Hi everyone I hope I'm posting in the right place.
I've been with my bf Alex for half a year now. We met during orientation at our university. We are both Chinese-American (born in the US specifically).
So two weekends ago Alex came to my house to spend the week with me and my parents over winter break. My parents were watching some political documentary on the Tiananmen Square Massacre in the living room, and Alex sat with them and watched for a while. He said something like "I can't believe this is how the West is depicting that." My dad raised an eyebrow and was like what do you mean? Alex said that the documentary is completely misrepresenting events and making up a false narrative. My dad just says "go on" and Alex just goes on this huge speech about how he's studied a lot of that history and he feels like the West is unfairly depicting the Chinese government's actions and that a lot of things never actually happened.
Well it was like watching a train wreck. I had never heard Alex talk about these views of his as we rarely talk about politics but the moment he opened his mouth on this subject I knew it was doomed. My parents were living survivors of that history. They were actually students at the schools where the protests took place and they lived through the brutality and ultimately had their own classmates die in the gunfire. My dad said he had steered clear from the protests at the time, but my mom was a very avid participant and came close to being beat by soldiers several times. They both managed to evade the actual night of the slaughter, but they knew it had happened because they had seen the bodies of young students being wheeled through the streets the morning after.
Alex, on the other hand, only heard of these things through the internet or other accounts or wherever, I'm not sure. His own parents were hundreds of miles away in the rural countryside. Anyways he actually tried to defend the government and said that they were simply targeting domestic terrorists and only the West paints it as an event where innocent students died. My dad then explained how he and my mom went through that period themselves and how innocent people did die, and lots of them. Alex got riled up and said that they probably had biased accounts due to them being young, passionate, and full of adrenaline. My mom then asked Alex if he can explain what happened to her cousin and 3 of her close dorm mates, all who disappeared during the protests and have never been seen again in the roughly 3 decades since. Not their family, friends, or anyone close to them ever heard from them again. It is assumed they died and their bodies destroyed.
Alex didn't have an answer to that and just said something like "maybe you just weren't aware of the severity of their crimes and they're probably in hiding somewhere." He then kept on his original argument that the West is somehow at fault for all of this and China is being scapegoated.
The rest of the week went by relatively uneventfully but I can tell my parents were very cold to Alex. After he left, they told me that it's my choice who I date but I should be careful with someone who's so easy to write off other people's lives to justify his own politics. My mom actually teared up and my dad just looked concerned and they both told me I could do better honestly.
Anyways, I don't know what to do now. I've tried talking to Alex and he just brushes me off. He keeps saying that Chinese people my parents age are so brainwashed and deluded they have no idea what actually happened. I've gotten angry at this so many times but he just says that it's not a flaw to have conviction about your beliefs, and I'd be an ignorant person to write him off just because his beliefs differed from my parents.
Am I jumping the gun by considering this as a red flag to possibly break up over? Are my parents right in their judgment of Alex? Is Alex right that I'd be ignorant for writing him off just because his beliefs differed with my parents? Thanks in advance.
tl:dr: My parents lived through the Tiananmen Square massacre but my bf doesn't believe students actually died. He argues to my parents that it was all manufactured by the West to slander China. My parents were disappointed and simply told me that I can do better. Are Alex's actions as big a red flag as I think it is? Or am I overreacting?
Japan seems pretty lenient on their own leaders too, TBH. It's more of a East Asian thing, a dictator in even the Arab countries would face significant uproar if he gunned down a bunch of students in capital.
Ehh. Depends if they were shiite/sunni/jews/druze. Basically as long as you gun down whatever group isn't In right now, you're fine. The middle east is like Mean Girls taken way too far.
Yeah, I'm with you. It's very difficult to argue with decades of brainwashing. I dated a mainlander a couple years back who was convinced that Mao's atrocities were "American lies" and tried to argue that Taiwan rightfully belonged to the Chinese. Also, hilariously, she hated Koreans because they "stole technology from China" which is probably the stupidest thing that a Chinese could whine to an American about.
