Linda Sun, the Chinese spy in NY who was paid partially with Nanjing Salted Ducks

A Chinese spy, Sun Tzu, Chinese gourmet cuisine, thoughts on immigration, stochastic terrorism, and I let Namewee and Kimberly Chen express my feelings to the CCP

Greetings, welcome back to “Mostly Asian History.” Thanks for coming.

While I think it’s great when people share my posts here on social media, I have noticed something strange when they do. For some reason, they have trouble describing my substack and what it’s about. Well, I renamed it for that very reason, and I renamed it “Mostly Asian History.” I did that because it’s mostly about Asian history. Hence the clever name, “Mostly Asian History.” (Yes, I do admit the original name was kind of confusing so I renamed it “Mostly Asian History,” because it is mostly about Asian history, you see. Asian history and Asian culture because you really can’t understand one without the other.)

Now I find Asian history fascinating and love to explore it, so it is only natural that I should want to write about it.

However, having decided to write about history, mostly Asian history by the way, I decided from the beginning that I wanted to dig deeper than some of the history blogs and amateur history posts that I have seen. None of this “did you know that British bayonets in the American revolution were triangular?” stuff, and “Today we will talk about the name of Robert E Lee’s horse.” None of that. I did not wish something where I simply regurgitated facts from books and documentaries that I read. I wanted something that “dug deeper” and occasionally gave insight into how we know what we know about historical happenings and perhaps more importantly how to recognize bad history, false narratives of history, and why and how they happen. Something where the reader, ideally, would walk away with not just knowledge but also tools to sort out and evaluate new historical claims when they encountered them.

I wanted my readers to begin to see historical facts as pieces in a pattern, not isolated events. I wanted them to see the actual historical record as a long chain of linked causes and events where if one link were removed the results would be changed as everything was interelated.

In short, I wanted something where my readers begin to develop some of the skills that I obtained in graduate school and that, prior to graduate school, I was only beginning to develop on my own.

History and the study of history is often an exercise in seeking the truth with limited access to facts amdist a wide variety of unproven or even disproven claims and false reports. And that’s what I wanted to try and prepare my readers for.

Of course, I haven’t always done that, and there were admittedly a couple weeks when I just wrote about things that had absolutely nothing to do with these ideas (i.e. my visit to George Washington’s headquarters or the piece on Russ Meyers) but when I’ve written about whether the Irish American gang The Dead Rabbits were real or not, and argued that they weren’t, one of my goals was to try and encourage readers to also consider asking if the legendary ninja of Japan were real or not and to better understand the process by how false beliefs can entire into the commonly accepted historical narrative. When I wrote about Ashida Kim and his novel last time, I wanted people to ask if it were at all possible that American karate instructors might actually affiliate with a two thousand year old ninja clan or if such things even existed. I wanted people to dig a little deeper, not just question historical claims but develop the tools to do so intelligently, and then put things in context.

So, having said that, this week I am going to write about a recent China related current event that happened here in New York State, but when I do, I hope to add some context and related information that you, my dear readers, are unlikely to encounter anywhere else. My goal is to not just repeat what I’ve read but to dig a little deeper, share what I find with you, my readers, and thereby increase your understand of history and Asian culture just a little more.

A Chinese Spy in New York, context and commentary

Just this week, the media reports that the FBI arrested a top aide to both current New York State Governor Kathy Hochul but also former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo on charges of being a Chinese spy and unregistered foreign agent for China. Her husband was also charged,

Now I am compelled to vent. I hate it when these things happen. I really do. Now, don’t get me wrong. As there are undoubtedly Chinese spies and unregistered hidden foreign influencers from several nations out among us, it is definitely better to identify them, catch them, and close them down, than to not catch them. They should not be allowed to continue to spread malicious propaganda and lies, manipulate our leaders, and undermine our nation and the cause of human rights and freedom around the world. So in that sense, assuming the charges are true, and I find them quite believable and very possible, it is definitely a good thing to have caught someone who is working to undermine our government and influence its actions for the benefit of others.

But it makes me sad.

