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In 1999 I met an English professor on a Navy frigate. He had made friends with a reservist of Chinese decent. When we arrived in Manta, Ecuador, there was a tra
by niels_olson 11y ago
In 1999 I met an English professor on a Navy frigate. He had made friends with a reservist of Chinese decent. When we arrived in Manta, Ecuador, there was a transportation strike; the whole city smelled of tuna. We went to a Chinese restaurant and the chinamen struck a deal: we would help load the restauraunteur's pick-up with frozen shrimp from a warehouse in the mountains; he would take us to Montecristi to buy some hats.
I sat in the back, with no seat (he had taken the seat out to haul more shrimp). We drove up the mountain dirt roads for an hour to the warehouse. It was guarded by men with automatic rifles. We loaded 20 sacks of frozen shrimp and drove another hour, deeper, to Montecristi.
The villagers were quite happy to meet us, as no one was coming to visit due to the strike in town. I bought three hats: a gorgeous open weave hat for my wife, a fino for my brother, and a veri fino for myself. I had the villagers block mine as a fedora, but it would take some time to get made. The man brought it to me the next day, at the pier, having riden his bicycle all the way from Montecristi. I paid $50 for that hat, including delivery. 25 strands per inch, or 625 weaves per inch. Outside of Brent Black's shop in Honolulu, I have never seen a finer hat.
Brent Black quoted me, sight-unseen, that hat would fetch in the ballpark of $400 in his shop.
I still wear it now and again. I have sewn in inner and outer bands of 1.5" black ribbon. The professor, Whiskey Charlie, bought himself a hat, as did the chinaman. And we drove two hours back to town, with those slowly thawing shrimp bouncing around with us.
Manta was the first place I saw a whale breach.
- crimsonalucard 11y ago"Chinamen" is kind of racist. I, being chinese, am not personally offended, nor do I really care, but "chinaman" is generally considered to not be a nice word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinaman_(term) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinaman_(term) I'm only bringing it up in case you are unaware, cracker.
- jgrahamc 11y agoFunny you should mention that. I almost wondered if the parent was using the term deliberately. It made the entire story feel as if it had been written in the US in the 1950s. I was reading it in the style of a 1950s detective story.
- 67726e 11y agoI agree, it have it a very old-timey feel. I felt like I was about to read about him being there to overthrow some kind of banana republic.
- pcrh 11y agoSimilar here, I spent some time trying to find out of it was a quote from Graham Greene or some other author who wrote about the Caribbean or South America... no luck though.
- niels_olson 11y agoFor what it's worth, Whiskey Charlie was probably a young man in the 1950s. And the military is culturally stuck in the 50s. So it's not that far off.
- mbubb 11y agoor the J Peterman catalog...
- an_ko 11y agoI think it would be good for the language if we try to "de-escalate" the usage of neutral-looking words that are currently considered offensive. Carefully re-introducing them when the tone is clearly not racist—like here—might be a good way to do that. "Chinaman" feels like an excellent renaturalisation target, given it is borderline.
- crimsonalucard 11y agoAny man with a resume has a history, just like a word. You can't change history, but you can certainly falsify the resume.
- an_ko 11y agoI don't understand. Could you be direct?
- hobs 11y agoThe GP means that you can misrepresent the word but it does not change the meaning.
- stickfigure 11y agoThat's a queer claim to make.
- crimsonalucard 11y agoi see wut you did there.
- rue 11y agoLet’s leave that decision to those affected by the slur, shall we?
- defen 11y agoYeah, anyone who has seen The Big Lebowski would know that it is not the preferred nomenclature.
- niels_olson 11y agoI saw the Big Lebowski on deployment sow many times I can't begin to count. I don't remember the scene you refer to.
- bch 11y agoObviously you're not a golfer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYOzUHnPJvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYOzUHnPJvU
- benkuykendall 11y ago(sidestepping any politics and instead discussing grammar) Anyone know why the use of demonyms as nouns is inconsistent? "American" is used as to denote one individual, while "Chinese" is always used as a collective noun.
- pcrh 11y agoA French...no (a Frenchman, OK). An English... no (an Englishman, OK). A Japanese... yes. A German... yes. An Italian... yes. A Chinese... no (a Chineseman, no; Chinaman, also no). It seems to be pretty random, like a lot of English grammar... "Chinaman" is singled-out as pejorative for historical reasons mostly restricted to the US. Other Europeans had different pejorative nouns for Chinese people.
- gaius 11y agoAgreed. In the UK Chinaman is archaic, but I've never heard it used as a pejorative. Chink would be racist here.
- jmadsen 11y agoIt was a good point to bring up, and I'm glad you did, but would have been a better post to also say what the preferred term is, especially as "a Chinese" is confusing to people. I _believe_ "a Chinese man/woman/guy/programmer" is the most correct way to say it, using it as an adjective (at least that's how I get around it).
- niels_olson 11y agoOP here. I ran into an interesting situation doing demographics for a college: there were 586 blacks and 587 African Americans: one white guy from South Africa worked the system. Needless to say, no one got kicked off a bus because their parents were born in Africa. They got kicked off a bus for being black. Since then, it has been my, perhaps selective, observation that the trend is for groups to prefer we recognize the people for what they've been through. They're not homosexual, they're gay. They're not African American, they're black. That said, in this case, I honestly hadn't considered the possibility that "chinaman" was offensive, but between "chinaman" and "chinese man", "chinaman" felt right in the story.
- niels_olson 11y agoI was unaware, thanks. Although I did think about the word choice... "Chinese? That's gender-neutral, not informative. Chinese man? too long. Chinaman. Dude, from China, with a little nostalgia. Nailed it. > Cracker Awww... I feel the love!
- 67726e 11y agoDamn crackers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_cracker https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_cracker