THE UGLY CHINAMAN

AUTHOR BO YANG

SOMETIMES in history, comes along a person who will speak quite objectively about his own community. In this case, the Chinese are the subject, and the man who took up the gauntlet is Bo Yang. This is his story about the community whom he knows so well.





CAUTION: If you are a Chinese and not the type to entertain insults and
other derogatory remarks about your race, dont read this book.
Bo Yang writes to shock. His target is the Chinese. Bo Yang's candour
and bluntness is like a sword. His words cut deeply. If the reader happens
to be a Chinese, he will bleed from within.
Eleven years ago, Bo Yang started calling his own kind names and has
earned both respect and scorn for it. Chinese by nature are inclined to
shun confrontation. In this respect, Bo Yang can be deemed to be
"unChinese". He has no compunction about invoking adjectives like crass,
crude, rude, untrustworthy on descendants of the Han race.
Bo Yang is the pseudonym of Guo Yidong. Today, he is a respectable elder
of 72, as most young Chinese brought up the Confucian way would describe
him. The meaning of "Bo Yang" is found in two trees, the cypress and the
poplar. Both are considered by the Chinese as sturdy species which are
able to withstand tough climatic conditions.
Bo Yang is no stranger to hardship and misery. He fled to Taiwan in 1949
just before Mao Zedong took control of China. In the 1960s, Bo Yang began
writing satirical essays on corruption and inequalities in Taiwan. His
works culminated in his arrest by the Kuomintang Government in 1968. Bo
Yang was a "guest" of the government for nine years.
In prison, he began a study of Chinese history. At 57, he was released
and reentered society.
Bo Yang shot to prominence in September 1984 at the University of Iowa
in the United States when he delivered a speech entitled The Ugly
Chinaman. His objective was to bring to the attention of the Chinese the
virus that had stricken them for centuries. He likened the Chinese people,
their culture and customs to one colossal "soy paste vat".
In Bo Yang's words, Chinese society is "a chaotic society riddled with
corruption and stultification, a society racked by the politics of
enslavement, perverse morality, an overly selfcentred world view and the
worship of power and money, a society where normal human intelligence has
become so ossified that little of it remains intact".
By way of comparison, he recounts a telling anecdote. By himself, the
Japanese is just a pig, says Bo Yang, but if three Japanese combine as a
unit, they can be as formidable as a dragon. The Chinese, on the other
hand, is a dragon on his own but three Chinese together will cancel each
other out because they would be too busy plotting to destroy one another.
Other ethnic groups compare the Chinese to the Jews, and both races are
described as hardworking people. But thats where it ends. The Jews may
fight among themselves in the Knesset (Parliament), but on the
battlefront, they fight as one.
Bo Yang says the Chinese fight separately in or out of the Parliament,
on the battlefield, and constantly within their own households.
The book, divided into three parts, is peppered with situational
episodes of Chinese sinning against each other. Part One covers Bo Yang's
major controversial speeches and an interview with the editors of a
Chinese magazine in New York. Part Two touches on other topics connected
to the subject, and Part Three is a selection of writings by Chinese
compatriots who were too deeply moved one way or another by the subject to
remain silent.
What's the verdict then? It would be too easy to adjudge Bo Yang as a
political crackpot who spent one year too many behind bars, or as someone
who allowed the loneliness and bitterness of his political sufferings to
eat into his soul.
The commonsense approach would be to judge what Bo Yang says with easily
appreciable evidence. How far ahead is the Peoples Republic in terms of
science and technology compared with other nations? Perhaps the question
should be: how far behind is China?
How cohesive are the Chinese outside China? Yes, many are financially
secure and yet their competitive spirit haunts them just as much as it
frightens the other races. Bo Yang has accurately depicted the societal
ambience that embraces the Chinese communities abroad.
Of course, one stroke of Bo Yang's pen does not describe correctly the
entire Chinese race just as one stroke of the Chinese brush does not make
a Chinese painting.
Nevertheless, The Ugly Chinaman is dim sum for thought. That is most
probably Bo Yang's intention. If his book so much as nudges each and every
Chinese reader to think long, hard and deeply about his own cultural
traits and manners, then Bo Yang will have achieved something.