Shanghai + Sex + Blog + Controversy = Book Deal?

Way to post rumors you've heard about what his name and employer. It's good to see the Shanghaiist isn't above jumping on the bandwagon of irresponsible journalism and mob lynching.

Yes.. the blogger "peasant" commented on this a few days ago.
http://www.shanghaiexpat.com/community/index.php?blog=20&title=sex_and_shanghai&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

His comments found their way to other chinese blogs and before you know it, he had dozens of comments, some of which named names of other playa teachers and some which amounted to death threats against the chinabounder. I don't blame them for taking that blog offline. The problem is, most did not even seem to have read the blog ( either from chinabounder or from peasant ( who IS Chinese ), but rushed to react with the crowd in curses and insults in the comments. Doesn't take much to stir some people up.

I had access to a few of his blog.

an exemple.

"Of course China is full of guys like me. We're 90% a bunch of bastards."

"I think it's important to be honest about this. I hope that some women in China at least will read this stuff and begin to be a bit more cautious. The blog is also here, since blogspot is censored in China."

"I have various friends involved with foreign guys, and at the beginning of their relationships the woman has told me `This foreign guy is different.' But he never is. We all lie and cheat and chase."

"The reason I do not put my photo up is because I would be identifiable. If I was identifiable, the women I write about would be too. That's the same reason I give the women fake names and do not put up their photos. I do have some respect for them, even though it may not appear that way."

I do not agree that all the foreigner only want to chace and change from girls to girls....

He does not seems to be such a bastard many chinese post want to make us believe.... But I could not read all the posts... so I have no clear idea about that.

But the important think for me is: "you should be free to say what you think, even to speak about china when you are in China"

I feel that a Foreign Blashing is "good" for chinese nationalist feeling... always attacking the japanese are maybe not enought...

i can understand why so many foreign men don't find anything wrong with this. they most likely envy him.

for me, it's extremely offensive. not becuase i'm chinese but because it plays nationalistic senses. if any man or woman were to parade their sexual endeavors by race or culture, it would most certainly offend people from that race or culture.

this person is exploitative. it's evident from his writing that he uses these women. now, it must be said that these women are idiots. i put blame on both parties but i put more blame on this filthy douchebag cause he is actively pursuing chinese women and using his foreigner status as leverage.

i think all men who exploit women are pieces of shit. i think foreign men who exploit chinese women are bigger pieces of shit. why? because we all know that a man from a foreign country has more advantages than any local man here. from the offset, he is wealthier, more privileged, and probably better educated (not necessarily by his own merits just the luxury of growing up in a foreign country). i think people who take advantage of the women here using their foreigner status are pieces of shit cause they have no merit whatsoever.

this guy is a teacher? and he is having sex with his students? sorry, but in my book, that doesn't fly. thats ethically and morally wrong.

he broadcasts his sexual exploits on his blog? again, exploitative and degrading. so what you don't use their names. regardless of whether these women are idiots or not, you are degrading them by putting this out there. are there any gentlemen anymore?

honestly, if i met the guy, we would have words. and i hope everyone sees this for what it is. nevermind the professor. he's not exactly reasonable is he? but underlying his 5000 character essay is the principle that men need to treat women with respect.

Regardless of race being an issue, this is just totally insulting to all women. If I were one of his girlfriends, I cut off his dick and flush it down the toilet.

Agree with Pete. Don't even try to argue such topic with Chinese, you always lose in whatever ways. I was almost speechless when talking about Japanese with my friends once and I won't do that again.

This blog or whatever it is was originally blocked by everyone's friend, the chinese government, then unblocked. Why? To stir up more nationalist crap.
On an international chinese website, chasedream.com, this topic is discussed in depth. While some are infuriated, most are fairly casual and find some of the blog funny and even true in some respects.
This blog only exposes the ugly, nazi-nationalist side of china which is a direct side effect of 1. being closed and 2. people being bombarded with mind bending propaganda all their lives.
This just goes to show how far China has to go to become a truly developed country. Shiny (empty) buildings and a (smoking, broken) maglev doesn't make you developed. Yes, this stuff does go on in the west, especially in the US with an almost pop culture flare to it. Don't believe me? check out the "yo mama" jokes on MTV, or watch a non-white comedian on stage (they are much harsher on their own ethnic group than on white folks).

