In the past week I found myself confronted with the following: wandering around a Barnes & Noble being inextricably drawn to books about China, reading about a Wal-mart security guard beating a customer to death in Jingdezhen (景德镇), Jiangxi province, and attending a continuing legal education class about China’s new anti-monopoly law (which you will recall, I gave a talk about at the business English salon at Zhongda).  The common theme in all three moments was the presence of China, which after more than two months of being back in the States, I either cannot escape or I do not want to escape.  It’s like a relationship that ends for no real good reason, thus you keep wondering why exactly it ended.  I knew I wanted to come home after a year in China, but aside from my fellowship being over, missing my family and friends, and the desire to date again, I had no other reasons for coming home and could have easily turned into one of those people who wake up one morning and realize that they have spent the last seven years of their life in China.  But that was not what happened to me and now I am back in New York, doing something very similar to what I did before I left and living around the corner from the apartment I lived in before I left.  Sometimes it feels like I never left at all, but then other times the memories of China come flooding back.

As I walked around the bookstore, my eye was drawn to anything that had to do with China, both fiction and non-fiction. Of the four China-related books I had picked up (and one about Japan to be inclusive), I settled on Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, by Leslie T. Chang because she writes about Dongguan (东莞), which was down the road from GZ and a place I passed every time I took the train from GZ to HK, so it felt near to my year spent in GZ even though I really did not meet many factory girls during my time in China.  People are always asking me about the factories in China and about people protesting about lost wages or other injustices perpetrated at these factories and the reality is that while these factories are no more than a 45 minute ride outside of GZ, they might as well be a world away. In my daily going-ons, I did not have much contact with factory workers and if I did, I did not really know it unless I was riding an overnight hard seater back from Yongding in Fujian in a car full of migrant workers and me.’  But I am interested in reading Leslie’s account of the factory girls that were so near to my experience, but never once did our paths cross.

As for the Wal-mart story, I just shake my head at the absurdity of the tragedy that befell that poor woman who shoplifted.  Sure she committed a crime, but to be beaten to death for such an act is something that does not surprise in the context of China’s overarching absurdity.  Of course it’s not like people don’t die while shopping at Wal-marts in America, but there is something about being able to envision something that many other people cannot that makes such a story that much more interesting.  I’ve seen some of the guards at stores in China and they are some scary-looking folk, made even scarier by the weapons and riot gear they are either carrying or have close at hand.

Finally, this continuing legal education session I attended about China’s anti-monopoly law.  It was on the 22nd floor of some office building in midtown Manhattan, but upon stepping into the conference room where the session was to be held, I could have been in a conference room in Hong Kong, Shanghai, or Beijing.  The room was filled with Chinese people, Mandarin was being spoken, and there was very little in the room to indicate that I was smack in the center of New York City.  I don’t know if it’s a testament to globalization that moments like these feel like they have no specific place or the fact that office buildings are office buildings no matter where you go in the world and it’s not at all linked with the romantic notion of globalization.  All I know is that I sat there for two hours listening to a talk about China’s new anti-monopoly law and what it means for global M&A transactions that China can now review deals the same way the EU and the US have been doing for years.  What was oddly missing from the discussion was direct commentary on the political and opaque nature of how things are done in China.  The point was obliquely referenced in how the regulations are vaguely drafted, but there seemed to be an unwavering faith that the Chinese government would be a responsible player in the international community when so much evidence exists to the contrary, especially if China’s national interests are going to be hurt or there is a possible threat to the government’s legitimacy or power.  I find it hard to ignore the political elements surrounding the implementation of any Chinese law when recent evidence like the detention of Chinese Rio Tinto employees for spying or the use of anti-vulgarity laws to control speech on the internet show that the government is not above coloring outside the lines of its own laws.  But in this room filled with risk-averse lawyers and a whole bunch of Chinese lawyers and law students, this conversation was not happening.  I wanted to know what these people would tell a client contemplating a transaction in China or whose deal would be subject to Chinese merger review.  Lawyers like to know what the risks are, but how do you explain risks that no one really understands. Perhaps I am more cynical than most, but the only harmonization that is going to take place in China in the near-term is among its people as the government tries to maintain stability and harmony in the face of China’s 60th anniversary on October 1 and beyond.

