Last night, my good friend, Edgar, sent me a clip on East-West relations. It rekindled some unfinished thoughts I jolted down when touring Australia years ago. Stereotypical and speculative it may seem, “Australian Accent” is a hasty sketch of a vast land with unique wildlife and landscape, and a people who are often the target of envy, puzzle or ridicule. I start with my exchange with Edgar (his in italic) and end with my travelogue, with a few clips to illustrate my points. Australian expats, if there are any in this forum, please treat mine as a weekend lampoon. Sometimes, only good friends would share naked truth.
My Friend,
I am very impressed by this man. But Australians have a very different view of China and Asia in general than Americans.
Best,
Edgar
http://asiasociety.org/video/asias-future-kevin-rudd-conversation-charlie-rose-complete
Dear Edgar,
I just finished watching the video you forwarded. Frankly, I'm not impressed with Kevin Rudd (former prime minister of Australia), both as a politician and intellectual. While his grasp of Chinese language and history, Australian geopolitical wedge between two major powers, and his intellect, enable him to see China's orientation and the forces that gravitates it in ways average Americans fail to see, his overall view and understanding of China is not on par with the seasoned strategists like Henry Kissinger or Zbig Brzezinsky. Rudd is deemed as an untrustworthy turncoat in China's political circle for his volatile temper and disposition. In the video, Rudd makes pained effort to project himself as a thoughtful, mild-mannered politician as well as a scholar with a good sense of humor. However, if you pay attention to his body language (tensed feet and shifty hands), a quite opposite figure emerges. I think he is a psychopath with inferiority complex disguised as a grand statesman. Harvard University and Asia Society invite him perhaps because he is the only western head of state who speaks Mandarin at a time when China's statue is increasing significantly, especially when America is entangled with multi-front adversaries. Charlie Rose's sequence of questions show how eager he (and the interests he represents) wants to know if China would come along with US in shaping future world. Rudd's reading of Xi Jing Ping and his agenda is somewhat on the mark, but that's just the stuff for general public consumption. I'm sure CIA analysts can offer more astute assessments on China than he does. Rudd’s outburst of frustration with certain pronunciation of Mandarin exposes his real face.
Take care,
Lostalley
Australian Accent
by Lostalley
I went to Australia in November, 2012. It is a wonderful country. Natural beauty aside, I find this gigantic island with its convict origin and redemption fever rather fascinating. Its ethnically Euro-American tendency and economically Pan-Asian dependency tend to give conflicting impressions in the eye of an outsider. Australians’ passion for environmental protection can only be matched by their obsession with alcoholic consumption. This seemingly paradoxical behavior, confusing at first, can be understood by empathizing as an ex-convict with a diehard habit (drinking) trying to come clean to redeem himself in a world full of suspicion and short of respect. Their heritage is Anglo-Scottish-Irish, but the latter's melancholy, artistic and intellectual traits are scantly visible in their Aussie cousins’ cultural pursuit, which appears to me rather crass and crude. A yet-to-clarify sentiment sneaked into my consciousness that this natural wonderland coined as the Lucky Country is both blessed and cursed. Geopolitically, as a buffer-zone between US and China, the choice between joining American military alliance for security and gaining Chinese economic benefits for prosperity is hard to make and even harder to keep. It occurs to me that Aussies may collectively suffer a well-masked but deep-rooted identity crisis. As I was driving along the winding path in the Giles Mountain in a rental car equipped with the right-side wheel (on left-lean road) and metric speedometer and road signs (in kilometer), Australia strikes me as an evolutionary hybrid between cultural Europe and physical Asia, like a fashionable tofu sandwich, edible but without brand recognition.
The geographical isolation that prevents a biological invasion also breeds a xenophobic alienation. My friend remarried a white Aussie named Darryl. She confided in me that Darryl dislikes Africans, Arabs, and to a lesser degree, Asians. "Why did you marry me then?" his pretty wife from Shanghai asked. "Because you're different from the rest", he reasoned. Such distinction may seem logical to the beneficiary, but can be dubious in the context of moral integrity. I found Darryl amicable, as we dined together at a nice waterfront restaurant, except when he subtly complained about the new immigrants. I was tempted to ask his thoughts on Australia’s poor treatment of the aboriginal in the past and present, but decided to refrain, as the Aussie sirloin steak I ordered was cooked to perfection, accompanied by a cool bottle of Sauvignon Blanc he brought, sitting silhouetted against a brilliant sunset of breezy Sydney Harbor. The rest of the evening slipped away rather dully until Darryl became animated when talking about his sole hobby, stock-trading, and how he made a small fortune by betting on some Australian mining companies who have been profiting in the last two decades by exporting to Asia, namely, China.
12/07/2012, Maryland