Yo mama is soo black...
Yo mama is sooo white...
Which car holds the most latinos...
Whose are the toughest vegetable stand owners, Jamaicans or Koreans, etc.

Chinese people need thicker skins, they are not the center of the world and no one is above being barbed.

Chinabounder does not need more publicity by posing as another poster. An Aussie paper had mentioned that this blog was a joke played by a group of chinese expats and their friends who had lived in China. They would all know the right buttons to push to make chinese men mad. Other blogs today talk about how Chinas decaying, patriarchal society cannot come to grips with sexual liberation as part of social evolution.

Whether this blog is true or not, it did succeed in revealing the feeble, fragile ego of china and its crack-addict level of addiction to "face". It also highlights the need of those nasty old men up north to let society evolve so that chinese men can get thicker skins. Many non-americans could not conceive how many "white jokes" exist in the US and are shown on TV, and yet white people are not up in arms about it.

Chinese society is truly weak, thanks mostly to thousands of years of continuous cultural oppression and control.

I believe that someone like Chinabounder should have the right to blog whatever kind of trash he wants, but I am exasperated that a number of those posting here continue to try to point an accusing finger at the Chinese in all of this.

"They would all know the right buttons to push to make chinese men mad." - Naan

Your whole premise seems to be that the reaction here is somehow uniquely "Chinese". You can't honestly believe that a blog purporting to be written by a foreign or minority teacher in the US or Britain that trashed local/majority men while detailing sexual manipulation of women (including students) coupled with sweeping racial/cultural generalizations wouldn't produce outrage. (And why, oh why, Naan, should we view this outrage against exploitation of women as a sign of societal weakness?)

The Chinese government does plenty of stuff that I don't agree with, and I am not a big fan of witchhunts. But I think any speculation on the "Chinese-ness" of the outrage here completely distracts from what I think is largely an issue with the expat community in China:

Regardless of whether or not this website was a fake, those of us living in China can all name a few guys we've met who remind us of Chinabounder. Asian fetish, yellow fever, call it whatever you want, but these losers actively exploit Chinese women because their skin color, nationality, and/or economic status empower them to do so. We may be disgusted by Chinabounder, but we are certainly not shocked.

Why is the expat community willing to put up with these nasty, racist assholes?

Simon Bard:

I have never talked to Professor Zhang, but there was a comment on the whoischinabounder.blogspot.com blog that is addressed to Roland Soong of ESWN. The comment is one of the last ones (last time i checked) and is written in Chinese. This person addressed the difference between Muzi Mei and Chinabounder -- and what it came down to was a matter of the respective positions of power -- for this commenter, foreign men are in a position of power (强势）vis-a-vis Chinese women. I'm not quite sure what this means, concretely, but I believe that the commenter's point was that Muzi has sex with people who are her "equals," whereas for whatever reason power relations ar different between foreign males and their chinese female love interests. I see the distinction as being interesting but the argument well, doesn't seem to really hold much water. I haven't read CB in depth so i don't know how he treats women, in general.

I haven't found much else that directly references Muzi Mei, but remember that Professor Zhang points out 4 criticisms he has, and that all the sex stuff is just the first one: the others are essentially about politics and the politics of culture. CB touched about all the raw nerves that exist. Remember when the actress Zhao Wei was wearing a white shirt that had a "rising sun" on it -- she got skewered for it in the Chinese press. A bad pass at erotic literature is, in the end, forgivable -- the forgetful public enjoys a bit of titillation once in a while. But questioning the reason behind Xinjiang being part of the PRC -- that's outright blasphemy, and people will not forgive or forget that lightly.

@epay:

"Your whole premise seems to be that the reaction here is somehow uniquely "Chinese"."