When the Chinese government takes some of our top immigrant talent and turns these people against their new homeland, my homeland, it just makes it so much more difficult for all of us to get along and work together in a positive fashion. It, obviously, fosters paranoia, increases racial tensions, and leads to international problems and uneasiness, and these are all things I would rather live without or keep to the lowest possible level. Decades ago, when I was younger and more idealistic, one of my goals in entering Asian studies was to work for world peace and increased understanding and cooperation between the peoples of this planet. And, quite frankly, I am not alone in having done so while now recognizing that the Chinese Communist Party does not make it easy sometimes to work towards understanding and cooperation between the US and China.

But it is what it is, and we must trudge on steering an awkward path under difficult conditions. When in doubt, try to learn more and do research.

Who is Linda Sun and What did she Reportedly do?

Linda Sun, aka 孙雯 (Sūn Wén), was born in 1983 in Nanjing, China. She was brought to the USA at age 5 when her parents emigrated and became a naturalized US Citizens.

She attended school here, earning a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Barnard College in 2006 and an education degree from Columbia University in 2009.

I’ve been trying to find more details on her parents and how they came here. However, if they came from Nanjing 37 years ago (when Sun was 5) in the 1980s, chances are good that it may have had something to do with their education or job skills, but again I have not been able to uncover real details. Generally speaking, however, the usual Chinese restaurant laborer, massage parlor worker, seamstress type of workers tend to come from other regions notably Fujian, Guangzhou (Canton), or Shenzhen. People from the other regions of China, tend to come because of eduction, although there are many exceptions.

In fact, my efforts to find more about her background information but details are sparse and hard to find. However, according to The New York Post, a source I described just recently as “one of the worst newspapers in the world,”:

The Queens operative had a modest upbringing, so her sudden move to a fancy Long Island home raised eyebrows even before it was raided by the FBI in July.

“Linda doesn’t come from money at all,” the source familiar with Sun said.

Several were also confused on how a government staffer and her husband who owns a liquor store and some other non-descript businesses were able to buy the nearly expensive home, which was purchased without a mortgage, according to property records.[1]

Is it true? I don’t know. It’s from an anonymous source in The New York Post. How could anyone know if it’s true or not. But that’s it, so far. Everything I have been able to learn about her parents and family background.

See: https://nypost.com/2024/09/03/us-news/queens-rep-to-chinese-spy-what-we-know-about-linda-sun/

However if you would like to know her exact salary from what I consider a reliable source, you can check here.

Linda Sun -NYS Employee Salary Lookup

You can see that her highest salary as a New York State government official was approximately $250,000 dollars a year, a great deal of money, but much less than required to purchase the property she is said to have owned.

She seems to have come to the USA at age 5, gotten a job in New York State government after college, stayed, and moved up, never as near as I can tell actually have worked in education despite having a degree in the field, but leaving the governor’s service under Hochul.

WHAT DID SHE DO?

As stated in previous posts here, I don’t feel that it really does anyone too much good for me to rewrite and summarize news articles. Sadly while I wish this were my full time job, it’s a side thing and time is limited. Instead, I will offer the links to infomrative articles, then add historical and cultural context and my own perspectives.

During her 14 year career in New York State Government Sun rose to a position of importance, becoming Deputy Chief of Staff to New York State governors. In this position, according to the charges and news reporting, she was able to increase access to the New York State Governor by Chinese officials, reduce access to the governor from Taiwanese officials, influence the context of speeches and announcements so that gifts from China during the pandemic got more public recognition than gifts from Taiwan, and so that issues such as the Chinese repression, mistreatment, and systemic efforts at cultural destruction of the Uighurs in Xinjiang was removed from at least one speech or public address, as well as give people in China the impression that their government had closer ties and more support from the New York Governor’s office than it really did.

She was also, reports say, able to forge the governor’s signature on visa requests to help people in China come to the USA under the guise of being invited on official New York State business when this was not the case. This may have been the “smoking gun” needed to prove definite wrong doing.  (In fact, Governor Kathy Hochul says when the FBI investigated the situation, by the time they came to her, they asked her one question and one question only and that question was “Is this your signature?” Her answer, she says, was “No.”)  

