SERIOUSLY???

---

On our way back from Jing Moutain the other day, my student, Rex, and his dependent child (yours truly) stopped for lunch in the town at the bottom, famous, said Rex, for its fresh food and cheap prices relative to its counterpart at the top. I followed him to the back of the place to see mulitple metal chafing trays displaying the food actually available (see FB pix), a far more illuminating, not to mention precise, predictor of outcome than faded pictures above Chinese characters that are commonly available in city restaurants. Some of the dishes looked almost as scary as the harrowing journey up and down Jing Mountain (see previous post). I smiled at the restaurateuse and the cook, told Rex I was trying to eat carefully, and suggested I'd like just noodles with pork. I didn't see pork that I recognized as such, but these two items are almost always available in eateries in some fashion. We had been seeing lots of "baby" bamboo (somewhere between shoots and full-grown stalks, duh) that morning, and LOTS of that (sticky, salty and sweet) is what came with five (or so) itsy-bitsy pieces of pork. Oh, and we shared a big bowl of egg and tomato poached in a steaming bowl of...well...water, basically. I ate as much of both as I could stand. Thank God for rice and beer.



Looking serious, Rex said he wanted to ask me something. Here in China, I'm an open book. Can America really control the weather? I leafed through my pages, and responded that, despite humankind's perpetual attempts to do so--from rain gods to cloud-seeding--uh...not that I knew of. He told me that in 2008 during Spring Festival (when half of China is on the move), the country experienced a terrible blizzard. In that same year a devastating earthquake took many lives in southern China (you'll probably recall the reports of children buried under shoddily constructed schools). According to Rex, the Chinese people were told (Rex didn't say by whom, exactly) that America had created these misfortunes to make them suffer. America was that evil. Seriously????? Could any state be that evil? And if it could, would it? And if some Chinese believe Americans would if they could, does that mean that they would if they could? The mind boggles.



I drank some beer. Nonplussed. I asked him if he really thought that was possible. He shrugged. I said NO WAY, and that it saddened and disturbed me that some Chinese could be so predisposed toward American intention as to find such a preposterous assertion remotely believable. And as recently as four years ago. To me this speaks volumes about not only the potential perniciousness of State-controlled media, but also the existence of a minable vein of irrational anti-Americanism within Chinese society. Are there enough layers of behavioral and attitudinal adjustments that attend steady, increasing and peaceful engagement between the U.S. and China to resist exposing such irrational belief? Does a comparable, simmering sentiment exist in the U.S? Could it be tapped, or is scepticism too robust to allow such nonsense to gain traction? Are my 300 students seeing their teacher as an agent of Public Enemy Number One?



It does not feel that way.

---

Comments

[anonymous]

Seriously
That is quite the strange question and scary that he would possibly believe it. Keep being that open book and experiencing China to the greatest.

[Debbie]

waiguo laoshi
Dear Cyn -- I just read your blog start to finish and cannot wait for more. Mt. Evans is as pretty as always (no stairs there!). Wishing we could go for a walk! xoxo