Brian Wong is censored, so is cancel culture going too far?

Hi guys, I am going to revisit the topic of racism - that of the East Asian nerd and this was because it had come up in the news again today. The publisher Harper Collins has removed a Chinese character deemed as 'harmful' from David Walliams' book The World's Worst Children. This was because the publisher had caved into pressure after a social media backlash about the character Brian Wong pandering to the very worst of Chinese stereotypes - the character is illustrated with small eyes, wears glasses and looks like a nerd. As a British-Chinese person in London, I obviously took interest in the story and so the first thing I wanted to find out before I passed judgment was whether or not the portrayal of this character Brian Wong is racist or not. I actually read the story and it was pretty stupid, I will spare you about ten minutes of your time by telling you that the target audience is very young children, so it was a dumb, vapid tale which didn't really have much of a story line to it apart from the fact that the boy Brian Wong was a very stubborn and flawed character. Sure there was an element of stereotyping involved with the glasses, being a nerdy swot who enjoyed maths, but what most people forget is that there was another character in the story Kenneth Chan who was a kind and empathetic character, who showed the very flawed Brian Wong kindness and was there for his friend. The word 'Chinese' was never ever mentioned in the story, even if it was clear that both principle characters were Chinese. If this had been a Singaporean or Chinese writer and if the story had been set in Singapore or Shanghai, I don't think anyone would have even considered accusing the story of being 'racist' - but the only difference is that David Walliams is white and English. 

I grew up with a lot of guys who were so similar to Brian Wong: my point is there is no smoke without fire. Chinese guys like Brian Wong do exist for a simple reason: it sucks to be poor and working class. That statement is true whether you're Chinese, Kenyan, Peruvian, Slovenian or Canadian. I have been there, I grew up in a poor working class family in Singapore. Whilst my rich classmates had fancy toys, I went to the library to read books to amuse myself because the library was free whilst those fancy toys were expensive. I remember how I tried hard to conceal my jealousy when my rich classmates talked about going to beautiful, exotic places on holiday when I knew that my working class parents would never be able to afford something like that. But when it came to our grades in the exams, it was a level playing field - well sort of. My richer friends had a lot of private tuition to help them improve their grades but I knew that if I studied harder than them, I could still outperform them and get better grades. Thus getting excellent results became this thing that you can't take away from the poorer kids - they may not have nice toys, they may have holes in their shoes, they may not have all the privileges that the rich kids have but the one thing that they have is their grades which they believe will be their ticket to social mobility and a brighter future. If getting an A in not just maths, but all your other subjects in school is that important, if it is what you base your pride and self-worth upon, then yeah you do turn out like Brian Wong - a swotty nerd who is very obsessed with being the top student in class and I recognized that immediately. 

Let me share a story about this former classmate whom I shall refer to as 'Tang' (not his real name) - Tang's family was so poor and just to illustrate how bad things were for Tang, his family couldn't afford the basics that the rest of us took for granted. The system in Singapore works like this: once you complete your primary school education at the age of 12, you would move onto secondary school and that would involve getting a new school uniform at that stage. So in his last year at primary school, Tang had hit puberty and experienced a growth spurt - however, his parents refused to buy him a new uniform even though it was obvious that he was struggling to fit his clothes. Their reasoning was that spending more money on a uniform that he would use only for a few months was a waste of money - money they simply didn't have, Tang was told to simply put up with the discomfort for a few months,  then they would get him a new uniform when he starts secondary school. Then one day disaster struck, we were playing football in the schoolyard when Tang went running after the ball, it looked as if he tripped and fell. I thought he had hurt himself when he didn't stand up but it turned out that he had ripped his shorts which were way too tight for him anyway and falling over was the last straw on the camel's back for those shorts, they had ripped open right down the seam at the back! He was mortified at what might happen next if all the other students realized what had happened so Tang sat there on the floor, totally paralyzed by fear. 

