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The Prophetic Legacy of the "Hainan Island Incident"

I was teaching adult students English in Taiwan when the "Hainan Island Incident" occurred on April 1, 2001. One would have thought that most people in Taipei would have been firmly on our (the US side), but unfortunately, very few of the northern Taiwanese that I spoke to about the situation back then actually were.

In fact, the Hainan Island Incident was absolutely China's fault, because Wang Wei, the Communist pilot who died was clearly negligent, with a long history of hotdogging and harassing American planes that had merely been flying in international airspace, and the reaction I got from people in Taipei about the whole thing was a huge part of why I eventually left Taiwan to go back home to Missouri in 2002.

So that's why, yeah, it would be swell if the US really could defend Taiwan and keep it from being overrun very, very soon (the way the Beijing government only recently did in Hong Kong), but... I mean, if more Taiwanese honestly believe that their national pride in being ethnically Chinese is more important than siding with the only ally that might be able to help them save their increasingly fragile democracy, then, sadly, you may just be on your own sooner than you think.

After all, I currently live in South Korea, where an estimated 128,650 Americans (33,686 in combat) paid the ultimate price to guarantee freedom and prosperity to the people of just the lower half of this peninsula, and sadly, only the oldest folks here still even appreciate what we sacrificed (in terms of blood AND treasure) for them. And don't even get me started on the high price we also had to pay for the people of Vietnam, who still ended up living under the corrupt, often dysfunctional and backward iron fist of a communist government.

Prejudice, But Not Necessarily "Racism"

When I was in college I naturally ended up having a whole bunch of classmates who were students visiting from Far East Asia. So one day, I was talking to a nice Japanese friend of mine in the campus mail room. Then, this girl from Nanjing, China suddenly came traipsing through the door at the far end of the hall. She and I were already quite well acquainted (because even and especially way back then, I was very much a teacher and friend to most Asian/foreign students on campus), so this particular girl happily chirped, "Hello, Hoover!" in my general direction. And then she went straight up into the Japanese guy's "personal space" and started yammering at him, a mile a minute, in typically thundering Mandarin Chinese.

Being but merely two dumbfounded young males in our early twenties, my ever impeccably polite Japanese friend and I just stood there for what seemed like an eternity, patiently letting our newly arrived female companion keep right on buzzing away, until my friend finally had little choice but to interrupt (something that many people from "Nippon" are often quite reticent to do, because they're usually raised to consider it very impolite behavior), and humbly inform our newly arrived guest that he actually did not understand even a single word that was flying straight out of her rapidly fanning maw.

"I'm sorry," he said slowly, in his usual, impeccably polite, but typically halting, rather thickly accented way, "but I'm a Japanese." Something that this girl from Mainland China obviously had, up to that moment, been totally and completely unaware of. Granted, many of the Asian foreign students at that particular college were Mandarin speaking Taiwanese (almost all of whom were nonetheless either ethnically Chinese, or at the very least, closely related to Han Chinese - whether they always like to recognize such facts... or not), so the girl from the Mainland had almost certainly assumed that my Japanese friend was from Taiwan.

Then, without even so much as skipping a beat, this Nanjing Chinese girl cocked her head to one side, slammed her suddenly clenched fists down onto her hips, and shouted in English (even louder, believe it or not, than her normally deafening speaking voice), "Do you know how many people you killed?!?"

Funny thing though; my Japanese friend wasn't even born until roughly forty years after the infamous "Rape of Nanking," and therefore had never killed anyone in his whole entire life. But prejudice (not necessarily "racism") still stubbornly persists, as we all well know. Yet those who tend to readily display it do not always represent any one particular nationality, color, creed, or even... sex.

And that's just the way it often really is, you know. No matter what anyone else may tell you. No matter what race-baiters and those who often seek to prosper and practice by trafficking in bad, old fashioned human hysteria may try to get you to believe.

Duh.

But then... wouldn't it be nice... if there really, truly was just one single solitary group of naughty, ever misbehaving people that the world could totally blame for all our troubles? You know, just one readily identifiable ethnicity, tribe, sex, or whatever, that could be targeted and then summarily purged from our midst.

Like performing an Exorcism, or something of that nature, for the ultimate benefit of the whole, entire human race. What altruism! What Utopian zeal! Yeah! So what if we could finally, once and for all, scientifically and clinically identify "the D'evil" among us," and then just... cut 'em all out. Or rather, surgically excise them, like just another pesky cancerous growth on the human body politic.

After that, maybe the whole entire world could just live in hippie style peace, love, and harmony until the end of time! Yeah, man. Yeah! Then, everybody could just toss all their guns away, go naked, wear flowers in their hair, and get high... and... practice free love, man! I mean, "We've got to get ourselves back to the Garden." Yeah!