Even back in the States, I am unable to avoid China.  Sometimes it sneaks up on me and other times I go forth seeking it out.  For more than ten years, China has been seeping under my skin and spending a year on the mainland has just accelerated that process.  There are certain experiences we have that are hard to completely get away from, and sometimes we don’t want to completely lose what we gained from those experiences just because a particular part of it has ended.

For the epilogue to my year that was in China I have decided to use numbers to keep track.  Kind of like the ubiquitous No. 3 Good Chinese Restaurants that can be found in small towns across America. When I came back to the States, I told my friends and other fellows that it was going to take me several weeks to process all that happened and everything that I saw in China.  I was also preoccupied with re-establishing my life back here, searching for a new job, and reconnecting with family and old friends.  It’s hard to simultaneously wrap your mind around building a life at home and making sense of a year spent in the thick of China. People ask me all of the time, "how was China?" and I’m hard-pressed to come up with something that encompasses everything single emotion the country engenders in me.  Usually I rely on a series of banal adjectives like "chaotic", "fascinating", "absurd", "interesting", and "awesome".  None of these words do the country, its people, or my experience justice.  It’s probably more telling to be standing with me when I read a news story about China such as a recent one announcing that the central government has decided to stop petitioners with grievances from coming all the way to Beijing as a way to maintain "social harmony and stability" ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the country.  My reaction of a slight knowing nod and a grimace that the goal of harmony is enough to stifle one legitimate form of airing grievances is more natural and real than any adjectives I could string together.  Or when I get an email from one of my former students and I break out into a smile because of their sweet words and unique insights on what is going on around them.  These reactions tell an observer a lot more about how I feel about this country that defies easy explanation. Not a day goes by since I have been back that I do not think about my days in China, but it is harder to think about what my time there meant and what it means to me going forward.  One thing that certainly changed during my time there was my thought on the chances for genuine political reform in China. Before I left, I was true to my liberal-internationalist leanings and believed economic development, as well as greater integration in international institutions would lead the Chinese people to eventually demand some meaningful political reform.  However, my thoughts on China’s future political development differed from many of the people I met there and taught in my classroom.  Most Chinese people find politics boring, which is only natural if your entire educational experience equated politics with Marxism and that was what you grew up thinking was politics.  If a majority of population finds politics boring, how can you begin to talk about political reform without people tuning out?  The challenge to is to make political reform about something the majority of the people care about.  One theme that has been a constant in my blog posts is the preeminence of economic growth and the ability to consume.  This preeminence is what had the government scared at the outset of the global economic crisis and what caused the government to pump hundreds of billions of dollars of stimulus into the Chinese economy.  For the government knew that if it broke this social contract of providing continuing economic growth to the people, there would be demands that something change politically and the central government was not about to let that happen.  Speaking in terms of just political reform will fail to gain traction with the general population, but make it about their ability to buy new BMWs, Louis Vuitton handbags, and Rolex watches and you may have a chance of making some headway with the general population on the issue of political reform. But if you could get through to the people this way, even with the advances in technology, it’s hard to disseminate such messages to the people without invoking the massive security and intelligence apparatus of the central government. You can also forget about large groups of people banding together in the face of a common mission.  While protests are common across the country over environmental degradation or lost wages, not since Tiananmen has there been any sort of overtly political protest.  My students who harbor political ideas different from the mainstream have intimated the futility of discussing such ideas with the classmates either out of fear of being ratted out as some sort of traitor or just being thought of as strange and uncool for discussing politics.  I was also told repeatedly in my classes that politics was boring and no one cared about politics the way that Americans do.  These are some pretty big obstacles to overcome if meaningful political reform is to ever take root in China and are partly responsible for the shift in my own thinking about the prospects for such political reform. Another thing I have been thinking a lot about since coming home is the different way of thinking about things in China versus America.  I wrestle with writing about this idea because I do not want to resort to gross generalizations, so I am going begin by treading lightly and try to rely on concrete examples from my experiences there.  However, even using concrete examples is problematic because such thinking could be the exception rather than the norm.   But I will caveat that most of these examples were met with approval and agreement from others within earshot. For my final projects in my U.S. Culture class, my students had to give a speech for or against one of three hot-button American cultural issues – the death penalty, gay marriage, and embryonic stem cell research.  One student gave her speech in favor of the death penalty (as a side note, most of my students chose the death penalty and most of those that did argued in favor of it)  and in the middle of the speech she said according to Jiang Zemin’s famous "Three Theory", it was okay to erroneously kill one or two innocent people for the sake of economic development.  As a lawyer and more importantly, as a justice and fairness-minded individual, I thought this rationale for the death penalty was logically problematic.  When I emailed this student her final grade, I diplomatically wrote: "Though I am not sure how the death penalty supports Jiang Zemin’s desire for economic development.   The connection between these two concepts was not so clear to me." She wrote back with the following explanation: "Jiang Zemin had a very famous theory in China, called ‘Three Theory’.  He emphasized that we should always concern the fundermental [sic]  interests of the largest number of Chinese people, so we can not sacrifice most people’s interests just because of one or two wrong cases. Hopefully that make sense.” Even after reading this explanation, I am not any closer to really understanding how his theory applies to erroneously killing innocent people with the death penalty in the name of economic development.  However, there is something larger and more important embedded in this idea.  One general fundamental difference in thinking between the Chinese and Americans is this emphasis on the greater good or society versus the individual.  I had another student who I have blogged previously about come to me and complain about this blind emphasis on society at the expense of the individual, which confirms one of these fundamental differences in thinking that was echoed consistently throughout my year in China and has been confirmed by other friends of mine who spent significant time on the mainland.  There is definitely a greater emphasis on doing what’s best for society, even if it means the central government kills a few innocent people along the way to maintain stability and harmony. The differences in thinking is probably the number one thing that makes U.S.-China relations so difficult.   However, as more and more people have experiences like mine on the mainland and open themselves up to these differences, it becomes easier to think of ways to bridge those differences and make progress on creating meaningful dialogue between the two sides.