With the help of her husband, Christopher Hu ( 胡驍 ）, who allegedly helped launder the money, they were given lush payments of large quantities of money. According to the New York Times. “Ms. Sun’s husband, Mr. Hu, operates a liquor store in Flushing, Queens, called Leivine Wine & Spirits. Over the past decade, he has incorporated several other businesses, including a company he created in 2020 during the early days of the pandemic called Medical Supplies USA. He also created two other businesses, Golden Capital Group in 2016 and LCA Holdings in 2023, the nature of which could not be determined.”

Among the allegations, and this one comes from the New York Times:

”In 2019, Tsai Ing-wen, who was then president of Taiwan, stopped in New York City during a visit to the United States. The Chinese government was opposed to Ms. Tsai’s visit, even asking the United States government not to permit it. Taiwanese officials invited Ms. Sun and Mr. Cuomo to a banquet, prosecutors said. However, Ms. Sun never forwarded the invitation and instead told the Taiwanese officials that Mr. Cuomo was hosting an activity day for staff members in the Catskills.“I already blocked it,” Ms. Sun wrote to a Chinese government official, according to the indictment. On the day of the banquet, Ms. Sun joined leaders of local Chinese associations in a protest in Manhattan against Ms. Tsai, according to prosecutors.”

For more details of the charges and reported acts, please read the published news reports linked below. While some are truly amazing, my goal is to add commentary and context, not summarize published news reports.

Interestingly most of her important actions occurred under Andrew Cuomo, who served as NY Governor from January 1, 2011 until August 23, 2021 when he was forced to resign following a sexual harrassment scandal. Although Cuomo managed to get himself re-elected repeatedly, usually due to widespread support of most of the Democratic policies in New York and the inability of the New York Republican party to present a good alternative, few New Yorkers in my experience liked him at all, and most people I know simultaneously voted for him while screaming that Andrew Cuomo was evil and creepy but the Republican candidate that year was somehow even worse (I voted for Andew Cuomo once myself actually, but I held my nose while doing it. Usually I just voted third party when faced with a choice between him and some wacko who the Republican party had somehow decided to nominate) Sun soon left after Cuomo was replaced by Kathy Hochul and sought employment outside the governor’s office.

I don’t know, of course, but I personally wonder how much of this was already known but accepted by Andrew Cuomo. Just asking without evidence, of course. Nothing wrong with asking.

As for Kathy Hochul, I am pretty much neutral. She seems to do a reasonably good job on most issues and the big problems in New York are unlikely to get fixed by voting against her.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgl23xlrzp2o

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/4/who-is-linda-sun-ex-aide-to-ny-governors-charged-with-spying-for-china

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/former-high-ranking-new-york-state-government-employee-charged-acting-undisclosed

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/nyregion/linda-sun-arrested-hochul.html 

https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/chinese-agent-case-new-york-classic-beijing-spy-effort-experts-say-rcna169506

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lavish-life-ex-top-aide-ny-gov-accused-secret-chinese-agent-rcna169430

The Chinese Consul in New York City has left his position

He’s gone. It is because he was told to leave?

SUN’S BACKGROUND IN DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION

As an aside, during her period in New York State Government, Linda Sun spent time working in the field of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” something that really is kind of hilarious. Like a lot of things in the word, the concept behind diversity, equity, and inclusion is actually very important, but implementation is a problem. People from rich families tend to have a lot of advantages over people from poor families (duh!). These include not just money, but also the ability to call your rich parents’ important friends and ask for favors like if they know of any good job openings or nice apartments to rent or someone to give them a reference to a good school or job that they might wish to have. Clearly, over a lifetime, these connections and advantages, plus more money and access to lawyers, doctors, mental health professionals, etc., can add up to make a big difference in a person’s life and success. And, historically, many people’s families did not have the opportunity to become rich because of their racial or ethnic background. And not just that, people raised in poor neigborhoods often learn different skills and behaviors than those in rich neighborhoods and thus wind up taking different directions in life, and not fitting in when given opportunities. Like so many things, obtaining a fair society with a level playing field is complicated.

