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Hold you horses, Henry. I thing many things can be said of Max, but "racist" is not one of them. Even if there is a serious misunderstanding of some cultural diffrences on the part of some of us, as you claim, I do not think this sort of ad hominem will effectively resolve the problem. Au contraire, it will make things worse. We are here to bridge such misunderstandings, not to deepen them, no?
As to the "language racism" - there is a substantial difference between Chinese and Western styles of expression, and many Chinese ellipses or metaphors may indeed sound odd when translated verbatim into English (or any other indo-european language). as i said before, i happen to live in china for two years during the cultural revolution, and the first thing i noticed was translations of the revolutionary literature - which appeared to me as odd at best and sometimes even comic. it took me considerable time to realize that the oddity was created essentially by the translation problems between two culturally different styles.
needless to say that misundersandings of that nature were not limited to linguistic expressions. i recall a rather serious diplomatic incident over a seemingly trivial issue involving post stamps. someone sent a letter putting the stamps (50+2 'cents') in a wrong order - the 50 'cent' stamp showing the bust of Chariman Mao was affixed to the wrong side of the 2 'cent' stamp showing an archer -- to the effect that the arrow seemed to point at the chairman. when the issue was brought up by the chinese side, our side saw it as a bad joke and dismissed it altogether, that of course exacerbated the whole problem even further to the point that the ambassador had to intervene to resolve it.
so the bottom line is that there are unavoidable cultural differences and misperceptions that do not necessarily imply racism or bigotry. nor do ad hominems help resolving these differences and misunderstandings.
wojtek