Dashan Recommends chinaSMACK on Sina Weibo

I’ve spent 9 months working 13 hour days, 6 days a week to concurrently build 2 large scale 3D MMORPGS, make sure the servers don’t chew through one thousand yuan a minute of bandwidth, make sure the 3d artists know how to use their tools, that the programmers actually know how to use the engine and that nobody does a half-arse job that looks right for a certain short term task and breaks when used in a slightly different way.

So, I’m asked to talk to investors about our technology strategy. I ask our head of business for advice on how to present it. His response was:
大家都喜欢大山，很幽默而且中文非常流利，像大山就好。你来说中文会特别牛逼。

That’s what’s wrong with Da Shan, it’s not that Mark Rowswell is a douche, he’s probably a great guy. It’s just Da Shan’s name is always on the tip of everyone’s toungues whenever they ask for the monkey dance.

fabulous, can you speak Mandarin? Or any language other than English?

I thin that often happens to people who become so fluent in another language. and maybe his mouth moves that way because he’s not the most handsome man.

ive spoken spanish and english my whole life but since i rarely speak spanish for some years, and had started to learn mandarin a year ago so as to speak three languages, i forgot how to speak spanish now. sometimes if i try to say something in spanish, i end up mistakenly mixing mandarin in.

so maybe he is speaking chinese so much that he’s forgetting english :)

Peter! I’m touched!

Hah, I was half-expecting a homoerotic joke after posting that but well-played. I’m flattered that you can find common ground with me nonetheless.

@anon – interesting, I totally whiffed on the homoerotic possibility, but that’s probably because I’m too old now for sexual double-entendres.

Just for the record, I find masses of common ground with you. I’d guesstimate I agree with 95% of what you have to say. Obviously (to everyone here, I think) you’re intelligent, sophisticated, educated, fair, considerate of others, a special person. I’d be very interested (and proud) to know you better and even test out friendship (but not homo-erotic, I was never into that).

My beef with you is that you want to sort everyone here out. You are like a mother hen, pecking and fussing around the foibles and misguided thinking of her chicks. It’s probably that I’m a bit (a lot?) like that too, that so annoys me about some of your posts (you know, the old projection-as-therapy maneuver). For example, that ridiculous interchange you started with Elijah a few posts back.

Often, phrases you use, the ways you refer to people and things, just scream a certain superior attitude that really vexes almost everyone. You probably are superior, but you have to give others enough credit for working that out for themselves, not spoon-feed it to them (just as novelists are adjured to “show not tell”). But that probably won’t change until you get compassion, a feeling change within, equally as massive as the intellectual progress your soul has already made. Apologies if this is all a bit much, these little boxes are a poor substitute for an evening and a beer.

Haha, you must’ve known I was going out of my way to take the piss out of Elijah as I’m sure you acknowledge that both of you have dog-piled me in the past, jumping in to attack me when someone else is. You and I have had ridiculous exchanges before as well. That’s why you and Elijah find a measure of kinship with each other, right?

Anyway, yes, I know how some of you guys see me. The reason that doesn’t bother me is because there are tons of comments and people I DON’T “sort out”. I trust you know where I typically stand, and you know how many comments are on here that I’d probably find disagreeable, yet you don’t see me harping on them all or even a significant percentage. That’s why I feel I’m justified in concluding that you see me subjectively due to past arguments having impacted you guys personally, rather than an objective assessment I should worry my self-image over.

I do think you’re absolutely right about showing instead of telling and I recognize that fault and shortcoming in me. I’m not very good at the Socratic method or the soft-touch. In my defense, however, I don’t believe I give innocent people a hard time and I’m compassionate to those who show they’re reasonable and compassionate themselves.

Good effort. Using “penultimate” instead of “second” (in a three paragraph comment) probably falls into “phrases” that “just scream a certain superior attitude”. That’s an example of why I don’t take your judgement of me that seriously.

As for your link, you linked to your own comment. How is that not personal involvement? If you’re wondering why I didn’t respond, I simply didn’t see it.

My response is that your comment doesn’t make sense. I wasn’t outraged at that fellow who walked past the kid in the snow. I was pointing out the lack of righteous indignation directed at that guy by the commentariat here who is normally so quick to jump on Chinese bystanders. Yet when its a white American, no one makes a peep despite their outrage at what the kid is subjected to, crying as he shivers in the cold. I was making an observation of the hypocrisy by us, the readers and commenters of this site.

You also quote me out of context, which you like doing (perhaps not intentionally but still disturbing nonetheless), as I’ve pointed out before. I was making a point about how single instances of questionable parenting rarely lead to drastic state intervention, and that was in response to a discussion about how child abuse cases are handled in the world.

Are you SURE you agree with 95% of what I say? This isn’t the first time I’ve been utterly astounded by how badly you misread and misrepresent where I stand on an issue.

Just another ridiculous exchange between you and I, right Peter? You always seem to end up repeating the whole “you should know no one likes you” schtick, desperately trying to wring a tear out of me, and yet I’m still here.

