A visit to Germany

 

Europeans are so much more upfront than Asians about history

A FRIEND GAVE me a warning when he heard I was going on a book tour of Germany.

“If I were you, I wouldn't mention the war,” he said. “They're probably still sensitive about it.”

I told him that his advice was imbecilic.

“Thanks,” he replied. “Always happy to help.”

In the event, it was hard to imagine any of the discussions I had on route, which were mainly with flight attendants, veering onto the subject of World War II. “Chicken or fish? And what do you think about the rise of Socialist Nazism in the 1930s?”

Arriving at a German hotel at dawn, I went straight to the dining room to find a stand of brochures, which I read over breakfast—sausages, of course.

“Come and see where Hitler had lunch,” said one.

Another offered (this is not a joke) a scenic bicycle tour of the Dachau concentration camp.

A third offered The Third Reich Tour with Lunch and Two Types of Beer.

Modern Germans are sophisticated, cool, laid-back people who are totally upfront about the sins of their forebears. “Hitler was SUCH a monster,” they say. “Have another sausage.”

What a contrast to Asia. In the east, it is considered bad form to complain about atrocities such as the government executing family members, the president committing genocide or the man downstairs buying a karaoke machine.

Asians prefer to gently massage (“censor”) history. For example, Chairman Mao was responsible for more deaths than Hitler but still has a massive fan base in China and South Asia. On a trip to Nepal, I said to a Mao fan: “What do you think about the fact that Mao killed 30 million?” The guy wagged his head diagonally and said: “Hey, we are all making the mistakes.”
*

Strolling through Munich, my guide and I chanced upon famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, a cuddly fat man who had assembled a 100-meter-long outdoor artwork made of brightly colored schoolbags to remember children killed in the Sichuan earthquake.

My German host was entranced, saying: “You say that Asians are encouraged not to remember the sins of the past, but this artist has dramatically captured a dark event in Chinese history.”

“Yes, he has,” I replied. “But why do you think he's put it up in Europe? The last time he campaigned for earthquake victims in China he was beaten up by police.”
*
Here's a quick lesson in how to write an Asian history book. Simply copy the text below and delete the bits you don't like.

“Before independence, our country was ruled by

(a) an evil feudal society

(b) a glorious free society.

But then the country was taken over by

(a) a band of heroic freedom fighters

(b) a ragtag guerrilla army after

(a) a bloodless coup

(b) a cruel massacre.

The people

(a) hailed their liberators

(b) suffered under their hated oppressors.”

Meanwhile, the last chapter of almost every Asian history book is the same:

“Today, the rulers talk about freedom, democracy and pluralism but

(a) the people suffer one-party rule

(b) the people suffer one-party rule, or

( c) the people suffer one-party rule.”

 

Technorati Tags: ai weiwei,frankfurt book fair,asian history

Comments

[Christy]

Haha your made-up conversation with the flight attendent reminds me of a real online conversation I had with a Turkish man:

Me: Hi! Wow it's so nice to talk to someone from Turkey, how do you feel about the EU not letting you guys in?

I was young and stupid then.

Second thought: I am still young and stupid.

[Jules]

My first date ever was with a German boy (exchange student). I very carefully warned my friends not to bring up the war, thinking he might be a little touchy on the subject.

Come the night, he made absolutely no mention of it. And after all my preparation! How insensitive...

[Angela]

I am insensitive too, on one of our first dates I immediately asked how my date feels about the reunification what was the impact to him personally and to his business, what life was like before the fall of the wall, and if he is circumcised. Being a gentleman, he answered all my questions.

[Nury]

Circumsized!??
You are outrageous Angela

[sej]

Hitler and his cronies were the monsters, not the people, so why should they be tarred with the same brush? And I think their openness is admirable.

Studies have shown people are able to do the most atrocious things to other people when encouraged by people in authority.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16312-shocking-study-reveals-people-still-willing-to-torture.html

But not all Europeans are as open as the Germans. Look at the Russians.

