The Immoral Foreign Blogger
(MOP.com Internet wanted poster number 3)
Preamble: There is a widely circulated Chinese blog post that runs quite long. The subject is a certain immoral foreign blogger against which the Chinese blogger has asked Chinese netizens to track down and kick out of China. In truth, I have known about that foreigner's blog and I refused to pay any attention to it. Many of my readers should be able to guess which blog it is without me saying anything. For your information, the foreigner's blog is Sex and Shanghai (hosted by blogspot.com, which was only recently re-opened in China).
So should I tell you about this Chinese blog post then? Ultimately, I have decided to do so, because this is an Internet storm right now and my readers expect me to cover these kinds of happenings (to wit, mass mobilization of netizens to chase down particular individuals such as cat-killers, adulterers, bikini kungfu girls and now an immoral foreign blogger). By the way, this Chinese blog post was reproduced in full in the Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao as well as various forums in Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, United States, etc.
I believe that the Chinese blogger is somewhat naive here. He is working on a classical rational model based upon (1) Phase 1 in which an Internet opinion storm creates a story for the mainstream media (and that has happened already); (2) Phase 2 in which public pressure via mainstream media forces the relevant departments (such as the Ministry of Education) to take action to expel this abominable foreigner from China. However, the previous experience of hunted individuals in China is that they are likely to encounter personal harassments and threats to themselves and anyone else connected with them. The consequences are impossible to foresee.
I will also note that this blowback was foreseeable. Some Chinese person was going to do this eventually because the foreigner's blog was obnoxious and clearly intended to arouse such a response. If you call Chinese women dumb cunts and Chinese men limp dicks, should you get away with it? Are you in any position to circumscribe their reactions?
ERRATUM: To clarify things, the restaurant known as Le Garçon Chinois has this Fodor's listing (via New York Times): "This dimly lit restaurant in an old French villa is a favorite spot for couples on a date. The walls are painted in warm hues, the art deco fittings are tasteful, and large windows frame surrounding trees and old mansions. Run by a Japanese-European couple, the restaurant presents a predominantly Spanish menu, with several tapas and paella selections." According to several readers, the owners also operate a Japanese restaurant named Yin on the first floor above Le Garçon Chinois, but it is common for foreigners to refer to Yin also as Le Garçon Chinois.
The Chinese blogger is Zhang Jiehai (张结海), a professor of psychology at the Department of Sociology in the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
(Zhang Jiehai's Blog) The Internet Hunt for an Immoral Foreigner. August 25, 2006.
Today, with tremendous anger, I will tell you the story of an immoral foreigner and I call upon all Chinese compatriots to get together and kick this immoral foreigner out of China.
This is how it is: Several days ago, a friend told me about a blog run by an English man in Shanghai. I read it and I was shocked, angered and disgusted ... after I read his blog, I had only one idea: This is intolerable and this piece of garbage must be found and kicked out of China!!!
In his blog, he used extremely obscene and filthy language to record how he -- a foreign language teacher in Shanghai -- used his status as a teacher to dally with Chinese women, most of whom were his students. At the same time, he did everything that he could to insult, debase and distort the Chinese government and the Chinese men.
His blog began this way to describe his life in Shanghai: "Therefore, you see, I was with Star on Saturday and I was with Yingying on Sunday. In between, I contacted Cherry via MSN, I telephoned Rina and I used SMS to flirt with Tulip. I send Susan an email to flirt with her, and I professed my love to Wendy on her blog."
This piece of garbage openly declared in this blog that he was only dallying with these female Chinese students. He said, "We don't talk about love, we don't talk about marriage, we don't even talk about being together." Once, he was even shameless enough to say, "I 'm tired of her already. A cunt is a cunt. I keep her just so that I can play with her again."
This piece of garbage's favorite show is to use obscene and pornographic language to describe the bodies of Chinese women and how they made love. For example, "My dearest Tingting, you have a very good and beautiful body. I cannot stop thinking about your beautiful skin, your lovely, smooth and soft breasts, you sexy, smooth and fine waist, your sweet and pretty legs and arms ... oh, of course, you are so pretty, so sexy and so perfect between your legs!"