I’ve been reading about the Uighur uprising and the subsequent Chinese government response with a certain amount of sadness and lack of surprise.  What I find interesting is the province’s top Party official has invoked the death penalty to punish anyone who is found guilty of perpetrating the violence.  The death penalty is a big black mark on China’s criminal justice system since the country kills more people each year than any other nation in the world and to invoke this cruel method of punishment against unknown targets is even more troublesome.

In my classes this semester we had discussions and debates about whether the death penalty should be abolished in China and most of my students said that the death penalty was necessary in China in order to promote a harmonious society and bolster economic growth.  I’m not sure about the latter point, but the emphasis on the nebulous concept of harmony that I have denigrated more times than I can count in this blog as a justification for the death penalty is in line with how most of my students stake out positions on controversial issues.  They start with a very general justification for a certain policy position, continue to speak in generalities, and then conclude without providing any concrete examples. For example, harmony as a justification for the death penalty.  Then some comments about it’s important for Chinese society to be harmonious.  Finally concluding that harmony should be maintained at all costs, including the possibility of erroneously killing some people when invoking the death penalty.  Errors such as these are a small price to pay when harmony is at stake.

What my students do not seem to get or articulate is that the Chinese government sometimes uses the death penalty at inappropriate times, such as this uprising in Xinjiang (新疆), when using such methods makes today’s Chinese government seem less associated with the economic juggernaut that China has become to much of the world and more akin to the China of the Cultural Revolution and all its attendant chaos and injustice.  However, my students do not view the government’s actions or policies through such a lens and are unwilling to criticize the government when they also depend on that same government for their jobs and livelihoods.

