{"id":1367,"date":"2022-03-21T15:35:42","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T13:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/?p=1367"},"modified":"2022-03-21T15:36:26","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T13:36:26","slug":"chinese-itzik-comes-to-haifa-tablet-jan-10-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/2022\/03\/21\/chinese-itzik-comes-to-haifa-tablet-jan-10-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Itzik Comes to Haifa (Tablet Magazine, Jan. 10, 2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"YouTube\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Beijing\u2019s courtship of Israel has been canny and effective<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matti Friedman<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week I drove up to Haifa to see with my own eyes a sight that, for most Israelis, has yet to sink in: the country\u2019s brand new port, our third, which is beautiful, automated, efficient, and operated by the same Chinese company that runs the megaport at Shanghai. The first full container ship dropped anchor the day after my visit. Chinese characters adorn the soaring ship-to-shore cranes, freshly painted red and white; Israeli workers man joysticks opposite computer arrays running Chinese software; and in the managerial offices sit Chinese executives. To get to the port, I paid a toll and drove through the Carmel Tunnels, which were dug a few years ago by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation. At a gas station on the way I bought a pineapple yogurt made by the iconic dairy-products giant Tnuva, founded as a cooperative by Labor Zionists and now controlled by Bright Food\u2014263 Huashan Road, Jing\u2019an District, Shanghai. China was far, far away, until suddenly it was right here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most prominent face of China in Israel belongs to a guy named Itzik. His real name is Xi Xiaoqi, and he\u2019s a 35-year-old resident of Beijing, but here he\u2019s known as Itzik ha-Sini<\/em>, or \u201cChinese Itzik.\u201d He gets recognized on the street. He stars in hundreds of internet videos about life in Israel from a Chinese perspective, and about life in China made accessible for Israelis. Some of these appear on his own YouTube channel, but sometimes he appears on Israeli outlets like Channel 12 or KAN 11, the public broadcaster, where journalists are delighted to have a Chinese figure\u2014the first\u2014who speaks perfect, slangy Hebrew and has an acute grasp of the Israeli audience. He\u2019s impossible not to like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good introduction to the Itzik genre is the video<\/a> where he lists his top 10 reasons for loving Israel, including malawah<\/em>, Jewish holidays, and the Pride Parade in Tel Aviv. Or the one<\/a> where he introduces his grandfather Xi Rennan, 87, an energetic veteran of the Korean War (on the side of the communist North, of course), gives him a Hebrew name (Ronen), and teaches him to sum up his philosophy with the Hebrew workaholic expression nanuach bakever<\/em>, \u201cWe\u2019ll rest in the grave.\u201d In Itzik\u2019s world, China is a great place, but one that can learn from us Israelis about openness, creativity, and fun. He has much respect for who we are and what we\u2019ve accomplished. The \u201ctop 10\u201d video actually includes only nine things, but he ends by saying, \u201cIt\u2019s OK, these are Israelis, they\u2019re good people, not small-minded\u2014they won\u2019t make a big deal about it.\u201d He snaps his fingers. \u201cThat\u2019s the 10th thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Read the rest here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beijing\u2019s courtship of Israel has been canny and effective Matti Friedman Last week I drove up to Haifa to see with my own eyes a sight that, for most Israelis, has yet to sink in: the country\u2019s brand new port, our third, which is beautiful, automated, efficient, and operated by the same Chinese company that runs the megaport at Shanghai. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1367"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1373,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions\/1373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}