Job Discussion Forums

[AKA]

If, after reading the following story, you wonder if the Chinese government should "teach its prostitutes how to behave", it sounds like they already know.
Anyway, it takes two to watusi.

29Sep03 THE Chinese Government has ordered Japan to teach its citizens how to behave following an "extremely odious" mass orgy between hundreds of Japanese tourists and Chinese prostitutes. Responding to mounting fury over the three-day orgy in a hotel in the southern city of Zhuhai on the anniversary of Japan's occupation of China, the Chinese foreign ministry said it had launched a formal investigation. The Chinese media and Internet chatrooms have been crackling with anger over reports of the September 16-18 sex marathon which reportedly involved 380 male Japanese tourists and 500 prostitutes at a five-star hotel. "This case is of an extremely odious nature," foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan said in a statement late Sunday. "Foreign citizens in China must abide by Chinese laws," Kong said. "We hope the Japanese government will improve their citizens' education about this." The incident has ignited a wave of nationalistic and anti-Japanese sentiment, with many people convinced the orgy was timed to humiliate China on September 18, the anniversary of the start of Japan's occupation of northeast China in 1931. Newspapers quoted Chinese witnesses as saying the Japanese tourists admitted coming to Zhuhai purely for sex. They said the five-star Zhuhai International Convention Center Hotel was overrun with tourists openly groping and hugging prostitutes in elevators and other public places. Reports said doors between hotel rooms were left open and that up to three or four girls could be seen or heard servicing clients in each

[Roger]

I wonder if the natiionality of the males was of any overriding importance. Just imagining that 500 Chinese tourists seeking the same pleasures would have made no impact on the newsreels or headlines anywhere.
Maybe I am biased in favour of equal regard for males from anywhere in the world looking for the same thing anywhere in the world, that usually is provided by female workers.

[kimo]

anoooo! AKA-san, wasn't that you I saw in room 508? I didn't know you were a contortionist.

[chinasyndrome]

I'm surprised you could recognise him under that cheap black wig and baked on makeup he was wearing.

[Tong Dawei]

Even though it maybe just pure coincidence, the fact that the unrepentant Japanese "came" into China in such a horid display does pick at the scabs left behind. If it was Thais against Columbians (no historic antipathy) then "what the hey I Guess". But it was not! Roger is usually so detailed and eloquent when he chooses his battles employing admonitions for any naive soul... Are you, Roger, addressing these people who have family members that cringe in their sleep about such displays? For all of your worldliness, have you ever lived through a holocaust? Have you?

It's not even like the confederates hanging a flag in Manhattan and going crazy. It's not even the same magnitude as if the Skin heads did the same thing in down town Isreal somewhere. The Japanese got off scott free with their war time atrocities compared to the Germans. So what if it was all a coincidence. The mere fact that such a coincidence raises such an uproar in the hearts and minds of people who have been there and done that/had that done to them should speak for itself!

Come on everyone, get a grip?! This "seemingly innocuous" event as you portray it will wreck havoc between the two concerned parties. Hopefully it will just set the record books straight.

p.s. Here's a link to an example of Japan owning up for their past. Finally! Maybe it's happened before but this should be a good current reminder...

http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20030929p2a00m0dm025000c.html

[shmooj]

For the thread...
I mentioned this to my students. Their reaction: they got defensive and said "The Chinese do the same." It seemed my mere showing them the news report had offended them, perhaps like some smug Japanese had offended me with news reports about English hooligans during the World Cup here recently.

For Tong
just to help me adjust the setting on my flamethrower, could you let me know how much experience of Japan you have...

[Tong Dawei]

Just take your best shot

[Roger]

well, Tong Danwei,
you have a big chip on your shoulders. holocaust in CHina? It happened in Europe, not here. You should know the meaning of this word before you use it - there are other sensitive people around, not just the Chinese!
Yes, the Japanese did horrible things, but not just in China... They did the same to whites living in SHanghai, Hong Kong, the Russians in Manchuria, and, of course, to the KOreans and the Filippinos.
But it is wrong to count the beans here. My surprise was that Japan's past is being abused by the current crop of CHinese mandarins to do their racist bashing of Japanese.
The shame thing is a shared problem here in East Asia - neither the Japanese nor the Koreans or the Chinese know what 'guilt' or "shame' means - and they can never apologise and repent. I am not saying you have to be a westerner to have this inner greatness to accept blame - but being Christian certainly helps.
Will the CHinese ever regret their crimes against Tibetans, uyghurs, Kazakhs, mongolians? I bet that not!
Because... same problem as with Japanese: "Face". Puerile mindset!

