Saturday, October 16, 2010

A Piece of Iceland Cake

By Chip Tsao | published Oct 16, 2008

Iceland turned to Russia last week for financial rescue. But it is China, not Russia, which should have been asked to bail the North Atlantic island-state out from the financial failure caused by the global credit crisis.

Iceland needed some HK$470 billion to save the country from its national debt. That figure is a piece of cake for China, and Guangdong alone with its foreign reserve could well afford it. Iceland could have thus been turned into an overseas Chinese province or—God forbid, what a sensitive term—a Chinese colony. We could make a conditional offer—China is so rich that the rescue package could even be doubled, so that each Icelander could get an additional HK$150,000 in cash (divided by a population of 3.2 million)—but only if they agree to surrender their sovereignty.

Then Iceland, an island inhabited by westerners, would be reunited with the Motherland. It sounds so surrealistically incredible. In the past 150 years, such annexation had been the other way around—bits and pieces of China were carved away, we all know, and taken by the colonialists of Britain, Japan, France, and most effectively by the Soviet Union, who hung portraits of Lenin and Stalin at Tiananmen Square. What a retribution it would be to send a governor to Iceland. But instead of distributing copies of the Little Red Book as missionaries did with The Bible in Africa, the Oriental colonial masters would be leading a flock of benevolent Chinese businessmen to modernize the country’s backward economy by opening foot massage parlors, karaoke bars, saunas and nightclubs in Reykjavik, providing new job opportunities with priority training for the ladies.

We could civilize the Icelanders by improving their boring cuisine, introducing sophisticated dishes such as steamed plaice, deep-fried shark meat with abalone, and for those locals who wish to be further enlightened through Chinese culture, a bowl of whale penis soup—we could take it from the world-famous Museum of Penis already in Iceland, which boasts a collection of more than 260 penises from various animals including horses, bulls and whales. The Icelanders are descendants of the Vikings, so let us take up the yellow man’s burden...

Some right-wing Europeans would furiously protest that this would be the beginning of a global Chinese takeover conspiracy. But no, we could pitch it so it’s not a cynical act of neo-colonialism, but simply a recovery of long-overdue sovereignty. Some American anthropologists made redundant by universities in recession could publish a few books—sponsored by patriotic Chinese billionaires—with new evidence that Cheng Ho, the Chinese navigator who came well before Columbus, made a side-trip northward after discovering America. A few antique bowls and chopsticks could conveniently be found in some new digs. But we must be careful not to go over the top. When someone suddenly hails the discovery of one of the exhibits in the Museum of Penis belonging to that of the great Chinese navigator, people will know it’s a fabrication, for Cheng Ho was in fact a eunuch.

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