Really cool girl otherwise. I avoided politics because of stuff like that and she asked me if I thought 9/11 might be a conspiracy by George Bush. It's hard to be too upset by it because 20 years of Chinese schooling is no joke.
I spent a long time living overseas and things like that aren't uncommon. In one country I lived their textbooks said that world War 2 began when the Americans nuclear bombed the Japanese at pearl Harbor. Notably they also did not mention the holocaust...
Obviously I launched into discussing the melting temperature of steel and that the buildings were actually hit by a cruise missile disguised as a plane by Jewish hologram wizardry.
The Americans just flat out don't discuss many atrocities. There are relatively few real denial campaigns like the Chinese (I can't think of one, but then you have shit like Creationism taught as a legitimate theory). But the lower-level history classes are full of the most ignorant people imaginable, so something as simple as not mentioning negative things is pretty effective. I like to think that the culture here at least fosters some individual thinking
Honestly the Chinese government has executed a really massive misinformation campaign about Tiananmen. The boyfriend is wrong obviously, but this doesn't mean he's a nutcase. He's the victim of a massive government conspiracy
That's even lazier then the normal redditor not reading the article. You really have no details on this and yet your commenting. The whole point of the drama is to get into it. What are you doing here?
Hmm you're right. I mean I did see Avatar, and the CGI was really lifelike. So I guess it's entirely possible that the tank video I saw was fake, given the incredibe technology we have nowadays.
I'm pretty good friends with a commie hating chinaman, he always talks about how much the ccp lies to its people. He said after that giant chemical explosion Tianjin they claimed only 20 people died.
I see people handing out pamphlets on street corners in Chinatown San Francisco who identify as 'Falun Gong'. Where do the fall on the politicol spectrum? They seem quite opposed to the mainland government.
I don't know how to qualify Falun Gong. They're a spiritual or maybe religious group (some say a sect). Doesn't seem they did anything too bad except getting a lot of influence and a big following, and not wanting to be under the direct control of the government (then protesting the way they were treated because of that).
They were harshly repressed by the Chinese government (we see a bunch of them who have fled in Europe too, they try to attract attention to their issues). Some of them claim the government went as far as harvesting them for their organs, but the only thing I'm sure of is that they were treated as political dissidents (which means jail, torture, work camps...).
The persecution of Falun Gong refers to the campaign initiated in 1999 by the Chinese Communist Party to eliminate the spiritual practice of Falun Gong in China. It is characterized by a multifaceted propaganda campaign, a program of enforced ideological conversion and re-education and a variety of extralegal coercive measures such as reportedly arbitrary arrests, forced labor and physical torture, sometimes resulting in death.
Falun Gong is a modern qigong discipline combining slow-moving exercises and meditation with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. It was founded by Li Hongzhi, who introduced it to the public in May 1992 in Changchun, Jilin.
I don't know. They seem harmless in Europe. They don't proselitize either. And AFAIK (in western Europe at least) they haven't caused any trouble or been involved in anything illegal.
Pretty sure they were persecuted. But when they hand me a pamphlet on the market on a sunday morning, what do they expect I'm gonna do? It's not like anyone can influence the Chinese government enough to get them to ever admit they were wrong about anything, let alone relent in cracking down on people they feel are a threat.
54 comments
1 IAintThatGuy 2018-01-03
Hi everyone I hope I'm posting in the right place.
I've been with my bf Alex for half a year now. We met during orientation at our university. We are both Chinese-American (born in the US specifically).
So two weekends ago Alex came to my house to spend the week with me and my parents over winter break. My parents were watching some political documentary on the Tiananmen Square Massacre in the living room, and Alex sat with them and watched for a while. He said something like "I can't believe this is how the West is depicting that." My dad raised an eyebrow and was like what do you mean? Alex said that the documentary is completely misrepresenting events and making up a false narrative. My dad just says "go on" and Alex just goes on this huge speech about how he's studied a lot of that history and he feels like the West is unfairly depicting the Chinese government's actions and that a lot of things never actually happened.
