Before reading this blog post, you have to read this long article first.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21715

As Xu Guoqi suggests in Olympic Dreams, “China,” he writes, “has been obsessed with winning gold metals in major international competitions to demonstrate China’s new status as an economic and political powerhouse…. Although China’s pursuit of Olympic gold medals clearly coincides with the nation’s journey toward internationalization and achieving new status in the world, the state-driven championship mentality still reflects a combination of Chinese can-do confidence and the country’s lingering inferiority complex. A nation that obsesses over gold medals is not a self-assured nation.”

It’s been over twenty years that the whole country is hooraying at every gold metal China get in whatever fields. It becomes the best way to show to the world that China is not the old China any more. The humiliation of being beaten or defeated is washed away with each gold metal.

Now gold metals are not enough to build up Chinese pride.  The world is no longer shocked by gold metals grabbed away by Chinese people. And also, we are still beaten in many kinds of sports (and, of course, the most humilating sports is soccer). As a result, another show-off case is opened up, architectural buildings. China becomes obsessed with the tallest towers and the modernest buildings. Especially after the bidding for Olympics, Chinese pride is stimulated higher and higher with each astonishing construction soaring up.  

However, for some reason they just do not feel as cheerful over these buildings as before over gold metals. These tall monsters push some people up into the sky and stand aloof there, they belittle the others and bring another kind of inferiority complex to have-not people. Chinese people who used to live in a horizontally-stretching and closely-attached neighborhood feel more uncomfortable than proud to live vertically above others’ heads or under their feet. It’s just not so Chinese.

When removing the old humiliation from Chinese people’s hearts, new humiliation arose. This time it is not the complex of inferiority to other countries, but to Chinese peole.

Things are just hard to say.

As for whether this inferiority complex of Chinese people is portraited in “Dark Matter”, I’d like to hear your comments.