More importantly, that was a really good post. I think you got the complexities of Wang’s situation about as well as possible. Hey, I depend on you for that!

Joel, I’m going to try to use more and more Chinese as time allows. Thanks for pumping us on your blog!

Brian, thanks for following our blog and for sharing your opinion, because what kind of a world would this be without freedom of opinions? I did appreciate the time we spent with old Wang, as he was downright jovial and really bent over backwards to show us a good time in the Chinese way (which in this case as it often is meant pushing it so far as to be unenjoyable, but I digress). I completely agree with your last sentence too. I tried to note that at the end of the post too, that he’s just as much an LBX as the rice farmer we see out in the fields, except that he’s landed where he is through different circumstances. When we were talking about biking or food or anything unrelated to politics, he was a hoot to converse with. For all I know, the average Spanish civil servant during the Great Inquisition might have been equally charming. What you call “condescending” is really just my reactions to projecting myself into his situation. I.e. it’s the stuff of my nightmares to wake up one day near the age of 50 and be a low-level pawn in an autocratic system, stuck in a place I’ve never been and where I know nobody, forced to do things I don’t want to do with a smile on my face. Maybe living in a concrete box 5 days a week without his wife to impose abortions on women he doesn’t know is his dream life, but that’s not the impression I got from his tone (although, again, maybe that’s because he was fighting a monster headache, so who knows).

All that said, I disagree with you on two points. First, I don’t think it’s a “trivial concept” to believe that China is for some quasi-religions reason inherently better than the rest of the world while simultaneously also feeling guilty about green mountains with clean air because it’s not developed enough. I can’t imagine ever saying, “the US is by the grace of God the center of the universe, except of course for all that dratted nature that really drags down our economy! Those Rocky Mountains and immigrant families having multiple children are our national shame, but in time we’ll sort those problems out, except they aren’t really problems because we’re already the best!” I just wish they could say, “you know, you guys are ok, and we’re ok too. We’re both doing our thing, and neither of us is perfect.” Instead it usually always ends up being more like, “you know, I like you guys individually, but your place over there just won’t do. Oh, no, I’ve never been there myself, and really I’ve only been in the one system in the one place my whole life, but I’m 100% sure I know all about your place and ours anyway!” For that matter, the whole reason we’re on this trip is to find out “the way it really is” instead of being like most asshole foreigners who read the news and feel like they can summarily judge all Chinese with a wave of their hands. Maybe in a way you’re right about most people not going insane over fundamental contradictions between what they’re forced to say/do and what they probably believe is true (God knows enough Americans live in ignorant bliss, and I won’t even get into my time in corporate America); so I should have said, “that’s the kind of contradiction that would drive ME insane.”

Second, I never said the guy was a dullard for not understanding this concept or that. Hell, I don’t really get General Relativity myself, and he, of course, knew a lot about different subjects we knew nothing about. It just gets my goat to be lectured about the deficiencies of my home by a guy who’s never been there, especially when all we had done was praise Fujian and China to him. At the end, I didn’t think of him as stupid or evil. He’s somebody’s dad and somebody’s husband, and more than that, he was more or less a nice guy. I just think his situation seemed really unpleasant.

There is no need to view all governmental workers with inherent distrust and repulsion. On their own, they are just normal village people that you meet everyday in your trip. The whole is not sum of its parts, as in the government is bad, because the institutions are pieced together in a certain manner, not because each person is inherently evil.

The only thing that struck me is odd – he’s wang with the 3 drops of water? I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that surname – Fujiannese?