My China Kanfa.....China on My Mind

I’ve lots on my mind.  I just came back from another two week trip to China.  This was a special trip because I went to places I’d never been to before.  I’d never been to Dalian.  Nor Qingdao.   These were some of the observations I felt were worth noting.  Let’s get right to it: I had two major takeaways.  One was more than a few folks mentioned how India and China were getting ready for war.  Not one, NOT ONE Chinese mentioned to me anything about North Korea.  As such, it is hard for the Chinese to put pressure on their government if the government continues to decide the narrative.  Simple as that. One nation is developing an ICBM with which to directly threaten the continental USA, with an unpredictable president as the leader of America, fully capable of doing something say, like launching a strike at North Korea, which would only cause China to pour troops into North Korea, not so much to bolster North Korea’s government, but to keep South Korea and America as fa

Last year I mentioned a kid in one of my posts.   A nice enough young man lacking communication skills and in my view proper decorum when speaking to others.  His speech full of “What?” and “No” other one word replies I felt were improper when speaking to adults.  I used his poor speaking skills as a teaching point to my own children.   The reason for his poor decorum I laid at the feet of his parents.   I’m sure it grated on his teachers.    My wife’s reply was basically “So what, their son is at Harvard.” His parents were not focused on teaching their kids polite speech.  Rather, their cold calculation was based on simply getting their kids to the best college possible.  They wanted their sons to go to Harvard. The oldest son did just that.  Valedictorian.  Math wiz.  A special talent.  As such it’s tough in any culture being the younger sibling of a kid that went to Harvard. Or Yale.  Etc.   But what happened over this summer I found simply shocking.  I just couldn’