Dan in La Crosse

Brad and Joey

"I want to talk about my favorite movie," Brad said, "Braveheart." He was giving his final speech, as his 31 classmates listened. He told the story of William Wallace: inspired by his father's death at the hands of the Brits, leader of a peasant uprising, killed in battle, inspiring a new generation of peasant rebels. Plot summary over, Brad said, "Now, I want to re-enact his final words. Is this okay, Daniel?" Of course.

He took a deep breath, composed himself, searched his memory for the proper English words. Finally, they came. With poise and spot-on timing, and with quiet passion, Brad delivered Wallace's final words (at least as portrayed in the movie). In English. With a Scottish accent. By the time he got to the final syllable of the last line, "You can't take away my FREEDOM," his classmates -- and I -- were on our feet, ready for battle. All we lacked were pitchforks. The students cheered wildly.

Nearly every student who speaks of his or her favorite movie speaks of "Braveheart." Some book (or Website) that they all read describes the movie as being about a "peasant uprising." Those two words -- peasant and uprising -- hold absolute supremacy in their vocabulary, given the past half-century of Chinese history. To combine them, in one movie, as Braveheart does, makes it an easy choice as their favorite.

Brad used the same movie to give a distinctive, beautiful speech, in his own voice and using his own words. And then he delivered Wallace's speech, word for word! Not that I was surprised. First semester, Brad used his speech to show me how to make paper frogs. Dozens of his classmates also showed me how to make origami animals. But Brad's frogs included one with a mouth, that moves, and one with legs, that leap! To close his speech, Brad, through the paper frog, sang me Christmas carols.

Back to the Braveheart speech, it was time for questions. I asked him if there's an equivalent figure to Wallace in Chinese history. Brad paused, thinking. After a moment, he talked of some guy from the Han dynasty, 2,000 years ago, of whom Wallace reminded him. Unbelievable. If I were to pose that question to any of his 31 classmates, I'd get one response: Chairman Mao. In fact, while Brad was silently considering the question, his classmates started whispering, "Chairman Mao."

Then, a girl asked him, "if you see a woman drowning in the river, and you jump in and save her, will you consider yourself a hero?" Again, long pause. "No," Brad said, "it's every man's responsibility." And his classmates again cheered wildly as he went back to his seat and his best friend, Joey, walked to the podium at the front of the class.

"I could choose a topic that's funny, but I've chosen a topic that's serious," Joey began. "I want to tell you, I don't care my score, I just want to tell the truth. My topic is, if I could change one thing about my country, what would it be? Education."

And then he walked to the board, wrote "Rape" in English and Chinese, and asked us if we know this word. Yes. The room fell awkwardly, brutally silent. We could guess what was coming.

Joey (he named himself after the drummer in the band Slipknot) is a heavy-metal rocker from Beijing. When he's not pounding his drumset, he's feeding his ravenous musical appetite, through his ubiquitous headphones, with Pantera, Marilyn Manson, Megadeth and their ilk. The musical tastes of his classmates, the edgier of them, lean to Backstreet Boys and John Denver; most stick to love songs from Oscar-winning movies.

China's entire education system is rotten, Joey began. There are three reasons for it: rich kids can buy their way into good high schools and colleges; the system rots students' minds, and creativity, with its focus on standardized tests which, Joey said, turn students into test-taking robots; and the educational leaders have a corrupt stranglehold on power.

To illustrate his last point, he told a story. A female friend of his was a student in a famous Beijing high school. One of the school's most revered teachers asked her to stay after class one day for some extra help. Joey walked to the board, pointing to "Rape." "He raped her."

Then, he wrote "Suicide," in English and Chinese. "She told some people about it, but the authorities said she was lying. They protected the famous teacher, because he has all the power. And so she had to kill herself." He was talking nearly at a scream, with occasional pauses where he fought back tears. He pointed to "Suicide." Silence for a few seconds. Then, he quietly said, "that's all." Time for questions.