I understand the difficulty attached to criticizing your own government.  We as Americans seem to have made criticizing our government and its actions a national pasttime, which is also not always the most productive approach to building a successful civil society.  But at least such criticism keeps all the parties involved vigilant about trying to do better. Perhaps China will one day reach this point, but I’m not holding my breath that this day will arrive anytime soon.

As I may or may not have written earlier, my last night in GZ I went to dinner with one of my students, Figo.  This act in and of itself is significant because I was very careful all year to draw a clear line between myself and my students.  However, Figo was one of my favorite students and definitely one of the most tortured because of his thoughts about Chinese society, the government, and his place in the middle of it all.  As a parting gift, I decided to give him a copy of Zhao Ziyang’s “Prisoner of the State” that I am currently reading.  It’s the first and only account of what really goes on in the upper echelon of the Chinese government and it’s centered around Zhao’s experience as the effective head of the Chinese government and Communist Party at the time of the Tiananmen Massacre.  Zhao was against sending government tanks into Tiananmen Square and for this position, he was stripped of all of his power and placed under house arrest until he died in 2005.  The book has been transcribed from secret tapes he made and had smuggled out of China during his years under house arrest and discuss the inner-workings of the government at the time of Tiananmen and also chronicle his thoughts on the changes that took place in China during the 1980s, as well as his thoughts on the future of the country.  It’s hard to read the book at times because I kept getting the feeling that Zhao was this lone wolf trying to take on the 800-pound gorilla of the Party.

Anyway, I had copies of the book made at the copy store on campus and dropping it off to be copied felt like a small act of subversion because the book is banned on the mainland, even though it was in English and no one in the copy shop could understand it.  In true Chinese fashion, the shop did a pretty good job of copying and binding the book, but of course the title had a mistake:

Prisoner of the State as copied

So I met Figo that evening for dinner and presented him with a copy of the book.  I asked if he knew who Zhao Ziyang was and he said that up until two days ago he had no idea, but then he broke through the Great Firewall and read an entry about Tiananmen on Wikipedia that provided him with all the necessary background information that he was missing.  He was extremely happy to receive this book and began asking me if I knew about protests that had been taking place in other parts of China over the past few days about environmental issues and lost wages. Only because I had read the South China Morning Post that morning was I somewhat knowledgeable about what he was talking about.  Figo is a student who has his ear to the ground and is trying to get as much information as he can about what’s going on in today’s China, but censors and other obstacles make that task difficult.  I asked him about the protests in Iran and he said he had heard about them, but that it was hard to find inf0rmation about them in the Chinese media.  This response confirmed what had been written in the Western media about China’s thoughts on the Iranian presidential election; that it did not want its people to get wind of these protests because them they may get unhealthy ideas about how to take on their government.

We had a great dinner.  Hanna, who is one of the other fellows, joined us and we went to my favorite 川菜 restaurant right off campus for my last meal in GZ.  Figo told us about how he can’t really talk to his five other roommates about politics because they do not agree or do not care.  We tried to steer him towards other students of ours who we thought had similar ideas so they could at least realize that they are not alone in their thoughts.  We also told Figo to email us if he ever had any questions.  I am definitely curious to see what he thinks of Zhao’s book when he finishes it because it’s really a fascinating look at what goes on when decisions are being made at the top of the Chinese government.  Kind of confirms what I wrote about over nine years ago in my thesis at Yale; that when making economically-focused decisions at least, the Chinese government does not always adhere to sound economic principles, but is usually governed by some distorting mix of political pressures and some economic theory that may or may not be correct.  This framework still holds today in a variety of areas where the government has control, thus it makes it hard to predict with any accuracy how the government will respond because it really depends on the internal and very not transparent dynamic among top government officials.

But on a light note, I leave you with some pictures of some of the more bizarre and not quite useful gifts we received upon leaving China.

A bedazzled bear impaled with Picasso-inspired fondue forks

The cow stick in glasses sitting in a baby bottle piggy bank

I kind of disappeared from the blogoshpere for the past week because I have been in transit from GZ all the way back to New York via Hong Kong, Vancouver, and LA.  Now I am sitting here in a Starbucks (yeah, a familiar theme this year due to its ubiquitous free wireless) in Chelsea (seriously, where else upon just returning?) back in New York.  I made it back to the city on Saturday after what seemed like one really long journey, but upon returning home to friends and family, it was all worth it.