This piece of garbage is very narcissistic. In his writing, all Chinese women will tell him abashedly before they take off their clothes in front of him for the first time: "My breasts are too small." When he takes off his pants, all the Chinese women will say in awe: "Your dick is really big!" Even if she is a virgin and this is the first time, she will say that too.
Tingting is a married woman. In the piece of garbage's description of dallying with Tingting, he does not forget to frequently make fun of Tingting's husband and then he pointed out that all Chinese men cannot satisfy Chinese women.
In his words, the Chinese men not only have low sexual potency, but they are also incredibly ugly. One time he used three "dulls" to describe Chinese men ("Chinese men are dull, dull, dull). He said that Chinese women can usually understand his compliments, but the Chinese men often do not ("China Man, generally, is not"; note that "China Man" is a derogatory term for Chinese people).
He used an example to say that when he tells a Shanghai woman, "I can tell that you are a Shanghai woman" and this Shanghai woman will understand that it was a compliment that shows that the woman is modern and fashionable. But when he once said that to a male student in class, "Are you a Shanghai man?" the student asked him in return, "How did you see that?" Therefore, he concluded, "This goes to show what a stolid and unimaginative fish China Man can be" (note that once again he used the colored term "China Man" to refer to Chinese men).
From this, we can see how ignorant this piece of garbage is. All Chinese people know that to tell a Shanghai person that he looks like a Shanghai man is not to compliment him. On the contrary, it is probably a compliment to say that he does not look like a Shanghai man.
Ignorance will not stop him from bullshitting. He said, "All of the misfortunes in China are blamed upon someone else. China always has to find someone else to blame. It is the same from the national chairman to the ordinary people. Generally speaking, Chinese people are completely ignorant of their society and they are uninterested in learning about it."
This is risible! This is so risible!
But what makes it intolerable for me is that this piece of garbage deliberately hurt the feelings of the Chinese national feelings in his class and he openly spoke to divide China.
As everybody knows, on the 15th of this month, Japanese prime minister Koizumi will visit the Yasukuni Shrine once more and thereby draw strong protests from China and many Asian countries. But this piece of garbage openly wrote on his blog on August 17 to denigrate the nationalistic feelings of the Chinese people!
He wrote: "I can understand the anger of the ancestors of these Chinese students. But they have never been hurt by the Japanese." He mentioned that in a Tongjie University class, he asked a student, "It's been sixty years already. Why are you so angry?" He said that on one hand, it is the result of the Chinese government manipulating the emotions of the people; on the other hand, he also said, "China loves its pain; dancing with their pain is romantic to the Chinese."
The whole world knows that Germany has done better than Japan on reflecting on the war. But an American Jewish professor friend of mind will not use any German products. Sixty years have gone by. Why couldn't he forget? Perhaps this was due to the manipulation of his emotions by the American government?
In the essay "The two fatal flaws of the Chinese people," I praised the Israelis for "hunting down the Nazis" at all costs and then finally sending them to hang on the Israelis' own gallows. If a small nation can do that, then what has big China done? If the Chinese people can deal with the Japanese militarists like the Israelis dealt with the Nazis, the Japanese would have apologized to us a long time ago and they would not dream of going to any Yasukuni Shrine.
So that was how this piece of garbage criticized the Chinese people for over-reacting. This piece of garbage seemed to have forgotten that his home country once suffered under the Nazi bombings.
For this reason, I am making a solemn call here: Let us learn from the Israelis and let our compatriots act together on this Internet hunt to find this foreign trash until we kick him out of China.
He even dared to openly engaged in activities to divide China. For example, he once asked a student from Xinjiang: "Is Xinjiang really a part of China?" At the same time, he told his students any number of times: "Taiwan is really an independent country."
Conversely, I have to say that I must thank this piece of garbage. I thank this piece of garbage for writing out his experiences and thoughts so directly. For the Chinese women as well as the Chinese men, this is lively and hard-to-find education material!
What is his assessment of the Chinese women who offered themselves to let him satisfy his sexual desire? He wrote: "These girls are all easy girls. 90% of the men on this planet will take advantage of them."