Luckily for Tang, a teacher nearby had witnessed his fall and came over to see if Tang was alright; she then asked me to run to the office to grab the newspaper for her from the teachers' lounge, which she then hastily used to wrap around Tang's bottom to protect his modesty but it was too late - even if the other students didn't see Tang's bottom, it was pretty obvious what had happened so the students started laughing at Tang. Fortunately for Tang, the school kept some 'emergency uniform' for situations like this and Tang was given an old pair of shorts - some former students would donate their old uniforms to the school. The teacher then called Tang's mother to come to the school and pleaded with her to buy Tang some new uniform that would fit him as he was a growing boy but Tang's mother said that she simply had no money for that kind of thing. In the end, the kind teacher gave Tang's mother some of the school's "emergency uniforms" on the condition that Tang would only need them for the rest of the year and at the end of the year, Tang's mother would return them to the school. Now Tang was actually a brilliant straight-A student, whilst the other students would make fun of him as the boy with holes in his shoes or the boy who split his shorts exposing his bare ass in the playground, Tang would then turn around and mock the rest of us for not performing as well academically. I remember once when he came up to me and asked me how much I scored for my maths exam; I knew he had topped the class and I deliberately said, "oh sorry, I can't honestly remember, I really don't care how I scored." That was a lie of course but that response frustrated the hell out of Tang because he was very desperate to tell me that he had performed better than me in that maths exam. 

There is a good reason why people like Tang and Brian Wong would retreat into the comfort of a subject like mathematics. When it comes to deal with people, managing social relations, there are no easy answers, no set formulas to follow to achieve the right result. Trying to get people to like us, trying to make new friends is a highly complex process with simple answers; that's why people with poor social skills tend to seek solace in activities like maths and computer games, where you can effectively shut off any uncertainty associated with dealing with people and so they can enjoy an activity where they can not only be assured of achieving their desired outcome, but they can replicate that over and over again. Now a kid doing maths homework for fun is a rather extreme example of this, the more common example of this kind of behaviour is when autistic kids spend many hours playing computer games on their own. There is actually something quite tragic when a child does that, when a child effectively gives up on human interaction in favour of an activity where they feel they can be in full control of the outcome - that means they have no confidence that they have enough control in their human interactions with their peers and they desperately need help to develop their social skills. I think that this is a serious issue amongst young people today, yet somehow, despite touching on the topic, the writer David Walliams offers Brian Wong no empathy or understanding, choosing instead to mock Brian Wong and invites the reader to do so as well, instead of trying to understand why so many young people today behave like Brian Wong; so this is really a huge mistake on the part of the writer - even fictional characters Brian Wong deserves a bit of understanding. 

Now there are so many similarities between Tang and the character Brian Wong - however, I don't think anyone would have an issue with me sharing my story of my former classmate Tang because I grew up in Singapore, I come from a very poor working class family in Singapore and thus I have earned the right to talk about Tang, given that I do understand the cultural context. But in the case of Walliams, he was born in West London and grew up in a relatively affluent area in Surrey in a middle class white family; in sharp contrast to Tang and I, Walliams had never tasted the kind of poverty or deprivation that some working class kids would have had to suffer. Now don't get me wrong please, I am not excusing Tang's behaviour - in many ways, he was very similar to the character Brian Wong but at least I am giving you some context about why Tang behaved this way. Having a reason or excuse to explain his behaviour still doesn't justify it, oh he had very few friends at school as most of the kids shunned him - not because he was so poor, but he was always trying to prove to people that he had better grades. He was only interested in making himself feel better about being smarter than everyone else and that did become quite tiresome after a while, so I hung out with other students with better social skills. But the format of my blog is quite different of course, I'm targeting a much older audience who would appreciate me given them the insight into the social context of Tang's story whereas Walliams was writing a book for very young children so any kind of explanation about the complicated social context would be lost on such a young audience. 

