The New York Times ran a reader's article by a Chinese-American born and raised in the United States, a "writer" born and raised in 1955 who has witnessed the entire development of China and the evolution of Sino-American relations.
The stories she tells take place mainly in Shanghai and revolve around Shanghai. Because her father was a wealthy Shanghainese.
From her perspective, it is easy to review the development of the mentality and relationship between China and the United States, and after reading it, we can also empathize with why Americans are now looking at China so unpleasantly.
This is how the story begins.
In 1979, my mother took out a band-aid in a hospital in Nanjing. The nurses gathered around it in amazement. "The West has everything!" they said.
It is through the description of the author's experience of returning to China to visit relatives, at different times, China's development is at a completely different stage, and the attitude and mentality of Chinese people towards the outside world and foreigners are completely different, and they are changing step by step.
In 1979, the author should have been 24 years old, and China at that time had just resumed the college entrance examination. Reform and opening up has also just begun.
In those days, a small Band-Aid for an American was enough to make a Chinese hospital the envy. At the same time, it also makes Americans (Chinese) extremely content. Because envy means conquest, it means surrender, and it can also allow Americans to enjoy high courtesy:
When we went to visit relatives in China, my Shanghai relatives were equally amazed by our beautiful teeth and ample body fat, not to mention our descriptions of American dishwashers, refrigerators, and air conditioners. With awe comes VIP treatment. The host took out bottles of expensive orange soda and mixed them haphazardly with expensive warm beer.
Obviously, this kind of worship and courtesy is intoxicating.
Then, the year came 1981. The author's status at this time became that of a "foreign expert".
In 1981, I returned to Shandong Institute of Mining and Technology to teach English. My students are coal mine engineers who are preparing to study abroad, and they may bring back safer mining techniques. I am their "foreign expert". Therefore, I have not only a bidet toilet in the apartment, but also a hot water supply, which is an unheard of luxury. My aunt (or housekeeper) would light a fire under a bucket of water on the roof, and when ready, turn the faucet handle in my bathtub.
In addition to the worship and courtesy mentioned above, there was also the special treatment of status, becoming an "expert", who was obviously a high-level intellectual in Chinese society at the time. I believe that the author was in the United States at that time, and she could not enjoy such treatment, after all, she came to China and only taught English. Being an expert is just as exciting.
After class, my students would take their stools to the basketball court, each facing a different direction, and they would sit and study for hours on end. They love their country, they want it to be strong, and they are grateful to Westerners like me. Even though we were foreigners, we were a great help.
At this time, because they are on top, their hearts are comfortable, and they also look at the Chinese positively: Chinese love learning, are not afraid of hardship, love the motherland, and know how to be grateful. It's all positive.
This good situation has lasted for decades.
A few decades later, China is booming. During my many visits over the years as a teacher, a guest artist, and a tourist, the staff at the Shanghai hotel always offered me both hands, nodded in greeting, and returned my credit card with a smile on their face.
That is, the special courtesy for foreigners, which lasted until this time. At least in the service industry, there is a special reverence for foreigners.
Until China was thoroughly developed.
But during China's boom years, when a quarter of the world's construction cranes were said to have been in the city, skyscrapers rose from what was once a rice paddy, and attitudes have changed. My credit card was single-handedly bounced and the receptionist barely looked up. My relatives also stopped asking me to bring them American goods. "China has everything," they said at the time. As many proudly proclaim, the 20th century is American;
At this time, not only was the worship of Americans gone, but of course the special courtesy was gone, and even "no longer needed", and they proudly led an entire century with China.
Yes, at this point, it finally tastes bad. The sweetness went down, the sourness came up. Before that, China was a respectable and lovely China, and from then on, it was impossible to look at China squarely.
And in this process, how the Chinese step by step from humble to confident, and the Americans step by step from self-confidence to unwillingness, showed vividly.
Because the author is a Chinese-American, she was able to record and express this mental journey more perfectly.
The feelings of real Americans may not be so rich and real, but the evolutionary logic behind them is the same.
Of course, the author did not stop there. Instead, Shanghai is finally "tired" to tell about some changes in Shanghai in recent years.
In the author's opinion, now psychological superiority has finally been found again. It means that although Shanghai now has everything, the environment is beautiful and clean, and the society is stable and united, the general environment has changed, and the people of Shanghai are tired. So even if Shanghainese have everything, there is still something missing.
But apparently a very short-sighted act. Foreigners in Shanghai have left some, but will be back soon. There are some fluctuations in the economy, and these are all twists and turns and explorations that must be experienced in the course of development. Engaging in the economy is what we are best at. Both the stock market and the economic situation are moving in a positive direction.
And our re-prosperity is based on learning from the previous tortuous experience and summing up experience, and we have achieved prosperity again, which is higher than the original prosperity and more certain prosperity.
I believe that the author will be disappointed again at that time. More complete disappointment. Because the current United States is in chaos, all kinds of domestic contradictions are intensifying, foreign disputes are continuous, and they have to accompany the two old men to play the game of voting.
That's what makes people tired.
So why does the United States now look at China in a way that is not pleasing to the eye? It is because this superiority mentality has been completely lost, and the United States needs to find a compensatory mechanism to gain the lost sense of superiority by belittling and suppressing China, as this author did.
The New York Times also needs a writer to help it vent its suppressed feelings.
Finally, put the author profile of Baidu Encyclopedia:
Gish Jen is an American writer who graduated from Harvard University with a degree in English.
Born in Long Island, New York in 1955, he graduated from Harvard University in 1977 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, then studied at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, dropped out of school, received a master's degree in fiction from the University of Iowa Writing Class in 1983, and began writing in 1991.
It seems that I have written some novels about the identity of Chinese immigrants to the United States. It seems that he often contributes to the New York Times, and has won awards from the New York Times, so he is an old client.