A White Person Wrote ‘Why Anyone Can Be Chinese,’ And It’s A Checklist In Privilege

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, pretty much everything that comes to mind other than the button knots thing sounds like something that would make him look extremely silly if he wore it in public. In China or elsewhere. It sort of makes me take him less seriously because it makes him sound like the Chinese version of a stereotypical weeaboo in Japan instead of a serious scholar of Political Science.

I've been wondering why people aren't calling him out exactly like this. Is that because he's trying to be 'Chinese' across the spectrum of culture and social thought rather than focusing narrowly on a slice of culture like Japanophile 'weeaboos'?

[ray245]

I think he might be referring to shirts like this.

[Ralin]

Kinda begs the question of what 'Chinese-style clothing' means when it's different from the clothing most Chinese people wear.

[AniThyng]

Yeah, pretty much everything that comes to mind other than the button knots thing sounds like something that would make him look extremely silly if he wore it in public. In China or elsewhere. It sort of makes me take him less seriously because it makes him sound like the Chinese version of a stereotypical weeaboo in Japan instead of a serious scholar of Political Science.

I've been wondering why people aren't calling him out exactly like this. Is that because he's trying to be 'Chinese' across the spectrum of culture and social thought rather than focusing narrowly on a slice of culture like Japanophile 'weeaboos'?

It's probably worth noting at this point that actual Chinese in China are probably going to be more amused than offended by his attitude, while the converse would be so for Western diasporic Chinese (that care about this kind of thing)

[Ziggy Stardust]

I think he might be referring to shirts like this.

Isn't that just as bad? Although that style of shirt is often referred to as having a "Mandarin collar" (since similar cuts of shirt were worn by Mandarins in Imperial China), it is not really a distinctly and uniquely Chinese thing (in fact, it is often also called a "Nehru collar", since it is similar to a traditional Indian garb called a sherwani; and similar styles of shirt are the traditional garb of many Greek and Eastern Orthodox clergy). Unless there is some extra significance to a Mandarin collar in Chinese culture of which I am not aware, wearing clothes like that to be more "authentically Chinese" sounds like the type of fetishism usually associated with Victorian-era Orientalism.