I married an Asian woman I met at work. Our boss called me in to ask if I was serious about marrying her and I said yes. He asked if I wanted any advice and I sincerely answered that I did. Our marriage was necessarily disruptive because it meant that she would also defect. That would cause problems up and down the management chain. His advice was for me to learn how to use chopsticks. that’s it. Nothing else.
I spent months learning how to use them properly in secret and finally deployed my skills when I thought I was pretty good. She didn’t notice. I then realized she almost always used a fork. In high school and college their meals were always served hastily and the students always brought a fork or spoon. they would eat standing up and had maybe five minutes to get the job done. No time for chopsticks.
When her parents came out to visit us after we got married I frantically asked her advice about good chopstick etiquette. I very much did not wish to cause her to lose face. She didn’t give a flying fuck. I honestly think I married one of the freest spirits in Asia, which is not necessarily a compliment.
She said I was doing fine and literally refused to give me any feedback at all, incorrectly claiming she wasn’t even that good. In fact, I think she only started to resume using chopsticks because I ended up finding them useful and now far prefer them to silverware.
I ended up having to learn most of the customs by watching people in restaurants. Just learning how to set them down right took additional months because I noticed far too late that they set their chopsticks down in a sort of V shape which is much harder than one might expect. Also, I am left-handed, but taught myself to do it right handed on the theory of that would also help me not lose face in front of the in-laws. It turns out they are also highly unconventional and probably didn’t care about my chopstick use one way or the other.
When we had kids, I would learn that Asian children who don’t learn to use chopsticks represent another way to lose face. It results in titanic power struggles within the family and makes everyone miserable. It’s a little like forcing kids here in the USA to eat their vegetables. By this time I had learned of her disinterest, so neither of us bothered to teach them. All of our children naturally picked it up with no apparent effort, including one who is very severely developmentally disabled.
I feel like a lot of this is culture and class specific. I can't speak for Japan, but in China there are at least as many different levels of chopstick-using skill as anywhere in the west. Kids and elderly who can't pick up a peanut or a cherry tomato, people who find it entirely unproblematic to stab a slippery dumpling, people who think it's stupid to waste time trying to get fried rice into your mouth with chopsticks and just grab a spoon instead, people who dredge their way through the hotpot to find the treat they're looking for...
I often get the sense that foreigners getting stressed about (or feeling pride in) how well they use chopsticks is a weird kind of orientalism. Because, like, who cares if someone shows up in a western restaurant and uses a spoon instead of knife to saw through something, or grabs a big hunk with a fork and takes a bite, leaving the rest on the fork? Maybe you wouldn't do it if you were having dinner with the queen, but any other context nobody cares. I'm sure parents still try to teach their kids to eat polite way, and maybe even feel a bit embarrassed if their kids show themselves to be less well-behaved than the neighbors', but that's a universal thing so, eh.
lol describing me as an Orientalist will amuse my family to no end but you made some cogent observations. All I can say is: face is a big thing in China. I respect my in-laws hugely. I did not want them to lose face nor to be made to feel uncomfortable on my behalf if I could help it. As far as I can tell Orientalism and pride had nothing to do with it. Or maybe you’re right and I am a deeply closeted chiaboo. I’ll watch some anime or whatever and get right back to you.
The thing I find interesting with orientalism is that it has a mirror in chauvinism from the other direction, both sides reinforcing the idea that there is something special about the cultural norms of people from East Asia in particular. It's almost as if there is a deliberate effort to reify cultural differences in a way that feels counterproductive.
I think these forces are especially noticeable living as a migrant to this part of the world, in that you sometimes find people gushing over you for being able to use what is actually a pretty unremarkable set of utensils or occasionally shitting on you for not knowing an obscure bit of etiquette that locals rarely perform. Either way it's just another form of the "western people like this, Chinese people like that" discourse which at best is vapid and at worst straight-up racist. I don't think it really helps to build a common sense of humanity.
Anyway, I feel like this kind of article is representative of the problem, in that it serves to create anxiety that there is some secret etiquette that must be performed in order to not be seen as an uncultured barbarian. Again, I have no experience with Japan so maybe they really are just That Damn Serious about how they use their chopsticks, but I doubt it. At least for me it was quite reassuring to find that - outside of the folks who really did hold chauvinist and/or racist views - most people in China cared no more about how I ate than how anyone else ate, and that the range of what was socially acceptable eating for all people was wide enough to make it clear that these sorts of articles tend to be either deliberately divisive or out-of-touch.
> it was quite reassuring to find that - outside of the folks who really did hold chauvinist and/or racist views - most people in China cared no more about how I ate than how anyone else ate
OK I agree completely. You will see atrocious manners in an average bar there. But my in-laws are brilliant scientists and thoughtful, gracious people. My mother in law is my hero. If I can reduce any friction in her life I will. Likewise when they visited us they were always closely observant of my behavior.
I think some of what you are characterizing as chauvinism or Orientalism is what I view as courtesy? I could very well be wrong on that one or misinterpreting you.
I think the confusion may be in a situation (regardless of culture) where one knows that a loved one’s family has a high regard for courtesy and manners, and you’re willing and eager to please them, sometimes this desire could be mistaken by others for an obsession or “reification” of the specific culture of the family.
I have enjoyed the politeness of the comments from you both and appreciate your courtesy!
First off, it's just hard. Sorry you have to go through it.
What's worked unfailingly for me for the 40+ years since I became an adult was always having long term habits that moved my life forward. I had no guidance on the big stuff, so from about age 12 I methodically taught myself about programming, sculpting a career, investment, running a business, running a household, being funny, being a man, etc. All years-long efforts. (If I had to do it all again I'd replace one of those with a martial art.)
So I had something to work on instead of lapsing into depression during very dark times. If you met me the last thing you would imagine is that chicks dig me, but they do. I'm not good looking by any standards. But building these skills created a person that people know can get things done at a pretty high level. People like a confident dude, and that will probably serve you much better than spending an ungodly amount of time on Hinge.
don't thinkpads from the similar time go for the same amount of money? seems like an alright price for a machine of that vintage, although thinkpad is obviously superior here since it would always be able to run linux or windows (well that one is not guaranteed) without much, if any, trouble
Not the OP, but I have an M1 MBA and it handles light "coding" stuff quite well, though haven't tried VSCode+Zoom+bunch of other stuff, as my work laptop is a M1 MBP.
Please take this question at face value. I tend to be slightly pro defense department in this context, but it is not a strongly held belief.
What I have known is that since its very inception, Google has been doing massive amounts of business with the war department. What makes this particular contract different? I really am trying to understand why these sentiments now.
It's a clear enough moral issue that whichever side of it you end up on is likely to have life-shaping consequences 5 or 10 years down the line. It's predictable that there will be domestic or international conflict with a high cost in lives and political coherence over that timescale, and being someone who 'was in AI' at a government scale vendor is qualitatively different from being a database admin o font designer or UX specialist.
Substantively, individual employees of these firms may have little or no actual impact on this. But AI is ubiquitous enough and disruptive enough that being professionally connected with it at a time of great geopolitical instability has the potential to be a very very bad look later.
No, because 'military contractor' is vague and people don't associate logistics or mapping info with death directly and assign responsibility to some generic person in uniform. 'AI systems that hunt down and kill you' is the sort of sci-fi nightmare people relate to personally.
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