A netizen asked him, "You take advantage of these naive Chinese girls. Don't you feel disgusted with yourself?" He replied: "Of course it is disgusting. But it is a lot of fun for me, just like it is a lot of fun for the millions of men like myself."
He said frankly that he thinks China is paradise. He said, "I also think about the people -- such as myself -- who live this type of decadent life, but this is not a grave mistake. We treat this place as paradise."
In order to illustrate how common the phenomenon of foreign men dallying with Chinese women is, he offered an example: "He was once eating at a restaurant and there were some foreign men and women at the next table. He accidentally overhead one of the men boasting to the others about how many Chinese women he has dallied with, including three at the same time."
He gloated: "It is very difficult for western women here. Someone like me will not even glance at a western woman. I treat them as if they are invisible. They don't exist."
Why? He explained that there are two reasons. "First, the western women are too smart and heady, and they will never believe in our bullshit. They know only too well what we are made of. Second, it is sex. Chinese women are sexier and more attractive than western women."
This undisguised disclosure of the mind is too shocking! Chinese women, have you all read this!?
On one hand, as a scholar and a man, I have relentlessly and directly criticized Chinese men, because I am one of them. On the other hand, I have always been reticent with respect to Chinese women, which included our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters.
But after reading this piece of garbage's blog today, I must ask these Chinese women, "What is the matter with you?"
I know that many of you don't understand what it is like outside of China and you don't realize that there are such pieces of garbage among foreign men. Amongst all this, there is one girl who heard that this piece of garbage mentioned that he has a blog and suspected that he has other girls; so she found this blog through some Internet searches and read how the details of her lovemaking with this foreigner has been told to the public. And she also finds out that the foreigner does not love her. Meanwhile, none of the other women know about this.
I can understand that some women do this for the money and others do this in order to be able to go overseas. But, our female compatriots, when you make friends with foreigners, please always remember this: Are you willing to be the female star in a pornographic blog?
Do not let others play with your body first, and then with your dignity.
I also have something to tell the Chinese men: Please think about how these foreign trash have dallied with your sisters and made fun of your impotence. Do you want to say that this is no big deal? Do you still want to treat the foreigners as important? Do you still quiver when you see foreigners? Please straighten out your backbones.
What a tremendous shame this has been!
What ever happened to the Chinese people today? Why do we elevate the English language so high? According to professor Zhong of the Huadong Normal University, some Chinese elementary and secondary schools even require their students to sing the Chinese national anthem in English.
This type of popular sentiment objectively creates a huge demand for foreign language teachers. Precisely because of this huge demand gap, many educational departments and organizations lower their requirements for the foreign teachers, sometimes with even no requirements as long as the person is a foreigner. Due to the low threshold, a large number of foreign trash who cannot survive at home come to China.
This piece of garbage admits in his blog: "Foreign language teaching is something that a westerner who has no skills or unwilling to do anything else can do. In China, there are many good and caring foreign language teachers, but there is also a large number like me (garbage)."
In western countries, a teacher is a respected professional, especially in universities. This is not something that anyone can do. Therefore, many foreigners who don't understand the Chinese situation are surprised. How can a piece of garbage who cannot find any employment at home come to China and become a teacher, even a university teacher. What kind of country is China?
Especially this piece of garbage, who is in the business of an engineer of the soul, and the engineer of the soul of our elites!
I am a researcher in psychology. There is only one reason why this piece of garbage would meticulously and laboriously write out his bedtime dalliances, and that is because he is a pervert. We ask whether such a pervert can be a teacher? And he claims to be a university teacher, at Fudan University, Jiaotong University, Tongjie University and Shanghai Foreign Studies University.
The Chinese women that he dallied with are his students. Outside of China, relationships between teachers and students are strictly prohibited. But this piece of garbage used his status as teacher to deceive his inexperienced female students. We ask how such a beast can be a teacher?
He deliberately disseminated speeches to divide China and he denigrated the nationalistic emotions of the Chinese people. He said that Chinese men are sexually impotent, and they are made from the same mold of unmatched dullness. He said that the Chinese people know nothing about their own society and history. We ask how such a megalomaniac can be a teacher?