And in that sense, efforts to promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, sound great, but in practice many such offices are staffed and run by Left Wing, hate-filled bullies with a dislike of this fine country and its traditions, and who promote racist ideologies that favor people of some sexual preferences over others and demand conformity in thought and language favoring people who are members of “their tribe and those who speak with words identifying others as part of their tribe” over those who are not member of the tribe and do not speak with the proper code words. Such people also tend to present a very badly distorted and lop sided version of history, something that I work hard against here and elsewhere. Again, it’s complicated. While things in that area have often swung too far in one direction while trying to correct real problems rooted in the past, thus causing new problems in their wake, hopefully over the next decade or two they’ll swing back, and the result will be a more sane, equitable society and work environment. But I doubt if few Republicans, and I am not a Republican by the way, will be the least bit surprised to find a dyed in the wool, Communist spy formerly ensconced in a New York State Government Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. I join them in snickering.

Such offices and their bullying are, of course, one of the things that has driven people like Jordan Peterson, the controversial Canadian psychology professor, to prominence and helped him get a forum when he came to fame by standing up to such offices and then, horrors, explained his position clearly and carefully using well presented facts.

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6361471811112

WHY DID SHE DO IT?

Based on the amount Linda Sun was paid, reportedly millions of dollars, and the things she purchased, it does not appear that love of Communism and solidarity with the poor, working peoples of the world weres very high on the list. In fact, it appears her motivations were pretty dog-gone capitalistic.

She was paid millions!!

According to NBC news: “She and her husband Chris Hu, who was also charged, lived in a $3.5 million home in a gated community in Manhasset on Long Island. With the millions they made from the Chinese government, they also purchased a $1.9 million home in Honolulu, Hawaii and luxury cars, including a 2024 Ferrari, according to federal prosecutors.”

According to the BBC: “In return, China allegedly showered Ms Sun and her husband, Christopher Hu, with millions of dollars in kickbacks that helped them buy a $4.1m (£3.1m) house in New York and perks including special home deliveries of salted duck. They also bought a $2.1m ocean-view condominium in Honolulu, Hawaii, and luxury vehicles including a 2024 Ferrari Roma sports car, according to the indictment.”

But there were also lots of Nanjing Style Salted Ducks.

According to the New York Times: “In July 2021, six Nanjing-style salted ducks, prepared by a Chinese consulate official’s private chef, were delivered to the parents of an aide to New York’s then governor, Andrew M. Cuomo. About four months later, another six ducks arrived at their home. Another four months later, there were more salted ducks. Eight months after that: still more salted ducks.

Prosecutors say that the poultry shipments, described in a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday, were just a small part of a yearslong series of payoffs to the aide, Linda Sun, in exchange for actions that benefited the People’s Republic of China and its Communist Party. The 65-page indictment also described travel benefits, event tickets and the promotion of a close friend’s freight business with a headquarters in Queens.”

According to today’s Wikipedia entry for Linda Sun: “On September 3, 2024, in the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, after being arrested at her Long Island home, Sun was charged by the United States Attorney's office with eight criminal counts—including conspiring to act as an illegal foreign agent, visa fraud, and conspiring to launder money—related to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in exchange for millions of dollars as well as all-expenses-paid travel to China; tickets to top shows, concerts and sporting events (including VIP suite access for at least one such event); employment in China for Sun's cousin; and home deliveries of Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by a Chinese government official's personal chef.[7] According to the unsealed 65-page indictment, federal prosecutors have alleged that Sun and Hu used this money to buy several luxury cars (including a 2024 Ferrari Roma, 2024 Range Rover/L460, and a 2022 Mercedes GLB250W4) as well as a 5-bedroom home in Manhasset, Long Island worth between US$3.6 million and US$4.1 million and a condominium in Honolulu worth between US$1.9 million and US$2.1 million, but never reported these benefits she received from China as is required of New York state government employees, nor registered as a foreign agent.[8][9]”

NANJING SALTED DUCK AND HUAIYANG COOKING

Okay, what’s with all these ducks? What makes them so special?