His female classmates peppered him with questions: how does he know she wasn't lying? couldn't she just transfer to another school? couldn't her classmates rise up and demand the teacher be fired? Don't you think this is maybe just a Beijing, and not an overall Chinese, problem?

On question after question, Joey gave increasingly more defiant answers. He didn't yield an inch, didn't soften his stance at all. One girl asked him what he'd do if he had power. "I don't want power," Joey responded. "I want money so I can buy a gun and shoot the teacher."

Another girl asked what he would have done if he was in the class? Nothing, Joey replied. He explained how speaking up about it would ruin a student's chance at getting into college and, by extension, ruin the student's life. Joey said he would have waited until after he was in college to report the rape.

Another girl asked, don't you think your view is too dark? "No," he answered. "The light just covers a lot of darkness." He drew a pyramid on the board, said the upper half is light, but the bottom half is dark. "Darkness hides in the corners," Joey said. "You can't truly know the light unless you face the darkness first."

His female classmates were trying to bring Joey around to a more moderate position. We all know him to be a gregarious kid, who talks all the time and acts hyper and is everyone's friend. But he's also a stubborn bull, with convictions that can't be budged and a voice he refuses to silence.

Joey's was the last speech of the class, and after it all the students filed out, saying goodbye to me, as usual. Joey went back to his seat, at the back of the class, next to his best friend, Brad.

Their temperaments couldn't be more different. Brad was born, and will die, with a smile on his face, with no change in expression in the intervening 80 or so years. It's not possible not to like him. He's just naturally a dazzling person, charismatic without trying to be, a graceful leader despite being introverted and about 5 feet short. His approach to life is constanly optimistic, constantly focused on the light half of the pyramid. He'd fit right into his favorite band, The Backstreet Boys.

Joey was born, and will die, with a disbelieving, and outraged, scowl on his face. In between, his expression has and will change constantly, with one eye on the light, and one eye constantly trained on the darkness. He's a leader because he's extremely outspoken and he questions authority in a country where you're not supposed to. This bluntness draws both admiration and outrage from his classmates, and I imagine he's frequently in a heap of trouble with his university leaders. He fits right into the heavy metal band he's formed in this little village.

What makes them friends, I think, is that each is an individual, true to himself. Brad smiles constantly not because he's trying to be shiny-happy boy, but because it's his actual, true personality. It's not an act. Joey calls for revolution and criticizes leaders out of genuine conviction, not vanity or some desire to be rebel boy. In both cases, they can't open their mouth without saying something interesting, because each has such a clearly defined, distinctive vision for how the world is and should be. And each, in his own way, expresses that vision quite forcefully.

Joey and Brad were joking and laughing, as usual, as they walked out of the room. I said goodbye to them. Brad smiled and said goodbye. "Maybe I gave a speech about the wrong topic," Joey said. "No, it was a perfect topic," I said. "Thank you for understanding," he replied, and they walked out.

"For anyone, either a Chinese person going to America, or an American going to China, the person has to have a sense of adventure . . . it's not so much getting used to it [the new culture], it's embracing it and enjoying it."

"If you trust people, they'll trust you back."

Douglas Shank, President, John Deere (China) Ivestor Corp.

There was a report on Chinese TV about Shank just now. He's mid-50s, balding, and fat, with pasty white skin and blue eyes. As president of the joint venture company, he's lived in the small Chinese town (in northeastern China) which houses the company's major factory, for the past seven years. He's become a part of the landscape. When there was a flood, he sandbagged with the natives. He does morning exercise with the old ladies. He talks with a drawl, but what he says is right on: trust people, embrace the culture, laugh off your struggles. Then, and only then, he says, can a business succeed. And his business has succeeded handsomely. Bravo to him.

The 34 bus

The 34 bus, bouncing down the State Highway for the Insane, pulled to a near-stop to pick up a woman in high heels. She boarded via the middle door, got one foot in, and the bus chugged on. A scream, a shriek, swear words in Chinese, all from the woman. The bus stopped chugging, and the engine died.