Ok, muslims were equally up at arms over the Danish charicature of Mohammed. Islam is faced with a "modernize or die" choice too, and some would say it has an "eggshell" ego about criticism and reform, as if killing everyone labled "nonbeliever" is the norm.

"You can't honestly believe that a blog purporting to be written by a foreign or minority teacher in the US or Britain that trashed local/majority men while detailing sexual manipulation of women (including students) coupled with sweeping racial/cultural generalizations wouldn't produce outrage"

That kind of stuff plays on the same level as "white man can't play b-ball or dance", "black men are chronic cheaters" and "asians can't drive cars", etc. Anyone with brains knows this stuff is the stereotypical fodder for jokes that ethnic groups in the US even point at themselves.

But how it was handled is the big problem. You can't fix a problem unless you can confront it and maybe laugh at it. But that's just another difference between a developed society and backward one.
"Exploitation of women"? Did he rape those women? They came to his apartment. Heck, all one of them needed to do was accuse him of rape and he'd be toast, proof or not.

"But I think any speculation on the "Chinese-ness" of the outrage here completely distracts from what I think is largely an issue with the expat community in China:"

The "chineseness" has to do with the outrage over one person's actions or a group's joke. As old china hands told western governments for a long time "the chinese don't like criticism", so western governments walked on eggshells with China. No more, China is what it is and CHinese people have to deal with it, and no one is above ridicule. And I think the expat community in China and in Asia is generally shit, full of misfits and a few criminals that cannot function in their native cultures. As one chinese girl asked me; "why do all of the bad foreigners come to china". Hey, at least its not Thailand, global HQ of child molesters.

"Why is the expat community willing to put up with these nasty, racist assholes?"

Because the expat community consists primarily of these assholes, and for those who aren't sex fiends (or chronic cheaters), there are plenty of expats stealing from their companies, selling their "home" country's secrets to the Chronically Corrupt Party or just fleecing their company and everyone they know for every jiao they can get.

mememe,
I agree with you PLUS don't forget the Cultural Revolution. How could you guys have forgotten the Chinese raped and killed themselves too. I don't see these hypocritical and uncivilized Chineee criticizing themselves before bitching about the innocent foreigners in China.

nanheyangrouchuan, you are one sick racist mo-fo who clearly knows nothing about Chinese people, and not much about the expats who live here. Your thinly veiled venom towards anything Chinese is revolting. Most of the expats I know are hard working people leading responsible lives, some just scraping through and others living the high life. And all respect or try to respect the laws and values of the country that has allowed us to live here and contribute to something bigger.

You clearly hate it here judging by your totally ignorant arguments and yawn-inducing sweeping generalisations ... Go home mate! You're not welcome here.

nanheyangrouchuan is Chinabounder, go to google his name and notice his writing styles. This troll has posted a whopping 40,000 Chinese bashing posts in different blogs and forums, his hatred against Chinese is absolutely unbelievable.

Most of my posts are more Beijing bashing than china bashing, and more than %30 are dedicated to bashing the far right wing in the US. But some people don't take the time or effort to carefully research (china expats writing for money, for example).

"And you ex-pats with your comments on the turmoil, you are lower than the oppressive professor. You are siding with him without comment on the oppression he desires for the single purpose of making your blog more popular, which might end (you hope and pray) in money to you someway."

I agree, expats in china are accustomed to towing the mark (publicly) and cowardly going along with whatever seems to be the popular movement of the people and the government. Expats have no backbone, like seaweed they move according to the strongest current.

But in the expat bars, they brag of their conquests and what they can get away with. dirty, dirty shame.

"What i don't understand is why you insist on lumping all expats together: i think i have seen a variety of opinions both here and in other websites: some find the Chinabounder type reprehensible but have not said much about the recent controversy, some agree with the Chinese anger but might find the reaction (kicking the man out) to be an overreaction."

I can't answer for nanheyangrouchuan, and I am guilty of lumping, but I divided the lumpage into two groups, the ex-pat community at large, and those who have kept this no-leg story on the treadmill for weeks. Your reply to me doesn't contradict what I wrote, though, if the only thing you've seen or heard uttered by ex-pats are those 2 reactions.

