China Dispatch

77. Blowing Away Foresight (2023-02-22)

“’That’s no moon,’” the York County, SC Sheriff’s department tweeted on Feb. 4. “Yes, there are reports that the Chinese balloon is flying over our area at the moment. It’s flying at 60,000+ feet. Don’t try to shoot it!! Your rifle rounds WILL NOT reach it.” About 24 hours earlier former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Wyoming Rep. Paul Gosar, tweeted pictures of themselves holding firearms, offering to take care of unidentified flying objects flying over the land of the free. Probably not helpful messaging if you’re trying to prevent errant bullets falling from the sky.

For Americans (and Canadians) accustomed to the security of geographic isolation, memes about overhead unidentified flying objects from a competing foreign power is a humorous deflection from chilling Cold War era fears. For Chinese who have only learned about the balloon through their Government’s curated lens, if at all, it reinforces the narrative of Americans being soft, overreacting, and resenting China’s rise.

Perhaps, as the House Majority argues, America and China are in a new Cold War. The Biden Administration steadfastly maintains that we’re in an “Era of Strategic Competition”. Regardless, UFOs invading sovereign North American airspace are scary. But what frightens me even more is the Twitter and Weibo-sized messaging that markets confrontation by hawkish frenemies in DC (and Beijing). Meanwhile, Americans are learning less about China now than at any time in the past decade.

The Cold War with the USSR sparked the birth of Sovietology in the US. Congress and private foundations poured money into the effort. While the US State Department did launch its opaque China House in December, it’s unclear who will be around to staff it in the next decade or two: the number of Americans studying in China was down 98% last year compared with its historic high of about 15,000 students in the 2011-2012 school year.

Before blaming this scary decrease in Sinology interest on the Pandemic or visa restrictions, note that at the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year, the number of Americans studying in China was already down by 83%. In the 2021-2022 school year, the number of Chinese at US universities was down by 8.6% compared with about 300,000 students in the 2020-2021 school year. Chinese students added about $10.5 billion to the US economy that year, down from about $16 billion before the Pandemic.

Recently, an ambitious American undergrad at a DC university studying Chinese politics told me that studying in the Mainland held little interest. Studying in Taiwan was easier and felt safer, the student explained. With the Great Firewall now more restrictive than ever, foreigners being advised to only bring burner devices to China, and pinyin being removed from metro signs in Beijing, Shenyang, and other cities, this is disappointingly understandable.

The high-stakes, urgently dramatic distractions preventing the frenemies from learning from each other continue. Secretary Blinken and President Biden are in Europe showing democratic resolve and working to delicately maintain “open lines of communication with Beijing”. Which is challenging when Chinese President Xi announced plans to visit Moscow and there’s talk that China is considering giving Russia weapons to aid their invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Assistant Secretary Wendy Sherman has been doing the rounds in DC explaining the Administration’s approach to China. During Ms. Sherman’s February 9 testimony, Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) asked about the threat of Confucius Institutes, which, at their peak numbered 103 in 2017 and now have less than 19 sites at American universities.  “We are very careful about looking at visas and making sure that in strategic departments where it might influence or create a problem for international security, we do not have those students come,” she said. “But it is very important that we not close down these people-to-people exchanges. On the other hand, we only have about 385 Americans who are studying in China and we probably need to increase the number of Americans who are willing to study in China.”

When “World War III” is trending on Twitter and balloons are falling out of the sky, important stuff like having a generation of students get to know each other looks a bit less urgent. But it’s more important than ever.

76. DC's many voices (2023-01-11)

Last year, I asked a Singaporean diplomat who had previously served in Washington what the biggest difference was between being posted in DC and Beijing. In DC, she said, you’re one of many voices trying to be heard by many people. In Beijing, there’s only one audience and it’s clear who that is.

Those many voices are one of the great benefits of living in Washington, DC. This week, in between attending sessions at an international transportation trade conference (I just started managing the blog for the Community Transportation Association of America…stay tuned!), I attended two events on the future of China-US competition. Between sessions and seminars, I wandered around Capitol Hill, had some coffees, and made unscheduled visits to the offices of freshmen members who I helped get elected. This was before there was a Speaker of the House, so folks on the House side didn’t yet have email addresses and were hoping there would be a new Congress established before their paychecks needed to be signed. While the transportation conference was a ticketed event, everything else was open and free. The open access wasn't altruistic, it was to compete for attention.