But who? Who could we possibly blame literally thousands of years of human iniquity on, man? Who, man? Oh... men! That's it, MEN! After all, most of us testosterone driven he-folks are just plain nasty most of the time, right? Always thinkin' them nasty thoughts. I mean, men are the ones who most often fill the world's prisons, right? Yeah....

But... the human race needs both males and females to procreate though, right? Okay, okay, so... so we target just only one group of males. Say... white males. No... white, Christian males! Yeah! Yeah, that'll do it. We'll blame everything on them, and live happily ever after with flawless, enlightened matriarchal "feminists" leading the way into a glorious, pastel-colored rainbow future. Yeah....

And all the beta males lucky enough to still be left alive after the Great Feminine Revolution will be brought up to sip soy lattes, paint their nails, and cross-dress. And they'll learn to not hide their tears while watching deeply sensitive movies, and all the very finest "social justice" flicks, like this most recent crop of Hollyweird propaganda films, starring young, emaciated, scantily-clad little 100 pound actresses - who nonetheless somehow manage to beat the hell out of a series of brawny, well armed bad guy male "actors" throughout the course of the paper-thin plot.

Sure, the movie may also be populated with beefy, muscled up dudes who may in fact tend to be much more robust, and have a great deal more muscle mass than most females ever born, but don't forget that they're the bad guys! Nowadays anyway, right? Duh, man... I mean, uh, FE-man! Yeah....

But wait! Isn't all of the above kind of what Nazism was actually really all about? You know, the process of identifying a scapegoat to blame for all the ills of beaten and bankrupt post First World War Germany? It was actually a pretty lame strategy, of course. Just root out the D'evil among us and... kill them all, every last single one. Problem is though... that that particular scenario really didn't end up turning out particularly well for Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or Mussolini's Italy, now did it? Hmm.

Living in the Wild, Wild East

When you're living in the wild, wild East, law enforcement is either generally lax or, in many cases, non-existent altogether. Because despite the example provided by many highly advanced, modern Western countries (such as the USA, the UK, and many nations in Europe), the mere concept of Law and Order is still poorly understood or even deemed wholly unnecessary in Asia. But boy, they sure do love our computers, big screen TVs, and smart phones, don't they?

So every single day one tends to witness a bewildering series of lawless and even quite foolish and unsafe shenanigans that people in China, Taiwan, and South Korea tend to get up to. Everything from jaywalking, to queue jumping (people not standing patiently in line), to every other kind of rude, disrespectful, selfish and asinine rule breaking you can possibly imagine. And most of the time, it's all done in broad daylight, right out in the open where everyone can see everyone else getting away with everything short of murder and outright theft.

For example, it is not uncommon to see someone walking right down the middle of the street in many parts of so-called "modern" Asia (even when there is an empty sidewalk nearby), forcing oncoming drivers to slow down in an effort to avoid hitting them. And everybody knows the especially bad reputation that Asian drivers tend to have! This however, does NOT stop Asian pedestrians from challenging their fellow citizens who may happen to be behind the wheel of a motor vehicle that could quite possibly kill or maim them.

But then... I guess, with the widely accepted concept of Buddhist reincarnation, one just gets to keep coming back, presumably to continue trying to do all the same incredibly stupid and totally reckless shenanigans all over again! Again and again and again. Apparently. Hmm. Doesn't sound like much of a "religion" to me. But what do I know? I'm a Christian, a Catholic Christian to be exact.

So in fact, I often think that the good Lord Almighty must be particularly partial to Asians. I mean, I often say to myself, "God must absolutely love the Chinese!" After all, they're certainly the most numerous group of people on Earth, and besides... if I, as a white American of European descent, were as careless, reckless, childish, and often downright stupid as I often witness Asians being out in the public, I'd most likely be stone cold dead already. Gosh! Maybe I just don't have enough "white privilege" working in my favor. Gee, that really sucks, don't it?

Don't Try to Teach English in China

Why did I only teach English in Shanghai for six months? Because China is a horrible place, and that's pretty much all there is to it. For example, in 2007, I suffered from food poisoning for two straight weeks when I lived in Shanghai. Seems that even at Kentucky Fried Chicken, an American food chain, you still can't make the Chinese workers cook chicken properly!

My guess is that the local Chinese workers smile, nod, bow, and all that, when the American franchisee is there to supervise things, but then, just as soon as the door closes behind him or her on their way out, it's right back to Chinese style chaos and rule breaking for the sake of expediency. Or to cut corners to save money and time. Whatever the case may in fact be, welcome to the wild, wild East, where nobody seems to be able to wait for anything. Not for very damn long anyway.

