Alice                                                                        June, 2010     

Anybody in Chicago who has met Alice Zhou Xiaofang remembers her.  She is the number 2 government person in the urban planning department in Shaoxing, but she is a mayoral advisor and all-around whip smart, dedicated, open, public servant.  Who asks questions and tells you what she thinks.  Who is also an electrical engineer and knit me the blue scarf I wore all last winter.   I was in Shaoxing to look at another ancient town, called An Chang, which is on both sides of a narrow waterway on the outskirts of Shaoxing.   It is now surrounded by modern buildings and cars and development, but some of the old town still remains.  Old, in this case, is late Ming-early Qing dynasties, which puts the buildings at about 400 years old.   This is based on fading inscriptions in stone, and on what I am told by Alice and others. 

Health Reform                                                        May, 2010   

Brenna and I had colds.   Not so bad, but she wanted to go to Shanghai to the Expo in a few days, so I thought we should make sure there was no serious problem developing.   No fun walking around the Expo with some hacking cough.

My cough had descended into my chest, sort of a bad sign, so I called my people at the school about a medical visit. 

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.   I think the sensitivity is to the Chinese government, not wanting to promote a religious event.  So, Happy You and Me Party.

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.

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.