Blogs are opinion pieces, primarily, even if they feign being pieces of journalism. Your "letting people know" about what was going on is such a pretense. You gave it airtime because it made popular reading, not because you had anything to say. As another blog (Hongkie Town Redux) says, "Now I'm getting a lot of visitors because of my posts on the Chinabounder Sex and Shanghai blog. Since I'm not above pandering to the masses, a mention of it again, including making it the heading of this post." (sic)

That aside,how can you not realize that the danger of this professor's diatribe and witchhunt far, far outweighs the threat to Chinese self-esteem that some horny ex-pat can pose with his affected and adolescent writings about his discovery of the use of his penis? You say what little criticism you had in the piece was reserved for the professor, but where is this so? Is it here: "He says that if a small country like Israel can do that, then what's wrong with China. We have to say that we find this a bit disturbing". That is biting critique. And what is the thing that is disturbing, Mossad hunting Nazis or the professor linking the killing of 6 million to some guy musing on a few chicks he's banged? Didn't this comparison of his deserve more than an arching of a single delicate eyebrow?

Or this: "Nationalist diatribes veer into dangerous territory when women are involved because of the whole symbolism revolving around rape, violation, purity, etc. If horny white chicks were using Chinese men like sexual play-things, would there be a similar uproar?" Aren't nationalist diatribes dangerous in themselves without veering anywhere near as much as the logic of that paragraph? Aren't you playing the sycophant in pretending that the Chinese reaction of insane virulence, chest beating and madonna-izing has a cause and an excuse?

And then you sum it all up with blistering contempt: "the lesson of this whole episode, he says, is that Chinese girls realize that even among foreign men, there are "trash."

And he needed 5,000 words to say that. Sounds like a professor indeed.", making him seem like a harmless cliche, the pedantic, but nutty professor, just a funny little self-important fella with a heart of gold.

The truth is that this professor is evil. I'm not a conspiracy theory type of guy, but if I were I would suspect that he and his hissy fit were arranged by the Party; I mean, it has all the earmarks, playing on nationalism, pandering to the idea that foreigners are insulting and hateful (but at the same time jealous) of China and the Chinese. Whether orchestrated or not (and I am not distracting my argument for a moment in claiming that it was), this is golden for the Party, and ex-pats blogging on it without mentioning the ignorance of this professor are giving them a hand.

Chinese need to know that when people are free to speak, they are going to hear things they don't want to hear. Their inability to accept this fact is what is frightening about this case you have helped along, not some little man musing on the workings of his cock.

Whether the professor has official backing to post his diatribe is unknown, but does have credence as anything that "unites" the chinese people and distracts them from the shortcomings of their government is a good thing; Mao said of the Japanese attack "to be invaded by foreign enemy is not always bad". Part of the anger of the chinese (male) population has more to do in general with chinese girls throwing themselves at foreign men AND the growing problem of not enough girls in china in general. I mean, if Tom Cruise showed up in shanghai it is understandable that clothes would come off, but most expats, especially after a few years, are more like Tom Bruise. And local girls are turning down white collar chinese guys for scruffy english teachers, married execs and of course, the classic (big fat bald pig) expat on the bar stool.

While not all expats are inherently bad, the combination of aggressive western business practices with what might be considered a "permissive" attitude by the local and national governments in asia towards foriegn business people stimulates and promotes less than responsible behavior. Asian expats don't act like this in the west, and the vast majority of the western expats in asia are merely middle to upper middle class "everybodies" in their own countries, in short they are not "special" back home.

Instead of a few bad apples spoiling the bunch, you have few good apples being completely obscured by vastly superior numbers of rubbish.

But like I said in another post, having talked to some chinese guys about this recently, this little blog may be approaching the last straw.

@ foriegner

That is the most condescending comment yet on this issue, to assume that all girls in Shanghai/China are poor and desperate and that is the only reason they chase these guys. most likely you are an angry chinese guy, so your outburst is forgivable.

