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Times

One-night stand exposes Chinese anxiety

E very child in China knows that parks in Shanghai used to display the sign: 'No Dogs, No Chinese'. That blunt signage is in fact an urban myth but the city's foreign-run parks really did ban native visitors (and dogs) during the century that Shanghai was split into international concessions. Decades of foreign invasion and occupation have etched a paranoia into the national psyche — a fear that westerners see the Chinese as inherently inferior, no better than an animal known for its subservience. Today, China still wrestles with its cultural relationship with the foreign. How acceptable is it to admire and imbibe, say, European or Japanese influences? Or is preferring the foreign always a sign of internalised inferiority, and what's Chinese should be seen as just as good?