By Tim Collard
November 2nd, 2009 – telegraph.co.uk
Trinidad and Tobago News Blog
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog
Lou Jing
For a start, Lou Jing is extremely lucky to be alive. I thought I’d seen it all in China, but I’ve never seen an African/Chinese mixed race person there. You don’t actually meet all that many people born out of wedlock at all. This is not, as the prissy blogosphere would have it, because of the superior virtue of Chinese maidens. It is because illegitimacy is so socially unacceptable that (at a guess) 99 per cent of such pregnancies are terminated. If the mother suspected that the pregnancy had resulted from an affair with a black man, I would have said until today that that figure was 100 per cent. And this 20 years ago! Lou Jing’s mother is one extremely brave woman.
Full Article : telegraph.co.uk
RIGHT: Lou Jing with her mother
China’s black pop idol exposes her nation’s racism
By Stephen Vines
November 2nd, 2009
She is attractive, effervescent and has an appealing voice. But these qualities alone would not have made Lou Jing the most famous television talent show contestant in China and the subject of national debate in the world’s most populous country. The reason they are talking about Lou is because she is black.
The 20-year-old daughter of a Chinese mother and an African-American father who left the country before she was born, Lou was a highly unusual entrant to Shanghai-based Dragon TV’s Go Oriental Angel. Her appearances – she became one of five finalists – have provoked a storm of abuse on the internet, a rare debate on racism in the media, and a bout of self-examination in a country where skin colour is a notoriously sensitive subject.
Dragon TV initially had doubts about allowing Lou to perform, but then realised that her presence would do much to attract publicity for the show. But few executives can have expected the fury contained in many of the blogs and online posts that accompanied her performances. The internet is the only place in China where the public can express views with near-freedom – although they are rapidly cut off by an army of state censors if they stray into territory that attracts official disapproval. The huge online interest in Lou clearly does not fall into this category.
Full Article : guardian.co.uk
A short video clip of Lou Jing
A New Kind of Idol: Lou Jing
Lou Ching is an all-around normal and attractive 20-year-old girl from Shanghai who likes clothes, (presumably) boys, the mall and has big dreams of becoming a singing superstar. So big that in August she became a contestant on China’s Let’s Go! Oriental Angel, a televised talent contest much like our beloved American Idol. So what’s the big deal? Lou is Black.
To clarify, Lou Jing is biracial. The product of an extra-marital affair between her Chinese mother and an African-American man, naturally the circumstances surrounding her birth make for great TV, which the show’s producers have played up, and playing Lou in the process. A baby born out of an affair is hardly news in any country, but the simple fact that her mom slept with a Black man and Lou was born has made the girl the focus of a rapidly growing debate about what it means to really be Chinese. Lou’s birth and upbringing in China, and pretty much her life until now, has been disregarded by many simply due to the fact that she has Black blood in her veins, something that I suspect would be different if her father was White. Naturally, she and her mother have their fair share of haters, some just displaying outright racism and disrespect towards both of them, hidden by the cloak of the internet.
Full Article : parlourmagazine.com
Seeing red over black angel
A half-Chinese, half-black young woman is making a lot of Chinese netizens mad. She didn’t do anything. She just looks different.
One of the most popular comments is titled: “Wrong parents; wrong skin color; wrong to be in a television show”.
Full Article : news.asiaone.com
The uproar really kicked off when a Shanghai newspaper published a libellous article suggesting her mother had cheated on her Chinese husband with Lou Jing’s father.
“The newspaper has retracted the article and we are involved in legal action against them,” said Lou Jing. “I tried to make sure my mother didn’t see the article, but even though we got it removed from the paper’s website and the major internet forums, it kept popping up elsewhere on the internet,” she added. “I cried a lot.”
Full Article : telegraph.co.uk
Heads-up to foreigners: “racism in China” is a cross-cultural conversation landmine
I guess this is one of those things that most foreigners in China discover sooner or later, though I didn’t realize until recently that this is a sensitive nerve for a lot of Han Chinese (Han are the majority ethnic group in China at 92%). Apparently the idea that there could be racism in China is outright rejected by a lot of Chinese: “‘Racism’ is never in Chinese minds,” says one commenter from Hong Kong. “We don’t have racism issues.” Yet multiple glaring, text-book examples of racism instantly and effortlessly spring to the minds of foreigners who’ve spent significant time in China. They’ve experienced or witnessed it for themselves, and they can’t believe that anyone would seriously deny that it exists. The Mainlanders, however, are offended that a foreigner would even suggest it.
