Chinglishness

Hi to Shirazi, my newest commenter! I'd add this as a followup comment myself, but being here in Mother China I can't actually comment on my own blog because that gets the censors' knickers in a twist. But hey, it gets your name mentioned on the front page, so it's probably all worth it. On the subject of my Chinese-ness. Well...that's a thorny one. I'm actually English, though I've lived in New Zealand for several years too and been in and out of China four times now.* Usually when I'm in NZ I feel more Chinese than I do when I'm in China, for the obvious reason that the Chineseness is so much more in-your-face over here. Sure, there are lots of Chinese in New Zealand, but that's just a small cross-section of Chinese society, the ones rich and daring enough to strike out into another country. In short, hardly typical of most Chinese. On a related note, most of the Americans here in Shanghai have a very blue-state mentality, thank Goddess.

*If you count Taiwan as part of China. And being here in Shanghai I find it's usually a good idea to follow the one-China policy, whether I really believe in it or not. Just to be on the safe side...

In short, I'm a little ethnically confused, though no longer in so much denial about my Englishness.* Some of my Chinese classmates from university actually thought I was a Qing dynasty prince in a former life.

*Which I'll try to tackle in another post. That's a long story...

Incidentally, I can communicate in Chinese at probably an intermediate level. Of course, I could be much better if I spent more time studying and less time blogging.