Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Asians & Guns

I first heard the murderer of 32 people in Virginia Tech was a Chinese, then later confirmed is a South Korean, which is not very much different to westerners really: Asians. If you browse Youtube top viewed videos a while ago, one titled "Crazy Asians" was on the first page. They are actually, I might add, Japanese.
People hate to be generalized, especially when this generalization relates you to someone "crazy". I wrote an article half a year ago about the "mission-impossible" for ordinary Chinese to be granted a US visa. I still remember at one point I wrote "Chinese are known as peace-loving people", I was wrong, as I have come to realize. Since few westerners can distinguish Chinese with Japanese or Koreans, or any other Asians for that matter, there is hardly a thing could be defined as "Chinese character".
On this devastating incident, two rather different approach could be found: tackling 1) gun control; 2) psychological crisis among students. Elayne Boosler has an interesting article, focusing on the former point, on the Huffington Post, well-worth a reading.