Even well to do, educated chinese girls are flocking for any white face.

My comment above included quotes from yours that were deleted due to unfortunate method of citing. Here it is in full:

you wrote: First, the linking of the Mossad/Nazis was not to the blog, but to Sino-Japanese relations, not to Chinabounder's sexual conquests.

I'm not sure what you are saying here. I didn't attribute any "linking" to your blog. I facetiously implied that your comment was milqtoast about a deeply serious subject. 6 million dead (unless you're Iranian in which case my whole argument is a Zionist lie) versus some big-nose banging a few mindlessly similar married women and a few one-sided ramblings. Was my point.

you wrote: What you wanted was for me to write something that you agreed with: a condemnation of this professor.

Or perhaps you at least wanted us to "have something to say" instead of making the few tepid comments that I did. Well, i wish i could oblige you but i don't have the time. Lame excuse, right? You said that you didn't even know the name of the
professor because it didn't concern you. Well, i learnt his name and read his blog and read what other people had to say about both on his site and in the Chinese media. I tried not to dash something off the top of my head. Frankly, I am not terribly interested in this issue, not really my cup of tea.

Attempting to make me look as though mine is an uninformed position because I didn't quote the rantings of a lunatic nationalistic "professor" is disingenuous. A snide, but weak attempt at deflecting the argument and undermining my position.

The reason for this is that you have no defense. Or your defense is that you "didn't have time". No time for freedom of speech? I see. In fact, you aren't interested in free speech. Ok. I can't debate preferences with you. I have a friend who works for China National Radio who says pretty much the same thing. But then, she is working for "The Throat" of the Party so she has an excuse for the slipshod pretense of unbiased reporting of events. "Put on a happy face" journalism.

What is the point and purpose of your blog? Who do you serve and why do you do it? Are you a happy-go-lucky chit-chat blog about this crazy topsy turvy world, a silly personalized view of Shanghai from a whacky and wordly ex-pat, experience as seen through your slightly ironic, gently elevated eyebrow, as most China-blogs
are? 2/3 of Shanghaiist is that, and nothing wrong with that, I like Dan's stuff and not _all_ of the other contributors are horrible.

Your personal pretense of being a just-the-facts journalistic venture, along with Dan's redentials, might get you a call as a source from some English rag, and who knows, it might land you a job as
a correspondent (though you'll have to tighten your prose, e.g. that meandering snippet about the dangers of nationalism that strays into sexual debate) but it doesn't change the raison d'etre of your blog, of any blog.

Blogs are not media-bound, they are the voice of the people. You are not a reporter, you are playing at being one if you say your blog is serious journalism. You provided "links" and a few explanatory paragraphs. Apparently the professor was looking for interesting sex sites with the Google search "sex and shanghai" when he stumbled on Chinabounder's site. A similar search would
provide all the links you gave without the tepid, and therefore tacit, comments made after the fact.

The only thing, the ONLY thing, yours or any blog has going for it is your power of comment ON the facts. You agree that The real issue is not what Bounder wrote, but how this idiot is attempting to stir up hate and repression in China. But you think this isn't your problem. Your silence, as I said, is golden to the powers of nationalistic hatred.

you wrote: sorry we don't have "the balls" that you do.

I believe you are married now, at least in form, and since I'm not a bounder, I don't think it is polite for you to be (wistfully) discussing the girth of my balls. Which, by the way, are enormous for any of you single girls out there.

runningdog:

My point was not to undermine your position by assuming that it was uninformed, my point was to explain why real world constraints limited the amount of time and energy i was willing to devote to a post. Of course, even if i had more time, i wouldn't necessarily have been as critical as you would have liked. The thing is, I never maintained that this site or that I personally am a journalist. On a number of other posts, in this last year, I have taken the other tack when people have said to me "hey, you're not very objective." I told them then, "well, i'm not really paid to be -- we're a blog."