Full Article : chinahopelive.net
Appalling Racism
In case there’s anyone here who doesn’t already read ChinaSMACK, check out this post (although be warned, this is a good mood ruiner). The short version of the story is that a half-Chinese, half-African-American girl who was the product of an extramarital affair went on TV, and Chinese netizens went crazy. Some comments, of course, are supportive, but many of them are deeply, disturbingly racist.
We’ve discussed the question of racism before here, most memorably last spring, when we accidentally touched off a bit of controversy and earned the ire of famous Chinese blogger He Caitou. He told me repeatedly that there is “no racism in China.” If you’ve lived in China, it’s probably a phrase you’ve heard before.
There’s no point in even discussing the question further; to my mind, anyone with a functioning brain can see that there is racism in China (just as there is everywhere else). What concerns me is the steadfast denial that such thoughts and feelings exist, even when presented with pretty damning evidence.
Full Article : sun-zoo.com
More Articles:
Shanghai ‘Black Girl’ Lou Jing Abused By Racist Netizens
Interview with Shanghai Black Girl Lou Jing
Chinese-Black Couple On Shanghai Metro
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Every Caribbean person who has internet access should read this artcle. The Chinese came to TnT more than 150 years ago, and had many children with poor black women who were,perhaps, paying for their groceries that way. Now, if we examine every product in our stores, we would see Made In China. This is also true in the USA. If that is the attitude of the Chinese people to darkskinned people, we need to remember when we order food in a Chinese restaurant, buy groceries,or buy cosmetics from the hundreds of thousands of beauty supply stores they have all over the West. Those who plan to go to Shanghai for the World Expo 2010 also need to pay attention.There are things people can do about racism. It all has to do with the pocket book.
Someone needs to bring this article to the attention of the government of TnT. Who knows what secret poisons they may be putting into the walls of the buildings they construct? There was a major problem about use of Chinese drywall beginning in 2004 in the USA. The drywall smelled like faeces, and had to be removed. God knows what they were made from.
If you feel you are working with inferior people, you give them an inferior product in the belief that they do not know any better. Think about it people.
“It is high time we introduced some sensitivity training on races and ethnicities if we are going to latch on to the orbit of globalisation. People should realise that if you have a right to discriminate against another race you have automatically given others the right to discriminate against you.”
THIS IS THE VOICE OF A CHINESE SCHOLAR.
It’s not just China. By the way, the majority of the people who sell African hair products are Korean. Whta your ordering thats called Chineses food, are there any Chinese people eating that? Probably not.
Check this out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/world/asia/02race.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=global-home
It seems that there is a Asian power movement going on that many of us were not aware of. It’s the Black power movement with strong global implications because of the global economy and the shift to Asia for mass produced goods.
Africans of the diaspora and at home need to get it together.
My heart goes out to our desperate Chinese workers . They have now lost one of their staunchest pro human rights /anti- slavery allies in Ms. L.simply due to the fact that their fellow socialist Shanghai nationals are portrayed as a bunch of anti- African racist.
The Chinese as an emerging power can be as complex as the usual European suspects that we have been riddled with for centuries. In one of the world’s longest civil wars, everyday thousand of Sudanese are dying of genocide and their pro capitalist pseudo democratic pal China has ensured political/ military support and protection for the black dictatorial pro Arab regime.And yet, no outrage outside of a few Hollywood movie stars. A few years ago in China , they were rounding up African male students who dared to show interest in the local girls. Not as bad as interracial interplays in our country , but racism nevertheless. and yet , not many of us loose much sleep over that as we praised them for a wonderful olympics.
As important as the racial point is in this case, of equal importance is the fact that the young lady was conceived via an unwed couple , and that too has created some of the outrage in the country. Perhaps that too should get us riled up as well – the distasteful legacy of global Africans that enjoy fatherhood without responsibility.Should we mentioned the late Kenyan prince Barrack Obama Snr, father of the present US President . How many hours did the bastard spend in his son’s life? Let me leave this alone before I run into trouble. Yes ,we’ll now focus on Chinese racism.
Will Neal please stop trying to write my script? Those Chinese slaves in TnT do not go to pop shows, and the racist comments were made on the internet, according to the Guardian of London.
