PRC SCHOLAR: WHY 'CN' NATIONALS AND 'SGNS' DON'T GET ALONG

[JR8]

Reading a link from a post by WD40 re: Indians working in senior MNC roles, I followed another link from there, and found the below an insightful, well written, and thought-provoking article.

'PRC SCHOLAR: WHY CHINESE NATIONALS AND SINGAPOREANS DON'T GET ALONG'
http://therealsingapore.com/content/prc ... -get-along

I tried to find an excerpt that might act as a synopsis, but it's a pretty concisely observed piece, and there didn't seem to be any one paragraph that might give an accurate flavour of the whole.

[nakatago]

Reading a link from a post by WD40 re: Indians working in senior MNC roles, I followed another link from there, and found the below an insightful, well written, and thought-provoking article.

'PRC SCHOLAR: WHY CHINESE NATIONALS AND SINGAPOREANS DON'T GET ALONG'
http://therealsingapore.com/content/prc ... -get-along

I tried to find an excerpt that might act as a synopsis, but it's a pretty concisely observed piece, and there didn't seem to be any one paragraph that might give an accurate flavour of the whole.

tl;dr version: one thinks they're better than the other.

[curiousgeorge]

tl;dr Chinese nationals come here thinking they are the same as Singaporean Chinese. Singaporean Chinese feel there is a large difference. Hilarity ensues.

[x9200]

Hilarity continues as the local Chinese often dislike the mainland Chinese for what the Western expats don't like in Singaporeans (i.e. to be very noisy in public places, jumping queues, littering).

[taxico]

excerpt from therealsingapore.com/content/prc-scholar-why-chinese-nationals-and-singaporeans-dont-get-along

"I would like to offer a few thoughts and observations on the misunderstandings between Singaporeans (here, I am primarily concerned with those of Chinese ethnicity - henceforth ‘Chinese Singaporeans’) and the Chinese, as well as the implications of such misunderstandings with regard to social cohesion.

...many Chinese tend to view other countries and/or societies with predominantly ethnically Chinese population with a sense of familiarity (qinqie)—which can be productive—but also a sense of presumptiveness—which can be counterproductive.

In certain circumstances, the Chinese presumptiveness develops into arrogance...

Not knowing enough about the historical trajectory of Singapore as an independent nation-state and not sufficiently recognising the psychological distance between Singaporeans and Chinese constitute the first major source of misunderstanding on the part of the Chinese immigrants. The significant distance in terms of autonomous national-cultural identity that the Singaporeans have traveled away from the ideological Chinese imagination is illustrated in some small but pregnant instances.

Related to the first, a second source of misunderstanding has to do with Chinese Singaporeans’ bilingualism, which ironically has the effect of entrenching the first type of misunderstanding as I outlined above...

...I sometimes even wonder if the tension between Singaporeans and the Chinese immigrants might not be less if Singaporean Chinese actually did not speak any Chinese/Mandarin at all.

A third very important source of misunderstanding has to do with class perception and attitudes... The rural-urban binary divide that has existed... since the founding of the PRC developed into a huge class divide as the poor and poorly educated rural domestic migrants flooded into Chinese cities to seek labour-intensive employments.

Speaking Chinese dialects, while perhaps being an expression of identity for some Chinese Singaporeans, often also coincides with disadvantaged socio-economic position in the Singapore society. With Chinese dialects carrying connotations of ruralness and backwardness (for the Chinese), the encounter between the more privileged immigrant Chinese and the less privileged Chinese Singaporeans can take on a class inflection. The same kind of discourse employed by Chinese urbanites to condescend on their rural compatriots may also be employed to bear upon those of lower socio-economic and educational backgrounds in Singapore, particularly in scenarios of conflict.

When two or more peoples come into contact with each other, they each carry their own sets of social, cultural and historical baggage with them. To hope that they drop their baggage and enter into context-free cosmopolitan interaction is often an impossible ideal...

In the case of immigration, the duty naturally falls more heavily on the immigrants to understand their host society and to correct their own previous misconceptions, but unfortunately this often takes some time; the duty on the part of the host, then, is to be patient..."

(written by a PRC national)

[Brah]

Hilarity continues as the local Chinese often dislike the mainland Chinese for what the Western expats don't like in Singaporeans (i.e. to be very noisy in public places, jumping queues, littering).

I could have quoted any of these and the OP posts as they are all relevant but that's too much work.

Odd to see this as for some reason or another as I did the internet jump-from-tangent-to-tangent thing (there must be a word for this by now) yesterday and watched more than a few YT clips of Chinese Tourists Behaving Badly. What an eyeopener. I've never seen Singaporean tourists behave like that at all, in fact quite the contrary.

Agree with the tl;dr comment, the excerpts posted by Taxico come across as a well-written treatise of denial.