You are right that blogs in general might be the "voice of the people," but this particular post was just me, so let's just confine this to what you think I did wrong, which is that I didn't come down hard enough, in terms of commentary, on the professor. As I said before, I don't have the time or the willingness to do so, but I disagree that, given these circumstances. I'm sorry that I have done a great disservice to "freedom of speech" and that I've fanned the flames of "nationalistic hatred," but I think you might be blowing things out of proportion. If blogs are, according to you, the voice of the people, than is my speech really priveleged, as one poster on one blog? There are tons of comments on this post, and that's what blogs about -- the ability to dialogue and comment. You assume that my silence is the last word on things -- but what about the other people that are talking and debating? I assumed that when i wrote this post that some people, who might not have heard of this before, would find it interesting and then follow up with some of the links that I put in. Sure, it's redundant in a way, but a lot of stuff is. So this is where you argue that I needed more opinion in it, since this is the raison d'etre of a blog -- well, obviously I didn't do that and this made me both an apologist for the professor and a bore to read. If, however, everyone tries to make up their own mind and comes to a conclusion, like you, that the professor is dangerous, then the only bad thing that i've done is been a boring blogger. And i'm willing to confess that, but I would rather not you insinuate that my "silence" is some kind of heinous crime. There are many things happening in China and around the world that we have NOT posted about. For example, recent jailings of journalists. I sure had an opinion about this, believe me, but even had I posted about it, I would have diluted some of the feelings that I had when I posted, just like with Chinabounder. Often when I write, I have huge comments which i then delete before posting, leaving nothing but a link and maybe a sarcastic remark. I sometimes have to write as fast as I can in order to get out a post and still have time to do the other things I have to do, and yet we have to keep Shanghaiist alive by adding new content.

Regarding that last remark about "balls," it was because of this:

"The guy, or group or whoever the hell they are, have a RIGHT to write about what they want. If it disagrees with some people, don't read it. If you hate it yet you read it and want to protest it, you have a chip on your shoulder and you are like the famatical Islamists or the Ultra Right conservatives. I reserve my particular bile for the ex-pat suck-ups who did not HAVE to take on the story, but did so for their own benefit. In all your personals ads sponsors and purse sales, did you lose your balls?"

If you have a beef with what I wrote because of their not being enough opinion or commentary or information, I can accept that opinion. But from the above paragraph it seems that you have called me (or perhaps the whole site?) "suck-ups" and insinuated that the personals and purse sales made us lose our balls. Somehow, I think you could have made your point about my post without resorting to what I consider something close to an ad hominem attack that, from what I can tell, adds little to the substance of your criticisms.

Back to your criticism (and perhaps I will end my replies to this thread here): again, I think it's a bit of stretch to compare us to the CRI and the "throat of the Party" -- I accept your criticism that blogs ought to be opinionated, but again, that's not always what i have the time or inclination (or perhaps the skill) to do -- but it seems to me that you consider my post a moral failure of nerve on the part of Shanghaiist and that I'm an apologist for the professor and all nationalists. Contrary to what you think, I know that nationalism IS my problem, as it affects many people who live here and a goodly portion of the human beings that don't -- but honestly, there's going to be plenty of other incidents and battles, and even if I were a good, quality blogger, I would still choose my battles, even if that looks like a cop out or a compromise. When I do get critical of something, hopefully I will be able to do it intelligently, and not, shall we say, insultingly.

A little science for the subject.

http://www.cpirc.org.cn/en/enews20020118.htm

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-12/04/content_287257.htm

The revolution begins in the bedroom.

While are part of Gothamist we are also fairly autonomous in certain ways; we generally hew to a certain style but I can say that obviously, as a blog, we are subject to less constraints than most.

In my second post, I put up Chinabounder's last post, which are short, but fairly cogent, replies to the professor's charges. The best counter to the professor is Chinabounder himself, or perhaps comments from around the internet that support free speech and his opinion. If those comments are on foreign/expat blogs, than they are accessible in China, since many of those blogs are not hosted on blogspot; they have their own service providers or whatever.

