Status Updates From Mr Ma and Son

Il razzismo spiegato con due domande fondamentali: «Ma voglio dirti una cosa. Ogni volta che pensi a lei chiediti: “Mi considera un essere umano, anche se sono cinese?”. E naturalmente ti darai la risposta giusta: “Se non mi considera essere umano, si può parlare di amore?”

Interrompo nuovamente Perec e inzio questo perché, come è già avvenuto, l'altro libro è troppo ingombrante per essere portato dietro fra treni e bici varie!

this book is SO FUCKING GOOD!!!!! making me rethink the colonial triangulation (quadrangulation?????) between China/HK, Mexico, the US and the UK at the turn of the century. it’s laugh out loud funny in the same way that it is also horrifying. answering a lot of my questions abt British Chinese political conscience and history, framed through a Chinese expat’s perspective so it’s hitting extra

The first part of this book gave me a shred of hope that everything would turn out okay-ish for the Ma's, but every chapter in the second so far has been incredibly hard to read. It's just devastating. Of all the postcolonial literature I think this is the first one that makes me feel genuine hatred for the British.

oh ma wei is sooo me!!!

catherine <333333

ma wei is even more delusional than me…

ehm the blatant xenophobia of the wendells??? 😀😀

It’s easy to read, but not exactly gripping

tutta colpa del capitalismo

think i just spoiled it by checking the amount i have left 🙁🙁🙁🙁🙁

low-key wanna finish this today

it’s telling a lot as to how lao’s satire is still applicable today. expect its not just london now, but the whole globe that criticises china with a similar rhetoric. how the japanese (and now koreans) are seen as the more smart and civilised ones (yet are still called names) whereas the chinese…they’ve always been characterised as the barbaric “ones.”

bro the characters in this book are so frustrating

progress is slow but steady

A large part of the evening paper is devoted to horseracing and football results, and these people buy a copy – at nine o’clock in the morning – to check whether they’ve won or not. When they see they’ve lost, they purse their lips and read a bit of the anti-foreign news to make themselves feel better.

Yes, the character he’d written meant ‘beautiful’, but when Mrs Wedderburn had embroidered it, she’d done it upside down, and the ‘beautiful’ now looked like the three characters ‘big’, ‘king’ and ‘eight’ – the ‘big’ standing on its head – which together mean ‘big bastard’. He burst out laughing. Never since coming to England had he had such a good chuckle.

‘It’s no good you sticking up for the Chinese, Mum. If they weren’t so horrible, why would all the Chinese in films and plays and books be murderers or arsonists or rapists?’

At last, when she’d finished getting ready, she went and seated herself quietly in the drawing room, taking out a copy of De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater to read, so that when her Chinese guests arrived, she’d have a suitable topic of conversation ready.

Newspaper vendors, flower vendors and cigarette vendors glided their trolleys about in solemn silence: English people approach buying and selling with the same air as they approach funerals.

Things are moving slowly over here...

Oh I do love Mr Ma, he is a ridiculous sort but really quite adorable!

The more things change the more they stay the same, the character traits of Chinese and British people seem to still stand up nowadays. Lao She had a knack for noticing the negatives of both cultures but still making light of them! Though he may be disappointed in the way things haven't changed.

The characters flip flop on whether or not they are racist against Chinese people. It changes from morning to night.

Been reading it all evening and really finding the dialogue and observations quite witty. Until the last chapter when the author pontificates very obviously in the voice of a character about his perceived flaws about China and England of the time. It seems quite jarring as it comes at a right angle to the rest of the story.

Wow can some people be prejudiced or what? I do think there is still a tendency in some to think of people not of your race as somehow inferior. I have witnessed it many times living here in China happening both ways. But nothing compared to how some of these characters are treated!

Also, a very witty book so far!

This should be recommended reading for anybody coming to live and work in China.

"Yes, the character he'd written meant 'beautiful', but when Mrs. Wedderburn had embroidered it, she'd done it upside down, and the 'beautiful' now looked like the three characters 'big', 'king' and 'eight' - the 'big' standing in its head - which together mean 'big bastard'. [Mr. Ma] burst out laughing. "

Reading this and seeing how similar an experience they are having in London as I have had in Beijing is interesting. Like being stared at, registering at the police station... I'm sure I'll find more similarities the more I read.

"If one knows in one's heart something to be good or not, then that is quite sufficient! What's the point in saying it out loud? "