My curiosity would have been piqued.
"I see, I really have to savor this burger and appreciate its American-ness next time," I might have told myself. Then, it would occur to me he was being sarcastic, and this would make my burger-odyssey appear foolish. I might wake up and broaden the scope of my culinary adventure.
Now, if you place the above two approaches in a Chinese environment and substitute "burger" with "chicken feet" and "sea cucumber", you should get the scenario in Tuesday's "China Chic" column (Jan 12, page 18).
Huang Hung's article, Dear laowai, don't mess with our Chinese-ness has been getting a lot of negative comments. These people angrily asked: "How can a mainstream newspaper like China Daily use such words as 'barbarians' to refer to citizens of a foreign country?"
Well, it was tongue-in-cheek and said for comic effect.
I'm not speaking for Ms Hung. But from what I know, no way could this thoroughly US-educated woman (from the age of 12) be a xenophobe. If anything, she is a darling of the Western press in Beijing, acting as a conduit between Chinese phenomena and Western interpretation.
Comic irony is a tool rarely employed by Chinese writers - less by Chinese writers who write in English. We Chinese have this image of being hard working, but no fun to be with. Our press used to translate Onion pieces as straight news. We don't have a TV talk show like Jon Stewart's - and we probably never will, as things stand. Our movie comedies bomb in Hong Kong and have no chance of crossing the Pacific. When Zhang Yimou made his folksy farce, A Simple Noodle Story, even our own literati sneered at him.
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