Chinese Culture, Lesson 1: American Football = ???

January 1st came and went, and once again, I spent a significant part of it in front of the television (now new-and-improved 42" HDTV that my parents bought WITHOUT TELLING ME) watching USC beat the crap out of yet another undeserving and overrated "Big" "10" "team." To tradition!

The next morning (that's January 2nd for all you non-math majors), I woke up and found that nobody else was home - apparently, my mom and sister had miraculously decided that I was mature enough to be left alone and not burn the house down. (Not kidding - in the days of old, leaving me alone at home was verboten because they were honest-to-God afraid that I would somehow hurt myself or, more importantly, somehow hurt the neighbor's adorable dog.) I read through the sections of interest in the Mercury (translation: glance fleetingly at the front page, read the comics, flip to Sports) and, before putting my paper down, I saw my mom's Chinese newspaper of choice, the World Journal, sitting underneath it. And, oh, how I laughed and laughed at my own people's ever-more-interesting culture.

Here's an overall shot of the front page of the Jan. 2nd, 2009 issue of The World Journal:


It's about the Rose Queen for this year's Tournament of Roses down in Pasadena. The same Tournament of Roses that culminates in the aforementioned football game. This is page A1. Like, MAIN HEADLINE. The same place where the New York Times would have put something urgently important, such as the unfortunate bombings going on yet again in the Gaza Strip area or the international economic crisis. But maybe I'm just jumping to conclusions and should give these people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they're talking about something else. Let's take a closer look, shall we?



That red headline states that, in the Tournament of Roses' 120-year history, this year's Rose Queen, Courtney Chou Lee, is only the second Chinese person to receive the honor.

I suppose it's a point of Taiwanese interest to be celebrated in ANY manner nowadays, no matter how mediocre, after the mind-boggling disaster that was Chen Shui-Bian's presidency.

(And now, a message from NBC: Boys and girls, if you want to see a real modern history lesson in nepotism, embezzlement, and general abuse of power, look no further. Indicted on Dec. 12, 2008 for forgery, money-laundering and misuse of public funds, former President Chen was one of the greatest embarassments to the Taiwanese people in its short history. For more information, Dr. Wikipedia has more here.)

This message brought to you by THE SHOW.

It makes sense that the article made absolutely zero mention of the results of the football game, since American football is generally not in the interest of the people of Taiwan (or anyone living outside of the US and Canada, for that matter), but just to make sure, I very slowly made my way through the article and found that, like any respectable Chinese/Taiwanese newspaper should, the writer did indeed mention the football game.

But there was no mention of the game itself or the scores or the history of the Rose Bowl game at all.

The only mention of the Rose Bowl game was the names of the two schools playing in it - the University of Southern California and the Pennsylvania State University - AND THEIR UNDERGRADUATE RANKINGS ON THE LATEST US NEWS & WORLD REPORT. (USC is at 27 and PSU is tied at 47 with UT-Austin; Cal is at 21...again.) Leave it to a Taiwanese newspaper to make sure the readership develops an immediate impression of these schools (if they hadn't already heard of them) based on a single comprehensive and, might I add, totally inaccurate representation of their academic reputation.

I come from a people of goddamn nerds. Pride!

P.S. Just for kicks, I took a picture of the Rose Queen herself.

Not bad.