The driver looked back. The woman, elegantly dressed in a white silk tank-top, Saran-wrapped white jeans, and red high-heeled sandals, was in tears.

She pulled her right heel off the bottom step. It's rusted through, and when she stepped on it, her three-inch heel lodged itself in the hole. And for ten feet, her right leg being dragged by the bus, she hopped along on her left leg. It was a few hops before she could muster the energy to scream. The other passengers stared at the floor.

The driver yelled at the woman. She had forced him to stop completely, which kills the engine. The woman didn't bother to get on, because she had lost too much face. She'd wait for the next bus. The driver turned the key with his right hand, joined the two bare wires required for ignition with his left hand, the engine rumbled and we chugged on. Ah, China.

How to respond?

A very bright student (about to graduate with his B.A. in Ancient Chinese Language and Literature and fluent in English) just sent me this message [excerpted]:

As afriend I wanna talk with you more.I have been puzzled with one question that American people are friendly,well-educated people,but why do the choose so stupid a man as their president.My friends from Britain and Canada tell me that
as a matter of fact many Americans are not well-educated.I am just fortunate to meet the nice Americans who just show me the bright side of the US.Daniel,to be honest,is that ture?And how can I imagine Americans who are pround of their human right.demancracy do so many serious things in Iraq,Is this the
responsibility of the president,the governmant or someone else?

Bedlam in Minneapolis

As I was going into cuss-filled, hypertensive convulsions during the fourth quarter of the Wolves' near-collapse on Wednesday (Thursday morning here), I clicked over to my email and, shew, found some great news from Minneapolis: my mom, the Media Specialist (today's term for "librarian") at Lyndale Elementary School in Minneapolis, received a Laura Bush Grant for School Libraries, effective 2004. More about it can be found at this link:
http://www.laurabushfoundation.org/052004_awardees.html

Double shew, the Wolves defied their Minnesota heritage and, miraculously, didn't break our hearts. Raucous cheering broke out on the streets of downtown Minneapolis to celebrate the Wolves' win. Silent reading will more frequently break out in my mother's library, not far from downtown Minneapolis, as a result of her hard work in securing this grant. To both winners, hats off!

Jackie Chan and Honest Abe

I had my second kung-fu lesson, taught by the famous "Arabic instructor" (Manabued form of "aerobics instructor"), last Thursday morning. I was standing on the platform that overlooks the university athletic fields, where 5,000 students line up in formation every morning, at 6:30, for morning exercise and political lessons pumped through the creaking PA system.

As I thrust fists and balanced on one leg and practiced deep breathing, a boy stood about ten feet from me, also on the platform, reciting the Gettysburg Address. From memory. In English.

All was right with the world. On the platform which normally supports fat Party leaders, dressing down the thousands of obsequious peons gathered on the fields below, there we were instead. Him learning a speech that makes me proud to be an American. I learning (disgracing!)an ancient art that makes him proud to be Chinese. As the sun rose. Aw yeah.

Politics and Religion

Another Sunday afternoon, another dinner (Oreos and Nescafe) and radio-show-planning session with Sunny at her comfy apartment in Changsha. It was my show to plan, and so I chose to play U2 after suffering through the previous two shows of Backstreet Boys/Westlife and then John Denver. I was pumped.

I made a list of eight classic U2 tunes to play, and gave the list to Sunny. She was startled. "But, Daniel, what about 'Sunday, Bloody Sunday!'"

"Of course we can't play that song," I replied. "It's about politics and religion in Northern Ireland."

Sunny giggled. "It doesn't matter. That's the one song all Chinese know by U2." Perfect, I replied. We'll play it first.

I again weaved Sunny's motorcycle through Changsha traffic and, miraculously, delivered us alive to the studio. We led into the show with "Beautiful Day," a great choice since it's familiar and popular and upbeat.

Then, we started discussing our vacation. The previous week was May Break, and all three of the hosts -- Sunny, Elaine (the station manager) and I -- had taken trips. We passed the usual banter, giggled, no big whup.

