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caberham posted:If you simply stated that you were not comfortable with the bride price, then fine. But the "in my country..."? Oh please I was gonna go all history teacher sperglord on this post, but I'll limit it to this: the Civil War was not only about slavery (in many ways slavery was pretty secondary to the conflict; hell, there was a slave state in the North during the War), so the Confederate flag flying in Mississippi isn't necessarily some great evil. That said, every time I hear someone say "IT'S ABOUT HERITAGE, NOT HATE" or ramble on in support of the Lost Cause (thanks, Faulkner, you beautiful rear end in a top hat) I want to stab things. Mostly eyeballs. Homesteading was pretty dominated by whites for quite a while, though that did change in the last quarter of the 19th century. The Act was kinda a disaster in any case, used often, as it was, for land grabs and seizure of resources totally unconnected to farming.
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Feb 10, 2014 17:40
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Don't even get me started on US foreign policy. God now I sound like Pro PRC Lao Wai or some social justice warrior. Where's my fedora 
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I was just trying to explain my family's objections, who are just sort of morally opposed to the idea of bride price, using whatever limited historical knowledge of the USA my father-in-law might have. It's not just absent from our culture - it is emphatically absent and explaining that to a person from a culture that literally puts a price on everything is challenging. Similarly, weregild is not part of our culture anymore either (because your children are not your property), though it is still an active practice in modern China. Bride price was really the only thing we held out on, other than buying a house/car in China (because that'd be stupid). Edit: actually the legal basis for practices like weregild is really interesting. bad day fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Feb 10, 2014 |
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Feb 10, 2014 18:04
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There are people born and raised in Maine that fly confederate flags. Also the civil war was about slavery 
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Feb 10, 2014 18:23
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bad day posted:Edit: actually the legal basis for practices like weregild is really interesting. There are entire Icelandic sagas based around the legal wrangling involved in this sort of thing. Some of the arguments in them against weregilds and the like are almost the same as modern objections, too. MeramJert posted:There are people born and raised in Maine that fly confederate flags. Also the civil war was about slavery When I was in college in Pennsylvania, a bunch of rednecks driving around with a Confederate flag hoisted on the back of their truck told me that they had it because they respected the traditions of western Pennsylvania. I asked them if they realized that Pennsylvania had been a Union state. They said that actually a lot of their Civil War ancestors came from West Virginia. They looked downright crestfallen when I told them why West Virginia is West Virginia and not still part of Virginia... The Civil War was about slavery as it related to economics. Reconstruction shows that pretty clearly. Ethics? Not so much. I'll grant you that slavery was a central issue, just not in the way it's often taught.
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Feb 10, 2014 18:46
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I had a classmate growing up that had a confederate flag on his truck, and one flying on a flagpole at home. He'd tell people he was from Alabama, and he sometimes spoke with a fake southern accent, but his whole family had lived in Maine for probably 100 years or more. When we were 9 years old he told me he weighed 158 pounds.
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Feb 10, 2014 18:57
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MeramJert posted:I had a classmate growing up that had a confederate flag on his truck, and one flying on a flagpole at home. He'd tell people he was from Alabama, and he sometimes spoke with a fake southern accent, but his whole family had lived in Maine for probably 100 years or more. When we were 9 years old he told me he weighed 158 pounds. Kurt Vonnegut posted:I had a classmate growing up that had a Confederate flag on his truck and one flying on a flagpole at home. He'd tell people he was from Alabama, and he sometimes spoke with a fake southern accent, but his whole family had lived in Maine for probably 100 years or more. For some reason your posts always remind me of a typical Vonnegut paragraph. This is hardly an insult.
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Feb 10, 2014 19:36
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I like Kurt Vonnegut.