And rules? From what I've personally witnessed over the years in China, Taiwan, and South Korea, most people in Asia just plain seem to rule-averse. One hates to stereotype, but if you spend any appreciable time in East Asia, you will quickly see that most Asians simply don't abide by any rules, regulations, or standards. Not the way we are taught to obey the law in the west anyway. So you can forget about food safety guidelines too, or any of that fancy stuff we tend to think is so very, very important.

Where There is No Punishment, There is Only Crime

Just plain SELFISH

An all too typically rude, selfish (oblivious to everyone else but herself) "ajumma" lady in South Korea suddenly decided that it would be okay for her to park illegally, directly in front of a parking garage exit with only one entrance and only one exit, while she went shopping in the grocery store across the street!

Naturally, the person waiting in the black car was honking their horn profusely -- and may have even been late for work, but did the woman who'd parked illegally even bother to hurry to move her car? Of course not! She just acted like she had done absolutely nothing wrong.

But hey! It was just another little moment of shame for the people of Far East Asia, who are so shameful so very often that, instead of actually trying to actually clean up their own act, they have, for literally thousands of years now, made an entire CULTure out of pretending that they're not doing anything wrong to begin with! You know... to "save face."

So, sadly, you tend to see this kind of thing in Asia quite often. Every single day, in fact, because Asians aren't supposed to get angry in public. Or display pretty much any truly genuine emotion except totally fake "happy."

You see, that sadistic, repressive A-hole, Confucius, apparently wasn't big on public displays of "negative emotion," so I think that must be why, to this very day, so many Koreans, Chinese, etc, etc, are constantly going around doing things in broad daylight, every single day, that are really, really rude, selfish, and just plain totally wrong. Because they know that nobody is going to take issue with them, much less have the guts to so much as tell them off in public.

Because there is crime and there is punishment, and when there is no punishment... there is only crime.

And besides, Asian cops (who are actually bothering to do their jobs) are almost non-existent in many countries in Asia in most cases. Seriously. You hardly ever see an Asian police car in Korea, Taiwan, China, etc. And when you do, there are usually two cops in the front and two in the back. Yep! The car is full! No room to put criminals even IF they did come across any! But these four stooges (who usually look all too typically effeminate and completely ineffectual) appear to just love to joy-ride around like that with their lights flashing! Just like a group of dumb little boys who have absolutely nothing better to do than play with bright, shiny things....

I even once asked an adult student in Taiwan why the cops there seemed to do almost nothing at all, except drive around every now and then and try to show off. He replied something to the effect of: "Those crim-nal, they see cop car come... then, they drop what they do, and run away!" Yeah... right. Okay. Well, now we know!

Ahem.

Again, the problem with that kind of moronic "thinking" is that there is crime and there is punishment, and when there is no punishment, there is only crime.

So, as a result, most people in this part of the world just tend to walk around on a daily basis being totally and completely self-absorbed, horrifically passive-aggressive, and often totally obnoxious much of the time. Because they know that in most cases, they can get away with just about anything - just as long as they pretend they're not doing anything wrong, and they remember to flash that big, dumb, toothy, fake "smile." You know... for their "big face" (aka false pride).

Yep. Welcome to something very much akin to Asian Hell.

Down and Out in Dog Eat Dog Asia

It's not easy to come out and be perfectly frank and honest in, or about, Asia, you know. After all, honesty isn't exactly expected or appreciated in this part of the world. Especially because the Truth can make Asians lose face. And they really don't like to lose face. And who in the world really does, right? Well, in East Asia, they really hate to lose face. I know. Because I lived in Taiwan for 5 1/2 years, Shanghai, China for 6 months (which was all I could stand), and have been in South Korea now for more than a decade now. I don't go out much. And when I do, I have to carry a trash bag with me, because I just can't stand the litter anymore.

You see, Chinese and Koreans litter something fierce. And they don't even bother to put out public trash cans in most cases. So if I were to make my own list of things that I can't stand about South Korea (because I could also make a real doozy about Taiwan, too), it would include the casual attitude that most Koreans (and Chinese) tend to have about litter.

Cigarette butts, wrappers, cans, bottles, you name it. Koreans just seem to think that it's somebody else's job to pick up after them. There are a variety of reasons for this, but I think their long history of indigenous slavery has a lot to do with it. I've read accounts that said at some points in their history, more than 70% of the population were slaves.

So I think that's why so many (though certainly not all) Koreans and Chinese seem to have this notion (without actually thinking about it) that everyone has their job, their chore on the plantation, so to speak. And cleaning after oneself? Well, that just ain't the chore of most Asians, it seems. For some odd, horrifically inexplicable reason.... So proper waste disposal apparently just isn't the job or concern of most Koreans -- unless, that is, it's their own homes that are getting littered up, and it affects them directly.