Well it was like watching a train wreck. I had never heard Alex talk about these views of his as we rarely talk about politics but the moment he opened his mouth on this subject I knew it was doomed. My parents were living survivors of that history. They were actually students at the schools where the protests took place and they lived through the brutality and ultimately had their own classmates die in the gunfire. My dad said he had steered clear from the protests at the time, but my mom was a very avid participant and came close to being beat by soldiers several times. They both managed to evade the actual night of the slaughter, but they knew it had happened because they had seen the bodies of young students being wheeled through the streets the morning after.
Alex, on the other hand, only heard of these things through the internet or other accounts or wherever, I'm not sure. His own parents were hundreds of miles away in the rural countryside. Anyways he actually tried to defend the government and said that they were simply targeting domestic terrorists and only the West paints it as an event where innocent students died. My dad then explained how he and my mom went through that period themselves and how innocent people did die, and lots of them. Alex got riled up and said that they probably had biased accounts due to them being young, passionate, and full of adrenaline. My mom then asked Alex if he can explain what happened to her cousin and 3 of her close dorm mates, all who disappeared during the protests and have never been seen again in the roughly 3 decades since. Not their family, friends, or anyone close to them ever heard from them again. It is assumed they died and their bodies destroyed.
Alex didn't have an answer to that and just said something like "maybe you just weren't aware of the severity of their crimes and they're probably in hiding somewhere." He then kept on his original argument that the West is somehow at fault for all of this and China is being scapegoated.
The rest of the week went by relatively uneventfully but I can tell my parents were very cold to Alex. After he left, they told me that it's my choice who I date but I should be careful with someone who's so easy to write off other people's lives to justify his own politics. My mom actually teared up and my dad just looked concerned and they both told me I could do better honestly.
Anyways, I don't know what to do now. I've tried talking to Alex and he just brushes me off. He keeps saying that Chinese people my parents age are so brainwashed and deluded they have no idea what actually happened. I've gotten angry at this so many times but he just says that it's not a flaw to have conviction about your beliefs, and I'd be an ignorant person to write him off just because his beliefs differed from my parents.
Am I jumping the gun by considering this as a red flag to possibly break up over? Are my parents right in their judgment of Alex? Is Alex right that I'd be ignorant for writing him off just because his beliefs differed with my parents? Thanks in advance.
tl:dr: My parents lived through the Tiananmen Square massacre but my bf doesn't believe students actually died. He argues to my parents that it was all manufactured by the West to slander China. My parents were disappointed and simply told me that I can do better. Are Alex's actions as big a red flag as I think it is? Or am I overreacting?
1 broden 2018-01-03
Unsensible chuckle
1 broden 2018-01-03
omg another
1 Not_for_consumption 2018-01-03
What a catch! Better she find this out now rather than after 10 years and 2 kids.
1 IneedSomeThrowaway 2018-01-03
Repost this to /r/hapas in order to show them why Asian women prefer mayos over them.
1 IAintThatGuy 2018-01-03
Dude is probably already a poster there, and/or /r/aznmasculinity
1 Thestateyest 2018-01-03
Its almost like third-wordlists forgive the actions of tin-pot dictators for political convenience, no matter how horrific
1 NormanImmanuel 2018-01-03
While this is true, this case seems more like a Chinese Supremacist true believer, rather than a Maoist LARPer.
1 ThenTheGorursArrived 2018-01-03
Japan seems pretty lenient on their own leaders too, TBH. It's more of a East Asian thing, a dictator in even the Arab countries would face significant uproar if he gunned down a bunch of students in capital.
1 pitaenigma 2018-01-03
Ehh. Depends if they were shiite/sunni/jews/druze. Basically as long as you gun down whatever group isn't In right now, you're fine. The middle east is like Mean Girls taken way too far.
1 SuperObviousShill 2018-01-03
I'm not sure that's accurate; I've never met a teenaged girl who had the same lust for young boys as a middle easterner.