First, Nanjing Style Salted Ducks are a dish that falls in the category of “Huaiyang Cuisine." Unlike Cantonese or Sichuanese cuisine which are both rooted in geography and regional, while Huaiyang Cuisine also has roots in a region of China, it grew into something much more distinct and unique and special.

If you get a chance, to understand Huaiyang Cuisine properly, please consider seeking out an episode of one of my favorite TV shows, “Confucius was a Foodie.” A Canadian documentary, travel, and food show hosted by a Canadian chef named Christine Cushing, each episode deals with some aspect of Chinese food and cuisine and putting it in historical or global context as well as its presence here in North America. Season 2, Episode 3, on the DVD set is entitled “Huaiyang: The Cuisine of Poets.” Cushing describes Huaiyang Cusine as “a cuisine based on philosophy more than geography. Huaiyang cuisine, considered among the most prestigious in China, revolves around deep understanding of freshness and original flavor. And I’m told that behind every dish there’s a story. And many believe you must have an understanding of poetry and the arts to truly master the cuisine.”   

That’s a lot to take in and absorb, but we are talking about what some consider to be a cuisine that is the pinnacle of high cooking produced by a millennia old civilization that has from the very beginning been obsessed with not just food but the visual presentation of refined elegance and sophistication by its educated, upper classes. And that’s what Huaiyang Cuisine is.

And when we look at Huaiyang Cuisine. It is not home cooking, It is, as Cushing says, “food as art.”

It involves taking the best, most carefully chosen, freshest ingredients, and then often preparing them in a way that is simple but inimitable by none but a high level master chef. For instance, the cutting of the ingredients is often done in a way that can only be done by someone who has spent hours upon hours of time over years practicing the cutting and slicing of food.

I like to cook Chinese food. In my free time, I took cooking lessons when I lived in Shanghai. I have read a great deal about it, and watched countless videos on Chinese cooking on YouTube, and stumbled through cooking many dishes and meals.

I used to think I was good at it. Now I realize that I am not very good at it, and, by some standards, never will be terribly skilled at it. I will always be a hobby chef and nothing more.

And to understand the difference between someone like myself and someone like them, go to YouTube and find chefs like the one’s I have found below and just watch the way they slice tofu, poultry, meat, and vegetables with such awe inspiring skill and precision. I watch these things and I find myself wishing that I had a few extra years of life where I could do nothing but practice slicing food and then, once I was done, cooking it. That would be a wonderful thing.

So in that context, I have presented several videos. Some on Nanjing Salted Duck itself.

Nanjing Style Salted Duck does involve carefully chosen ingredients, they are then prepared very carefully, but not in any way that is terribly complex looking, but just needs to be done perfectly, and then elaborately cut for sharing and presentation. And there is a story behind it, a legend, and it involves a tale that the first Emperior of the Ming Dynasty in the late 14^th Century, a man known to angry outbursts and having a violent anger towards his enemies and those who supported or appeared to support his enemies, became enraged over crowing chickens that repeatedly woke him from his sleep too early in the morning. In response, he ordered all the chickens in the region killed and slaughtered, thereby forcing the people to raise, cook, and eat ducks. Now, my cursory research, did not find any supporting evidence that this tale was at all true. For the record, studying Chinese history often feels like an endless series of going down rabbit holes to see if something interesting is true or not, and if true why and how did it happen and what does it mean. Therefore, I honestly did not try too hard, only spending about ten minutes on this, but I doubt if it’s true. But perhaps it does not need to be true. One could argue that the real purpose of this story is not to tell history but to make a particular dish, a particular way of cooking duck, more special and thus improve the experience of being served this style of duck at a gourmet meal.

So if the purpose of a story is to improve a culinary experience, as is often the case in Huaiyang Cuisine, then the story behind Nanjing Style Salted Duck succeeds. It does, as they say, fulfill the implied promise of the story teller in this context.   