Just before we were to play "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," however, Elaine broke the mood. "So, Daniel, have you seen the news about the American getting tortured in Iraq?" Yes, I replied. "Daniel, isn't it just terrible what they did to that poor man?" Yes, of course it's terrible. "What could possess people to be such monsters?"

And on and on the prodding went. We were on the air live, and all the sudden this political hot potato was passed to me, on a show whose first rule is, no politics, no religion. Gorgeous!

Adrenaline raced through me, but I didn't know quite how to respond. On one hand, maybe Elaine -- and the many others who've mentioned this incident to me -- are genuinely sympathetic and want to console me. But, given the other major news of the past weeks -- the torture of Iraqi prisoners by American and British soldiers -- I can't help but wonder their real motives. It seems, in the roundabout way that Chinese sometimes communicate, that they're really digging for some comment on the other big news of last week. And how to respond? It seems only honest to acknowledge the other news, but they don't ask about it and it obviously reflects very poorly on America.

I explained, on air, that there's tragedy every day in Iraq, on both sides, and there's progress every day, too, a lot of which we don't hear about. We can only hope that better news will be ahead soon.

"Okay, Daniel," Sunny said, "now, please introduce us to Sunday, Bloody Sunday. It's about the problems in Northern Ireland, right?"

"Yes," I replied, "maybe you know that there's been a conflict there. Some people want to remain a part of Great Britain, while others prefer to be a part of Ireland, their own nation. This disagreement has led to some hard feelings, and even violence."

"But what side is U2 on?" Sunny asked.

"Neither side," I said. "They wrote this song to talk about the costs of the conflict and to express hope for a more peaceful future." And Sunny talked about how Bono used to wave a white flag at concerts when they played this song. She asked me why, and I explained about the Irish tricolor flag -- Protestant orange, Catholic green, neutral white in the middle. "It's their way to support unity and peace," I said.

As the song played and we were off-air, Sunny told Elaine, in Chinese, about how I had been afraid of playing the song because it was about religion and politics. Elaine laughed hard, and then said, "Daniel, you know, politics and religion is okay. Just nothing about politics and religion in China!"

Still off-air, Sunny started talking about coming wars. She said her friends are talking about how there will be a war between China and the U.S. within the next twenty years. But why, I asked. Over Taiwan, she said. And I said I thought that was a strange idea, given that the American government, for years, has supported the One China policy, with Taiwan a part of it. Plus, I said, it hardly seems wise for the U.S. to jeopardize its friendship with China, the world's biggest market with the world's biggest military, over a relatively small nation such as Taiwan. Maybe I'm naive.

"Well, if not the U.S., then we'll probably fight with the Japanese," she said. "You know, all Chinese hate Japanese." Yes, I know, I said. I told them, off-air, that it's handy living in China, where people are so busy hating the Japanese, they hardly have time to hate Americans. They laughed hard.

As "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" wound down, and it was about time to go back on-air, I said, "okay, I'll start a discussion about the coming war between China and the U.S. over Taiwan's independence, okay?" Elaine glared. "Daniel, remember, you just can't discuss China's politics and religion," she said. "But it's about Taiwan, not China," I said. Her face tightened more. Finally, she understood that I was giving her chain a big yank, and wasn't truly serious, and she had a hearty giggle. On to the air we went, and on to next song, "Desire."

From then on, the mood lightened considerably as we weaved through more of U2's classics. We played "Angel of Harlem," which gave me an opportunity to talk about the civil rights movement and introduce Harlem and tell of my fondness for New York City. We played "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." I asked Sunny if she's found what she's looking for. Nope. Neither has Elaine. Neither have I. We played "Even Better Than the Real Thing," and "Pride (in the name of love)," and "Where the Streets Have no Name."

I loved every second of it, because I finally felt like I was discussing music with an actual meaning, and, even better, I could talk about its meaning, albeit in very watered-down tones. Usually, I endure our drivel about how many U.K. chart-toppers Westlife has pumped out. I feel like the Chinese Kasey Kasem. This week, we were discussing the world, and America, and problems near and far, and hope and possibility and the future, all through the soulful sounds of U2. I, for once, was tuned in. Which probably means that most of our audience tuned out.