If this information is just general information about how westerners think about Chinese nationalism, well, I wasn't up that task, for sure -- Chinabounder's remarks on the difference between the is (de facto independence of Taiwan) and the ought (reunification or not?) sum it up as clearly as anyone. The guy isn't dumb -- i remember thinking this the first and only time i read his blog before this brouhaha -- in May. He's quite capable of defending himself, in words. Actually trying to make a good written argument about Chinese nationalism would have taken me a bit afield -- if you think that I ought to have at least put in a couple of sentences in this regard, just to make things clear, then all I can do is plead laziness. In fact, i would rather stick to that than to delve into the context of blogging, Shanghaiist/Gothamis t commercial concerns, etc. Honestly, we don't really make a lot of dough with those personals. At least the benefits don't directly redound to me.

By the way, most of our readers are not Chinese, and a goodly chunk are Americans (in greater proportion than some of the other English speaking countries combined) so that is also why I left certain things unstated. I didn't have the propaganda-addled Chinese reader in mind -- statistically then, what I did makes sense, but morally, perhaps not. As you suggested, with something important, pandering to the majority makes you seem frivolous.

Read the comments -- there are some left by what I assume are Chinese (at least not native English speakers) who have noted, in so many words, that the government uses this stuff to divert attention and secure its legitimacy. I had a Chinese friend tell me last week that Americans and Japanese are dumb, because they believe their government (Shanghai born and raised, she now lives in Texas, and is no doubt referring to the 51% of americans that were once behind bush). She told me that Chinese were different -- they all knew the government was corrupt and bad.

Not a terrific example, but perhaps it suggests that a Chinese reader of this blog (whose English would have to be considered above average) already has a sense of the issues involved.

Thanks for your comments.

you wrote: While are part of Gothamist we are also fairly autonomous in certain ways; we generally hew to a certain style but I can say that obviously, as a blog, we are subject to less constraints than most.

I admit to a near total ignorance of the high fanancial world of international blogdom. In America, as you know, we criticize popular media and news outlets for conflicts of interest that appear very similar, but if it's only a trickle (and here I would have hoped that it was a veritable flood of green because frankly those personal ads everyone has are f*&king pathetic and it frosts my ass everytime I have to wait for them to load), than I mistook the dynamics of your being en league with Gothamist.

you wrote: In my second post, I put up Chinabounder's last post, which are short, but fairly cogent, replies to the professor's charges. The best counter to the professor is Chinabounder himself, or perhaps comments from around the internet that support free speech and his opinion. If those comments are on foreign/expat blogs, than they are accessible in China, since many of those blogs are not hosted on blogspot; they have their own service providers or whatever.

That's the rub, they generally weren't. When the situation was mentioned it was entirely to do with a sex blog and the justifiable (seems to be the concensus), but exagerated anger. Either that or something more self-serving such as joining in the fun chase for those with k0m9uTr sK1L1z or to draw searches to their own Bounder-esque blogs. No defense of free speech. No condemnation of the lynch mob mentality of a sadly huge portion of Chinese society. China Daily wrote about this tendency a while back, an op-ed that wasn't much more pithy or biting but at least noted the problem: : "Online "flaming" wars exist everywhere (...but) in China they may have a self-propelling force that sweeps thousands, sometimes millions, into a frenzy. It is nearly impossible, even for the most respected scholars, to give voice to dissension. Thinking of it, this does have something to do with our culture. For thousands of years, we have not really cultivated enough space for different voices.

you wrote: If this information is just general information about how westerners think about Chinese nationalism, well, I wasn't up that task

I'm not talking about nationalism so much as the mob mentality and freedom of speech as a right and in this case, inciting racism and hatred.

You wrote: Read the comments -- there are some left by what I assume are Chinese (at least not native English speakers) who have noted, in so many words, that the government uses this stuff to divert attention and secure its legitimacy. I had a Chinese friend tell me last week that Americans and Japanese are dumb, because they believe their government (Shanghai born and raised, she now lives in Texas, and is no doubt referring to the 51% of americans that were once behind bush). She told me that Chinese were different -- they all knew the government was corrupt and bad.

