Hollywood traditionally loves to portray Chinese men as a bunch of mean, vengeful and untrustworthy demons, which is of course very biased. China does produce mean, vengeful and untrustworthy men, just like any other nations, but China also nurtures men with noble spirit and a heart of gold.
There are two men born in China and studied in both China and the United States. After receiving their PhD respectively, one becomes the world’s top scientist and surgeon through decades of strenuous and honest work, another remains jobless due to his less sufficient training and even lesser endeavour in the profession.
But different academic training and working attitudes are just parts of the causes that set the two men world apart. There is more – the humanitarian conscience.
The following is one instance to illustrate our point:
About ten years ago in September 2000, Fang, the watchdog of Zachary Burton, a professor at Michigan State University, began to collect evidences against Dr. Xia Jiantong, a 24-year old Chinese who was said to be the youngest professor that Harvard ever appointed. The offence Xia committed related to his description of his academic credentials that Fang believed to be over exaggerated to some degree. Fang determined to bring Xia down for that reason so sent the accusation along with the relevant materials to the assistant dean for Harvard Graduate School of Design. When in November he mentioned this incident on his website, Dr. Xiao advised him to take second thought before proceeding further. And following is the record of their online exchanges at the time which can still be found on Fang’s personal website:
Xia is a real talent; please give him an opportunity to learn a lesson without damaging his career. What he has achieved in such a tender age is amazing, he must have worked extremely hard and we as Chinese should feel proud of him.
None of us is saint and we all have our faults, let along a young man like him – even some senior academics would over boast their achievements on occasions. Take ourselves. When we were at his age, how many silly things we did? To be frank, I’m not as smart as Xia, and when I was 24, I was just on my second year studying for my Master’s degree; by then I had achieved nothing yet but I was even more arrogant and ambitious than Xia.
Please, let’s give him some support and wish him to achieve more in his career. I bow to all of you here, please stop chasing after him. Neither cheap praise nor harsh condemnation would really help a talented young man to learn and to grow. I disagree with your idea of making a big splash on this matter by informing the Harvard authority. We can help him to correct his mistakes privately, otherwise it may eventually hurt all Chinese students and academics here.
I sent out the documents because the assistant dean of Harvard’s School of Design asked me to do so.
Please forgive me for being blunt. I just don’t see why it is necessary; if I were you, I would definitely do things differently. To start with, do you really have to follow the order of an assistant dean from Harvard? Is it wise for Chinese in America to ruin another Chinese’s career? Will it do any good to Chinese students and academics studying and living in the United States? Look at those American movies, whenever a Chinese appears, he is forever depicted in a negative light. Have you ever seen a positive Chinese character in a Hollywood film?
I’m not a fan of Jews, but I do admire their spirit of unity which has a lot for us to learn, since we are more like a plate of sands. Your fraud busting activity is undoubtedly quite beneficial to a healthy development of China’s science, but when it has a potential to spoil the collective image of Chinese people, we should try to address the issue within Chinese community. All things in the world are interconnected, and a positive action could result a very negative consequence.
Phew! Is the collective image of Chinese people maintained by Xia? I was asked to send out the materials, should I just ignore the request? If I did so, they might think I have something to hide, would this spoil my personal image as a Chinese? And further spoil the collective image of all Chinese? Tell you, you’re just fxxk stupid, pray stop calling yourself professor.
Do you see how psychotically unreasonable and fxxk rude of Zachary Burton’s watchdog is?! How can anybody ever believe a man like Fang who concerns no one else’s interest but his own would spend years to bust fraud for free just for helping “China’s science move forward”?
Yet Zachary Burton would present this mean, vengeful and untrustworthy guy as a watchdog to keep men of honour and noble honest. This notion in itself deserves to be fraud busted. If it is not due to Burton’s naivety that makes him so easily to be fooled by his student, then we shall have a good reason to suspect he may cherish some deliberate intentions.
But whatever Zachary Burton’s true intention for China and especially China’s science is, he can feel quite satisfied by now. The good man devoted to serving the humanity and serving Chinese people in particular has been locked up and labeled as fraud by a Fang associated media, while the man of fraud in almost all aspects being hailed as the warrior of fraud busting.
What a fxxk stupid moment in history it is!