I have finished the first five chapters of Harry Gelber's The Dragon and the Foreign Devils. I didn't know that when Columbus went looking for China in 1492, he was bearing a letter meant for the leader of the Yuan Dynasty. They were not aware in Europe that the Dynasty had fallen over a hundred years earlier. Also, Marco Polo is considered by some to have been a fraud and not gone to China at all. I can assure you, rare readers, that AKIC is not a fraud on that account. I am in China.
The students' knowledge of Foreigners is limited. I had a student ask me if Australia was going Communistic because the Labor Party won the recent election. I told him this was an exaggeration. Although, truth be known, the more I hear about what the new Australian PM is doing, it may not be such an exaggeration after all (he signed onto Kyoto three hours after elected). The fact that the student had actually asked me a question about foreign news was a rare thing for me. But then I learned that the new Australian PM is a fluent Mandarin speaker and so received lots of attention in the Chinese press. I had tried and was chided (by leftie foreigners no less) for talking to students about the U.S. presidential elections but the students had no knowledge.
So many students who live in Wuxi tell me that they have never been to Shanghai. Shanghai is a one hour train trip from Wuxi. It was nothing for me, before the Toner came along, to go to Shanghai on a day trip. Many Wuxi people think Shanghai is too big and too far away. Also, they are busy in Wuxi with family and studies.
What is a Wuxi person's hobby? Sleep or maybe play some computer games.
Hey Andis. It's interesting that you should correlate the Aussie PM's decision to sign Kyoto with the suspicion that it maybe a sign of some creeping authoritarianism. That is hardly the case. Signing Kyoto, if anything, is today a purely symbolic act and one that indicates the current and future need to deal with the climate change issue. I am aware you are a Climate Change denialist, however, you should come to Australia sometime to see just how serious the issue is. Indeed,... open your eyes to the impact of pollution in China and realise it is just one component of the greater issue so pressing to people and governments around the world. Already, Australia has managed to reduce some green house emissions and the new governments declaration is a testimony to encourage work on this issue in an international forum. Australia alone can not meet the challenges of Climate Change in this country. Hopefully, tax brakes on Green Industries will be relaxed to encourage further investment in alternative energy development and use. In that sense,... if it does happen, then Australia will only be fulfilling it's liberal market traditions. Of course, I am keeping my fingers crossed about that. Anyways, it would be a good course to take in order to take some of the heat of the commidities boom in Australia and diversify the Australian economy further. The previous Howard, Liberal government used the same excuse as the Bush administration concerning Kyoto that singing it would harm local jobs and the economy. The opposite appears to be the case.
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