Each week, we read a few riddles for the audience to answer. This week, they were:
"What happens to a tire when it gets too old?" (it's re-tired)
"What never asks questions but always gets answered?" (a telephone)

Usually, we get 50 to 60 responses, via email. This week, we got two. Maybe it's because the riddles were more difficult than usual. I finally offered a hint about the first riddle: "the same thing happens to a tire as happens to people when they get old enough not to work anymore. For example, my dad. He recently stopped working. What do you call this?"

Instantly, we got a message: "Exhausted!"

About halfway through the show, as advertisements were playing on-air, I asked Sunny and Elaine about an incident on-air in Changsha last year. I knew it involved China-bashing by a Japanese person. I know that it caused a nation-wide uproar in China. I know the DJ got canned because of it.

They explained: last year, on the air live, a student called in to a very popular live show, on a different radio station. He said, in Chinese, that he is Japanese, and that his mother has always told him that Chinese are pigs. He came to China, he said, to see if it was true. And, after being here for a year, he knows it's true: all Chinese are pigs. And on and on he went, for 10 minutes, bashing China and glorifying Japan.

And, they said, there was an uproar. Students called in to the show by the hundreds, wanting a piece of the caller. The DJ, apparently the most famous DJ in Changsha, got canned because he allowed the caller to keep going. And the caller, it turned out, is Chinese, not Japanese. He was taken away by the police. "No one knows what happened to him," Sunny said.

And so I asked if that incident is the reason for the injunction against foreigners going on air live. Elaine said that rule has been in place for decades, and has nothing to do with the incident last year. "Plus," she said, "we have the equipment to delay the broadcast by 7 seconds." Do we use it on this show? "Of course," Elaine said. "We have to."

I chose "The Hands That Built America" for our last song. This has become my favorite song in China. It's about the immigrants that flooded into the U.S. during the late 19th and early 20th century and, without complaint, went to work constructing the country and to war defending it. The song mentions the Chinese, among many other nationalities of immigrants, so I thought it was a great fit for our show.

On air, I explained the immigrant experience in America, and how Chinese, mainly from southern China, came to America by the thousands and were largely responsible for building the railways in the American West. I explained how America is a nation of immigrants, and how it's been successful both because we as a nation have always embraced new immigrants and, equally important, new immigrants have embraced America. This song, I said, is a tribute to that heritage. It felt great to talk with pride about my country. We said goodbye to our listeners, and Sunny rolled the song.

About twenty seconds into the song, it got cut. Cheesy advertisements rolled, in Chinese. I had gotten too carried away introducing it, and it was time to move into the next hour of programming, Hong Kong boy bands with their U.K. chart-toppers.

Next week, we'll play the Beatles. On the first day of my adult English class this semester, I played "Yellow Submarine," and my students sang along after a few times. Before playing it, I asked if anyone knew the Beatles. A woman, about 35, shot up her hand. I called on her. "The Beatles are the four boys from Britain who like to do the drugs," she said.

Feng Huang

I'm now in western Hunan, in a tiny, ancient town called Feng Huang. It's home to a minority hill people called the Miao (pronounced like the call of a cat). They wear bright, elaborate costumes and black headwraps, similar to turbans. They pack their babies standing up in round wicker baskets with a flat bottom, which they carry on their back like a backpack. Today I took a photo of one of the women from behind, with only the pink pompom of the baby's stocking hat sticking out of the basket. It was cute.

The streets here are narrow and windy and made of gray stone. The buildings are from the 18th century. They rise up the hillside from the river. Craploads of bamboo boats float down the river. Streets are jammed with people and livestock. A lady stir-fries cabbage. A guy fillets a catfish. An old man barges through through the crowd, hauling a fake leather couch on his back. Ah, lovely.

Good read

Tom Friedman. China's economy. Good stuff:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/opinion/02FRIE.html