Our relevant departments really ought to step in!
There are presently many Chinese compatriots, men and women inside and outside China, going to his blog to refute and denounce him. But I can tell everybody that the more attention that you pay to a pervert like this, the more active he will become. There is only one thing to do and that is to kick him out of China. Compatriots, we can no longer let "the Chinese universities give him a livelihood, the Chinese women satisfy him and the Chinese men give him entertainment."
Here is our action plan: In order to kick this piece of garbage out of China, the deed must be carried out by the relevant departments in Shanghai. In order for the relevant departments to take action, the media must intercede. My media friend tells me that the media needs a news "lead" in order to intercede. Therefore, the first step is to create an opinion wave on the Internet to create a happening so that the traditional media such as newspapers and television can have a 'lead' on this matter.
Phase One (From today to early September)
During this phase, will various compatriot netizens please send this essay to all your friends via email and then ask your friends to send to all their friends? After sending this out five times, this may reach everyone who owns a computer in China. Through the forums and blogs, we will let more people (especially Chinese women) know about this affair. Since the affair occurred within the universities, we ask that this to be posted at all the university BBS's in Shanghai.
Only letting all the Chinese women know about this affair can have a truly educational effect. By reducing the number of that kind of Chinese women, we can destroy this kind of ugly foreigners. Otherwise, we get rid of one piece of garbage but many more pieces of garbage will come.
Phase Two (Early September to Mid September)
We let the Shanghai (and even the national) media pay attention to this affair and apply pressure to the relevant departments in Shanghai. With sufficient pressure, I believe that this piece of garbage can be kicked out of China. My goal is to kick him out of China before National Day!
How To Find Him?
In his blog, he mentions the following information that will help us track down this piece of garbage. British, born in the year of the dog, the name is possibly Brian. He says that he has been an English language teacher at Fudan University, Tongjie University, Shanghai Foreign Studies University and Jiaotong University, but it more likely that he is at Jiaotong University. He is accustomed to writing down his MSN email address at the end of the course and encouraging everybody (actually, it is the female students) to contact him via MSN.
The first female that he dallied with is named Tingting. She is a married doctor from Wuxi. Lucy is from a wealthy northern family and says that her family spends more money on the dog than the nanny. Ceecee is a Shanghainese who majors in Anglo-American literature at the Shanghai Foreign Studies University.
The most valuable hint is that he went to the Tianping Hotel with a female student and the room has no window. Everybody knows that very few hotel rooms have no window (I have never encountered a windowless room). When I went to check at the Tianping Hotel, they really did not have any windowless rooms. He went with a female student twice to the Boxueliu, with the room number being 418 one time. He also went many times with various women to dine at the Japanese restaurant Le Garçon Chinois at Maoming Road.
If people think that there is a foreign language teacher who fits these descriptions, or otherwise find valuable clues, please leave a comment at my blog or contact me directly via email.
Netizens and compatriots, if you are a Chinese man with guts and if you respect Chinese women, please join this "Internet hunt for the immoral foreigner"! Let us act together!
I believe in the power of the Internet, because I believe in the power of the Chinese people!
Related Links:
(Associated Press) Chinese Internet users hunt author of racy blog, but alleged authors claim a hoax. August 31, 2006.
Chinese Internet users are raging against the anonymous author of a blog they say insulted China with its purported accounts of a British teacher's sexual exploits among Shanghai women. However, a person responding to an e-mail to a contact address on the site said the authors were a group of performance artists who had fabricated its content as an investigation into online vigilante behavior.
"We did not anticipate quite the level of anger this would raise," said the message, which said the authors behind the cyber name "Chinabounder" included a British man, an Australian woman, two Chinese men and a Japanese woman. The message said the blog had been closed out of concern for the safety of the group's Chinese members and ordinary expatriates in Shanghai.
The English-language blog, called "Sex and Shanghai," was inaccessible Thursday, but a cached page could be read through the Google search engine. Along with mildly lurid accounts of dates with Chinese women, it contained irreverent comments about Chinese society, and some on the controversy generated by the blog.