The first China event I went to, an analysis of a war game scenario hosted at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), was standing-room only. The all-Caucasian panel included a retired Air Force general, a Naval War College professor, and a wargaming expert. The premise of the scenarios they ran was what would happen if China invaded Taiwan (if there was discussion about the implications of US-sparked aggression, I didn’t catch it). The panel’s recommendation was that the US needs to immediately strengthen its deterrence. Taiwan, the Naval War College prof recommended, should take on a “porcupine” strategy, where they are consistently just dangerous and annoying enough that the Chinese would want to leave them alone.

The second China event I went to, an analysis of the future of the US-China competition for talent, was jointly hosted by CSIS and the Brookings Institution. Only half of the seats were filled. According to one of the organizers I spoke with afterward, anecdotally, both events had received a roughly equal amount of publicity, and the events were live-streamed. Maybe the die-hard war game folks prefer to attend in person, the staffer mused.

The talent competition panel had an outgoing Biden admin US immigration law expert, a conservative Hoover Institution/Palantir technology guy, and a Beijing-born MIT Sloan professor. The MIT prof openly told the audience that there were labs at MIT he previously wasn’t allowed to go into because they were funded by US national security agencies. I was more engaged by the talent panel.

After the talent competition event, a Vietnamese diplomat approached me, having overheard me introduce myself to one of the panelists. What had I been doing in Beijing, he wondered? What did I think of the event? We went for coffee at nearby Kramer’s Books. My dad asked me later if he thought the man took me for coffee because he had a crush.

The diplomat openly told me that Vietnam, with its “giant to the North”, relies on its trade relationship with China, and deeply values its relationship with the US. We had a war in the past, yes, but Vietnamese people care more now about how to make life better in the future. His Government and China’s share similar political values, he offered. But where China chose to close itself off from the outside world during COVID and not widely inoculate its people when it had the chance, Vietnam was grateful to accept 40 million doses of vaccines donated by the US. Throughout our conversation, he repeated his specific gratitude no less than three times. I think it was the first time that someone has directly thanked me for the aid my country gave to theirs. In response to his initial thanks, I asked him if what we had donated was enough (he said that with the European and Japanese contributions it was). Subsequently, I didn’t quite know what to say, other than nod.

I asked him if Vietnamese students wanted to study in the US, and in China. He gushed about how much Vietnamese students (who could afford the $200k+ price tag) loved studying in America. They wanted to come in high school too, he said, but it was difficult to get families to host the kids and be their sponsors. He also said that most Vietnamese students learn Chinese for business. 

With a twinkle in his eye, he tested my Chinese and graciously complimented my pronunciation. He asked me if I had ever been to Vietnam, and when I told him I had in 2006, he invited me to contact him when I planned to return, and if I wanted assistance sending American students to visit and study in his country. That afternoon, he was one of many voices, and I was one of the many people he was trying to get to listen.

75. COVID Luck and Privilege (2022-12-22)

My  COVID luck is astonishing. The five months before COVID appeared in China were my first living in Beijing. I used that time to go scuba diving in Thailand for the October Holiday (partially to avoid the 70th Anniversary of the PRC celebrations and accompanying restrictions in Beijing). Then I visited friends in Perth, a destination I naively assumed would be little more than a 6-hour journey from Beijing because they’re in the same time zone (it’s a 12-hour flight). A week later, I went on a month-long holiday to the US, planning to attend a cousin’s wedding in San Francisco, travel to national parks with some friends in Utah/Arizona, visit friends and family in New York and DC, and fly back to Beijing from whichever airport was cheaper. Back when flights between China and the US could be found for $300 each way.  

Nine months later, when the novelty of lockdown sourdough bread, fresh air, empty roads, and Zoom happy hours waned, I escaped to the ostensibly COVID-free bubble of China. When I told well-educated, well-traveled family and friends I was indeed returning to China, the presumed birthplace of the virus, their universal reaction was, “What? Is it safe? Wait, isn’t it safer there now?”