Which is really dumb when you think about it. Because the Korean peninsula actually is the home of Koreans, and not just the inside of their noisy, thin walled, little shoe box apartment flats - that are typically just one more cubbyhole sized dwelling unit stacked up on top of thousands of others, inside all those stuffy, unimaginative, ugly high rise buildings that increasingly block out the sun in South Korea.

But then, indiscriminate littering is also a Chinese cultural thing too, I've noticed. It's just even worse in China and Taiwan. And any which way you slice it, casual, even downright ignorant Asian attitudes about pollution are just plain disgusting. Not to mention not real good for the environment either. Because, here's the thing, kids. "Culture" doesn't excuse all bad human habits and traits. It just doesn't. After all, the Nazis had a culture too. It grew out of thousands of years of the darker side of German culture. And we all know how that ended.

So yeah, I want desperately to eventually get out of Korea and never ever have to come back. It's a long story, but after I couldn't take living in Taiwan any more, I went back to the US for a while, and then... well... let's just say that I didn't exactly get a lot of help from my folks in trying to re-acclimate. Then the Obama economy hit, and the only jobs I was getting offered were to go teach in Korea because I'd taught ESL/EFL in Taiwan for so long. That was even more frustrating than Korea has been (or I wouldn't have made it for this long), but I was trying to pay off my student loans at the time.

At any rate, these days, everything and anything gets a person accused, tried and convicted (in the court of public opinion) of "racism." Or, especially, if you happen to be a "Trump supporter." Which seems to be great sport for a lot of fancy, virtue-signalling folks who usually haven't even been outside of the comfy confines of the idealistic, spoiled, little Western world that they inherited from their often much more truly deserving forbears who actually fought wars and settled a nation.

But me? Heck! I grew up on Star Trek, and the whole "diversity is our strength" thing. So, believe it or not, idealistic fan boys and girls, Gene Roddenberry's grand, Utopian vision of a future, where everybody just all gets along on the good ship Enterprise, unfortunately just did not prepare me at all for the Real World. It certainly didn't prepare me for the ugly, "racist" things I overheard the Chinese of Shanghai and Taiwan say on a regular basis, when they thought I hadn't bothered to learn their language.

I certainly was not prepared for the dogs I was forced to see butchered for meat in public during my first month here in South Korea. But then... some Jewish girl from New Zealand (and originally I really liked her because she was Jewish. Because, in fact, having grown up in a small town in the American Midwest, I'd never met a lot of Jewish people before.

Even worse, she and her "African" American friend from the US led me to that market that day. On the way in the subway car, I stood in shocked and awed rapt silence as the two "ladies" cracked jokes about me being the preferred piece of foreign meat for the Korean "whitey wranglers." But then, I guess I'm not supposed to think that was "racist" of them, huh?

20090123 - Definitely Not My Kind of "Kennel"

Either way, I had no idea what was going to be there at that market that day. Those two "ladies" didn't tell me a thing. But they had been in Korea for a while, so they both must have known fully well what I'd be forced to witness. I was horrified when I saw the fresh dog meat, and the sad looking dog waiting dutifully by the butcher's table to be the next one in line.

I took photos of the dog meat and the dogs in pens waiting to be slaughtered on demand. Then, for some odd reason... God know why, of course... those two gals just disappeared into the crowd that day. They abandoned me. I didn't even know exactly how to get back to the subway. I eventually made it back, but it took a while on my own. And if I hadn't been lost a few times in Taiwan a number of years prior to that, it might very well have taken me a whole lot longer to find my way back to my apartment that particular day in Seoul.

20090123 - A Very Painful Memory of Seoul, South Korea

Dog eating was a thing in Taiwan and China too, of course, though I always just heard about it. There weren't any open air markets that butchered dogs on demand that I ever saw in Taiwan (though there was Taiwan's infamous "Snake Alley," which I always quite purposely avoided. There were/are a lot of three legged dogs in Taiwan though. They get hit by cars, I saw firsthand, quite frequently, I'm afraid. Then... I suppose somebody comes out with a butcher knife and hacks a busted limb off. Maybe... cauterizes or sews up the wound? If they're real nice, I guess. Makes good soup, I was told quite frequently in Taiwan.

Yuck.

20090123 -  House of Korean Horrors

But yeah, it's not easy to find true foreign expat "friends" in Asia, I've noticed. Most of the expats just get drunk together on the weekends. But then, misery does love company, as they say. But that just ain't my kind of misery. Life is hard enough without shocking your body into having a skull smashing hangover the next day, just for the "fun" of being able to suck down bottle after bottle of booze.