Again, till next time. In the meantime, thank you for your kind words earlier.

he’s the most famous foreigner in china. he writes books, goes on television, hosts big events, has endorsment deals (i think one of the companies he endorses is ford auto), ect. i’d say wikipedia him if you want to know anyhting else. he’s won some awards and honors from both china and canada as well

thanks for explaining who he is. i heard his name c ome up on the site before but didn’t care till he outed chinasmack. strangely, i write books too and am a modestly known romance novelist. i ended up on chinasmack because i decided to make the heroine in my latest novel have a love interestwho is chinese so decided to go do some research. i was consuming a lot of chinese related news, and landed here. i have not finished my book. in fact, this web site caused me to change my mind a bout a chinese man as a love interest altogether.

in all of my books, the women travel, meet and fall in love with men from different countries or are culturally different. the last one was japanese. the one before that was french. and so on.

but i suppose we can thank chinasmack that i lost my mojo with all the stuff people write here, making me feel like a chinese hero for my heroine is inappropriate.

No, can’t let a Chinese guy be the romantic lead, you’re getting into uncharted territory there, possibly risking your career.

THE FUCK. That’s exactly what E-PUFF said.

Choonage, why do you say these things? Please enlighten me. These comments have really taken me a bit because I need to understand why as a hero he is inappropriate. My mind is open.

Staylost, he could be taiwanese. But is it improper to refer to him as Chinese at all should I decide to make him Taiwanese? I am certainly not opposed to the idea.

I like your outline, but the book is half-written already. I actually stopped in the middle of the book after reading China Smack. He won’t be an athlete.

I made him a rich chinese businessman, an investor who, along with his father is coming to save the heroine and her father’s company.

Now, after reading this site, I understand how resented wealthy people in China are. You know, the piss takers who think they are above the law [according to china smack]. I was thinking about incorporating that hatred into the plot when the would be couple have to make a trip to mainland where they become lovers. The rest of the story takes place in America. So what you guys are telling me, is that a chinese man should not be seen in this light? That he should be Taiwanese instead? So confusing.

I know most guys hate romance novels lol and they especially hate that the love interest or the hero is always rich and handsome. But fans of romance novels rarely tire of these plots when done right.

indeedly @staylost

I write like a goof on this site, but the truth is that I can write some pretty decent love stories. My readers love them.

What stopped me half-way through this book is that I enjoy writing about beautiful, american black women. But from what I read here, is that a Chinese man would never find a black woman attractive. So that’s why I stopped to give the book further thought. I’ve contemplated making my hero into a wealthy brazilian or a man from some other country or perhaps changing the ethnicity of the woman from black to white (in an effort to continue the book). I don’t mind. But the truth is that, the characters as I imagine them in this book can only appear to me as I started them. The characters were born from my imagination a certain way and it’s hard to change them mid-story.

Americans would not have a problem with my story, and the female readers would love it as is. But I’m not so sure that if anyone from across the ocean ever happened upon it, would be pleased or outright perplexed by it and I would rather not be disrespectful or untrue to another person’s culture. So that’s where Chinasmack netizens actually influenced the outcome of my story. I was not aware of any of these peculiarities before I started.

So that is why, I am rethinking the hero or perhaps the heroine. Not sure how I will proceed as yet, as I like the story as it is.

I kind of agree.

At least he could do a Jet li and set up ‘the one foundation’ charity. He could call it ‘the er/2 foundation’.

I bet he’s had a go at Fang bing bing hasn’t he. I don’t even know what she looks like, but I’m suitably jealous.

So there you are generalizing about them when you want to be seen as an individual. Maybe better to deal with the problem at the very moment that that given person makes what you feel is a dehumanizing comparison?

“Oh, yes, nobody compares with DaShan, but I must be making progress if I would even remind you of him! He’s a teacher, an entertainer, but I’m a [fill-in-blank] , we foreigners are not all alike in our interests and talents, you know!” [Clinking sound of penny dropping in Chinese person's mind]

As I’m sure you know, the collective is historically much more significant to the average Chinese than the individual psyche, and – especially outside their own families – it is a vital part of the social armor not to be too much conscious of the individuality of others.

That will change and is changing as the cultures interact. And – you know what – your buddy DaShan is one of those in the advance guard.

There’s nothing wrong with the Chinese government putting their viewpoint forward. Every government does, and has the right to do so. In general, CCTV and China Daily just do a poor job of it.

I think a lot of people have trouble distinguishing between the government’s political bias and just the general cultural bias in China. By extension, they assume that the government’s bias is somehow totally removed from the general cultural bias (in other words that it’s imposed from above against an unwilling population) when the reality is actually much more complex.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it- although the Chinese case is distinctive in that CCTV International and China Daily represent the government much more directly than, say, the BBC does for the UK. Just saying that the state clearly doesn’t consider this English-language content irrelevant.

In any case, though, you were originally talking about something different- whether the government cares about what English-language sites say about it, rather than what it uses English to say. On that score I agree with you, although I’m sure there are people employed to keep track.

Not sure what you mean about biases- if it’s a nationalist/patriotic concern for the image of the country, then I agree with you.

That must be why last night before I even read this post and was in a taxi on the way home, the taxi driver seemingly randomly blurted out the name “Dashan!”

Having said that, he did first enquire if I was a Xinjiang ren.

Maybe it’s an eyesight thing.