CHINESE ARE CHEAP

Apparently the money expended on Ching Ming can be taken out of the family trust. Which, understandably, surprised my apartment mate, because traditionally in her family the various siblings just cough-up the necessary dough and visit the family graves without paperwork, receipts, investment advice, and taxplanning.

My apartment mate comes from a different breed of Chinese American than many recent arrivals, consequently she is a bit old-fashioned and behind the times.

This despite her fairly shocking behaviour, like contributing to charity, doing volunteer work, and voting regularly.

Or dating a white dude, and having a middle-aged Caucasian bachelor for an apartment mate.


I don't know how Wheelie Boy (her love interest) feels about having a raving anarchist libertarian as his girl friend, because I never talk to him, but as the apartment mate I am rather chuffed, because it's great fun listening to her express outrage the shenanigans of her own people. I too am surprised that Ching Ming expenses are a valid family trust outlay.


Even so, family trusts are a Chinese American phenomenon that indicate sensibility, solid values, and years of effort. Third or fourth generation, of Hong Kong or Toishanese origins, plus careful husbanding of resources.
A family trust is a culmination of the acculturative process.



無忠厚
有一善，從而賞之，又從而詠歌嗟歎之 ...

Thoroughly modern mainlanders probably have everything squirreled away in Panama instead, and enter all disbursements on the books as maintenance costs for the real estate they bought with the money they smuggled out. Even if it was junkfood purchased with a two-for-one coupon.
Consequently they haggle like moereneukers and demand receipts for everything, ask that the entry be changed to something like "steam pipe sheathing" instead of Christian LaCroix or Louboutin, and whine petulantly when they have to pay for sales tax too.
Despite the contradiction, they'll show off designer brandnames, expensive watches, fancy duds, and status objects, plus profound knowledge and familiarity with such things, while simultaneously bitching up a storm about spending one penny more than they think they can get away with, waste your time for several hours until you finally cave in just to get rid of them and see them finally leave, all the while keeping up a kvetching monologue about how much money you must be making off of charging such outrageous prices, everything costs too much here and is badly made! Then they'll pretend that they are poor and possibly Laotian when they fork over the dough. To be written off as a business expense.
And claimed on their taxes.

I'm fairly certain that most of the residents of SF Chinatown do not have family trusts or huge hidden bank accounts stuffed with the rewards of whatever free-enterprise and 4 modernizations related finagling their highly-placed Hunanese relatives or Szechuan ganster uncles engaged upon.
And they have better manners.

If this sounds judgmental, rest assured that it is. Many Mandarin speakers here in the United States are a thoroughly corrupt bunch, kind of like the warprofiteers of the modern era. Sleazy cheapskates, vapid consumerites, vulgarians, and arrogant. Yeah, I know that some of them are descendants of the old guard that fled to Terrace Bay after Peanut lost the war, but far many more are priggish provincial snoots who inexplicably became rich in the last generation and came over for the safety of their money.

If you hear Mandarin spoken, that tells you something.



Decent folks speak Cantonese.




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