Sister Bin vs the anti-Horton brigade: 江山易改,本性难移?

Hello again guys. I hope you're enjoying the Rio Olympics. Oh what are we to make of China today? You see, I'm 40 - I grew up in a time when China was shrouded in mystery back in the 1980s and people knew very little about how real Chinese people in China thought. Even though I am (mostly - technically speaking, I'm mixed Eurasian) ethnic Chinese, I am still very much treated like a foreigner, an outsider whenever I deal with those from China even if I am fluent in Mandarin. Now the two social media stories from China that have made headlines are that of the Chinese woman who recorded a rant on the beach in Thailand aka 'Sister Bin'  and then there's the ugly side of Chinese mob anger when they decided to all attack Australian swimmer Mack Horton. So that's one good news story from China (well, a quirky one that gives hope in the midst of a bad situation) and one that just makes me bury my face in my hands in utter despair. What are we to make of these stories then? Well, allow me to offer my personal response.

Now before I get started, allow me to state my credentials. Given how many hours I trained as a gymnast as a child, I was practically brought up in the gym by Chinese coaches from China - that's why my Mandarin is totally fluent but I can't read/write Chinese very well. That's mostly because I had plenty of opportunity to speak Mandarin with native speakers of Mandarin from China since I was a kid, but didn't spend much time studying, memorizing those thousands of characters. So from a young age, I was very much exposed to a kind of very Chinese environment that was remarkably different from what other Singaporeans experienced. Since moving to the UK, I have done various jobs where I cashed in on the fact that I speak Mandarin fluently - that has resulted in me working on numerous occasions with PRC expats. Sometimes I get along really well with them and become great friends, sometimes I find it hard to understand their mentality and there was one occasion in Beyoğlu, Istanbul where I argued with this stupid bitch from Shenyang for nearly an hour (until another PRC colleague stepped in and calmed things down). That happened just once, but yeah it suffices to say that I have had a mixed experience working with people from China. Ironically, I have had far more contact with PRCs than someone like my dad who doesn't speak English - his only contact with PRCs were my gymnastics coaches back in the day. You'll be amazed how many Singaporeans actually don't have that much contact (if any) with PRCs, so with that in mind, allow me to comment on these two stories.

Sister Bin gives us a valuable insight into the Chinese mindset of today, something many non-Chinese people struggle to understand. Many around the world have had plenty to complain about the behaviour of Chinese nationals and Sister Bin's epic rant does answer an important question: do Chinese people merely accept the bad behaviour of their fellow citizens or are they just as disgusted as us? Clearly, Sister Bin's disapproval and anger gives us a very clear answer on that issue. I don't know about you, but I found it quite reassuring and that's probably why her video has been so popular and widely shared on social media by her fellow Chinese citizens. But her rant was not so much an apology to the Thais but rather directed at her fellow Chinese citizens, I doubt she would have expected her video to have gone viral quite the way it has. I do wonder if she would have censored herself if (in hindsight) she knew that would have happened and the video would have been viewed by thousands of non-Chinese people on social media? I wonder what sister Bin would have said if she realized she was actually addressing a much wider, global audience?

Sister Bin gives us an interesting insight into modern China.

Chinese people are extremely paranoid about the outside world looking down on them - that's perhaps a hangover from the period in the 1970s and 1980s, when China was a lot poorer than the rest of the Western world and when contact was first re-established under Deng Xiaoping's time, that was the first impression that the Chinese got when they saw rich Western, Japanese and Korean tourists coming into China. It has always been a massive chip on their shoulder ever since and that aspect of the Chinese mentality hasn't changed much in the last three decades. This chip on their shoulder does condition the way they react to anyone non-Chinese (such as Australian swimmer Mack Horton) who makes any criticism of China (or any Chinese person or any aspect of China today). Mack Horton does have a point - doping and the use of banned substances is a major problem at the 2016 Olympics and actually Russia is the country that has been most guilty of cheating but certainly others like China have not been completely innocent either. And look, it's not a question of opinion - if Chinese swimmer Sun Yang has failed a drug test, then you can't argue with that result the way we can dispute whether the latest Star Wars movie has lived up to all the hype and high expectations by the Star Wars fans. However, this is hardly a simple story of Sun Yang cheating.

Am I sympathetic towards Sun Yang? Actually, I am - but allow me to elucidate please before you assume that I am taking this stance because I am Chinese. Sun tested positive for the prohibited stimulant Trimetazidine in mid-2014. That test was conducted at the Chinese swimming championships - so in fact he was caught by his own Chinese authorities (and not some external, non-Chinese body); Sun was consequently suspended for three months by China's swimming federation. So even if Sun did cheat and take a banned substance, he was caught by his own people and punished for it - so it is not as if it was some kind of state-sponsored doping programme (as in the case of Russia), but wait, yet another Chinese swimmer has just failed another routine drugs test in Rio, so the picture is hardly clear. Sun Yang claimed that the substance he took was merely medicine prescribed to him by the team doctor - Sun is a swimmer, not a pharmacist or a doctor, so he couldn't have known what he was taking was a banned substance. So in this case, whilst he admitted to have broken the rules, it did seem that he didn't intentionally cheat. The team doctor Dr Ba Zhen was subsequently suspended. So is Sun Yang merely a victim of Dr Ba's costly mistake - or is he merely a pawn in a more elaborate conspiracy within the Chinese system? So do you blame China's system or the swimmer?

