Confronting Western Myths About China

By Li Nan

September 30 was a big day for David Ferguson. Dressed in his kilt， the 65-year-old Scotsman received the Friendship Award， the top prize given out annually by the Chinese Government to honor outstanding foreign experts， in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. “It was a very memorable experience，” Ferguson told Beijing Review.

Ferguson stood out from the crowd in his kilt and， after delivering a speech to award recipients， Chinese Premier Li Keqiang approached him and asked in English， “Do you come from Scotland？”Ferguson answered in Chinese， “Yes， Im Scottish.” Having lived in China for 15 years， he can now speak a little Chinese.

From stranger to defender

Ferguson is a writer and editor with the Beijing-based Foreign Languages Press. When he was young， he traveled around the world， but China had never been on his radar. “It was just too big and too far away，” Ferguson said.

He met his Chinese wife when she was studying in the UK and the couple moved to China in 2006. “I came to China with a great ignorance of what the country was like，” he said. He thought of China as a huge， poor country with one or two outposts of modernity， such as Beijing and Shanghai， and of the people as whey-faced peasants in gray Mao suits.“My imagination was， I think， mirrored by many people in the West，” he added.

However， when Ferguson arrived in Jilin， an industrial city in northeast Chinas Jilin Province and the birthplace of his wife， he discovered a reality far different from his expectations. “It was absolutely nothing like that，” he said， recalling Jilin to be a modern city and the people to be dressed in modern， fashionable clothes. “There was a lot of food and a decent standard of living.”

In early 2008， his wife found an advert for a job as an editor with China.org. cn， a Beijing-based official online portal to China. However， Ferguson originally had misgivings about becoming part of the Chinese media system and working on behalf of the Chinese Government.

The event that changed his mind was the violent riots that took place in Lhasa， Tibet Autonomous Region on March 14， 2008. “That was a big story here in China. And it was also a big story in the Western media，” he said. He read extensively， watched a lot of footage of the event， and found that he was looking at two completely different stories—the Western media story and what was actually happening. “The Western media story， bluntly， was a pack of lies，” Ferguson said. “So， I decided that at least some person should try to do whatever they could to tell a more truthful and honest story.”Approximately one month later， he became an editor with China.org.cn.