![]() This had raised questions over whether he would retain his position as minister and be able to see out his term as president of the eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers - a crucial role that places him at the heart of negotiations on fiscal policy and bail-outs. ![]() The Dutch finance minister was already under pressure after his Labour party was crushed in last week’s elections in the Netherlands. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, a key euro area dealmaker, is facing calls to resign after he suggested that southern European countries had squandered their money on “booze and women”. Please consider Protests Mount Over EU Dealmaker’s ‘Booze and Women’ Slur. Spain and Portugal now seek his ouster in addition to an apology. This latest debate is a sure sign that the process is creating anxieties for many.This compounds Dijsselbloem’s already significant problems as his party was trounced in the recent Dutch elections. Chinese migration from the mainland is remaking what it means to be Chinese-American. Such visceral reactions from both sides suggest that Chinese-white relations constitute only one of many factors shaping attitudes to Chinese culture in the USA. They have all studied Identity 101: “It’s an asian-american thing,” tweeted Roses-are-red, “… because we’re specifically taught that we gotta hide our chinese identity and assimilate to white culture and then some white chick with a shallow appreciation of chinese culture gets to wear a qipao and suddenly it’s ~cool and quirky~” The Chinese-Americans have proved themselves not all daunted. I can’t stand these Americans calling it ‘sacred’ to the Chinese culture. One mainland Chinese person tweeted, “qipao is not a Chinese ‘traditional’ dress at all. Faultlines emerged between people in these various categories. ![]() The twittering started in America, but soon enough embroiled mainland Chinese, Hong Kongers, Taiwanese and Singaporeans. New and revised values can certainly be attached to cultural objects and from this perspective the debate itself is more interesting than its subject. In China today it is often worn by the bride to her wedding banquet, but is perhaps most commonly used as a uniform for female staff in stores and big hotels.Īs long as champions of the qipao are calling for the importance of understanding its history before putting it on (and Lam does just this), its complex design origins and historical social status are relevant to the debate. During the Mao years it faded from popularity before disappearing altogether, having become a symbol of bourgeois decadence. Historically it was more likely to be worn by a call girl than by an activist. In the longer term, the dress has proved to have an ambivalent position in the Chinese cultural landscape. Its status was cemented when the newly established Nationalist government recognised it as formal dress in 1928. The familiar, figure-hugging dress with its mandarin collar and long side splits finally emerges in the late 1920s. A browse through fashion features in the Chinese press in the 1920s reveals a mix of elements in various novel designs before the familiar dress appeared. It was in Shanghai that the qipao took definitive shape. In its more shapely final form, he advises, it was a “symbol of activism” and an expression of “gender equality”.ġ935 cartoon by Zhang E showing a woman wearing qipao. Lam himself bizarrely describes its origins as lying in a shapeless garment made for Chinese women to wear when they were doing housework. In the course of this brouhaha, some odd statements have been made about the qipao. Among famous qipao-wearers of the Western world are Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Nicole Kidman and Anne Hathaway. Her name is Keziah Daum and she joins venerable company. The problem for Lam and his many “likers” is that in the tweeted photo of a prom in Utah last week, the girl wearing the red embroidered qipao is “white”. With thousands of young Chinese-Americans attending high school proms each year, this is unlikely to have been the first time a qipao has served as a prom dress. ![]() Is it “a sacred garment” as some have claimed, or, as the girl in the photo responded, is it just “a f***ing dress”? ![]() The responses to Lam’s tweet have included ethnic slurring, calls for tolerance, sympathy for Lam as the oppressed minority, sympathy for the girl in the prom dress, and claims and counter-claims about the status and meaning of the dress in question, the qipao (pronounced “chee-pow”). ![]()
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