By jingo, they're mad![1]

Zhang Ziyi is once again the focus of an Internet controversy.

She is said to "have offended Chinese sensibilities" by appearing in a kneeling position in her latest movie The Horsemen. I haven't seen the movie yet, but from publicity materials, Zhang seems to play the role of a killer named Kristen. It's not clear whether Kristen is even Chinese or ethnic Chinese. But I guess such details would not bother those intent on painting the Chinese actress as "a traitor to her own country".

In 2005, Zhang starred in another Hollywood production, Memoirs of a Geisha, in which she played a geisha who sleeps with a client, played by a Japanese actor. A lot of egos were bruised in China, which gathered enough momentum to have the movie banned in her motherland.

According to one Internet posting, Zhang's "sins" are numerous. In a Sino-South Korean co-production called Sophie's Revenge, which is now in post-production, Zhang complimented her co-star but he supposedly bad-mouthed China. By extension, Zhang has been found guilty as well.

In a series of publicity shots a few years ago, Zhang wore a gown that revealed the upper part of her back. The photos were plastered all over Tokyo, which some netizens reckoned "debased the Chinese race".

She also appeared in a shampoo commercial in Japan but turned down a similar product endorsement deal in China because "the money is too little". Very "unpatriotic", claimed some.

In 2007, she appeared on the cover of Brio, a Japanese magazine, looking buddy-buddy with a Japanese man. In 2006, she was featured on the cover of the Japanese edition of Playboy. Though alone, she obviously played to Japanese male fantasy.

What should these "seven deadly sins" get her? I will not quote the online suggestions. Suffice it to say, it's not pretty. Sometimes I have the feeling that Zhang gets her hefty fees not for her performances, but for all the mud thrown at her. She is as quickly deemed here a symbol of a hundred years of Chinese humiliation as she is seen as the archetypal Chinese porcelain doll in Hollywood.

Why are Chinese youths -netizens are predominantly young - so easily affronted? Moreover, when they feel displeased, they purport to represent the whole Chinese nation, not just themselves. What gave them the power to make such a bombastic claim?

Online, ultra-nationalistic postings often assume anyone who does not agree with them is "unpatriotic". They will say: "If you love your country, come read this article!" Since when has reading one specific posting out of millions become a prerequisite for loving one's country? These guys haven't even read Confucius or the 300 Tang poems, yet they still feel free to call themselves patriots.

Jingoistic rants share two common traits: They are extremist by nature and have zero tolerance for different opinions, even for those that only slightly veer from their orthodox view of political correctness. I once had a televised debate with Huang Jisu, one of the authors of China Is Not Happy. Huang basically said that all those writers who continued working during the Japanese occupation were traitors even though they may not have ingratiated themselves to the occupiers. He took out a photo of a famous martyr and said people should live up to that model. I said that martyr was, indeed, a patriotic hero but we cannot expect everyone in Japanese-occupied Shanghai to have acted like that. Moreover, I seriously doubted my opponent would himself have had that kind of courage.

I guess decades of lopsided education have blurred the line between human decency and unbounded heroism. For most people, if they can refrain from committing evil when evil is all around them, that's good enough for them. Lu Chuan's dramatization of the rape of Nanking, called City of Life and Death, is a case in point. While he did portray Chinese resistance and heroism in maintaining a refugee camp, many viewers were dismayed that he showed Chinese soldiers and civilians facing the massacre without putting up a fight. Moreover, they were angry that one Japanese soldier was depicted as having a modicum of human compassion, which eventually resulted in his redemption.

By the same logic, Schindler's List would have been a glorification of Nazism because Schindler was a German and a Nazi member and it was he who saved so many Jews. That would have turned Spielberg into a Nazi whitewasher in the least. Maybe he is the son of a Nazi officer who fled Germany and camouflaged himself as a Jew. (Seriously, this is the line of thinking of quite a few youths here.)

I'm not saying Lu's film is perfect. It has many faults. But the graphic depiction of violence against Chinese people is a strong indictment of Japanese militarism. Lu also let the Chinese characters share much of the rescue efforts originally conducted by a small group of Western expatriates. But in the eyes of the nationalist "purists" that's not good enough. They probably want a cartoonish version of the Japanese soldiers, the kind popular in 1950s war movies. But wouldn't it be more insulting if hundreds of thousands of Chinese were brutally slaughtered by an army of buffoons?

Western observers may say this wave of ultra-nationalism has been stoked by the Chinese government but that is to disregard history. In the early 20th century, Anna May Wong, a Chinese-American actress, suffered a similar backlash whenever she portrayed a morally unsavory role. She had only a supporting role in the 1932 Hollywood romance adventure Shanghai Express and her occupation as a prostitute was only hinted at. Yet, there was still a boycott of the film in cosmopolitan Shanghai. There were no such problems in Germany, where Marlene Dietrich, who played the lead with a shady past, hailed from. And Dietrich was a much bigger name in Germany than was Wong in China.

Chinese people suffered a great deal of humiliation when their door was forced open by foreign invaders and they lost many wars at their hands. But the stigma of shame is not restricted to history. For the present generation, it's more from a skewed perception of history. We have never learned to look at foreigners, especially Westerners, as equals. We either pride ourselves on a superiority complex or banish ourselves into an inferiority complex, which are simply two sides of the same coin. Last year when some were calling for a boycott of a French retailer, Chinese visitors were spending a king's ransom in snapping up French wines at a Paris airport. Even if a Chinese brand had the same quality as its French counterpart and was cheaper, rest assured that most Chinese would go for the French brand without even pausing to think about supporting a domestic industry. Loving China is all rhetoric; worshipping all things foreign is all action.

Besides, if every trivial gesture is deemed offensive and loudly protested, what can you do about something really offensive, such as a Japanese leader visiting the Yasukuni Shrine? Your protests would most likely be brushed aside as crying wolf.

So, why are they picking on Zhang Ziyi? Because she is popular overseas and she is dating a foreign guy. Put any of her critics in her position, and they would do the same thing. But if Anna May Wong is any indication - Wong later started taking on roles of anti-Japanese heroines when even Madame Chiang, China's first lady, conspicuously avoided her on her American tour - Zhang would do well to scrutinize her offers more carefully. I suggest she try the Chinese equivalents of Mother Teresa or Joan of Arc. Maybe she can pretend to date a nationalistic youth. That would quell the flames of ignominy.