I m Perfect - Picture at an Exhibition

Until at least 2016, there was a fascination with western looking models in China, just as there has been with Asian looking models in the US. Women’s clothing stores are a major venue for other-looking models in ads and store windows. This upscale women’s clothing store at our local mall in Hangzhou featured a beaming, perhaps ecstatic sophisticated western woman, with long curled hair – the store’s image of perfection.

Everything old is new again – Inner Mongolia

If you’ve gotten tired of depressing news from Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong, there is a new oppression to watch in Inner Mongolia. As in the other provinces comprising mostly non-Han people, the new policy requires forced language change and erasing of traditional culture.

It is to laugh – or not ... more on culture wars in elementary math class ...

It’s not often that life imitates art so precisely.  When it does, the result is frightening. But there it all is, on YouTube and Twitter. 

First the art. Watch Alternative Math  - A Short Film at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh3Yz3PiXZw&t=17s from Ideaman.  This is a nine minute recounting of a teacher’s existential crisis at trying to teach 2 + 2 = 4 in a modern progressive  American school.  The 2017 film is meant to be a parody, but then ….

Wokeness – and despair for democracy

Americans seem to have woken up to disparities in our society, particularly for black people.  This is a good thing. Wokeness will go a ways toward fulfilling the promises suggested in the Declaration of Independence.

But there is a most disturbing part of wokeness that is not limited to racial matters, and that is the language fascism of the left. It is as dangerous to a free society as any fascism of the right and too close to what we can observe every day in China.

Lest We Forget June 4

In the social, economic, and cultural miasma that is the state of the world, we might let tomorrow slip by without notice.

A couple of old comments -

http://chinareflections.com/index.php/104-comments-on-the-news/401-what-chinese-cannot-not-talk-about

http://chinareflections.com/index.php/104-comments-on-the-news/402-how-to-end-june-4-et-al

What do you think of western civilization?

The question to Gandhi is now being asked again, this time by educated, sophisticated Chinese of each other.

This was the topic of a four-hour phone call a few nights ago between Chinese PhDs, both with extensive American experience and important midlevel career positions. 

In a word, their conclusion was the same as Gandhi’s – it would be a good idea.