All I can say is that I don't know - I wouldn't rush to judgement because I would like to refer you to another case from the 2000 Sydney Olympics, that of Romanian gymnast Andreea Raducan. Raducan won two golds and a silver medal at Sydney but then subsequently failed a drugs test. It was then discovered that the banned substance pseudoephedrine was in the cold medicine prescribed to Raducan by the team doctor. Raducan was promptly stripped of her medals and when the case when to appeal, even though she was exonerated of any wrongdoing and it was clear that the banned substances she tested positively for could not have contributed to her winning performance. Neither Raducan or the Romanian Olympic committee were subject to any disciplinary measures but Raducan's medal was not reinstated. Certainly, the wider gymnastics community feels that this was a grave miscarriage of justice - punish the team doctor by all means for prescribing the wrong medicine to Raducan, but why strip her of her medal? Raducan is clearly a victim in this case - now I am not making any comparison to the Sun Yang case here, all I am saying is that these competitors are part of a wider sports programme with coaches, team doctors, physicians and a whole load of other experts helping them train. If someone is guilty, it is rarely ever a rogue individual - but other the result of a series of decisions (whether deliberate or not) which leads to a failed drugs test. 

As for the tirade of abuse hurled at Mack Horton and Australia by the Chinese, well, you see, even though I look Chinese, I have a Chinese surname, I speak Mandarin fluently and have worked with many Chinese nationals over the years, I am still being very much treated as an outsider because I had never lived in China. Allow me to share a story to illustrate this point: years ago, when I was working with a group of China nationals, I took an afternoon nap after a heavy lunch and you know that moment, when you start to wake from your nap - you're still kinda drowsy and sleepy, you know you are awake enough to be aware of what is going on around you but you've yet to open your eyes or move because you kinda wanna sleep a bit more? Whilst I was in that state, I had overheard my Chinese colleagues openly criticizing the Chinese government over their stance on Tibet. I must have listened to them for a few minutes before I finally opened my eyes and sat up. The moment they noticed I was awake, they promptly changed the topic as if on cue. I was an outsider who must not hear their complaints about the Chinese government, lest they gave an outsider a bad impression of China. It was amazing how they had this silent agreement about what to do in this case.

My colleagues were embarrassed that I heard what they said.

I did try to join in the conversation (in Mandarin, of course) as I was quite intrigued by this willingness by my colleagues to openly criticize the Chinese government. However, any attempts to engage them in a conversation about Tibet was immediately rejected by my colleagues. They either told me that they were talking about something else altogether, that I was sleepy and must have misheard them or simply tried to change the topic. One even defended the Chinese government, saying that people like me (the outsider) didn't understand the situation within China and thus should not rush to judgement about China's internal affairs. There was a mix of defensiveness and embarrassment when they realized that I wasn't asleep and had overheard a lot of their conversation - they acted as if they were naughty boys who had been caught doing something very wrong. They almost had this since of duty to protect the good image of China and that overrode any possible desire to include me in a conversation about Tibet. In hindsight, I should have just kept my eyes shut and continued to eavesdrop on their rather interesting conversation!

What did this episode demonstrate? Well, it shows that even if the average Chinese netizen is aware of some degree of doping that goes on within the Chinese sports system, they will be more than happy to turn a blind eye to it as the priority would be to defend the good name of China when under attacked by an outsider. I'd love to be the fly on the wall (or in my case, the sleepy colleague having a siesta) amongst a group of Chinese athletes who are comfortably talking amongst themselves about the issue of doping in Chinese sports and perhaps then and only then, would we actually get an accurate reflection of what is going on. But what is clear is that social media is making a huge impact on the way we are now able to gain an insight into modern China - twenty or even just ten years ago, Sister Bin's epic rant would have never gone viral, but given the way stories are shared on social media, even my French friends are talking about that story on Facebook now. How will this impact on the way Chinese people talk about their society and country to others outside China, to outsiders like me? I don't know, it may take a while for us to truly see the impact and even if change is on the way, I'm not sure if this will be a quick change brought about my technology or if the Chinese psyche is more along the lines of 江山易改，本性难移 ("it is easier to change the rivers and the mountains than to change one's character") ? Well we shall see: modern China is undoubtedly changing fast, but just how fast?

江山易改，本性难移 ?

That's it from me on this topic. What do you think of Sister Bin? Do you think that Sun Yang is innocent or is the entire Chinese swimming team complicit in a doping scandal? What about the Chinese netizens who are blindly lashing out at the Australians without first verifying the details of what happened? Can this Chinese chip on the shoulder ever be healed in our lifetimes? Let me know what you think, do leave a comment below please. Many thanks for reading.谢谢!