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Feb 10, 2014 19:37
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blinkyzero posted:For some reason your posts always remind me of a typical Vonnegut paragraph. He's just going full China in the China thread. EDIT: blinkyzero posted:I was gonna go all history teacher sperglord on this post, but I'll limit it to this: the Civil War was not only about slavery (in many ways slavery was pretty secondary to the conflict; hell, there was a slave state in the North during the War), so the Confederate flag flying in Mississippi isn't necessarily some great evil. That said, every time I hear someone say "IT'S ABOUT HERITAGE, NOT HATE" or ramble on in support of the Lost Cause (thanks, Faulkner, you beautiful rear end in a top hat) I want to stab things. Mostly eyeballs. I will on yours. The Civil War is a complex conflict but it's the expansion of slavery, not slavery itself, that causes the war. It becomes about slavery as a whole because Lincoln realizes that its central to the conflict and why the country would go into hysterics every 10-20 since its founding over equal representation. Even though the North didn't want to initially abolish slavery, every Southern fire eater, Confederate politician, and supporter of the new government believed that the election of Lincoln was the first step towards the destruction of their slave centered way of life. Just because slavery is legal in the border states during the war doesn't mean that the war is not about slavery. tl;dr Just say slavery Apu. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Feb 10, 2014 |
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Feb 10, 2014 23:31
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My wife and I got married in China but her bitch sister stole our reservation at the hotel her dad made by marrying the first guy that would say yes and being older, so tradition says she gets the first ceremony. I haven't paid the parents yet and I don't think her family does that, she also said the same thing about the parents getting most of the money for our wedding since they gave all the other people money at their weddings, so it's like everyone is always reimbursing everyone else for the gifts from the other people's weddings.
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Feb 10, 2014 23:42
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:The Civil War is a complex conflict but it's the expansion of slavery, not slavery itself, that causes the war. It becomes about slavery as a whole because Lincoln realizes that its central to the conflict and why the country would go into hysterics every 10-20 since its founding over equal representation. Even though the North didn't want to initially abolish slavery, every Southern fire eater, Confederate politician, and supporter of the new government believed that the election of Lincoln was the first step towards the destruction of their slave centered way of life. Just because slavery is legal in the border states during the war doesn't mean that the war is not about slavery. Yeah, I actually agree with pretty much all of that. What I meant to say is that the ethics of slavery had less to do with the conflict than the economics of it. The question of slavery in new states was tied to that.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:14
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I'm surprised no one has noticed that Caberham is on his high horse about the institution of slavery and the mistreatment of dark skinned people when he lives in a society that feels that "owning" of SEA domestic servants is an inalienable right.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:20
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:I'm surprised no one has noticed that Caberham is on his high horse about the institution of slavery and the mistreatment of dark skinned people when he lives in a society that feels that "owning" of SEA domestic servants is an inalienable right. I've been a witness to explosive caberham rants about how people who treat servants poorly should die in a fire, though, so it's not like he's on board with it.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:24
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He can shut up until China has a black president.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:26
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Has modern China even had a non-Han head of state?
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Feb 11, 2014 00:29
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MeramJert posted:There are people born and raised in Maine that fly confederate flags. Also the civil war was about slavery It wasn't really ABOUT slavery until the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. That inextricably tied it to slavery from that point on but the original start of the Civil War was not slavery. edit: Didn't finish reading the thread, has already been addressed.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:32
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MeramJert posted:I like Kurt Vonnegut. Poo-tee-weet
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Feb 11, 2014 00:33
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blinkyzero posted:Has modern China even had a non-Han head of state? No because being Han is like being "white" and a made up thing to increase national unity. The other nationalities are only allowed to sing, dance, and wear funny hats. Couple this with the largest recognized non-Han minority group only having 18 million people and you're going to get a lot of Han politicians.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:40
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"Only" 18 million. Only a larger population than 133 of the 192 UN member states. But also modern China has only had, what? Five rulers? Mao, Deng, Jiang, Hu and now Xi. Other people have held head of state and head of government titles, sure. Jiang was the first to actually consolidate titular power with actual power. Soong Ching-ling was actually the president of China for a couple weeks because why the hell not. I think by his death, Deng's only title was like vice minister for fisheries or something.
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Feb 11, 2014 01:03
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Even including Taiwan, they've all been various flavors of Han.Bloodnose posted:"Only" 18 million. Only a larger population than 133 of the 192 UN member states. This is compared to 1.2 billion Han Chinese. So yes, only 18 million.
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Feb 11, 2014 01:14
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Deng was Hakka which is like everything that got groups classified as minorities. Except Hakka aren't. Or something. Edit: What I'm saying is the classification policy was and is stupid.