And I had a Chinese friend tell me last week that Japan is the US's secret enemy, that we Americans are naive to think otherwise, that we couldn't trust western media (which admitedly isn't far from the truth - it's those damn personals ads again) because they too are naive or controlled by the Powers, who in turn are naive because 64% of weapons construction in the US is controlled by Japanese robotics (presumedly these robots will arise and smite us when Japan finally decides the moment is right for Nippon World-Conquest part II), that the reason the Chinese ambassador told the US to shut up about China's military buildup is that the US had secretly made a deal to sell more advanced weapons to Taiwan, and that China was not, in fact, not building up. This information he gleaned from a Chinese news site. When I asked him how come he trusted that source, he said he could see when a reporter was arguing a personal agenda (apparently this was marked in Chinese media with a yellow highlighter or something) and that this .CN site wasn't controlled by the State. This guy is an engineer, he is not stupid. Many many Chinese I know in America and in Canada think this same way. Anecdote for anecdote.

All I know is that the China Daily article I cite above had one comment on it, a letter to the editor, that western media will always lie about China and portray this country and the Chinese in an unfavorable light.

running dog:

you're right that the flame wars, internet lynching and the mob mentality are problems. As i said, i probably should have duly noted this in my post. The problem, on a more general level, is the ability of a person to assess how big an issue is -- my continued bafflement over the political career of George W. Bush is a sign of this. I am insulated in terms of people i have face to face contact with -- most of them were somewhat skeptical of the man back in 2000, and yet, by hook or crook, he won, ditto in 2004. In the same vein, although I read of such things in the Chinese media (which reminds me, even the Super Voice girls and idol type contests often devolve into mob mentality affairs, with each fan base attacking, virtually or actually, other fan bases). I've been around Chinese people my entire life (though not all mainlanders), and i've been travelling to china since 1980 (i was quite young then); even in the states, we have many mainland friends, but never, at least in our personal contacts, have i really met one of the people that you've described, people who, were they famous, might be described as ideologues. People who, when you hear their ideas, make you do a double-take.

I sometimes wonder if it's different b/c I'm ethnic Chinese -- maybe the conversations take different turns or focus on different things. I've heard many foreigners and expats talking about the conversations they've had that are quite similar to yours (regarding the military build up, etc.), but i've never had one myself. Do you have to bring up the topic or do they do so, spontaneously?

On the other hand, I also have an aversion to talking about such things for the very reason that it is quite likely that you will run into the same stumbling blocks over and over again. I can talk about religion and politics about dinner but I won't do it unless i think it will be interesting or somehow fruitful (or enjoyable). I probably avoid talking about those things with most Chinese people, and my close friends, who know that i'm American, don't really bring it up either.

in any case, your points are duly noted.

it is astonishing to me that some people would really write this stuff on the blog, to brag about how he had scored so much in China? or her has, such as our Ms.MuZiMei. (heard that she recently post a personal ad online).

to me, i think this kind of intimacy is consensual. those girls should at least be adults, shouldn't they? Although he is using it to bash on how Chinese men are is a little over doing it, but the chinese fellow networms often use the same method to attack other races, such as the Japanese, (historical reasons) Where is the fairness in that?

China has a lot of problems, due to its culture matters, historical occurrences, and this new 'open market econ.' method.

everyone is entitled to one's own opinion.

this professor's so called man hunt is pointless. or u can even call it a "salem witch hunt". there are far more than just this one chinabounder person, the message this professor send out is saying, you can get laid all you want, just dont talk about it. what good will that do to the majority of the audiences?

i've also read some of his research article. he claims that the western women he interviewed commented on how well mannered the chinese men are when they are on a date. which i think it's bogus, or maybe Chinese men behave in front of them, simply because they are white.

all i can say is i've dated all kinds of people, the worst manner is from Chinese men by far, and the only good chinese date i've ever had was with a Chinese gentleman from ShangHai.

The whole thing is totally stupid,look at what a chinese people said in his blog if u can read it or some one translate his meaning and put them here.