Asian vs. Caucasian

Since I’m regularly reading Nury’s columns I feel slightly drawn into a friendly Asian-Caucasian competition. He is Asian, so it’s fair enough that he depicts his and his people’s point of view. And I give him the one point that all the big money making screen writes come from the West and the Asians are not really recognised apart from a very few examples.

However, I am talking about the everyday newspaper, magazine, book writing and general publishing business. I’m a rather struggling to get my word out there, and it can’t be lack of skill showing as yet, since nobody has even bothered looking at my stuff. So, who is it to stand our ground?

Don’t know a comedian or writer addressing this particular issue (well, didn’t really look for one) and hence here I am volunteering. I believe I’m the perfect counterpart for the job.

Me, Caucasian – that means white, never was in the Caucasus and don’t have relatives there – female, inexperienced writer with ambition and overgrown confidence in own skill, is challenging well established, horribly experienced, male Asian writer who increases his army in offering writing courses, which I would kill for, if it would help me attending, but what won’t happen anyway, because I’m firstly not Asian, and secondly, I’m located in the deepest provinces of England and he is in Hong Kong.

As if that wouldn’t be unbalanced enough: He has travelled the world and knows stuff, while I’m … well, I’m from Germany!

Being German means, having grown up with a history of racism followed by a period of strict political correctness. Germans of my generation feel guilty of almost everything… just in case! When I moved to England – and I mean England, not the UK of GB or any other concept of peoples inhabiting this island – I found that they are much more relaxed about racism; especially against Germans.

Here is proof by a conversation with an English colleague:

	He:	Was in Germany, lovely food
	Me:	Oh yes, do you know Erbsensuppe – pea soup
	He:	No, didn’t have that…
	Me:	You soak the dried peas and then boil them with leg of pig, and …
	He:	Oh, and then you blitz it…
	Me:	Noooo, you English! You have to blitz everything…
	He:	But you Germans started THAT in the first place!

And then we had a good laugh. This conversation would not have been possible in Germany, and it indicates that I now live in an environment where ‘racist comparison’ seems to be possible by calling it ‘cultural comparison’ and making sure that everybody is laughing at the end. Phew!

What? English and Germans ARE of the same race, so it IS cultural…? Ha, you definitely don’t have a German background. For Germans to talk about ANYTHING that is different is racist: ‘Doesn’t this lawn look a bit greener than the other?’, ‘How can you be so racist? It’s not the lawn’s fault…!’

Well, back to my proposal of taking on the Asian wit. I haven’t been travelling a lot and if so only towards the West, where the Californian weightlifters at Venice beach stopped me in my tracks; hence me never reaching the land where the sun apparently is rising from, and people are looking much slimmer. Given that the above is about the only cultural experience I have with Americans I henceforth decided to only represent Europe.

Now, which means of carrying out this competition do we have? The Asian side owns a well established blog with God knows how many visitors and I have my website with 10 fans, at best.

That should do! This is not just an Asian-Caucasian competition, right? This is a male-female competition as well… and you know who is bound to win that?!