In this context, food is used in China, and arguably everywhere but more so in China, to build relationships and cement them as well as to display one’s wealth, sophistication, and generosity. If the FBI knows anything about Chinese culture, they should be working hard on tracking down who Linda Sun shared those Nanjing Salted Ducks with if they haven’t done so already.

https://macaonews.org/partner-features/macau-huaiyang-garden-cuisine-londoner-macao-zhou-xiaoyan/

https://confuciuswasafoodie.com/cuisines/huaiyang/

https://thewoksoflife.com/yangzhou-food-guide-huaiyang-cuisine/

Chinese Knife Skills and Chinese Gourmet Cooking

Nanjing Style Salted Duck

Notice what appears to be step three. Letting the duck hang and dry for five days.

Sun Tzu, Chinese Spies, and Chinese Traditional Thought

Real quick, as this, and it always does this each and every week, has gotten much longer than I’d planned, the Chinese tradition of using spies dates back to ancient times.

The oldest strategy book in the world is Sun Tzu’s Art of War. It’s available in several translations, every Chinese person I have ever asked has heard of it although sometimes only by its Chinese name, and it’s available in multiple English translations of widely varying quality. I’ve personally read it probably half a dozen times, always in translation.

Just for your information, the Chinese name of the book is the “Sun Tzu Bing Fa” or 孫子兵法.

Sun Tzu ( 孫子 ) pronounced like “Soon Tzuh” with “Tzu” rhyming with “duh, wrote his classic book around 500 B.C. with no one being sure of the exact date. It talks about how and when to conduct warfare. Among its key teachings are try to obtain what you need and achieve victory without fighting whenever possible, the importance of military intelligence and understanding your enemies, and the use of spies. In fact, chapter thirteen of this slim book focuses entirely on the use of spies.

All these things are essential to understanding the Chinese approach to conflict and competition. For example, in pre-modern China, when most of the enemies of China were often less sophisticated, often barbarian peoples, the Chinese army would head off to war carrying a lot more drums, horns, and flags than their European counterparts would have, with the intent of using a nosy, colorful display to frighten and intimidate their enemies before the fighting began.

It’s a book well worth reading.

And just FYI, if you start delving into ninja silliness, almost any book on ninja history will mention Sun Tzu and The Art of War as somehow being instrumental in the creation of modern day ninja. Don’t believe it though.

https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/Article/577507/sun-tzu-in-contemporary-chinese-strategy/

https://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

THE ISSUE OF RECRUITING HIGHLY EDUCATED AND CAPABLE CHINESE FOR IMPORTANT POSITIONS

 Having already stated that I hate it when this sort of thing happens because it increases racial prejudice, increases Asian-American hate, and fosters a climate of fear and paranoia let me discuss one possible question problems like this raise.

This type of thing also raises the important question of should we as a nation continue to recruit and hire highly educated, highly skilled Chinese born people for important positions knowing that some have been proven to have engaged in corporate or international espionage?  This is, as they say “the elephant in the room,” and people are definitely asking it.

Let me offer the counter argument. First, if we accept the idea that the American and Chinese governments and corporations have a relationship that is often competitive and involves vying for advantage and dominance over one another, and this is a real part of what is clearly a complex relationship between the two countries, this question needs to be asked.

Having taught graduate students at the number three university in China, Fudan University for two years, and having stayed in touch with enough of my students to know what’s become of them and where they wound up, I think have a perspective on this worth sharing.

Highly educated people are a valuable resource. It takes several years and a lot of money and resources to make a person highly educated, and not everyone is capable of being educated to a high level. Once highly educated, they are capable of doing amazing things, like creating new fabrics, creating new substances from old substances, making better airplanes, solving problems involving pollution, gaining new insights into how societies and people work, healing the sick, teaching children to become better people and to give them valuable knowledge and so on.

A nation only has a finite number of highly educated people, although the numbers shift a bit as some highly educated people retire or die off and other people graduate and become highly educated. -Or the numbers go up as educated people from outside enter the system.

And having said this, when a highly educated foreign person leaves their home country and then uses their education here to solve problems in our country, it is often both a loss for their home country and a gain for our nation.

