Article Preview
Asian Diary
- Abstract
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: “The West,” the Israeli diplomat was saying, “has a secret weapon it doesn’t yet know about. More explosive then nuclear warheads where Southeast Asia is concerned, and at least as immoral. A Siamese king, back in 1910, wrote a book about it. He called it the ‘Anti-Semitism of the Orient.’ The Jews, you see, are the Chinese. It hasn’t changed. There’s only one unifying factor in this part of the world: each indigenous people—Malay, Thai, Vietnamese—hates the guts of a Chinaman.”
By “the Chinese,” he meant, of course, the Chinese of the diaspora, the Nanyang; China proper is a distant, amorphous presence. China is old, but the Chinese of the Nanyang are comparatively new on the scene. Admiral Cheng Ho sailed the straits of Malacca to Arabia and Africa in the 15th century. Long before that, Chinese traders were busy in the Malay archipelago, Borneo, and the Philippines. But Europeans, after all, were doing much the same thing at much the same period: Cheng Ho and Vasco da Gama are practically contemporaries. Yet each left a surprisingly superficial mark: the odd coastal fort, the odd Buddhist shrine or seaport mission-station.
About the Author
This article is available for purchase to subscribers and for individual purchase
Subscriber Sign In
Not A Subscriber?
