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May 10, 2026
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Whither Xi? Whither CCP? Whither China?
Xi, CCP, DJT, GOP – Part 1 – Government and Party
What Chinese are talking about (1) – Shaolin Temple raises the red flag
Happy You and Me Party
December 2009
Chinese people all seem to have hidden talents. Sing, dance, do calligraphy, perform something. For a long time, I saw this in my Chinese government friends, and I thought, well, these are the best and the brightest, so they are smart and talented people. But the arts cultivation is wider than that.So now I see I was wrong. My college students- who are not yet in the government- put on a Happy You and Me Party for all the foreign students and teachers about two weeks before Christmas. The event was sponsored by the school, and the International Chinese Students Organization. The ICSO students serve as the go-to helpers for foreigners- take us shopping in a school bus on Saturdays, so we can buy regular American (or German) junk food, instead of Chinese junk food, and help with recharging phones with money and related problems.This was clearly the holiday party, but it was not called a Christmas party. I don’t think that was any cultural sensitivity to not everyone in the US or Germany or Russia or Kazakhstan being Christian. Chinese are generally surprised to learn that Jews are not Christians. I don’t know what they think of Muslims. …
Chinese people all seem to have hidden talents. Sing, dance, do calligraphy, perform something. For a long time, I saw this in my Chinese government friends, and I thought, well, these are the best and the brightest, so they are smart and talented people. But the arts cultivation is wider than that.So now I see I was wrong. My college students- who are not yet in the government- put on a Happy You and Me Party for all the foreign students and teachers about two weeks before Christmas. The event was sponsored by the school, and the International Chinese Students Organization. The ICSO students serve as the go-to helpers for foreigners- take us shopping in a school bus on Saturdays, so we can buy regular American (or German) junk food, instead of Chinese junk food, and help with recharging phones with money and related problems.This was clearly the holiday party, but it was not called a Christmas party. I don’t think that was any cultural sensitivity to not everyone in the US or Germany or Russia or Kazakhstan being Christian. Chinese are generally surprised to learn that Jews are not Christians. I don’t know what they think of Muslims. …
One-third Coke, Two-thirds Sprite
Spring, 2011 For the last six years before I came to China, all of my students at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago were zhonguo zhengfu guanyuan, Chinese government officials. Many have become friends, and I stay in touch with them as much as I can. This is about a wedding I attended recently. Michael, one of my government students, picked me up at school.When Michael got married, in 1990 in the northeastern province of Liaoning, the ceremony was much simpler, he said. At that time, some rural people did not have much money, not even food to eat sometimes, he said. He had been working on a dam project in the south of China, and he took time out from that to get married in Shenyang. His bride was a college classmate, also from Shenyang. He graduated from the university in 1988.He was happy to accompany me to Hangzhou to the wedding of Chen Yifu and his bride, because he said he learned some things about how young couples do weddings now. Michael is about 45.There is no standard format to a Chinese wedding, just as there is none in the US, although there are some common features. I am …
Cultural Hegemony, from 1959
Summer, 2016 Not sure where this fits … I have always thought that the comments on the “Chinglish” street signs and hotel menus were tending to the mean-spirited, even if some were funny. No one laughs at my speaking Chinese.We were at afternoon tea yesterday with one of my students from Chicago and her husband and daughter. They both work for the Hangzhou police department, in jobs that have to do with contact with foreign governments and screening government officials who want to go abroad.The place for tea was beautiful – a hotel developed by Greentown, one of the biggest Chinese real estate developers, set in the hills of Hanghzou and a bit isolated from everything else. The design of the hotel is meant to evoke 1920s London – smoking rooms and billiard rooms and card rooms and a veranda looking out onto the hills and landscaped gardens – and the super-Olympic sized outdoor pool, surrounded by falling waters cut into the hills. The hotel was all highly modern, and highly high end, otherwise.There was a (modern) movie on the big tv in the sitting room, some sort of 1920s setting English upper class drama. Think Bertie Worcester, but not his …
[atlasvoice]
