Had a weird conversation today about why I choose to go by Andrew instead of my Chinese name. Some person insisted it was because of white supremacy and I should go by my given name and be proud of it and not white wash it.
But the thing is…I am fine with my Chinese name. I just don’t want non Chinese speakers like him to butcher my name with poor pronunciation. It’s also really hard for me to pronounce romanized Chinese names in general. And I can’t expect people to be able to read every Chinese name in Chinese.
Some people aren’t very smart. In this case, demanding that you bow to their way of looking at the world if pretty hypocritical as well. If they were white, wow, what a lack of self-awareness. But we see this behaviour all too often these days, if you know what I mean…
I just gave my Chinese name for my ARC papers. When I was asked if I had a Chinese name, I said yes this is what it is. I don’t tend to use it day-to-day, because my real name is quite easy to pronounce.
Some people are stupid and some people just have mental problems. Or obsessions. I have met people who are smarter than me (not a super difficult thing, but I mean really smart people) who say really dumb things, things that are also denied or debunked by many other smarter people.
Sometimes it’s not about intelligence, but about the importance than an idea, a posture, an ideal, rationalizing something has. For some people really small, stupid, what you would consider unimportant… is worth a 30 min angry speech, or going to jail for it, or who knows what.
The best you can do in these situations is just to keep quiet and fart. Or say yes yes yes until you get a BJ.
Vietnamese students I had back in the day used to give the TW students in class a hard time about insisting on English names. They saw it as a lack of self esteem about their own identity and tied it to a need to be accepted.
To be honest I was also kinda confused the first time I knew about this. But then it kinda made sense to me: this is a country which economy depends a lot on exports. Their names can be confusing enough to non Chinese speakers, and their romanization is even more confusing and not flawless. In order to avoid an unnecessary hassle and make things easier for their customers or their peers in other countries, they just have another name. Peculiar, but… whatever. To make a big fuzz about this tells more about the hysteria of that person than about the double naming thing itself.
Again, people are not always rational. But our brains rationalize our postures, actions and words. Some people may be compensating their problems or traumas when they tell you too much about what you do.
Yep, I’ve been attacked here for a lot of nonsense, pedo inferences, inferences that I support murderers, all kinds of stuff just because people didn’t like the points I was making, on a non-personal level. Some people just lose their shit, not worth the time of day.
I was given Japanese curry risotto for lunch yesterday. Carrots, potatoes, chicken, curry sauce, mixed with rice, in a little tin dish with cheese melted on top. Given to me -a Canadian- by Taiwanese people. I thought it was pleasantly(?) international. Better than poutine and butter tarts every day!
Funnily enough I have to go to the bank this morning to sort out a transfer my dad sent. He tried to use my Chinese name and it’s screwed up the process.
I’m guessing he used the pinyin of your Chinese name, which isn’t on any of your documents? If he was somehow able to actually use Chinese characters (maybe sending from China, or Taiwan itself) and you opened your bank account with your Chinese name I bet it would work. I’ve had people send money to my account using my Chinese name from within Taiwan, but since the name has to be in English characters for international transfers from the UK, I would only be able to use my registered English name.
I guess Vietnamese exchange students in TW are also victims of ‘woke culture’ too! 
It’s everywhere! Run for the hills!
