Okay, I heard this on Monday, and I find it absolutely incredible…
I have a friend from Senegal who recently accompanied the Senegalese ambassador on his visit to Taipei a couple of weeks ago, acting as his aide. While here the ambassador had audience with a number of high-ranking government officials, including the Mayor, and his deputy, Bai Hsiu-hsiung (I think… anyway, I doubt it was Ou).
Apparently, at one point Bai rubbed the skin on the ambassador’s arm with his fingers, and then looked at them to see if they were dirty or not. The ambassador promptly lost it, and yelled at Bai, “Every man has a position, and the one you are in is clearly not appropriate for you. How can you be so old, and still so stupid?!”
Bai went white as a ghost, and stumbled over his words for the rest of the meeting.
I find this truly unbelievable. Can this really happen? And if so, how could such an ‘educated’ person be so bloody stupid? :shock:
It sounds somewhat apocryphal to me. But if it really did happen and the news got around, I’d expect to see at least one of the other side’s city councillors latching on to it, baying for the man’s blood, and trying to stick part of the blame on our worthy mayor.
I think it was more like a show of affection. You know, all lovey, dovey, feely, and alittle touchy and smelly, and the ambassador just misunderstood it.
Not that I’d want to be near Bai, when he gets touchy either.
Where’s the merit in accusing another pollie of a potentially rascist gesture?
This is a point I’ve often raised with Taiwanese accusing Australians of being rascists (fact is I think the bulk are…cool it, I’m Australian!). When that red haired hag (my but she did look part aboriginal) was banging her rascist drum many a Taiwanese would auto recite “Oh! All Australians are rascists” I’d then ask what woould happen if just one legislator stood up in the Legislative Yuan and said…“we don’t want black people here”. Answer? “Why nothing of course.” In Australia it provoked a keen debate and demonstrations throughout the country. The next question was always more telling. “So Taiwanese aren’t rascists? Right, so there’d be no problem when your daughter came home with a Filipino husband then?”
There are a number of special politeness issues which need to be addressed when dealing with blacks. As I attended a high school and university which were “fully integrated”, I am aware of many of these.
It is unfortunately true that Chinese rarely have this degree of knowledge and/or experience, simply because they have had very little exposure to blacks at any time in their lives.
Also, in terms of dealing with common African blacks in Africa, I don’t believe that they would consider the above mentioned “gesture” to be especially impolite. The ambassador, and his retinue, are probably more westernized however.
I visited West Africa several times. It should be noted that this was in the early 1970’s before the AIDs epidemic. Once I was with a friend who got sick. We inquired as to where to find a health clinic. We were given directions and when we got there we were surprised to find a line of people and animals waiting in line to see the doctor. As we watched, a cow was given a shot, and the next patient in line, a young black man, was given a shot in the buttocks with the same needle before he could even take down his pants. Needless to say we decided to go to a pharmacy and buy some medicine, and didn’t make use of the doctor’s services.
