Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Quick Recap

Something funny yet inspiring happened to me lately. My German teacher recommended me to some woman as a German tutor. I was totally flattered. Just for the record, I've only been learning German for 6 months. But she thought I was adequate to the job and referred to me as her best student for now. But it didn't pan out. Nevertheless, the whole thing's a nice little ego boost for me.

What also can make my day is reading comments or any other kinda of feedback about my blog. Just in case you don't know, Blogger is blocked in China mainland like forever. So to a large extent, readers of this blog are non-Chinese or Chinese who would like to read some English stuff and be capable of bypassing the GFW.

I'm not concerned too much about daily traffic driven here but I do pay quite a little attention to which of posts are most read. By far I know my most popular posts go to "I Don't Have A Dream", "Chinese people? Incomprehensible!" and "Sex and the Univercity". I'm not be swift to generalize anything I see. However, what I found out is gonna illustrate the point that foreigners are more interested in self-reflection - they're fond of reading unharmonized posts which criticize the CCP, Communism, centralization or even Chairman Mao BY CHINESE OURSELVES.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's understandable. It's like "hunting for novelty". I assume that I'd feel the same way if I hear British people judge themselves. But the pathetic part of my case is that I'm entitled to speak up only outside the GFW, only beyond the sight of the "Internet harmonizers".

For one moment, those new notions dawn on me and I'm going for somewhat a westernized girl. But the next moment, I feel tied up by those old-fashioned values I grew up with. I can't totally let myself go. I wanna balance it all out. But from time to time, I got a bit overwhelmed by living these two lives.

Say one thing and do another - it's ironic that I actually grow into a typical Chinese. hehe, I'm in need of a bear hug.



(Below is a cartoon paraphrasing how Swedish media looks at Google's withdrawal from China.)


 (这张图片咱们中国人看看就好,外国人看不懂,呵呵。)

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Here is your bear hug~~~Hahaha~~~

And about what you said, you are living a two parts of life,I wanna say that,so am I.

SHUO said...

Tell me about it. :-)

PH said...

I follow this blog via the nice feature provided by Blogger called "Blogs I'm Following," but I can't remember how I found you in the first place...>.<

smgangwr@gmail.com said...

You mentioned that your government blocks or doesn't allow you to blog. Does that mean that you could potentially get into trouble?
Second, don't change who you are or your pursuit of what you enjoy. It appears to me that the Chineese enjoy many more freedoms then what we in the West have been taught. I have been concerned more with my own country as we have bought into Capitalism line, hook and sinker departing drastically from our Constitution. This is evidenced by most middle class Americans becoming indentured to credit capitalism. They never quite understand Freedom, Independence or Liberty because they sold their soul to the company store (money).