Flying from HK to LA, I had to connect in Vancouver.  I have never gone to the States via Canada and apparently there is usually a fast-track lane for U.S. citizens to clear both Canadian and American customs, but for some reason it was closed when I disembarked from my plane and I had to stand in line with every Canadian trying to get home from being overseas.  Normally I would be down with this process, but Air Canada only gave me an hour between flights and I kept nervously checking the time as the line inched forward and wondering if I would make my connection.  It was als funny because as I got off the plane, I thought “I love being back in America” and then I realized I was in Canada and had to modify that to all of North America.

Another twist in this tale is that you have to collect your bags after going through Canadian immigration and put them on some other carousel after going through American customs.  No one could give me a clear answer as to exactly how and where this process took place, so I stood by the baggage carousel in Vancouver waiting for my Priority-tagged bags and they were not coming.  I spotted the lone Air Canada agent by the carousel and frantically accosted the poor woman., Marlene Waters  With her calm and extremely pleasant demeanor, which did not go unnoticed after not having slept for the past 20 hours, she explained that I had to go through Canadian customs, claim my bags on a special carousel for U.S. citizens going back to the States, then go through American customs, and finally put my bags back on another special carousel to get to my flight to LA.  Unfortunately in my sleep-deprived state, these directions were a little too much for me and Marlene perceptively picked up on my confusion and decided she was going to hand-hold me through this process.  I basically became a lemming, following her through this maze and so grateful to have found her by carousel 23.  She pleaded with officials, put a fast-track sticker on my ticket, and in the most glorious moment, commandeered one of those golf carts to shuttle me to my gate after clearing security.  Needless to say that I made it to my flight with time to spare, enough of which to get myself a much-needed iced coffee.

Customer service like the one offered by Marlene is quite rare these days and if Marlene, anyone from Air Canada, Vancouver, or someone who frequently travels is reading this post, I just want them to know how grateful I was to have stumbled upon (okay, okay, accosted) her that day.  More people in more service industries should take a page from her book of professionalism and think about how much of a difference going a little bit above and beyond makes in other people’s days.

Now that I have given Marlene my shout out, I think I am going to use the next few weeks of being home to unpack my nearly 200 pounds of things I lugged home, as well as the final weeks in China, and my thoughts about the year that has been.  But right now I am just going to enjoy the feeling of being home.

I’m on the train from GZ to Shenzhen because I missed the through-train to Kowloon and China is whizzing by as I prepare to cross the border for the last time during this journey. With my massive bags in hand and elbowing people out of the way to board the train, I’m trying to by goodbye to China. It’s a procees, as I said in am earlier post. I’m physically saying goodbye, but all of the processing and making sense of this year will take more time. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about what we’re going to miss and aside from the fruit and vegetable market a five minute walk from the apartment, I am going to miss the absurd and not always quite making sense that has seemed to make itself at home in my daily life here in China. Whether it’s a cowstick with no discernible use given as a gift or the old lady wearing the “stud time” t-shirt, life in the States will be lacking that absurd edge. Of course it’s also absurd that the Great Firewall prevents me from accessing my blog at home, but I can write this post on my mobile, browser. Oh China. So it’s goodbye for now with more to come later when I’m in Hong Kong preraping to fly out.

I taught my last class of the year this past Wednesday and then our students threw a “surprise” farewell party for Celia and I that evening.  I put surprise in quotes because at least a dozen people had referenced this event in passing over the past week, so it really was not much of a surprise.

