There is a mitigating circumstance, though. A previous book by the Rabbi, "Yiddishe Kop" was translated into Chinese as "The Jews' Art of Thinking" (猶太人的思考技術). The new book uses a similar phrase because of branding, and perhaps also because it is eye-catching.
The bottom of the front and back cover lists many wealthy ethnic Jews and Jewish families. The back cover gives a statistic showing the American Jews are wealthier than the general population. Nothing inflammatory is going on here, but it made me do a double-take, considering how sensitive some people are to stereotyping.
The book was published on January 19.
Update: To clarify, I think that "The Jews' Art/Techniques for Getting Rich" is clearly a bad title in English. The words "Jews" and "rich" sound crass together. But I can't judge whether the Chinese title really sounds bad. With a slightly different translation back into English, such as "Judaic Principles for Wealth," it doesn't sound bad.
In my experience, there is no stigma attached to combining the words "Jew" and "rich" in Chinese....most of the Chinese people I have come across have an immense and genuine respect and admiration for the business acumen of the Jewish people. I think the title is fine.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting, Josh. I didn't know that Chinese people had any opinion of Jewish people one way or the other. But there are some people that for various reasons do not appreciate stereotypes or generalizations that we may consider positive (such as that Jews are good businessmen). But I guess there are almost no Chinese who feel that way, so the only people who might be offended by such an implication from the book title are those who can't read it.
ReplyDeleteJEWS have little to no Glass Ceiling in the Whitey World because they are Whitey themselves!!
ReplyDeleteDon't believe me!? Just ask the founder of TSMC, Dr. Morris Chang!
He worked at Texas Instruments for a long time, and each time comes to making him the CEO, they passed it to another Whitey!
When he got sick of that Glass Ceiling in America, he came back to Taiwan to start his Company, which is the amazing TSMC!!
Anyhow, do the book talks about Benard Madoff and how JEWS control the Federal Reserve System with FIAT MONEY? How about American Tax Payers would have to bail out their Jewish Banks if they started to fail?
The TRUTH is our East Asian People needs to learn HOW not to get backstabbed by the JEWS and their CRONIES with their MONOPOLY (Wall Street such as Goldman Sachs and Bilderberg Group, Hollywood, many levels of important US Government Functions, Microsoft, Google, and so on.... very long list) and just simply UNFAIR BUSINESS PRACTICES by those JEWS!!
Moscow, comprised two thirds of wooden buildings at the time, burnt down almost completely (it was estimated that four-fifths of the city was destroyed), effectively depriving the French of shelter in the city. French historians http://www.smartlation.com assume that the fires were due to Russian sabotage.
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ReplyDeletethere are member from chinese diaspora all other asia ( from small pacific island to malaysia )
Everywhere I have been I saw many "ethnic local chinese" working as small traders ( buy and sell stuff ) or boss of small office. And in many places I hear some people complaining at them ( don't know if it's fair complain or only jealous).
I guess the stereotypes in asias do not apply only to jews.