[earthfriendly]

What the heck! I could not access the link. Another govt censorship?????????????? This will not translate well into the next election, I say !

For many centuries, China had adopted an isolationist policy, closing its door to foreigners since the 1300s ("barbarians" to the north at that time). That, together with govt-sanctioned nationalistic propaganda resulted in this kind of insular outlook. My girlfriend was shocked that her mainland Chinese husband did not know who Spiderman was when the movie came out. He was not exposed to the awesomeness of this wall-climbing guy during his childhood in China. The advent of internet and their appetite for overseas travel have the effect of broadening their outlook and learning to become better-behaved global citizens. It will take a looooooooooooooooooong time, over generations.

Unfortunately, President Xi has recently taken on quite a natonalistic tone. Does he want to take China back to the Mao era?

[American]

Hilarity continues as the local Chinese often dislike the mainland Chinese for what the Western expats don't like in Singaporeans (i.e. to be very noisy in public places, jumping queues, littering).

What Western cities are you comparing to? Same can be said about New Yorkers, people from Mexico City, Milanese, And perhaps many other western places.

[Wd40]

My girlfriend was shocked that her mainland Chinese husband did not know who Spiderman was when the movie came out. He was not exposed to the awesomeness of this wall-climbing guy during his childhood in China.

In India, we used to watch a lot of Jackie Chan movies, as kids and we used to imagine that all Chinese could do Karate, girls included

Also we thought, Chinese could eat anything like Frogs, snakes....

[x9200]

Hilarity continues as the local Chinese often dislike the mainland Chinese for what the Western expats don't like in Singaporeans (i.e. to be very noisy in public places, jumping queues, littering).

What Western cities are you comparing to? Same can be said about New Yorkers, people from Mexico City, Milanese, And perhaps many other western places.

Where do you see any reference in my post to any city except indirectly Singapore? I don't really get your comment.

[JR8]

Hilarity continues as the local Chinese often dislike the mainland Chinese for what the Western expats don't like in Singaporeans (i.e. to be very noisy in public places, jumping queues, littering).

What Western cities are you comparing to? Same can be said about New Yorkers, people from Mexico City, Milanese, And perhaps many other western places.

This reminds me of the debating tactic of breaking down your opponents point into it's constituent parts (thus redefining it), so as to try and defeat it.
The OP mentioned three aspects, so let's stick to that, after all that was his point. What Western cities have those three aspects within everyday life?

Queue-jumping seems to be an Asian thing*, perhaps it derives from 'kiasu'.
Queue jumping is highly taboo in the west, and unlike here, a queue-jumpers will be immediately pointed out and collectively told by those queueing to shift. There is zero sense of a queue-jumper then being able to 'water face' away the situation, if they tried that it's quite possible they would be physically pushed out of the queue.

* I'm pretty well travelled, and outside of SE/NE (especially) Asia, the only other place I've experienced egregious queue-jumping is Lebanon. Why Lebanon but not Egypt, Israel, Turkey etc, I have no idea...
p.s/edit: - That said, the people queue jumping there were the local equivalent of 'bukits' [Chinese expression => 'from the hills'], i.e. poorer rural folk in the big city for a day.

[earthfriendly]

https://martalivesinchina.wordpress.com ... eferences/

I am sometimes amazed and I say things like: “How can you NOT know what Pulp Fiction is??”. The current world is so globalized! But then I think twice and realize that our cultural background is too different. Pulp Fiction was released in 1994. Was it possible to watch foreign movies in China at that time? Probably not. Even today, the number of foreign movies that are shown in theaters in China is limited to only 34 per year. This is not a problem now because we have the internet, but it was a hindrance in the 90s.

[x9200]

https://martalivesinchina.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/cultural-references/

I am sometimes amazed and I say things like: “How can you NOT know what Pulp Fiction is??”. The current world is so globalized! But then I think twice and realize that our cultural background is too different. Pulp Fiction was released in 1994. Was it possible to watch foreign movies in China at that time? Probably not. Even today, the number of foreign movies that are shown in theaters in China is limited to only 34 per year. This is not a problem now because we have the internet, but it was a hindrance in the 90s.

As she mentioned above in the quoted part, it IS globalized, now, currently, so I don't really agree with the point of the the China's past. Do they remove any reference to Pulp Fiction now for the China surfers? Probably not.

I know what is 50 shades of grey, or Twilight, or Hello Kitty. I know despite of never watching the movies or owning anything related. It is present in the pop-culture/media everywhere and specifically on the Internet. And so is Pulp Fiction. If you use Internet you will see it, unless you purposely limited your exposure, but then it is a matter of choice not a case of country isolation.

[American]

Apologies for my illogic. Must have been drunk