Hitler killed between 6 and 7 million Jews. Stalin in the early 1930's on the otherhand, killed between 7 and 10 million (some say up to 18 million) Ukranians. This mass-murder is still something today many people, mostly Russian, refuse to admit happened.

Christy,

You are not alone, "Young and Stupid" are ailments everyone suffers. You'll get over being Young all too soon, do not fear. Stupidity on the other hand is an something from which no one ever seems to recover.

[TS]

Many many (many) years ago when I was still in school back in Denmark, a schoolmate had an Australian boy visiting as part of an student exchange program of some sort.
We were both in the same swimming class and on his first day our teacher tried to gauge his swimming ability to decide which group he belonged in (shallow- or deep-enders).
The teacher's English skills was limited and the boy's Danish skills even more so.
After about five minutes he finally comprehended the question and since he was Australian, action speaks louder than words, he dove in head first and swam to the other end of the pool and back, faster than anyone we had ever seen.
As he jumped back up on the edge of the pool next to the teacher, she exploded and shouted angrily at him for something like ten minutes about the dangers of diving head first into a pool at the shallow end.

I can't help think what he would have done if asked if he was circumcised.

[Sam]

Nury,

No matter how hard Big Brother in Asian countries tries to cover their tracks, how immaculate their brain washing campaigns are, how extensive their collaborators and stakeholder tries to water down what had happened, or how many glorifying stories their cheer leaders keep rolling out, pigs wearing lipsticks are still pigs.

[Julie]

TS, your story is about old style swimming in Australia. In the olden days (when I was young) you were warned about diving into open water, especially rivers, but diving into swimming pools was considered safe. These days you aren't even allowed to jump into pools . . . I know this because I last week I was treated to a lecture on it in a bookshop by a woman who said she was a swimming instructor. And she wasn't even buying a Nury book!
Perhaps if she had been she would have had more reasonable views. I went away thinking that yet another fun thing has been lost.

[Denis]

Ah, I see the last paragraph of the story is a nice little dig at
a. singapre
b. India
c. Hong Kong
d. Macau
e. Malaysia
et cetera.
They talk and talk about democracy and freedom but they are one-party dictatorships.
At least we can take some cheer from Japanese, which had one party rule for many years but recently switched to another. India has occasionally had brief interludes of other parties, but Congress had dominated for ever.
One day things will change I hope and true democracy and pluralism be introduced. When will this happen for Singapore and Malaysia?

[Angela]

If it aint broke, don't fix it.

Good morning fellas! :)

[Nury]

TS, I forgot you were from Denmark. I ended up sitting with some Denmarkians/ Denmarkers/ (how do you say it?) at dinner on Monday. They were lovely. Really good sense of humor, very charming and absolutely fluent in English. They were also very self-deprecating about their own food, which they said was "terrible, like German".
One was a Prince named Henrik. I asked him how I could join the royal family and he told me "it would be difficult".

Julie, I love the Australian directness -- so much in contrast to the rest of Asia Pacific.

Angela, don't ask an Australian whether he is circumcized or not. He will tell you bluntly and then take it out to show you.

[Big black guy]

He'll take it out to show you and then you can have a good laugh

[YukiSoba]

I personally think that the observation on the last chapter in the history book is what I would perceived as "quite true". As a Malaysian, there are hypocrites that we can observe each day in the newspaper. There will not be one day where one hypocrite will appear.

Our campaign "1Malaysia" has been misused, or rather I should say "abused" by the politicians themselves, merely to give excuses on something that would give them the advantage, such as public holidays. Lately, I've noticed that the working days (& schooling days too) are becoming lesser, because of the this. The worse part is the corruption in this country is one of the most distinct trademark now.