Critics of the blog had demanded that "Chinabounder" be unmasked and kicked out of China.
"Chase down the foreign scoundrel on the Internet," Zhang Jiehai, a professor of psychology at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, wrote in an essay posted on his own Chinese-language blog. "We need to find this foreign filth and kick him out of China," Zhang wrote.
Numerous reader postings on Zhang's blog supported his call for a manhunt, often in highly profane terms. "This kind of garbage, chop his head off," wrote one who signed as "sanipuga." "Pardon me, but I think these women are also garbage, national scum," said another, signed "Jiehuo."
(McClatchy Washington Bureau) In China, Internet vigilantes stir up electronic lynch mobs. By Tim Johnson. September 6, 2006.
It all began with a Shanghai psychologist outraged at the Internet postings of a foreign English teacher boasting of his sexual conquests of Chinese women.
"This piece of garbage must be found and kicked out of China!!!" Zhang Jiehai, a member of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, wrote on his Web diary.
Soon, Zhang's angry essays ricocheted from one Web site to another, routinely gathering 100,000 viewers, amid spiraling calls for a campaign to out the anonymous Internet womanizer.
Late last week, names surfaced on the Internet. Students at English schools in Shanghai started pointing at teachers. Apparently wary that violence would erupt against unsuspecting foreigners, Zhang this week backed off his demands to root out the blogger.
The case of the foreign writer, who goes by the Internet name "Chinabounder," is only the latest example of Internet vigilantes stirring up mobs to ferret out those they see as acting improperly. Already this year, Internet users tracked down and harassed a college student blamed for having an affair with a married woman and identified a model caught on videotape crushing a kitten with her stiletto heel as a perverse publicity stunt.
What made the cases similar were cascading denunciations on the Internet that have drawn comparisons with mob behavior during the Cultural Revolution, the chaotic period in the late 1960s and early 1970s when Red Guards tormented people they viewed as insufficiently loyal to Mao Zedong.
Such vigilante attitudes aren't isolated to China. Complaints of electronic lynch mobs are also soaring in South Korea, the most wired nation in the world. A 30-year-old man became a national hate figure last year when online vigilantes accused him of driving his girlfriend to suicide. In another case, a photo posted to the Internet of a woman who failed to clean up after her dog on a subway led to an Internet hunt for her.
In a bid to halt online harassment, Seoul announced in July that it would require Internet users to undergo identity checks and use their real names when posting to popular Web sites. The regulations go before the National Assembly next year.
Some of the Internet manhunts build a great deal of momentum. China now has 123 million Internet users.
Social scientists note that Chinese have few venues for expressing opinions, so they often vent on the Internet, shielding themselves with anonymity but quickly joining in nationalistic or moralistic online crusades.
"If you judge this phenomenon with Western values, it is definitely a primitive custom that we should get rid of. However, most Chinese people think it right to beat the thieves or expose the names of the individuals who are regarded as evil," said Yu Changjiang, a sociologist at Peking University.
A popular Hong Kong commentator and blogger, Roland Soong, said the vast number of Internet viewings on the Shanghai blogger issue became "a phenomenon."
"It is something that everybody is talking about. The post is news. It shows up at all the major news portals," Soong said at a forum in Beijing Monday night.
As the Internet frenzy mounted, The Associated Press reported last week that the Web site was a hoax set up by a group of artists, including a British man, two Chinese men, an Australian woman and a Japanese woman. The blog, headlined "Sex In Shanghai: Western Scoundrel in Shanghai Tells All," is now closed to all except for friends of the blogger.
Some Chinese Internet users doubt that the blog is a hoax and continue the manhunt. For his part, Zhang backed off his campaign to "chase down the foreign scoundrel" and boot him from China. But he still updates his Chinese-language blog, "The Internet Hunt for an Immoral Foreigner."
"I do hope that no one innocent is dragged into the incident," the scholar said in an interview posted on the Sohu.com Web site. "How can you prove that a certain teacher has done it? ... It will go against my original purpose if we continue hunting like this."
