Geoff Cockayne

I have just read Mr Lind's letter and a thoroughly depressing experience it was too. Like Mr Lind I am a true Brit. Like him I have a Chinese partner. We are married because we kind of believe in that sort of thing (rather Asian of us). Like him we have lived in Asia and suffered the intolerance that often accompanies mixed relationships. But if he thinks that such intolerance is confined to Asia, he is very seriously mistaken. As a youth I can remember the insults that were were hurled at white women in Britain who dared to be seen in the presence of a black man.

Unlike Mr Lind we now live in Britain. If he balks at being overcharged a few Baht in Bangkok he should consider this. My wife Yan Nin has been offered a place at Leeds University next year, by which time we she will have been resident here for three years -- the normal qualification period for home student status. Despite this the British Government decrees that she must pay 7500 a year because it has taken the Home Office nearly two years to process a perfectly straightforward visa application.

If she was the daughter of a banker from Stutgart rather than a factory worker from Sichuan she would pay nothing and qualify for support from the local authority.

Mr Lind and his like need to learn some history. The western nations, principally the British, were responsible for the destruction of a 2000 year old state and the deaths of millions through the illegal peddling of opium -- a trade which funded the Empire and provided some one-sixth of the British government's income through the nineteenth century. The Cambridge History of China describes the opium trade as "The most long standing international crime of modern times".

If Mr Lind thinks we should forget history, he should pick up his Daily Mail and read about the former Yugoslavia -- or come to that Northern Ireland.

Wise up all the Mr Linds! Before pointing out the spec in Asian peoples' eye we should examine the plank in our own. This century belongs to China. I pray that the Chinese government and people can show us westerners some forgiveness for the past. In the meantime a little humility on our part might not go amiss.

Geoff Cockayne
(Anglo-Saxon with a side salad of Irish and a sprinking of Norman French)