Injustice anywhere must be protested.I would say that Japan was wrong to enslave Chinese people during WW11, and the racists in China are wrong to discriminate against a brown Chinese girl, and the construction companies in TnT are wrong not to pay their workers a fair wage.
At the same time, I reserve the right not to go to China, buy products made in China, particularly those claiming to be designer originals- US Customs siezes container loads of them all the time. I do not buy Chinese toys for children, because some years ago they were selling real cat fur on toy cts, and their lead paint record is horrendous. I can cook food from all cultures, so I do not need to go to a Chinese restaurant. Years ago, I learned to walk around Chinatown, in Philadelphia, and choose a restaurant that Chinese people were entering.That was before the picture of the two Chinese in Sando taking home a road-kill dog appeared in the TnT papers. If I go out to a restaurant now, of any Asian persusion- Japanese,Thai or Vietnamese as well as Cambodian, I eat chicken, that cannot be faked. My girlfriend who set up her oil company’s ccounting system in China more than ten years ago, gave me some information about their sanitary habits that was disturbing, but I will not share them here.
Yao Ming is one of my favorite basketball players, and I have eaten in his restaurant in H-town.
You won’t hear much arguments from me on this score , as I am firmly in your corner Ms. L. When it comes to cuisines, you can generally be said to be putting your life at risk at times when eating out, especially in some quarters of the global village. Forgive me , I tend to sometimes get carried away. The audacity of me in trying to write your script. Let’s continue to keep global exploiters symbolic hands to the fire ,irrespective of where they might lurk.Be they Canadian Apple farms that exploit WI apple pickers, or Yankees homeowners that use and abuse our numerous ex nurses , teachers and escaping Trini housewives that daily slave to raise their snotty nose, miserable kids ,and incapacitated senior citizen family members.
Ah these Japanese , they too have suffered throughout history . Some would say that they deserved internment by FDR during the lead up to WWII ,and the unleashing of two atomic bombs on their country under the directive of Truman.
Hey , what a coincident indeed? Today I began watching the movie ‘Memoirs of a Geisha.’I happened to read the Arthur Golden wonderful best selling novel several years ago about glorification of prostitution by Japan. Leave it to Asia to make something that would be seen as despicable elsewhere , into a cultural art form.
Lets see Chinese had female foot binding, Japanese Geishas , African genital mutilation, and Indians bride burning. Which one of these received the most condemnation? O yes, back to the big story- Chinese racist!
Ding Hui: Still Chinese, still black, still playing volleyball
In fact, Ding Hui was selected for the training group for the Chinese national team in the spring of this year. Coach Zhou Jianan had high praise for his play, saying he was one of China’s top five players. But Ding’s skin color and mixed parentage (his mother is Chinese, father is South African) attracted more media interest. The 20-year-old Ding Hui, the first black player to get a spot on any Chinese national team, competed for Zhejiang in the national games.
Ding Hui is part of a small but growing minority in China—people with one Chinese parent and one black parent (often African) who grow up side by side with children whose appearance is more consistent with what is generally considered Chinese. Another such young person is Lou Jing, who recently made waves when she made it to the late stages of a Chinese reality show competition called “Go! Oriental Angels.” (We’ve chronicled her travails extensively)
Black athlete Hui Ding becomes China’s new sporting star
Ding said, “It seems that what people and media are concerned about the most is my bloodline. However I do not care about that at all. What I am thinking is how to play Volleyball well in the national team and wish to win respect with my Volleyball skill.
“While walking in the streets, people always consider me as a foreigner and talk with me in English, but I just speak Hangzhou dialect, which takes them by surprise.
“I am Chinese, and a Hangzhou city native, born and grown up in the city. I am just an ordinary Volleyball player. I can only speak Mandarin and Zhejiang dialect and cannot speak any African language. My English is also not good,” said Ding.
I don’t know why there is surprise over this revelation. It was news during the Vietnam era, when the kids of black american soldiers and Vietnamese women were discriminated against in the land of their birth, and by the American government where mixed white and vietnamese was given immigrant preference over black and vietnamese.
The one human characteristic shared by every non black group in this world is anti-black prejudice. Black people carry on this with this illusion that only white people are anti-black racist when the evidence abounds that hating black is a universal past time.
China land of opportunity for some young Africans
Kajese is one of an increasing number of young Africans heading to China, as the country’s booming economy and ever-closer ties with African nations create opportunities as tempting as any in Europe or the United States.