Romanes eunt domus

Yesterday's edition of the local paper ran a short article about a wave of xenophobic manga in Japan. Of course xenophobia is a serious issue regardless of place or format, but there was one quote which just about made me fall over laughing:

In "Introduction to China," which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says, "Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive."

"Yes, but other than tea, silk, rice, soybeans, Buddhism, written language, traditional dyes, paper, calendar systems, cosmology, Confucian principles, the potter's wheel, brocade/gauze-weaving techniques, traditional medicine, and porcelain-- other than that, what have the Chinese ever done for us?!?"

(Actually, it would be kinda fun to linkify all the items on that list, but I still haven't started packing for tonight's departure for the annual week of East-Coast(ish) cold weather. I don't even think I'm sure where my warm wool coat is.)