So, in theory, every time a highly educated person comes from China and moves to the USA and uses their educated here (or at least mostly here) in theory, it is a bonus for the USA and a loss for China. With one such immigrant from China the number of educated people we have versus the number of educated people they have, our number is suddenly TWO higher in comparison to the Chinese number the day before. (They lost one, we gain one. = net diffence shifts by two.)

While the US government mostly takes this for granted, the Chinese government is well aware of this, and is actively discussing how to reduce the brain drain from China to the USA. I attended a program on English language education while in China, where a major theme was the idea that if China were to get more Chinese students to develop a higher level of English language ability, the Chinese universities could recruit more high level, foreign scholars to come to China and teach their subjects in China, and then less Chinese students would wish to study abroad, and as many of these students who study abroad do not return to China, the brain drain from China to the West would be reduced. The Chinese government is also engaging in things like having programs aimed at teenagers who are being groomed by their parents to leave China and come to the USA to foster loyalty and love to their home nation even after they leave.    

But here in the USA we just sort of seem to take it for granted that people wish to come here and live and few give it much though.

Stochastic Terrorism

While I am on the subjects of Asian hate and hate crimes and controversies in Asian immigration, let me toss out and define a term you should all be familiar with but that most of you are not familiar with.

“Stochastic Terrorism” is when one inflicts terrorism and creates violence by engaging in actions that are statistically likely to cause violence but without being able to predict exactly when, where, by whom, or targetted at whom exactly.

So if I were to go to some internet forum full of angry, disatisfied people knowing that a small percentage of them were prone to violence and capable of it and consistently say things like “Slobovians are dirty people who spread disease. Someone should go find the Slobovian neighborhoods and take a few of them out to teach them what happens when they spread their Slobovian diseases in the USA,” if I do it long enough, and get enough people to repeat what I am saying, eventually someone will do something somewhere to hurt a Slobovian. It’s inevitable and its called “Stochastic Terrorism.” And it’s a fact of modern life, and foreign troll farms, and some political candidates and media personalities that need not be named, due it all the time. Welcome to the modern internet age.

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Jiaoying Summers on “The First Time I heard Stop Asian Hate.” — And Pete’s thoughts on Intercultural Understanding and Charges of “phony politeness.”

And for a lighter look at Asian Hate, Jiaoying Summers is a Chinese American citizen, immigrant stand up comedian.

While I often find her stuff too crude for my taste, some of it is quite good. Here she gives her views on Asian Hate in the USA. Watch it, and I offer my important lesson on cross cultural understanding below.

Now it’s important cross cultural lesson time. Seriously. If you spend a lot of time around Americans, which in this context means non-Chinese Americans, and get their thoughts and views on what they really think about Asians, a common statement is something along the lines of “They’re kind of phony. They hide what their really thinking and feeling. They say dishonest things when everybody knows it’s dishonest. Sometimes it is impossible to know how they really feel about something.”

WELL NOW . . .

GUESS WHAT, BOYS AND GIRLS . . .

If you spend a great deal of time around Asians, you realize that they, just like Jaoying Summer’s mom in the above stand up routine, say the same things about us. “Americans (or Westerners in general) hide their feelings.” “It’s impossible to tell what they are thinking sometimes and how they really feel.” “They are so phoney and overly polite,” and “Often they pretend to be your friend sometimes when they don’t really mean it.” (This usually refers to Americans ending conversations with something like “We’ll have to get together sometime” and then not following up. Things like that, not so much predatory acts.))

My interpretation is that we are all, each of us from both cultures, taught how to hide our feelings and act in socially appropriate yet basically unnatural ways in order to meet culturally defined social expectations in certain situations, like meeting strangers in a business setting. And as different cultures have different expecations, or different ways of showing politeness, we tend to find people who are hiding their natural impulses in order to meet the expecations of a culture that is not our own to be “acting strange” and “being phony.”

My two cents and my interpretation of a complex issue.

