An evening student Mike in Grade 1 asked me one day after class, “Can you explain something to me. I’m in a love-hate relationship with a woman from China. She keeps saying things like, ‘Your Western food is rubbish. Your Western cars are rubbish. Your Western houses are rubbish. Your Western culture is rubbish.’ Why does she do that? I’m doing Chinese because of her, which proves I have respect for her culture, yet she just slags off mine at every opportunity. I don’t understand why she’s doing it.”
I said, “You said you’re in a love-hate relationship with her. Where’s the love bit?”
(London, 1993)
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