The China Expert: Myth or Misnomer?

I’ll save you the suspense – the China Expert, a dime a dozen due to their ubiquity and self-conferred status, is both a myth and a misnomer. I only tell you this because now that it’s time to fill Josh’s shoes, literally elevens or twelves but literarily Shaq-size, the prospect of coming off a self-styled China Expert gnaws at my vitals.

China’s foreigners are rarely long-rooted. So once tired of the mandatory get-to-know-you query, “How long’ve ya been in China?”, I stopped asking and started listening. Without fail, a foreigner’s broad pronouncements on all things Chinese, and actual time in the country, comprised an inverse ratio of Euclidian precision. But despite the China Expert’s vast store of advice and opinion, gleaned from a tour or two or a year or two in hearts of darkness such as Shanghai and Beijing, math is seldom his province.

Which is not to say, “Avoid China Experts.” They have immense value in livening up otherwise dull bar crawls and mixers, their outrageous predictions and anecdotal observations providing great party fodder. They’re also handy as a measure of your own wisdom, which waxes as your desire to debate the China Expert wanes. The smug smiles of his listeners, heartened to hear their unripe viewpoints confirmed, may haunt you forever though. But who doesn’t like a good China story? Heck, I’ve got one of my own.

Fate, fortune, and the merciless Beijing winter once drove me to China’s mildest climes, Southern Yunnan Province. Ironically and thankfully, the Elysian expanse between Kunming and the Burma border, far more evocative of “Shangrila” than the actual yak-crossing to its north, has been only mildly bruised by the past few tumultuous decades. The crummy little bus-stop cities marring the green hills and red earth are no more than dead skin cells on an otherwise thriving organism. Ergo, the appearance of a foreigner in these regions is cause for much excitement and instruction.

“Foreigners aren’t very tall,” I heard from a doorway, after wandering out of a bus station and into town for some restored circulation. Taken aback, I drew myself up to a full 1.75 meters, no giant in this age of hormone-injected cows but no dwarf either, and continued on. “Look, a foreigner!” I soon heard from an unabashedly excited little boy, followed by, “Why aren’t his eyes blue?” A smile was all the encouragement his friends needed, and I was soon mobbed, for autographs, of all things. The village elders soon hobbled over, but maintained a dignified distance, although close enough for me to catch their comments. “What is he wearing a coat for? Foreigners must have thin blood,” one crone observed, the possibility that I was in transit from locations which had winters undreamed of in her philosophy. I only sorted the meaning of their comments from their dialect because each one was repeated as others arrived, each time with growing conviction.

I got back on the bus more bemused than anything else. I was something of a China Expert back then, so I soon concluded that rural Chinese were obtuse and eager to squeeze people into over-simplified categories. Sorry to say, I didn’t have a chance to laugh at myself until months later. A sophisticated Canadian gentleman [double oxymoron?] was holding forth to a large table of diners, in a booming voice that carried easily to the rafters. Peking duck paled on the board next to poutine, and Canada was the real ascending economic superpower, Chinese GDP growth be damned. But it was only his claim that Chinese Canadians mostly stuck to Vancouver and Toronto, because their blood was too thin for the Great White North, which jogged my memory. Had I a certificate of China Expertise at the time I would have set it on fire, and offered to light the Canuck’s smelly pipe with it.

I say let the sun set on this Age of Experts. Or, to quote Marshall McLuhan, “Specialization is for insects.” Now, don’t throw away your microscopes just yet, microbiologists delving into recombinant pathological DNA structures. Worker ants like you, we need. You are truly experts, learning more and more about less and less for the benefit of mankind. As for the dung beetles who consider China a narrow enough field for specialization, may your balls of excrement soon dry, decompose, and fertilize richer minds. As for this China Amateur, my viewpoints are intended only for entertainment purposes.

Related posts:

1. The China Expert: Myth or Misnomer?
2. China Briefing’s China Business Guides

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