Tag: pet food

Comments And The Chinese Electric Car

No one, certainly not me, wants to be accused of racial prejudice. Make no mistake, it was disturbing just to be accused.

I wrote an entry on Gearlog last night about the new Chinese electric car from BYD. As with most of my posts for them (and here) there was plenty of me infused in the article and lots of my opinion. I am lucky that my editors give me latitude in that regard.

“From those fabulous folks who brought you the $40 Rolex watch and melamine laced baby formula (and pet food) it’s the electric car! Monday morning BYD unveiled the F3DM, China’s first mass produced electric sedan.”

Uh oh! I woke this morning and checked the comments.

“Why is racial prejudice so ingrained in the minds of the American culture? It is shameful that the author of this article thinks it is his duty to insult BYD and the Chinese people in general by opening this article with irrelevant and insulting references to Rolex knockoffs and tainted milk. Where does BYD fit into these imbecile ridicules?

Who knew? I told Helaine I was going to respond. She said don’t.

I checked back later today. I was being defended by strangers.

“The reference to a “knock off” is because the exterior is a knock off; just look at it! The technical advances are “inside” as rightly pointed out in the article. Get over it, I have (I’m Chinese). The author also took a good crack at GM too, saying its Volt is a “2010 dream”… why not have a go at him for saying that? I was in no way insulted or felt the article contained racial bias.

If you get ‘told off’ by someone, don’t first say its because you’re ethnically different, perhaps the person doing the ‘telling off’ does this to everyone, or perhaps you deserved it. If you still feel the article was refereeing to ‘stereo typing’ then we only have the Chinese government to blame for allowing knockoffs to occur so openly. “

Later another commenter came on.

“have you listened to any on the Chinese dialects such as Cantonese or even Mandarin recently? I’d say racial prejudice is pretty ingrained in us Chinese too. A lot of people I know still use “鬼佬” or something similar when referring to foreigners.”

Where do I start? Helaine was right. I would only have started a flame war. The other two comments have allowed me to rest easier. No one, certainly not me, wants to be accused of racial prejudice. Make no mistake, it was disturbing just to be accused.

On top of this what’s amazing is the reach of Gearlog. The site gets around 650,000 page views per month from every corner of the Earth. I suspect one or two of these commenters was from China. The world continues to get smaller.