Take MACC, our Anti-Corruption Agency, for example. I was joking once with my friends that someday they might be corrupted. And it really happen before my very eyes. And the death of a Mongolian also proves corruption, especially when the victim's father during the investigation, all of a sudden, which adds to the mystery. And during the investigation, one of the prime suspect was the current prime minister himself. What has Malaysia become!

Looking back at the formation of this country, the current Home Affairs Minister's grandfather, the founder of UMNO, wanted that party to have the all the races at that time in the party. In the end, UMNO, is restricted to only Malays. Sounds like this has already happened long time ago.

I'm not offending any Malays here, but the fact is that not all Malays are from this land here. In fact, in history, they are not ever a native here. From my short study on Malaysian ancient history, many came from the land of what we know today as Indonesia. Our national language also came from there. And to keep thing simple, the hypocritical people may be the politicians who try to practice the "one-party rule", which would have sounded better as "one-race rule".

[Angela]

We are politically monogamous.

[Nury]

Thanks for your interesting update on Malaysian history, Yuki Soba, you told me lots of things that I didn't know before.

And thanks also for your comments, Angela.

Personally I take my hat off to people who battle for pluralism and democracy in Asia, but at the same time, I reckon we may as well be realistic. People who are in power in Asia don't like to let go of it.

I know I would make a terrible politician, so it's no good me campaigning for more freedom in Asia.

But making a joke or two that make a point--well, that's something I can do.

Occasionally, politics becomes really funny. Like Mahathir is SOOO rude to the current generation of Malaysian leaders, having forgotten that he was the one who picked them and made them leaders!

[sej]

Nury, sometimes you don't even need to ask, we'll somehow manage to work it into the conversation anyway.

[TS]

Nury,
We are called Danes.
The Danish Royal Family do have a connection to Hong Kong as Prince Joachim was married to a Hong Kong girl... for a while anyway.

I don't agree that Danish or German food is terrible, but it can pale in comparison to food from the rest of the world.
What I have realised about food and Danes is that many don't like foreign food much, even if they say they do!
Once took some friends back in Denmark to my favourite Indian restaurant and I found they didn't like any of the food at all and complained about the smell. They thought that Indian food was based on the curry powder that you find in most western countries.

[Adriansyah]

It's too true for us Indonesians too, Nury. Well, our 1945 independence WAS a thing to be proud about, but 1965 massacre was a year zero no one supposed to talk about. Try to mention that the communists were only scapegoats, and you'll be the next scapegoat.

And the scary thing is that we are now slowly sliding back to dictatorship, not ruled by a single dictator, but by a consortium-like dictators.

Maybe freedom was just too tires

[Adriansyah]

I meant 'tiresome'. Typos. :P

[Chamin]

I was in China for a week last month, and found that the government has blocked Nury's web site. All social networks, Youtube, selected pages of CNN and Flickr were also blocked.

My first thought was "how come they think 1.3 billion people can be misled by bloggers in other countries?"

But then, it does seem that most of than 1.3 Billion ARE misled by a handful of politicians anyway :-p

As for Singapore, I am sure that the ruling part is already scared about people wanting change, after seeing what happened is Australia and Japan. They must be taking some action out there, but not sure if Angela would like to report on this topic :-p

[Kate Cary Evans]

Loved and loathed by Chinese authorities and art aficionados alike, Ai Wei Wei is intriguing.

He is also being touted as a contender for the title of the foremost contemporary artist from China. You can read more about him and see some of his art on
http://artradarasia.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/picasso-of-china-or-voice-of-dissent-who-is-ai-wei-wei-profile/

According to Artinfo Ai Wei Wei "has been called a headline grabber, a master of borrowing from other artists, and a “scholar clown,” and he’s been denounced for criticizing symbols of elitism and authority ranging from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to the Chinese government to the Eiffel Tower"

[Nursing top]

hahaha...that is what really happens when you don't totally speak the same language.

[search engine strategy]

wow nice.. i want to go to Germany!!

[platepass]

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