1 ca2co3 2018-01-03
What Arab dictator hasn't gunned down students in their capital by now? It's practically a prerequisite.
1 skivian 2018-01-03
This is one of the few times where I think their standard advice of "leave him" is actually correct. Dude sounds like a nutter.
1 IAintThatGuy 2018-01-03
Pretty par for the course, for a native Chinese. But coming from a Chinese-American, dude is prolly a /r/aznmasculinity poster.
1 SithisTheDreadFather 2018-01-03
Yeah, I'm with you. It's very difficult to argue with decades of brainwashing. I dated a mainlander a couple years back who was convinced that Mao's atrocities were "American lies" and tried to argue that Taiwan rightfully belonged to the Chinese. Also, hilariously, she hated Koreans because they "stole technology from China" which is probably the stupidest thing that a Chinese could whine to an American about.
Really cool girl otherwise. I avoided politics because of stuff like that and she asked me if I thought 9/11 might be a conspiracy by George Bush. It's hard to be too upset by it because 20 years of Chinese schooling is no joke.
1 ca2co3 2018-01-03
I spent a long time living overseas and things like that aren't uncommon. In one country I lived their textbooks said that world War 2 began when the Americans nuclear bombed the Japanese at pearl Harbor. Notably they also did not mention the holocaust...
1 CirqueDuFuder 2018-01-03
What fucking country. You can't just drop that with no country.
1 dudesweetman 2018-01-03
Bullshitistan
1 CirqueDuFuder 2018-01-03
And deleted.
1 I-need-MAYO 2018-01-03
She had to ask? Doesn't she know jet fuel can't melt steel beams?
1 SithisTheDreadFather 2018-01-03
Obviously I launched into discussing the melting temperature of steel and that the buildings were actually hit by a cruise missile disguised as a plane by Jewish hologram wizardry.
1 Barton_Foley 2018-01-03
That is now the new name of my grindcore band yet to be formed.
1 SuperiorExcess 2018-01-03
Should've fed her like really obvious lies but tell her it's super woke shit.
1 Uniquestusername99 2018-01-03
Or just the truth
1 Pricee 2018-01-03
Makes me wonder how much brainwashing american schools do
1 SithisTheDreadFather 2018-01-03
The Americans just flat out don't discuss many atrocities. There are relatively few real denial campaigns like the Chinese (I can't think of one, but then you have shit like Creationism taught as a legitimate theory). But the lower-level history classes are full of the most ignorant people imaginable, so something as simple as not mentioning negative things is pretty effective. I like to think that the culture here at least fosters some individual thinking
1 thesouthnortherner 2018-01-03
No need to wash what they don't have.
1 Hammer_of_truthiness 2018-01-03
Honestly the Chinese government has executed a really massive misinformation campaign about Tiananmen. The boyfriend is wrong obviously, but this doesn't mean he's a nutcase. He's the victim of a massive government conspiracy
1 imaginarycreatures 2018-01-03
Unless I'm reading the post wrong, he seems to have been born in the U.S. I don't think the Chinese government was directly involved in his education.
1 Hammer_of_truthiness 2018-01-03
I don't read the posts on here.
1 aznsensation8 2018-01-03
That's even lazier then the normal redditor not reading the article. You really have no details on this and yet your commenting. The whole point of the drama is to get into it. What are you doing here?
1 Hammer_of_truthiness 2018-01-03
do you have a custie flair? No?
Fucking neck urself boyo.
1 Imgur_Lurker 2018-01-03
gottem
1 riemann1413 2018-01-03
gr8 point
1 thetarget3 2018-01-03
Good call, you wouldn't want to waste time reading that you could be using fapping to anime tiddies
1 The_Reason_Trump_Won 2018-01-03
If his parents are immigrants and strongly pro party it could easily happen.
1 Pepperglue 2018-01-03
Depending on where they live, there could also be a heavily influence from the local Chinese newspaper.
The papers in my area are quite pro-China, and do say some pretty outrageous stuff from time to time.
