Upsetting the Chinese. Afterthought on the Shanghai 2007 World Bridge Championships

I don’t recall the title, but in one of Kinky Friedman’s novels he has a Jewish character make the observation ‘The thing I like about the Chinese is they don’t care that we killed Christ’.

Frankly that’s pretty much what I’ve always thought the Chinese perspective would be. So when the US world champions on the victory dais last year held up a sign which said ‘We didn’t vote for Bush’, I thought the Chinese were as likely to care about that as I do whether Paris Hilton wears underpants.

US women receive their Gold Medals at World Bridge Championships Shanghai 2007

(photo by Simon Hinge)

An aside here….I’m on a mailing list for Hilton hotels and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why I got so many emails about their Paris establishment. ‘Click here for Paris Hilton photos’. ‘Paris Hilton free here’ ‘Paris Hilton special….’ there was no end to them. Quite useful, no doubt, if one lived in England, but not to somebody over the other side of the world. ‘Paris Hilton. Free sex movies.’ was the last straw. I dashed off an email to complain: ‘If the Hilton in Paris can have free sex movies, why can’t the Sydney Hilton?’. Well, it transpires that Paris Hilton is a girl – presumably conceived at the Hilton Hotel in Paris by parents who had both a taste for ancient Greek literature and a hankering for a boy. I need a better email filter.

Back to the subject at hand. The question is ‘Did the Chinese really actually care that the US champs made that statement???’ It is well known that the US bridge administration attempted to inflict all sorts of draconian penalties, so presumably they cared. But is there any actual evidence that the Chinese cared? If so I’d love to see it. I’ve talked to Americans who said the Chinese cared, but they didn’t actually have any information as to how that manifested itself. Could it be there was simply a presumption that the Chinese would care? Your thoughts would be appreciated.