Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

‘My favorite famous people is Hitler’

This week I've been teaching my students how to talk about famous people. So naturally, one of the questions I've been asking is: "Who is your favorite famous person?" In today's morning class I posed the question. My students, being a bit shy and nervous as usual, seemed too hesistant to answer. Seeing no volunteers, I picked a student named Steven.

"My favorite famous people is Xi-te-le," he said, with a bright smile. "I like him because he is very smart."
"Ok. Good job. But um, who did you say?" I asked.
"My favorite famous people is Xi-te-le," he said again, smiling.
Oh.
Now I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Steven meant Adolf Hitler ( ???) or XiTeLe. Another very awkward moment.

I had read a little bit about this in Peter Hessler's River Town, where he had a similar encounter as an expat in China. From what I remember, apparently some of the Chinese people he met thought Hitler was funny and comedic, because of the way he had been portrayed on an old television show. They saw the interpretation and adopted it as their own view of the man.
But I'm not sure why Steven would hold one of the world's most hated leaders in such high regard. Saying Hitler was smart was an interesting way of describing his appeal, if you could call it that.

Then again this is China; even as one can compare Hitler to Mao Ze Dong, there are still many people here who still revere the Chinese Communist leader, despite all the horrible things he's done. As Steven said he liked Hitler, the rest of the class didn't show much of a reaction, except for a few laughs. Steven smiled on, innocently, probably more concerned about whether he pronounced his speech correctly. "Ok, great. That's good," I said to Steven, moving on to the next part of the lesson. "Now let's if we can use some other words to talk about famous people."

It's funny. Since being in China, what Steven said was probably the most offensive thing I've heard. It was all unintentional though, and I'm not even certain for sure that he meant Hitler. Something I'll have to look into though.