1 OnlyRacistOnReddit 2018-01-03
I think relationships actually did a decent job this time. A Chinese tankie caught in the wild is pretty impressive.
1 Unfunny_Twat 2018-01-03
The last time I saw a Chinese tankie in the wild, a dude in a white shirt was trying to climb on it.
1 OnlyRacistOnReddit 2018-01-03
That didn't really happen, it's just a plot by the capitalist imperialists to try and convince you that Communism is failing.
1 Unfunny_Twat 2018-01-03
Hmm you're right. I mean I did see Avatar, and the CGI was really lifelike. So I guess it's entirely possible that the tank video I saw was fake, given the incredibe technology we have nowadays.
1 fsdgfhk 2018-01-03
FAKE NEWS
1 Baconlightning 2018-01-03
The Tibetans did Tianamen square or something?
1 UnluckyImp22 2018-01-03
I heard it was an American sexpat, Sam Hyde.
1 lssah1488wiking 2018-01-03
You should cuck your boyfriend, /u/dr23421.
1 yesiamcorrect 2018-01-03
I'm pretty good friends with a commie hating chinaman, he always talks about how much the ccp lies to its people. He said after that giant chemical explosion Tianjin they claimed only 20 people died.
1 IAintThatGuy 2018-01-03
Do chinese count as people? Maybe there were 20 european engineers in the plant.
1 yakabuski 2018-01-03
What's a 'Tiananmen Truther'?
1 IAintThatGuy 2018-01-03
Someone who thinks the events in Tiananmen square didn't happen (which is the official position of the Chinese government).
So you'll find a lot of native Chinese who believe that (from being raised on state media), but it's rarer to find Chinese-americans who do.
1 yakabuski 2018-01-03
I see people handing out pamphlets on street corners in Chinatown San Francisco who identify as 'Falun Gong'. Where do the fall on the politicol spectrum? They seem quite opposed to the mainland government.
1 IAintThatGuy 2018-01-03
I don't know how to qualify Falun Gong. They're a spiritual or maybe religious group (some say a sect). Doesn't seem they did anything too bad except getting a lot of influence and a big following, and not wanting to be under the direct control of the government (then protesting the way they were treated because of that).
They were harshly repressed by the Chinese government (we see a bunch of them who have fled in Europe too, they try to attract attention to their issues). Some of them claim the government went as far as harvesting them for their organs, but the only thing I'm sure of is that they were treated as political dissidents (which means jail, torture, work camps...).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Falun_Gong
1 WikiTextBot 2018-01-03
Persecution of Falun Gong
The persecution of Falun Gong refers to the campaign initiated in 1999 by the Chinese Communist Party to eliminate the spiritual practice of Falun Gong in China. It is characterized by a multifaceted propaganda campaign, a program of enforced ideological conversion and re-education and a variety of extralegal coercive measures such as reportedly arbitrary arrests, forced labor and physical torture, sometimes resulting in death.
Falun Gong is a modern qigong discipline combining slow-moving exercises and meditation with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. It was founded by Li Hongzhi, who introduced it to the public in May 1992 in Changchun, Jilin.
[ PM | Exclude me | Exclude from subreddit | FAQ / Information | Source | Donate ] Downvote to remove | v0.28
1 yakabuski 2018-01-03
Roughly equivalent to how Scientology is viewed in Germany?
1 IAintThatGuy 2018-01-03
I don't know. They seem harmless in Europe. They don't proselitize either. And AFAIK (in western Europe at least) they haven't caused any trouble or been involved in anything illegal.
1 yakabuski 2018-01-03
I agree they seem harmless. Just have a persecution complex on overdrive.
1 IAintThatGuy 2018-01-03
Pretty sure they were persecuted. But when they hand me a pamphlet on the market on a sunday morning, what do they expect I'm gonna do? It's not like anyone can influence the Chinese government enough to get them to ever admit they were wrong about anything, let alone relent in cracking down on people they feel are a threat.
1 yakabuski 2018-01-03
The eternal conundrum.