Jeremy Goldkorn, creator of Chinese media blog Danwei, described the online frenzy of such cases as an "Internet swarm."
"There has been a definite rise of nationalist sentiment - `Oh, you dirty foreigners, evil vile pigs. Get out!' - those kind of things," Goldkorn said at the forum. But he added that the number of Chinese who take "a very reasonable position" on the issue is often overlooked.
Still, commentators voice concern about sudden, violent sentiments on the Web.
"Trial by virtual lynching has become the norm in China's cyberspace community," a commentator for the China Daily newspaper, Raymond Zhou, wrote in June after a previous massive Internet manhunt.
(SCMP) In search of 'a foreign scoundrel' By Raymond Li. February 11, 2007.
Zhang Jiehai, a professor, was behind a highly publicised vigilante campaign last year to hunt down an expatriate he described as a "foreign scoundrel on the internet". The purported English-language teacher, called Chinabounder, uses his "Sex and Shanghai" blog to recount his sexual exploits with Chinese women. However, the Shanghai-based sociologist told Raymond Li that he wasn't angry with the elusive blogger, but a sick society.Q: How did your online campaign to expose the so-called "promiscuous language teacher" start?
A: A female friend referred me to the "Sex and Shanghai" blog in August. The blogger claimed that he was a language teacher living on the mainland. At first, I was shocked by the graphic details and derogatory language he had used to describe his sexual conquests of Chinese women. While I felt disturbed, I said to myself that this guy did not force women to sleep with him. These women chose to give themselves away. There is no doubt that this guy is flawed, but also some people in this country are even more flawed.
But you did try to find the blogger - why?
I just wanted to let people know what was on the minds of some foreigners like him. I also wanted to tell those women that they might have thought they were being smart and could have gained something from sleeping with these foreigners, but these guys are even smarter and are only taking advantage of you and have nothing to lose.
Why did you respond so strongly to the blog?
The "Chinabounder" incident is not just about some lurid accounts of sexual encounters. It reflects how sick our society has become and the looming identity crisis people in this country are facing under the domination of western culture. Some people just can't wait to turn their backs on what their ancestors have passed down to them in favour of anything exotic. On top of that, I have a strong belief that all men are equal, and if for some reason we're not as better off or powerful as others, it doesn't mean we were born inferior.
Many people did not expect an academic to lead such an emotionally charged campaign. Do you worry about being labelled a nationalist?
At first I was very emotional when I started the online call, but what I tried to do was promote a rational view of ourselves and the outside world. I was labelled a nationalist when I offered some harsh views on foreigners living in China and then I was perceived as a follower of western culture when I criticised Chinese people and Chinese society in my essays. I am who I am. Besides, I don't think nationalism is a problem right now in China. If people sometimes overreact, that's because they're insecure and have low self-esteem. It's not an indication of nationalistic sentiment.
Were you upset when some started to question your motives after you failed to find the blogger?
I'm disappointed. But look, the blog may be just a pile of lies or an account of someone's sexual fantasies. But does that mean the things described will go away? On the contrary, they are actually happening in many big cities.
But you did publish a book.
Yes. But it was actually a collection of essays I wrote between 2005 and 2006 and only one third was dedicated to discussion of the "Sex and Shanghai" blog.
It's said that your book tries to offer a psychological analysis of Chinese society. What do you think is wrong with Chinese people?
We have to admit that the country has been less developed for the past century or so, and as a result, people easily fall in love with things from the west or anything exotic. They tend to look down on themselves and can't wait to embrace western values, particularly American culture, whole-heartedly. On top of that, they try to deny it.
Do you have a solution?
You've got to confront your low self-esteem and admit you have a problem. While we should admit that we are not as good as others in some aspects, we should not try to give up everything we have. Many aspects of our life are not comparable; cultures are unique in their own ways.
Would you act the same way if another "Sex and Shanghai" blog popped up?
Absolutely, because it would have far-reaching implications. I'm proud of making my voice heard to wake up the whole nation, and I think even if it hadn't been me, someone else would eventually have stood up to do the same.