MCLC: 'no Japanese, Filipinos, Vietnamese, or dogs' (1,2)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Magnus Fiskesjo <magnus.fiskesjo at cornell.edu>
Subject: 'no Japanese, Filipinos, Vietnamese, or dogs' (1)
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Good news: There is a sizable healthy counterreaction to the racist
signage in Beijing, among the Chinese public:

http://www.tuoitrenews.vn/cmlink/tuoitrenews/international/beijing-restaura
nt-s-xenophobic-sign-ignites-online-fury-1.99068

(This from the Vietnamese paper Tuoi Tre, featuring comments from the
original photographer Rose Tang and longtime Beijing journalist Paul
Mooney).

However, I am also being reminded that the racist-dehumanizing tactic of
comparison to dogs has a long history and has been rather widespread in
recent years, in similar signage and in demonstrations etc., both against
the Japanese, but sometimes also against other non-Chinese.

Curiously, it reminds me of the way the Japanese in the 1940s tried to
incite traditional Chinese-style contempt among their occupied Chinese for
Americans and Britons by writing banners denouncing them with their
Chinese characters (Ying and Mei) with the dog radical, as had been done
in Chinese with the Chinese names for so many 'barbarian' neighbours in
China's history -- (I wrote about this --briefly-- in my article "The
animal other" in the _Social Text_ special issue on "China and the Human"
in 2011).

ps. --I am always interested in more news and observations from the
Chinese human-animal (as well as human--semi-human) front. I am currently
teaching about how genocide and war is orchestrated, and this element of
dehumanization is key, of course, in the run-up to such horrors and
figures interestingly in human-animal relations too.

sincerely,

Magnus Fiskesjö

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From: Moore, O.J. <O.J.Moore at hum.leidenuniv.nl>
Subject:  'no Japanese, Filipinos, Vietnamese, or dogs' (2)

In October 2011 in Yangzhou I saw a chalkboard inside a dumpling shop (not
on the street - but it was raining so I wonder if it had been brought in
to save the text being rinsed off by the weather) stating in Chinese the
business' refusal to accept Japanese custom. I did not see the "policy"
enforced. This was on Dongguan jie, a thriving tourist street/progressing
architectural recreation, but at that time of year few tourists were
about. I talked to the owner. He would state no personal reason for his
antipathy, but asserted that Japan humiliates/has humiliated China.