A Jewish man walked into a restaurant in Shanghai. Proud of the diasporic history of the Jews, he was eager to find out if there was any Jew in the great metropolis. He asked the waiter, "Do you have Chinese Jews here?"

The waiter, scratching his head, went inside the kitchen to enquire. He emerged 10 minutes later, "Sir, I have checked with our experienced Shanghaiese chef. There is no Chinese juice here."

"I simply can't believe there is no Chinese Jew in Shanghai! Are you sure?" the Jewish man pressed on.

The waiter, already exasperated, said, "Yes, sir. We serve apple juice and orange juice, but we do not have Chinese juice. If you like, we can serve you Chinese tea.'

This joke, although amusing to me, got a mainland Chinese friend of mine riled up. As far as he sees it, it is disparaging to the Chinese because 'Chinese people in the urban centres now have much stronger command of English'.

He certainly didn't catch the joke.

However, his edgy response only confirms my long-held observation, through my extensive contact with people of Chinese origin the world over, that the Chinese - many of whom are proud of their allegedly 5,000 years of civilisation - hardly respond positively to criticisms in life, and feel slighted very easily.

Part of the reason lies perhaps in the education, public or private, that many of the Chinese people receive, which is premised on a core contention that Chinese civilisation embodies the glory of the world.

History has always been a favourite subject of mine, and I remember studying it fervently in high school. Simply flip through any book on China's historical relations with the neighbouring regions, one will invariably find that, since millennia back, peoples living around the Central Plain (Zhongyuan) of China were divided into four categories: to the east, Yi; to the west, Qiang; to the north, Di; to the south, Man.

And what was their common character? Well, they were all regarded as uncivilised and barbaric by the Han Chinese of the Central Plain. (While a Hokkienese, Cantonese or Hainanese person today may frown on any non-Chinese in Malaysia, it would be to his or her benefit to know that, once in China, he or she would reasonably likely be perceived as a barbarian from the south.)

Such ancient racial classification, remains unchallenged to date, does verge on xenophobia.

Ebullient teacher

Beiwei (386-557 AD) was the very first dynasty founded by a people outside the Central Plain, the Xianbei, a sub-tribe of the Mongols of Turkic lineage. Tuoba Hong, a Beiwei emperor, was a fond admirer of the 'superior' Han Chinese culture.

Acutely aware of the 'backward', nomadic tradition of the Xianbei, which was seen as an obstacle for him to rule northern China effectively, Tuoba Hong began a gigantic social engineering by sinicising the Xianbei folk, adopting in full the court systems and culture of the Han, and forcing his own people to learn the Han Chinese language at the expense of the native tongue and culture.

There was an ebullient history teacher in my high school who taught so passionately about the Beiwei era in Chinese history and concluded, "the superiority of our Han Chinese culture is self-evident, is it not? Tuoba Hong achieved racial unity and harmony by sinicising his own people. He was truly a visionary." Almost 18 years on, I could still remember his beaming eyes.

On hearing this, a classmate sitting in front of me turned around and said, "Do you not think Tuoba Hong was a traitor to his own people? He practically sold out the Xianbei tribe by forcing Han Chinese language on them."

I was prompted by his wise words to raise my hand at once, asking, "Sir, if you are opposed to the Malay ultras who are constantly on a lookout to assimilate us, why should you give credit to a ruler imposing Han culture on his own people? I clearly don't see any difference between Tuoba Hong and the Malay supremacists here."

The teacher was piqued. He reminded me in great displeasure that my stupid remarks could set me back by quite a few marks should I repeat them in the exam. Yeah, it was my first taste of the so-called Asian values.

Japan vs China

The humiliation of the Chinese at the hands of the Western imperialists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries did not change much the perception of a grandiose Chinese civilisation.

Even Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, two great scholars that appealed for a thorough renewal and overhaul of Chinese culture to save the nation from the brink of elimination, were to some extent racist too, erroneously believing that the yellow and the white races were duty-bound to safeguard the world, while the browns and the blacks are devoid of the qualities needed to rise above their own limits.

China's ancient order of the world, which places its own at the centre and relegates those surrounding it to the peripheries, has also created a profound ambivalence on the part of the Chinese towards Japan. Because the land of the rising sun was once a tributary state to successive Chinese empires, its rapid modernisation and technological advancement throughout the 20th century is watched with admiration and jaundice by the Chinese.

The Sino-Japanese war, in which millions of Chinese civilians were brutally killed, sowed the seed of hatred between the two East Asian giants in recent decades, and Japan's shifting positions on the war issue have certainly done nothing to improve the Sino-Japanese relations.

However, I would contend there is another element, more latent and less discussed, to the enmity between the two nations: the Chinese, seeing themselves at the top of world civilisations, still find it unpalatable that the Japanese, a 'dwarf and barbarian race', should have 'usurped' the rightful leadership of China in Asia over the past century.

(It is out of this concern that Sun Ge, a respected Chinese scholar associated with the Chinese Academy of Social Science, Beijing, and a Japan expert, cautions that it would be better if Chinese youths stop their crass and ugly nationalism of today, exemplified by the irrational reaction to China's football defeat by Japan last July, and seek to put Sino-Japanese relations in the right perspective.)

Chinese Malaysians racist?

What are the implications of Chinese racism for Chinese Malaysians? They are multi-faceted. But I would argue any proper and clear discussion on the issue will be obscured by the 'victim mentality' of the Chinese in Malaysia.

Given that Malaysia practises institutionalised racism in that the non-Malays are unfairly treated by the state, it has festered a prevalent myth that the Chinese in the country can never discriminate against or be racist towards others, 'because we are victims of Malay racism ourselves'. Those who hold such views clearly do not understand that one can be victim as well as perpetrator at the same time!

In this milieu, the effort to articulate the issue of Chinese racism is bound to be met with strong resistance and denial by the Chinese themselves, who have been living under fear of persecution for decades.

This mentality siege again reared its ugly head in the recent tsunami disaster in South and Southeast Asia, with Sin Chew Daily and the Sinocentric Ya Zhou Zhou Kan (regional Chinese magazine Asian Weekly) highlighting the looting of Chinese businesses in Aceh province, Indonesia, sensationalising that Chinese Indonesians were again being persecuted.

What these two influential publications have failed to appreciate is that tribulation recognises no colour skin, and in this time of turbulence and fear, everyone suffers in Aceh. By focusing solely on the fate of the Chinese Indonesians, wouldn't the Chinese media perpetuate the very racist discourse that they claim so much to want to dismantle?

Already, the rumour-mongering coffee shop is overwhelmed with racist postings against all Indonesians, branding them 'barbaric and beastly'. Isn't it high time for some soul-searching by the Chinese?