However, it was a very lovely and typical Chinese party long on good intentions and heart, but short on direction and discretion.  Our students put together a video farewell that consisted of all of our students jumping in front of the camera to say a few words about either Celia or myself and to say goodbye.  The video was very touching.  Then the party took a slight turn towards the bizarre.  Our students have this obsession with having us sing and dance, kind of like caged monkeys.  While Celia was giving her farewell speech, they cajoled her into singing 简单爱, a song by a popular Mando-pop singer named Jay Chou.  When it was my turn to speak, they tried to get me to sing or dance.  Singing or dancing seem to make them happy, but I politely declined.  They then asked me to flex my muscles, which I flat out refused to do.  It was an awkward situation, but I continued speaking.  After the speech, one of my students came up to me and she asked if she could feel my muscles, which was just wrong on so many levels and once again I politely declined her random request.

The rest of the party involved sitting in a circle and playing games like mafia.  At one point, one of our students suggested “truth and dare”, which we understood well enough to immediately shoot down.  Before leaving, the students presented us two binders that were really Chinese versions of slam books (remember those from elementary school where students would pass them around and write down their personal info, hopes, and dreams?) and these were filled with some heart-warming messages.

All in all, the party was a very sweet gesture on the part of our students and I left that evening feeling like I had actually made an impact on some of their lives.  Though there was no way that they were even going to get me to sing and dance for them, no matter how much they begged.

This week is my last full week in China and it’s been marked with farewell dinners and receiving gifts from the many people I have met during my year here, including some of my students. Some of the gifts are really cool like the pens that look like really fancy chopsticks or a ceramic plate of the five rams, the symbol of Guangzhou.  Some other gifts that either Celia or I have received are a little more bizarre, like the set of Picasso-inspired fondue forks or the bedazzled teddy bear we have sitting in our guest room.

It’s hard to describe the feeling that comes with leaving a place like China and knowing that in a little over a week’s time, I will be back on American soil and beginning to pull together a new version of the life I left behind nearly a year ago.  There are so many things in this country that I have stopped looking twice at over the past year, like the table of men spitting on the floor in the middle of a crowded restaurant, the guy working out shirtless at my gym, or the little girl going to the bathroom in the middle of the street.  It’s not only people’s lack of inhibitions that I have stopped caring about, but also the rest of the sheer chaos and madness that exists in China.  I guess it’s what happens when a place begins to feel like home, when you begin to know and almost anticipate the rhythms of daily life.  I know where to pre-walk on the subway platform so the escalator to take me to my station exit will be right there when the subway stops, where to buy my favorite muesli, and exactly how long it takes me to get from my gym to the restaurant where we would have lunch with our students every Tuesday.

After a year in China, I do not profess to be an expert on this country or its people, but I certainly have a deeper understanding of this country’s hopes, fears, dreams, and culture than I did before boarding that plane last August.  Returning back to the States with that understanding means I accomplished the goal I had set out for myself, which was to further explore my relationship with this fascinating country.

Two questions I continually get from people here when I tell them I returning to the States in a week are one, “Are you coming back to China?” and two, “Do you like China?”  After I explain that I am not coming back anytime soon, but I may come back one in the future to visit, I find myself at a loss for words at how adequately describe my feelings about China.  Usually I opt for a simple “yes” and leave it at that, but as my time quickly winds down, it’s a question I am going to try and answer more thoroughly in the coming days, but probably one that I will not be able to really answer until long after I am back home.

Less than two weeks and I will be back on U.S. soil for good.  It’s hard to believe how quickly a year really passes, especially when you are living in a place as wild and chaotic as Guangzhou, China.  I taught my last classes this week and I am just gearing up for final presentations and grading next week.  

In my last graduate student class, we did a lesson on gay marriage as part of some of a larger unit on cultural controversies in the U.S. including the death penalty and stem cell research.  The class was supposed to be 40 minutes of discussing the arguments for and against gay marriage, as well as providing my students with some context for why this issue is so important in America at the moment.