Imagine if I wrote a story about Tang and published it, I don't think anyone would accuse me of racism simply because of the colour of my skin. I do think that this is an interesting theme to explore and that's why I've discussed the themes ranging from class identity to social skills on my blog given that I know what it is like to grow up in a poor working class family and have to battle against the odds to succeed in life. So would it be fair to accuse Walliams of whitewashing - is he trying to write about an issue that he has little or no knowledge about? I suppose in his defence, he could say that this is just a children's book for a very young audience, he isn't trying to write a novel for adults so there really isn't the need to go into a lot of details when it comes to explaining Brian Wong's cultural roots and how that may impact on his behaviour. Thus Walliams is in a no-win situation, it is not his responsibility to portray Chinese characters in a positive light to try to get white kids to like Chinese people more but if he creates a deeply flawed Chinese character in his story, then he gets accused of racism. Given the kind of problems that a rich, middle-class white writer like Walliams would encounter in creating a Chinese character like Brian Wong, I would say, don't even go there. If you wish to talk about the flaws in Brian Wong's character, then make him a white character then the story would revolve around social skills without it involving any element of cultural identity and most importantly, without running the risk of offending any Chinese people. After all do you want them to buy your book or not? If so, then don't do anything that may alienate and offend that large chunk of your potential market - I am surprised no one from the publisher advised David Walliams about this issue. 

To be fair to Walliams, yes I've encountered a lot of Chinese guys who are just like Brian Wong when I was growing up in Singapore - this stereotype exists because of a culture that places so much emphasis on academic achievement over other aspects of a child's development such as social skills. This is really the most bizarre self-fulfilling prophesy when children who were brought up with this mindset get into positions of authority and then they start rewarding younger employees who had the best results at school, rather than those who are actually good at their jobs. Thus we have the bizarre situation in Singapore whereby senior professionals in their 50s and even 60s have to submit details of their exam results from their secondary and primary school as if that is somehow relevant. As for the geeky, nerdy appearances, good grief - it is something that I find utterly appalling. You see, in the West, we have a long tradition of identifying the social class of a man based on the way he dresses - so without even having to speak to a man, I could probably identify his social class within a few second after observing him. This is not the case in Singapore for a few reasons: firstly, our extremely hot and humid tropical climate has been the main factor in dictating the way people dressed rather than any kind of social convention but more importantly, Singaporeans had switched from a far more Asian form of dressing to a completely Western style of dressing within just two generations. However what Singaporeans did was adopt a very Western style of dressing without any of the rules and conventions that came with it. 

Having grown up in a poor working class family in Singapore myself, I have seen how my parents react to this issue: I remember this story from my childhood. I had this classmate whose mother (whom I shall refer to as Mrs Ang, not her real name) made a real effort with her appearance - she would dress up nicely, wearing make up and use perfume. I later found out that Mrs Ang was an estate agent thus she wanted to look her best when showing her clients around the properties. My mother labeled Mrs Ang a slut, a whore and described her as a prostitute because according to my mother, Mrs Ang was already a married woman - what the hell was she doing trying to tart herself up like that to attract other men, only prostitutes would do that. There's a rather cruel phrase in French that comes to mind: mal-baisé - the literal translation is "badly fucked" but it refers to a woman who is so ugly that even her own husband wouldn't touch her. So if a mal-baisé woman meets an attractive woman like Mrs Ang she can either a) make an effort to improve her appearances or b) change her perspective by painting Mrs Ang as the slutty, depraved whore trying to seduce men whilst making no effort at all to improve her appearance. There is an element of sour grapes to this mindset when a woman in that position says, "I don't want to look anything like Mrs Ang, look at her! She looks like a cheap slut! Her  poor husband must be so embarrassed when she turns up looking like a prostitute." You might think that this is an irrational way to react to this situation but actually there is a very obvious reason why some working class people do adopt this kind of mindset. 

It costs a lot of money to look as fine as Mrs Ang - she would spend a lot of money on her outfits to look like professional in the business world. Everything from her shoes to her handbags to her accessories would be expensive an even the make up she is wearing, the hair care products she uses, right down to her perfume, all that costs a lot of money. Working class women like my mother didn't have any money to spend on all of those things: such is the harsh reality of being poor. You don't have the money to spend on nice things that will help you look a lot more attractive. However, taking the sour grapes approach to dismiss Mrs Ang as a depraved slut and call her names costs absolutely nothing and that is the cheaper route that a lot of working class people take. So when someone like Tang sees a classmate playing with an expensive toy, he deals with the situation by condemning that classmate's behaviour as hedonistic - that classmate is a lazy boy who is wasting his time playing with that toy instead of studying for his exams; he might also claim that the rich boy should have spent all that money on educational books rather than a silly toy. The alternative would be to simply accept his bad luck that he was born into a poor family, that his working class parents could never afford to buy him nice toys like that and Tang simply alters his perception of the world to feel better about the bad situation. Thus if you come from a poor working class community where few people have any money to spend on their appearances, then being an unattractive nerdy, geek becomes the norm and if everyone in your community looks equally geeky and nerdy, if nobody has any money to invest in their appearances, then you don't feel like there's something terribly wrong with looking like that. This goes a long way to explain why so many Chinese men are so geeky and nerdy. 

