This was meant to be a good year

This is too much.

Are our opinions really so wrong and worthless?

Someone decided to let me know, the other day, how messed up they think China is. They weren’t even telling me this because they wanted to have a discussion about it; they just wanted me to know. Is it really so hard to be respectful of someone else’s heritage? I don’t want people to make generalisations or to stereotype my country. I never, ever said it was perfect, but it’s still home. It’s where I’m from, it’s where my whole family and the people I care most about are from.

The government is not the same as the people, but it is still very much a part of the country. It’s at least a part of Chinese history and culture, whether we like it or not. It’s not a historical or political anomaly that can be ignored or criticised as an entirely different entity. It affects millions of lives on a daily basis. People care very, very much about what happens within and without. Not everything it does is wrong. Not everyone shares the western viewpoint, and a different viewpoint can be equally valid—is this so hard to accept?

I had a friend (now elsewhere in Canada) say how someone went up to her just to say what a mess China is making, and because my friend disagreed, that someone could not believe it and thought worse of her for it. Did that someone even ask why my friend thought that way? Did the person who implied to me that my country sucks even want to know how I feel about it? I wish so much. No one even asks why it’s like this; they just assume we feel the same, or that we at least should.

To have people exhibit this much disdain for a place so important to me is very painful. Straight-out hating would be easier to deal with. What happened to multicultural, globally-sensitive citizens? What happened to just being human and recognising others as people with feelings and values as well?

I don’t wish to apologise for talking about this so frequently anymore. I don’t like this topic, but it’s harder still not to say something when, in person, very few listen. Why did I ever feel the need to apologise in the first place? I didn’t want to bombard you with political rants. But I’m being bombarded online, offline, in the media, in person. What difference does it make whether I discuss this or not?