And, by the way, I have had Brazilians talk at length about how phony many Americans are, just as a Taiwanese ex used to and often with the same observations. She did a very funny imitation of a White lady pretending to be friendly and impressed to meet a person when she couldn’t care less about them.

Imagine if you will a much exaggerated, overly emoted and exaggerated “OH Honey, it;s sooooo nice to meet you. And you are new in our country, WELLL, isn’t that sooooo exciting. Oh Taiwan! Welll that’s sooooooo nice to hear.”

Yup, that’s how foreign people see our culture sometimes so please don’t go telling me how phony they are.

And, just so you know, tucked away in my files is a half written book called “Overcoming racism, Cultural Boundaries, and One Upmanship -How to overcome class, race, and cultural barriers without being an asshole about it.” It’s basically a non-PC book on working across cultural barriers and understanding the people around you who aren’t really much like you. If I can find someone who will pay me at least minimum wage to write it, I will finish it. (Again, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.)

Namewee and his anti-Chinese Communist Party Song “Fragile

Well, just to reaffirm that while I have nothing against the people of China or Chinese people from outside of China, I really do not like many of the things that the Chinese Communist Party does including this.

And to re-emphasize that, I am going to share a very popular Chinese language song that is very critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

Namewee is the performing name of a Malaysian born Chinese singer. Several centuries ago, Chinese began settling in Malaysia, largely coming from the Fujian area, to take jobs as laborers and seek opportunites. Today, off the top of my head, approximately 45% of the population of Malaysia is of Chinese descent, and the city-state nation of Singapore is also largely inhabited by people of Chinese descent whose roots lie among these people. The Chinese, like in much of South East Asia, have done well economically and control a disproportionate amount of the local economy leading to friction. (One result of this friction, has been an increase in Islamic Fundamentalism and extremism among the non-Chinese Malay people who are often Muslims.)

Anyway, Namewee ( born 黃明志; which he prefers to pronounce in Hokien rather than Mandarin so the family name of “Huang” would be pronounced “Wee” - Hence stage name of “Namewee” or “name Wee” -get it? ) is someone who clearly lives to mock people more powerful than him and does so through his music. In the past, he has mocked not just the local Malaysian Islamic Fundamentalist extremists but also the Chinese Communist Party.

With the assistance of Kimberly Chen, an Australian born citizen whose parents were Chinese-Malaysian immigrants, he wrote and co-performed a song called “Fragile” sometimes known as “Your Pinky Heart.” Although born in Australia, Kimberly Chen became a successful singer and model in East Asian including China, right up until she released this song at which point her work was banned from the nation and her website blocked. (Namewee’s work was apparently already banned there.)

While the song is superficially a love song in which a woman sings to her male boyfriend or lover about how she is sorry that she makes him angry all the time with the things she does and says, the truth is she feels his heart is just too fragile. To a Chinese person, within and without China, however it’s obvious that she’s singing about the volatility and sensitivity of the Chinese Communist Party to criticism or actions that question its beliefs or statements. The song was a big hit in Taiwan and elsewhere in China. Obviously, it was banned in China.

It’s well worth understanding that the song and its video is full of symbolism that is clear to a Chinese person but would often be missed by a Westerner. While the panda is an obvious reference to China, and “pink” refers ti the “red” of the Communist movement, the presence of cotton and cotton plants is an allusion to Xinjiang, a cotton growing area, where Uighur political prisoners are often forced to labor without pay making clothing from cotton. I have included a video below which explains much of the symbolism in the song and its video. You can they are advertising that their video got 700,000,000 views by the time this version was released.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namewee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragile_(Namewee_song)

I just found this one and had to comment. As stated my Chinese is really not that great, but…

It says: 黑人老外解析《玻璃心》MV彩蛋 看到這幕變臉 意外「辱」到自己？

Those first four characters, 黑人老外 basically says “Black foreign guy” and then it says something about, I think, “looking for Easter Eggs by himself.” and it comes from something called “Freedom TV.” (hmmm? Falun Gong? Maybe? Maybe not? No idea.)

Notice the “ha ha ha” subtitles like in Kamala Harris’s Chinese nickname?