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Feb 11, 2014 01:30
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edit: Wrong thread
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Feb 11, 2014 01:53
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If you fly the confederate national flag most people will mistake it for the old US flag because it was so similar. Most people fly the battle flag because they're morons. The "stars and bars" was a red white and blue flag, not the orange and blue one.
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Feb 11, 2014 02:08
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Tom Smykowski posted:Deng was Hakka which is like everything that got groups classified as minorities. Except Hakka aren't. Or something. Hakka is Han. It's like saying Irish people aren't white.
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Feb 11, 2014 02:28
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So CCTV did a special report on DongGuang Sex Tourism which resulted in a huge massive shut down. http://www.chinasmack.com/2014/stories/massive-police-crackdown-on-dongguan-prostitution-industry.html quote:Summary: February 9th, CCTV reported on a number of hotels in Dongguan engaged in providing sex services. That afternoon, Dongguan deployed 6525 police officers to simultaneously shut down all the saunas, foot massage parlors, and places of entertainment [KTVs, bath houses, gentlemen clubs], arresting 67 individuals involved in the sex trade. The government leaders of five towns including Zhongtang and Huangjiang have been reprimanded, while the local police chiefs have all been suspended pending investigation. Dong Guan is probably up and running by now.
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Feb 11, 2014 03:10
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caberham posted:So CCTV did a special report on DongGuang Sex Tourism which resulted in a huge massive shut down. How dare you mock their mockery of the law!
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Feb 11, 2014 03:14
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Hakka is Han. It's like saying Irish people aren't white. Because, like I said, the classification was dumb.
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Feb 11, 2014 03:32
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caberham posted:So CCTV did a special report on DongGuang Sex Tourism which resulted in a huge massive shut down. Where will you go on business trips now?
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Feb 11, 2014 03:49
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I agree with Civil War chat. Also the Civil Wars broke up and that's too bad.
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Feb 11, 2014 04:26
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bad day posted:I was just trying to explain my family's objections, who are just sort of morally opposed to the idea of bride price, using whatever limited historical knowledge of the USA my father-in-law might have. It's not just absent from our culture - it is emphatically absent and explaining that to a person from a culture that literally puts a price on everything is challenging. Reading this segment just ticks me off. I just hope it's my terrible reading comprehension  CHINESE CULTURE  Is such a broad stroke. The country itself is pretty vast, with different regions and variations. People also have different levels/personal attitudes to wealth as well. It's like the air pollution: you can see it, feel it, taste it, it's everywhere, but your body itself can not tell the AQI right off the bat (God have mercy on you if you are a AQI connoisseur)It should be more along the lines of I have trouble dealing with this rear end in a top hat who just happens to be Chinese. My girlfriend and several associates in this thread are Chinese and don't really "put a price tag on everything", Thank You very much. My girlfriend's family is a typical family from Hangzhou and they do not and will not give me crap. Actually, my girlfriend is more afraid of meeting my family because she finds my family to be super polite on dinner etiquette. quote:Similarly, weregild is not part of our culture anymore either (because your children are not your property), though it is still an active practice in modern China. America is like the land of litigation OJ got sued and Actuarial Science is a thing.Look, I'm not advocating on the Bride Price at all. I just see it as one of many other token customs which can be amended/included/discarded. Insisting on a 50,000 RMB comb or X amount of tables, or WE MUST HAVE... which creates a huge burden on the other party is just plain stupid. Have a bit of empathy, compassion, and compromise. To me, that's what face is all about, not just "rawr rawr rawr do whatever it takes". Be TRULY HARMONIOUS and all. bad day posted:I don't ever think I've had a serious relationship where there wasn't a list of grievances hauled out at some point or another.. Clearly you haven't dated anyone long enough to reach that stage. Clearly after all this dating and marriage you haven't changed much for better  I have hurled and received mud at people. It's already not nice. Using old dried firewood from experiences past during an argument just makes the flames extra hot. Like salt on wound. It's because of my past serious relationship which makes me vow "never again", date better, and be a better boyfriend. I really don't want be dog piling you bedepressive. Let's smoke a HENAAAAAN peace pipe sometime. simplefish posted:Well I get what you're trying to say, but surely the things we are/aren't comfortable with are in large part due to our upbringing and the culture we grew up in. True, but culture is malleable. I think it's important to reflect and re-examine on your own cultural/personal values from time to time. Living abroad in a "foreign" tends to do that to you. Heck, even moving cities is already a change of environment. You realize that Steak and Shake is loving awesome and that Carl's Junior is over rated.
