Yeee-Hah! - Remembrance and Longing / In the midst of Albert Yee's book packed with the personal reflections of a 4th generation Chinese American, one chapter is of especial significance -- albeit with some difficulty -- for readers: "The Incomparable Chinese and Jews." Here psychologist Yee maintains that these diverse peoples are "psychologically similar and surprisingly compatible."
Yee opens his theory anecdotally -- citing his personal relationships with Jewish college professors and real estate agents -- before moving to more scholarly data based on his work with Rabbi Anson Laytner on "Chinese and Jewish Characteristics; a Preliminary Analysis," a jointly published article which appeared in the 2001 issue of Asian Thought and Society: An International Review."
The work becomes far more complex when Yee explains his perceptions with a subchapter titled "Social-Psychological Framework," complete with illustrative triangles described with such terms as culture-state dyad. Later headings are also reflective of textbook linguistics as Yee interweaves historical fact with theoretical interpretation: Social Equilibrium Theory, Patriotic Discontinuities, Sino-Jewish Dissociation, all of which culminate in his Stepping Stone Syndrome.
The latter, after graphic representation, is summed up by the assertion that "Sino Judaic compatibility, not just comparability, arises from the fat that Jews and Chinese are uniquely similar in their independently having strong positive culture-people bonds and negative state-people tensions and fears.
There is much meat in Dr. Yee's thesis, but it is not always easily digestible.
—Executive Director, China Judaic Studies Association