[Tong Dawei]

Holocaust- for example,

A massive slaughter: an important document in the so-far sketchy annals of the Cambodian holocaust;

I don't have a chip on my shoulder as some would accuse. I am merely throwing in my two cents as an outsider just as others have done who have taken the dismissive route regarding Chinese tolerance of this pretty rude incident. I'm not backing The Mandarins but I am listening to the local mentality and it's reaction (not to be confused with the locals who rounded up the hookers). My main assertion is that Japan does much more to conceal and revise the repulsive portions of it's history, which all of humanity should learn from, rather than deal with the realities and consequences of their past actions. Again, I know that this is what The Mandarins play up to exact foreign aid "donations" from Japan. Even though this in and of itself is regretful, it serves to illustrate the guilt that Japan is "admitting" yet not acknowledging publicly and for the record. Maybe I'm wrong (chime in Shmooj) but as i understand things, Japan has erased their atrocious behavoir from their history books and replaced it with benign explanations.

Please don't chase your tails here and say that China did bad things too. Right now, in this thread, we are talking about China - Japan in its aforementioned context. Focus.

The Chinese on the street seem pretty pissed at their unrepentant neighbors. Why does any outsider stick their nose into this fray and feel they have to dispense with condescending spin of judgement? Again, I don't have a chip on my shoulder, do you?

[chinasyndrome]

Guys! Guys! Holster those weapons!

So for me, the story of the Japanese and the hookers isn't a big deal. It's only the scale of the incident, and some would say the timing, that has everyone up in arms. I don't understand the Japanese mind but I seriously doubt that hundreds of the buggers got their heads together and said 'hey, let's all shoot over to China and bonk a swag of hookers on or near National Day'. In that sense I think the Chinese are overreacting.

TD, I hear what you're saying about the Japanese invasion of China. That 'holocaust' was much larger than the one committed by the German's, yet it's commonly referred to as 'hostility', 'atrocity' or 'aggression'. I think (but I'm not sure) that perhaps the non-dictionary definition (at least for Europeans) is that a holocaust is a planned event designed to exterminate a race of people, whereas hostility etc is more in the realms of wanting to subjugate a race. Effectively, the Japanese didn't want to exterminate the Chinese race; they wanted to subjugate/assimilate (and enslave) them.

In a very real sense it doesn't matter what the Japanese revisionists say or do. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki got to find out what a nuclear blast tastes like. In that sense, the German's got off damned lightly. And also in that sense the Japanese themselves know exactly what they did and the price it cost them.

[Tong Dawei]

Will attribute source upon request.

�When capitalized Holocaust refers specifically to the destruction of Jews and other Europeans by the Nazis and may also encompass the Nazi persecution of Jews that preceded the outbreak of the war.

Word History: Totality of destruction has been central to the meaning of holocaust since it first appeared in Middle English in the 14th century, used in reference to the biblical sacrifice in which a male animal was wholly burnt on the altar in worship of God. Holocaust comes from Greek holokauston;that which is completely burnt, which was a translation of Hebrew (literally;that which goes up, that is, in smoke). In this sense of burnt sacrifice; holocaust is still used in some versions of the Bible. In the 17th century the meaning of holocaust broadened to something totally consumed by fire and the word eventually was applied to fires of extreme destructiveness. In the 20th century holocaust has taken on a variety of figurative meanings, summarizing the effects of war, rioting, storms, epidemic diseases, and even economic failures. Most of these usages arose after World War II, but it is unclear whether they permitted or resulted from the use of holocaust in reference to the mass murder of European Jews and others by the Nazis. This application of the word occurred as early as 1942, but the phrase the Holocaust did not become established until the late 1950s.

Holocaust, mass murder whatever you want to call it...

CS, I think there is a distinction to be made here between the caualties of 20th century warfare (hiroshima....) and the leaders of Japan's war machine who ended up running the show so to speak when the war ended. Much different fate from what happened to the leaders of the german war machine.

[shmooj]

[chinasyndrome]

[Seth]

One reason Japan never had to repent to the extent that Germany did was that the US wanted to use Japan as a economic and stable power against communist Russia and China and even Korea. Contain the red menace and all that stuff. The US was soft on them, basically.

[Tong Dawei]

Shmooj: Is that your best shot? Aside your smug demeanor, which you seem to save for me, your post is not worth noting. Seths assertion about Japans fate goes well beyond your fat books rationale IMHO.