At the end of the discussion, I asked the class if they had any questions or comments.  My graduate students are not the liveliest bunch, but one of my students, Harrison raised his hand.  He proceeded to ask me what was to stop him from marrying a desk or a goat if we allowed gays and lesbians to get married.  I proceeded to explain the idea of the logical fallacy of a  slippery slope argument, which this particular question fell into.  He then said that is was unfair to draw a line at two men or two women getting married when we are taking the step of altering the original rule of marriage between a man and a woman to have children.  He also said that it would give people too much choice and this sparked a discussion about whether being gay is a choice or biological.  Harrison then referenced a newspaper article he had read that claimed a man who was gay had been cured of his condition and was no longer gay.

Upon hearing this comment, I felt that I was in the middle of a teachable moment and I spoke up.  In a very measured voice, I told him I had to provide my side in this debate and proceeded to tell him and the rest of the class that as a gay man I knew that it was not a choice or something that could be cured.  One may think that they are cured or fixed, but it is only psychological deception.  He proceeded to get angry that I would use personal knowledge to rebut his reference to this article and he stood up and began debating me full-on from across the room.  He said that my personal knowledge was just as good as the article that he read and thus it was not fair that I was trying to use personal information to refute his argument.  The class, which had been silently watching at this point, jumped in and began attacking Harrison and his reference to this article, claiming that he knew nothing about the story and was merely repeating something he had read. In response to his assertion that my personal experience was not relevant, I decided to use this moment as a lesson in effective debating and proceeded to cite studies claiming that being gay is not a disease or mental illness, as well as the fact that it has been taking off the list of mental illnesses by various medical associations around the world.  However, Harrison was getting frustrated, both because of the language handicap and his perception that I had an unfair advantage,

In order to dial back the situation, I put an end to the debate and told Harrison that what he had displayed was exactly what I was looking for in a persuasive speaker.  He had great physical presence, made eye contact with me and the rest of the class, cited evidence, and argued with conviction.   I proceeded to tell the class that I was not here to teach them a particular viewpoint and I did not care if they remembered nothing I had written or said all semester, but what I wanted them to learn was to think for themselves and speak what was on their minds, even if it contradicted or was against what the teacher thought.  I did not want them to think what they thought they should think, but what they want to think.  The class was listening with rapt attention as I cited Harrison’s willingness to challenge me as one of the most gratifying moments I have had a teacher this year.  It was right up there with students coming up to me after a particular class and telling me that what was discussed in class changed the way that they thought about something.  While we agreed to disagree, Harrison’s speech was the first time I had seen a student directly challenge a teacher and to do it in his second language made it all the more special.  At that moment, it became less about the specific ideas being expressed and all about how he expressed those ideas and I felt that I had done my job as a teacher in motivating him to challenge in that manner.

At the end of class, the students asked me all sorts of questions about being gay including whether I thought I could ever “go back” to women and how I knew that I was gay in the first place.  Alex asked me if I wanted the class to keep this thing a secret and I told him that I did not want them to because that is not how I live my life, though it had been for a large part of my time in China due to cultural sensitivity and out of respect.  However, as I think about leaving and the next step, I think it’s important for my students to know that their teacher whom they respect and learn from is also a gay man and no different from anyone else.  More importantly, what I saw in class this past week was also proof that I have left my students with something far more valuable, the willingness to speak their minds.

Microsoft has spent tens of millions of dollars rolling out it’s latest weapon to challenge Google’s search dominance, but no one in China is able to even try Microsoft’s new search engine called bing.  I tried going to www.bing.com while sitting at my dining room table in Guangzhou and I was greeted with an error message that the page was unavailable.  I wondered if the site was down or if the Chinese Internet censors were deciding to play a little hardball with Microsoft.

To test my hypothesis, I logged into my US VPN and instantaneously I was able to access bing.  

So now I am wondering.  Is the Chinese government really deliberately depriving the hundreds of millions of Internet users here on the mainland the chance to try Microsoft’s new search engine or is there something subversive implied by the word “bing”?  The only bing (饼) I know are the salty, fried flatbreads folded with oil and scallions and topped with hot sauce that  I buy in the market on my way home from class, which are also known as 葱油饼 (cong you bing) or scallion oil biscuit.   I guess those are the only bing the Chinese people will be getting for the time being until the government decides to let the other bing through its Great Firewall.