Sunday, September 06, 2009

To be a Chinese Citizen

Last night I was eating at restaurant with my friend Doug. Our waitress was an young Asian woman. We tried to guess her nationality. Thai, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese? We settled on Korean after a lengthy process of elimination. So we asked. Hong Kong Chinese. She then launched into a long explanation of the traits and differences. Interesting. Indo versus mainland. We got on the subject of her citizenship and she described the test. Mulitple choice questions like "who was the 13th president of the United States," what was the color of the uniforms of the North and South in the Civil War," and "what do the fifty stars represent on the American flag." I had no idea who the 13th was. I started counting and naming. Not sure. To my surprise she said that in China all you needed was a background check. No test. Then she laughed and said, "imagine if you had to know 5000 years of history and dynasties to become a Chinese citizen." We decided the citizenship test was pretty lame. Probably dated back to the days when the American gov't considered most foreigners inferior. One of the side effects of jingoism.

6 comments:

Cynthia Short said...

The citizenship test proves nothing. They need to take a test to see if they can be a productive member of society! Wait, we all should take one of those....

ron hardy said...

That's actually what I said to her Cynthia. That the questions were essentially meaningless. Sixth grade level memorization/multiple choice. Like the written part of the driver's test. I'm not sure there is a test to gauge that. Minnesota multi-phasic. smile

SarahJane said...

It probably dates from the time of the 13th president, when there weren't so many to remember.

ron hardy said...

Yes, Millard Fillmore set standards for that test that secured his posterity.

SarahJane said...

I knew that.
laugh

ron hardy said...

I thought so. I boned up on Millard... smile/laugh