Dear Slate, yes there are chocolate bars in China
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Coming soon to a police checkpoint near you
"Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?... Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?"
- Betty Brown (R-TX), in response to testimony by Organization of Chinese Americans spokesperson Ramey Ko over how voter ID legislation may create problems for Asian immigrants because of name transliteration issues.
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That sounds like a Texas Republican. But America has a history of name butchery. Luckily, the Chinese are generally quite creative when it comes to choosing new names. In a few years, Lucifer and Rockwall could be standard American handles.
More thin skinned reactions. Texans are just Texans, even Latino and black ones. In the small towns everyone agrees to segregate and they like it like that. The Chinese are going to have to learn that they are the extreme minority and just deal. To make things easier they could pick up names like Beto, Jesus, Javier or Juanita Gonzalez Consuelo Chavez.
And no one here (foreigner, that is) has been forced to use a non legal Chinese "name" for documents in China and other legalities? They just assume here that all from the Wai Guo have a Chinese name from birth???
Actually no, I've never been forced to use a Chinese name and neither have any of my laowai friends... especially for things like identification and registering at the local police station.
They'll ask if you have one, but if you don't, they shrug and put in your English name. In fact, most times, they'll ask if your identification document has a Chinese name on it, and if it doesn't, they don't bother putting it in at all.
If one cannot master/remember a Chinese name, you are not very bright. Take the laowai for instance, many just couldn't coordinate a pair of chopsticks. lol.
布朗女士，
您好！为了让您的名字能被中国人更好的接受并永远记住，我们决定将您的名字改为 "被踢.不让"，请务必接受。
祝好,
kfpanda