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Feb 11, 2014 04:39
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Caberham you're completely wrong. Steak & Shake and Carl Junior's are bad.
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Feb 11, 2014 04:42
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Five Guys Burgers and Fries or gtfo.
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Feb 11, 2014 05:29
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caberham posted:
It's easy to fall into this trap when the assholes are using the fact that they are Chinese as an excuse for being assholes. The kinds of assholes that foreigners are likely to meet do this ALL THE TIME.
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Feb 11, 2014 05:52
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blinkyzero posted:modern China Oxymoron spotted.
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Feb 11, 2014 06:07
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caberham posted:True, but culture is malleable. I think it's important to reflect and re-examine on your own cultural/personal values from time to time. Living abroad in a "foreign" tends to do that to you. Heck, even moving cities is already a change of environment. You realize that Steak and Shake is loving awesome and that Carl's Junior is over rated. I don't disagree that people should be more open-minded, but some cultures are more open to change than others. A lot of it has to do with having had the opportunity to be exposed a lot and regularly to other cultures. This is something not everybody has, and I think it's wrong to blame them for it. It isn't wrong, however to stand your ground. I don't really see an issue of responding to "You have to do it in China, because..." With "We'll in America, We actively avoid doing this because..." - it's what happens next that's important. Stating the nature of the disagreement is the first step to resolution and compromise, where each side explains why doing things a certain way is important to them and how that might be mitigated by the other side. Even if t never gets past the first step, it's down to bride and groom themselves to decide on a course of action. If family aren't happy with it, that's their problem and it's their choice to not attend the wedding, or not speak to the couple afterwards, so long as the couple are willing to let bygones be bygones down the line. And even between bride and groom there has to be compromise. Weddings are the sorts of things that people dream about as kids and plan in their minds even before they have a fiancée. If each party can't let On my way! Things go and basically say "marrying you and being with you is more important than x, y, z, or getting my own way 100% of the time" then it doesn't bode we'll for the future. How can you live with someone for decades if you can't even sort out a compromise over what's effectively a one-day party? I do think "It must happen like this because  MY COUNTRY" and then putting your hands over your ears and going lalala I can't hear you is stupid and childish, though. There should always be some attempt at explanation,and explaining yourself (or being asked to explain yourself) is a good way to analyse what you believe/feel and why.
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Feb 11, 2014 06:33
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Don't marry crazy bitches with mean parents 
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Feb 11, 2014 07:25
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simplefish posted:I do think "It must happen like this because It is absolutely stupid and childish. It is also exactly what Chinese people do.
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Feb 11, 2014 07:26
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peanut posted:Don't marry crazy bitches with mean parents VideoTapir posted:It's easy to fall into this trap when the assholes are using the fact that they are Chinese as an excuse for being assholes. The kinds of assholes that foreigners are likely to meet do this ALL THE TIME. goldboilermark posted:It is absolutely stupid and childish. It is also exactly what Chinese people do. You fell into the trap  Now you are stuck in the land of "being a racist jerk" caberham fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 07:35
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I have Chinese friends that say that ridiculously childish things that are done is simply because "That's what we do!" or "It is our culture and it is how we do it." If my Chinese friends telling me this stuff and me hearing it makes us all racist jerks, I guess it is something I will just have to learn to live with.
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Feb 11, 2014 07:44
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goldboilermark posted:I have Chinese friends that say that ridiculously childish things that are done is simply because "That's what we do!" or "It is our culture and it is how we do it." Seriously? There's a big loving difference between hearing something objectionable and parroting it. Because your huge circle of Chinese friends represent all the Chinese people in the whole loving world  Instead of being a Misanthrope and hating on society, you should just hate yourself for your personal failures.
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Feb 11, 2014 07:55
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Somebody told me to just buy a house because it's a waste of money to rent. I wish I had thought of that.
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Feb 11, 2014 07:59
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