Different folks different “strokes”

The Chinese are known to be enterprising people.

That’s why they own much of Indonesia.

Not that that’s a criticism of course – Jakartass has evidence that the more Chinese there are in a country, the richer that country is. So the Chinese could be said to be doing a lot to raising the prosperity levels of a country. This means better standards of living, more job opportunities, better health care etc. So well done the Chinese.

But the Chinese – at least in China - are also fiercely nationalistic and in some cases unashamedly xenophobic.

As the British blogger Chinabounder has found to his cost (full story in the Guardian):

Chinese internet vigilantes have launched a hunt for a self-professed British bounder who has sparked outrage by blogging about his seduction of women in Shanghai. The campaign to uncover the identity of the blogger and have him kicked out of China is the latest in a series of online denunciations that have drawn comparisons with the humiliations inflicted by mobs during the cultural revolution.

Traffic on the Sex and Shanghai blog has surged from 500 hits to more than 17,000, thanks to a swarm of castration threats, anti-British rants and attacks on women who sleep with foreigners. The author, who calls himself Chinabounder, introduces himself as a wastrel, "lacking in moral fibre, but coping with the situation". According to the posts, he is an English language teacher at a university.

WTF! Actually, as soon as I read this article I instantly thought of our very own man on the job, who I will not name here for obvious reasons.

In fact, in Indonesia, it’s quite easy to chalk up quite a big tally of missions accomplished as an expat. And if you stay here for a number of years, and especially if you live in a big city like Jakarta, Surabaya, or Bandung, three digits is well within reach.

But expats here don't run into such problems – in fact I often received encouragement rather than admonishment from the locals.

I guess this is just another example of how tolerant most Indonesians actually are – even though there are a few headcases running around…

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