The many definitions of stupid?

Recently a Taiwanese politician & intellectual, Ao Li called Singaporeans "stupid". As a "1/3-educated" Chinese guy who can speak with a Johorean accent but can hardly read/write Chinese, I was initially quite shocked to hear a politician say something like this and although I'm a Malaysian, if you consider the way this guy defines the different type of Chinese, we are bundled together with Singapore since most of us come from the same set of ancestors who left China for the greener pastures down south! So if you feel that way too, replace the word Singaporeans with Malaysians or Southeast Asian Chinese. On further digging of the matter, I came across this blog which translated the transcript of the politician's talkshow:

Excerpts from e pur si muove:

When I had said Singaporeans are stupid, this is what I had meant: I said, Taiwanese are not the most ill-intentioned (Ed: Ao just says ‘bad’ here, I am inferring from context), Taiwanese are the most inept (Ed: not quite, the Singlish blur is far more accurate), I say people from Hong Kong are relatively more ill-intentioned, mainland Chinese are inscrutable, and Singaporeans are the ones who are more stupid. (Ed: this looks like a tongue-in-cheek classification of various ethic Chinese populations.) I said Singaporeans are stupid. I meant to say it in an oversimplified manner, to describe a general phenomenon: this kind of statement is made in a very crass fashion, I never said my words were not oversimplified.

People only hear me say "Singaporeans are relatively stupid", they don’t realize, when I said Hong Kongers are ill-intentioned, the converse is to say that Singaporeans are not ill-intentioned, just more stupid. Why resent being called stupid without knowing why you are [allegedly] stupid?

Huh? I think this stupidness he's referring to is the cunningness of the Taiwanese and Hongkongers. Which can be quite true from my experiences with these 3 groups of students - but of course, I don't really wanna generalise but I believe the environment you live in guides your principles and ethics.

But one thing I must remind everyone, their level of culture was not high, because they didn’t even have enough to eat; they couldn’t live in rural Fujian and elsewhere. That is why, as I had just said, their industrious and assiduous nature is good, but their cultural literacy was poor, because they were a very poor people, and this batch of people were the ancestors of modern-day Singaporeans, and also the ancestors of modern-day Taiwanese; when we look from a historical perspective, we view them with repect and empathy. But we must acknowledge that these people did not have solid cultural foundations.

This again shows how "stupid" this guy is and how insulting he is from his ignorance. From what I've learned about the customs and traditions we Malaysian/Singaporean Chinese practise, we're still upholding the Chinese culture, which many in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan don't hold on to anymore. In fact, from talking to some of the Taiwanese/Chinese coursemates I have here, they were quite surprised about certain things we do like the special ritual you'll have to do when you move to a new house, what to do during a double lunar year, etc.

Anyway, the reason I'm kinda fired up to even write a pretty long post to my standards is the experience I had of being called a "Chinese mongrel" while I was studying with a bunch of PRC students. This happened back in boarding school when a PRC student forgot to close the Word document he was using to write about his experiences in Singapore to his friends in China which my friend happened to read. He referred to Singaporeans & Malaysians as mongrels and generally doesn't consider us to be Chinese at all to the extent he calls Malaysian Chinese Malays!

This sentiment I guess is pretty accurately described by the Taiwanese politician above and till this day I'm still puzzled as to why some ppl here are so pro-Chinese when the ppl you identify with you don't even recognise you as a real Chinese.

So to all non-Chinese Malaysian friends, you'll understand now why some of the Chinese population here in Malaysia feel more Malaysian than anything else and whenever you used the phrase "If you're not happy here, go back to China lah", we feel more insulted than the ppl who call us "Chinese mongrels".

Back to work now.