So it isn't unreasonable to talk about nerdy, geeky Chinese men - they certainly do exist in large numbers today, I don't think it should be a taboo subject but I doubt David Walliams was the right person to talk about this sensitive topic. I don't even think I'm the best person to talk about it given that I am not a geek at all today; in fact I've done everything to project the image that I am far more like Mrs Ang - I love fashion, I want to make myself attractive and I'm willing (and able) to spend vast amounts of money to do just that. In fact, if Tang met me today, he would probably condemn me as vain, hedonistic, shallow (and that's just the tip of the iceberg). It would be interesting to find out how Tang feels about the portrayal of Brian Wong in this story to understand how a real life Brian Wong would relate to his fictional counterpart. It would be useful to get his perspective as I'm sure he wouldn't agree with most of what I have written here. Don't forget, we should never treat "Chinese men" as a monolithic entity, you can look at some of the most popular Chinese actors and pop stars - have a look at this list of top 10 most popular male Chinese stars today. Oh they all look so incredibly stylish. Certainly, they are all extremely attractive, well-groomed, take great pride in their appearance and they are anything but geeky. I would say their cosmopolitan image is a blend of what we would expect from Korean stars along with a lot of style lifted directly from the West. Thus it's not as if cool, handsome and attractive men don't exist in places like China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore; it is just that there isn't that much of a penalty for appearing like a geeky nerd in the East compared to in the West, whereas being a geeky nerd in the West is often a lot more harshly punished. 

Allow me to use an analogy to make my point about different societies having values: so in the West, rich people always enjoy winter sports, being able to go skiing during your winter holidays was something rich people did - access to winter sports is a status symbol. Whereas in Singapore, this is not the case because very few rich people chose to do winter sports. They simply had other ways to spend their money so going skiing isn't quite the same kind of status symbol in the East. So in the West, if you said to your colleagues, "I've never been skiing before", it would be a huge social faux pas because that would be tantamount to saying, "I'm poor and working class." It would risk pushing all the wrong buttons, so even if you have never been skiing before, you would never share that fact with your colleagues. Whereas if you said that same statement in an office in Singapore, it would not result in the same repercussions - people will simply take it that you don't like winter sports and not make any assumptions about your wealth or social class. It wouldn't be some kind of shameful secret you would have to hide from your colleagues. Thus by the same token, turning up to work in a city like London looking like a complete geek would at the very least invite the silent judgment of your colleagues - they might go further and talk about you behind your back or even ostracize you on the basis of your appearance. However, if you turned up for work in Singapore looking equally geeky, there simply isn't that same 'social penalty' for the simple reason that you wouldn't stand out at all, there are probably other guys in the office who are equally geeky. An especially stylish man would be rewarded for looking very attractive, but there's no equivalent penalty for looking geeky in the East. 

There is one more issue that I just can't overlook - what about the Chinese people who are accusing Walliams of racism because he was perpetuating a racist stereotype? What is their motivation for pointing the finger of blame at Walliams then? If Walliams was actually saying something quite genuinely racist and hateful about Chinese people, then I would be the first to complain but Walliams had simply created a character who was a swotty nerdy geek: I grew up with loads of kids in Singapore who were just like that. These stereotypes are unflattering to say the least, but they do exist for good reason. Should we pretend that they don't exist at all or at least try to start a sensitive and tactful conversation about the issue? The way I see it, if you want people to think that you're sexy, stylish and attractive, then the onus is on you to invest in your appearance, create the perfect image. That's a massive undertaking but it is your responsibility to make people like you - it would be wrong to shift that responsibility onto someone else like David Walliams and expect him to make others like Chinese people like you. This reminds me of something I stumbled upon on Facebook years ago by a Chinese-Malaysian guy who claimed that he can never ever pick up white women in America because of all the negative stereotypes about Chinese guys portrayed in American media - this being Facebook, I then clicked onto his profile and saw all his photos. Holy shit, the problem isn't in American media at all, just take a look in the mirror, therein lies the problem. You can't pick up women because you're a fucking ugly geek, you're not attractive and that's your entirely fault. 

