvious business wisdom that China steals and spies out whatever intellectual property it can.
But this is communist tyranny. Everything corrupts from the inside, from the top down, with the stiff-browed leaders perpetually making highhanded, doublespeak excuses and laughably see-through shows of triumphal patriotism and Big Brother brainwashing. What an awful country.
In fact, at one dinner a few talented English students of mine confessed to me that they all three wanted foreign boyfriends because they found them much more handsome and appealing than Chinese men. Now, I met a lot of decent, likable guys in China, but I could see the ladies’ point. The Chinese husbands I witnessed too often showed off domineering, drinking, dismissive, pouty, entitled behavior, not caring who was watching and seeming to have no appreciation for how much more attractive and shapely their wives were compared to them.
As I’ve said before, the greatest threat from foreign guests in China, handsome or not, is when they see China for what it really is.
Another good and humorous article