Common Misconception Response #5

Misconception: All Chinese people are in the Communist Party

Dear Jennifer,
I just know that you think we Chinese are all in the Communist Party! I think its really a misconception. On one hand, our population is 1.3 billion, but our Communist Party member's number is only 70 million. These figures show that not all the Chinese are in the Communist Party. In China, there are also some other political parties like Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party, China Association for Promoting Democracy, China Democratic National Construction Association, and so on. As we all know, Wan Gang, the Minister of China Science and Technology department doesn't come from the Communist Party, he is a member of China Zhi Gong Party.
On the other hand, if you think that all the Chinese people are believe in communism, maybe you are right. China Communist party is the administration party in China. All the people are influenced by Communism since they are born. So, to sum up, not all the Chinese are in the Communist party, but most believe in communism.
Yours, Eric

Misconception: Chinese people only eat rice and fish every day

Dear Sir or Madam,
I think you have some misconceptions of Chinese food. Now I will show what Chinese people eat. Chinese food can be roughly divided into Northern and Southern styles of cooking. Northern dishes are relatively oily and the use of vinegar and garlic tends to be quite popular. Wheat plays an important role in Northern cooking ravioli like dumplings, steamed stuffed buns, fried meat dumplings are just a few of the many flour based treats that are enjoyed in the north of China.
Representative of Southern cooking styles are Sichuan or Hunan cuisine, famous for their liberal use of chili pepper. Within the whole of Southern cooking, the Jiangsu and Shejang regions emphasize freshness and tenderness, while Guangdong cuisine tends to be somewhat sweet and always full of variety rice and by products, including noodles, cakes and congee.
In Chinese cooking, color, aroma, and flavor share equal importance in the preperation of every dish. Normly, any one entree will combine three to five colors, selected from ingredients that are light green, dark green, red, yellow, white, black, or caramel colored. Usually, a meat and vegetable dish is prepared from one main ingrediant and two or three secondary ingrediants of contrasting colors are then cooked appropriately, incorporating the proper seasonings and sauce to create an aesthetically attractive dish.
In fact, many of the plants used in chinese cooking, such as scallions, fresh ginger root, garlic, dried lily buds, tree fungus, etc have properties of preventing and alleviating illnesses. The Chinese have a traditional belief in the medicinal value of food and that food and medicine share the same origin. This view would be considered a forerunner of nutritional science in China. Notable in this theory is the concept that correct proportions of meat and vegetable ingrediants should be maintained. One third of meat-based dishes should be vegetable ingrediants and one third of vegetable-based dishes should be meat. In preparing soups, the quantity of water used should total 7/10 the volume of the serving bowl. In short, the correct ingrediant proportions must be adhered to in the preperationg of each dish or soup in order to ensure full nutritional value.
Yours, Jerry

***Teacher's Note: I spent time to type out the audaciously copied email above to give you all a little treat! Enjoy my student's shameless attempt at plagiarism and apparent belief in my naivity...it didn't take long in my teaching career to learn that most of my students can't put a grammatical sentance together...and words like ravioli, liberal, medicinal, aesthetic, and adhered are generally forgery flags! Now to determine a punishment...