I work in investment banking today but I do a little bit of acting on the side and I did act in a Cambodian beer commercial last month. Please allow me to share with you an incident earlier this year: my agent called me and told me that there was a TV show that wanted me for a minor role - it was just two days of filming and the money was decent. So I requested the script and I wasn't comfortable with what I read: the comedy was set in a university - the character they wanted me to play was that of a security guard who didn't speak English properly and had a very strong Chinese accent. I thought it wasn't very intelligent to try to get cheap laughs by making fun of a Chinese person speaking broken English, so I said no - I turned it down and I told my agent, "I am sure there must be loads of other actors desperate for experience, let them do this role - I don't like the script at all." Whilst I had the choice to refuse to be a part of that project, on that very same day, I went to an Asian supermarket in Chinatown where I witnessed a white customer asking a shop worker there the question, "could you tell me what is the difference between light and dark soy sauce please?" The shop worker tried his best to offer an explanation but it came out in broken English with an extremely strong Chinese accent. So yes, of course there's no denying that Chinese people like that do exist and are in fact in the majority - Chinese people like me who speak English without a Chinese accent are in fact in the minority. So even I had to acknowledge that the script wasn't exactly racist per se, it merely depicted an aspect of Chinese people (ie. the very strong Chinese accent) that I didn't want to be associated with in any way at all and thus I have no regrets at all in saying no to that role. 

I would like to finish by pointing out the difference between the coverage of this story on the BBC and the actual uncensored response on social media - the BBC article shows a victory by those who campaigned against Walliams and effectively managed to get Harper Collins to censor the story of Brian Wong. A read of the comments left on Instagram has revealed that others actually do not think that Walliams has been guilty of racism and that Chinese people are actually a LOT more racist than white people, that the portrayal of Brian Wong in this story is nothing like the hideous portrayal of black people in Africa and that Chinese people really ought to take a look in the mirror and examine their own racism before they accuse Walliams of being racist. Whilst all that is true of course - let me be the first to acknowledge how hideously racist some Chinese people can be and how appalling that is  - I also need to point out that two wrongs don't make a right. Just because some Chinese people are racist doesn't give British people the right to be equally racist, rather we need to put aside our skin colour and nationality for a moment and hold individuals to account for their actions if they are deemed to have done something of a racist nature. Thus it is completely wrong to say to a Chinese person, "shut up, you have absolutely no right to talk about racism because Chinese people are so racist." No, every single person has the right to talk about racism regardless of their skin colour. What we need to do is to listen to the other party with an open mind and then respond with a cogent argument to put forth our opinions - what I find really distasteful is the way many have tried to shut down any discussion on this topic rather than engage with others online; unfortunately that's a reflection of how people with very poor social skills misbehave online and I go out of my way to avoid people like that. 

So there you go, I hope I have done poor Brian Wong justice in offering you some context into why people like that exist - rather than simply censor any portrayal of geeky Chinese nerds like Brian Wong in the media, I think Brian Wong deserves some empathy and understanding. We need to talk about the social context that has created people like Brian Wong in our community rather than use cancel culture to simply censor all the Brian Wongs out there and pretend that Chinese men like Brian Wong don't even exist at all when not only do they exist, they represent the majority of Chinese men out there. But what do you think? Have you met geeky Chinese nerds who are just like Brian Wong? Should we censor men like that in the media and only allow Chinese men who look like the most stylish K-pop stars to appear in the media then? Why are some Chinese people so offended by the portrayal of Brian Wong in this case? And do you believe that David Walliams is really guilty of racism in this case? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.