Three years later, I’m sitting at a friend’s apartment in the stately Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, DC, beginning day four of quarantining under my own recognizance. I just took my Paxlovid antiviral, which I only found after visiting two different pharmacies to find in DC. When complaining about this to a friend in China, I immediately realized the gauche tone of my complaint. An Israeli friend was shocked to learn it was even prescribed to me (“You’re young and healthy. What do you need it for??).

I’ve probably had more COVID vaccines than 99.9% of the world. I initially received two doses of Sinovac, the Chinese-inactivated conventional COVID vaccine soon after it was made available to foreigners in Beijing. In the summer of 2021, I took advantage of my American passport and valid Chinese work permit and visited the US for a month, during that brief respite post-Delta pre-Omicron when we partied and thought it was all over. I chose to get Pfizer-BioNTech at my local American supermarket because it required less time between doses than Moderna. This fall, days after the Bivalent booster was released in the US, I got the updated Moderna because that was the only major mRNA vaccine I hadn’t received yet (why not keep mixing and matching?). I traveled to seven countries and worked on a political campaign, and finally picked the virus up somewhere around town in DC.

Beyond my privileged access to a variety of vaccines, I’ve also been lucky to hop between islands of calm in the COVID storm. When I returned to China in Fall 2020, I enjoyed China’s two squandered years of being a fairly COVID-free bubble. Life within China continued to be relatively normal until roughly the beginning of 2022. I went to big parties, took domestic flights, and went to bars, all without fear of getting infected because the contact tracing was so precise and anyone coming into the country had to quarantine as I did. When Omicron finally hit the shores of Mainland China in January 2022, the Beijing CDC claimed that it had been transported on a package from Toronto that transited through the US and Hong Kong.

As our onslaught of constant COVID testing and snap lockdowns ensued, I was grateful that I had followed my parents’ advice and received a full course of an mRNA vaccine in the US. At the time, only diplomats from select countries had access to it in China. If Chinese friends and colleagues wondered what would happen when the virus could no longer be kept out, they wouldn’t talk with me about it. They were rightly proud that China was able to keep COVID out. The indulgent, chaotic West was too selfish for people to be careful and take the precautions that were becoming normal in China. But ex-pat friends and I saw the limited capacity of the public healthcare system and knew that Chinese pensioners were wary of getting vaccinated. When the COVID-Zero band-aid was inevitably ripped off, we were saddened to think about what would ensue.

After Xi Jinping’s successful coronation in October, I knew that the end of Dynamic Zero COVID was imminent when Chinese friends started telling me that they heard about protests. “We Chinese are resilient, but don’t take away our right to work,” one friend told me. “Then we’ll get angry.”

Now that the band-aid has been ripped off, friends and colleagues in China are hunkering down by choice to avoid getting sick or because they are sick. Deliveries, a mainstay of middle-class life in China, are delayed because so many of the delivery workers are sick with COVID (ironically, they were among the first people vaccinated ostensibly to prevent transmission through them). Until recently, no one dared buy over-the-counter painkillers like ibuprofen outside of a private hospital with a prescription, for fear of being flagged by the local CDC for having COVID symptoms. Now it’s sold out. After months of mandatory COVID testing, at-home rapid tests are also difficult to come by. And Paxlovid, the Pfizer antiviral treatment that I kvetched about procuring? It’s one of the few foreign medicines available in China to prevent or treat COVID. And it quickly sold out at a remarkable $426/box when it became available to the Chinese general public last week. 

74. Yinz Pittsburgh Election (2022-11-03)

There are 7 days until one of the most consequential elections in my lifetime. Yesterday, the people of Brazil decided to save the Amazon Rainforest and arguably their own democracy by (re)electing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Next Tuesday, Americans will have similar choices to make.

I’ve been working for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in Pittsburgh for the past month as a field organizer, returning to my University of Pittsburgh College Democrats roots. When I first arrived, I proudly told people that after three years in Beijing, I wanted to help to get out the vote in ground zero of democracy. My seemingly hyperbolic passion initially confused folks who’d been working on the ground here for the past year. We’re more used to each other now.

With the exception of some very senior staffers who I worked with back on the Kerry Campaign, I’m more than a decade older than my colleagues. Yesterday, I reminded a co-worker to take his coffee off the top of the car before we drove away. “Don’t pull a Mitt Romney,” I said, referring to when then-GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney left his dog crated on the roof of his family station wagon. Colleagues who overheard me looked confused. When I explained the background of the anecdote, one staffer told me he was 12 when Mitt Romney was running for president. The other was 10.

Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny county were instrumental in winning Pennsylvania for Joe Biden, and Pennsylvania put Joe Biden over the edge to win the presidency. There are several high-stakes, competitive races up and down the ballot this cycle.

John Fetterman can help Democrats keep the Senate. Josh Shapiro has pledged to protect a woman’s right to an abortion in Pennsylvania, contrary to his opponent who indicated that women who get abortions should be charged with murder. Long-time Pittsburgh Democratic Congressman Mike Doyle is retiring. After an expensive and divisive primary race that had AIPAC (the American Israeli Political Action Committee) backing the losing candidate, the Republicans are running a local borough councilman also named Mike Doyle. This old-school shrewd move would have been amusing, were it not for the fact that Republican Mike Doyle is gaining ground against Democratic nominee Summer Lee.  

I’ve also met a slew of talented state legislators and candidates who could help flip Pennsylvania’s GOP-controlled State House and Senate. These strong young leaders, many of whom are women, have wonked out with me about policies to help low and middle-income homeowners repair their homes and attract small businesses. They’ve tried to entice me to invest directly in their communities, telling me about opportunities to buy ready-built empty diners and restaurants. I’ve also seen them do a good job at chatting with donors, knocking on doors, and talking to crowds. They are running to make their communities stronger. It’s inspiring.

Voters, who are growing weary of the deluge of ads by mail, internet, radio, tv, text messages, emails, yard signs, and social media, sometimes recognize this rising talent, too. One voter I talked with, a white man in a working-class neighborhood with mostly owner-occupied homes in southern Pittsburgh, told me, “I don’t trust any of those politicians running. I wrote in my nephew’s name on the mail-in ballot.” I asked him about his local state representative. “Oh her? I like her. I trust her. She takes care of our community. I voted for her.”

Anecdotally, there’s a similar trend in the Western PA towns that voted for Trump. People who have red MAGA signs on their front lawns tell Democratic state legislators, candidates, and their canvassers that they’re voting for them because they know and trust them. Someone helped them in their legislator’s district office. A legislator personally knocked on their door and introduced themselves. Their interaction with traditional retail politics seems to be a relief from increasingly stressful rhetoric.

Elected officials’ district offices remind me of Communist Party community resource centers I saw in neighborhoods and villages around China. They serve a similar purpose—a direct connection to the promise of government services that may otherwise be challenging to access. And they remind the governed who is taking care of them. 

73. Scandinavia and Energy Consumption (2022-08-29)

They looked like parking meters but were actually electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. "You don't have these in America?" asked my Polish-American friend who had flown from her home near Dublin to meet me in Copenhagen. "They're everywhere in Dublin,” she said, futilely hiding judgment. I shook my head. EV chargers were few and far between when I was in the US last summer. “Maybe there's more now?" she looked perplexed. "What about in China?"

I spent 90% of my past year in Beijing where people park their Americanesque cars and EVs in newly built garages below malls and high-rise apartment buildings. Even with its recent economic slowdown, China continues to be the world’s largest car market. Parallel parking on narrow lanes vanished with the one-story hutong courtyards that were multi-generation family homes for time immemorial. Those garages, I reflected, had plenty of fast charging stations for EV cars and motorbikes. Motorbike charging stations were even set up at both entrances to my school’s gates, connected to your WeChat pay Alipay. They would charge you a few cents an hour to plug into their high voltage outlets, ostensibly so that you didn't forget about your bike. (There’s an icky track record of electric scooter and bike batteries spontaneously combusting indoors, so it’s now required and somewhat enforced to charge them outside)

Now I'm back in America and the only street-side public charging station I've seen is still a clunky thing that can two accommodate cars in downtown hippy dippy Takoma Park, MD. It was installed before I moved to China three years ago.

During a culture-shock-inducing visit to upscale Tysons Corner Mall last week, I visited a retail shop for Lucid Motors, a California-based battery company that’s getting into the EV game. They’re marketing themselves to the ultra-luxury consumer who wants an EV with Napa leather and a battery with replaceable battery cells (no "fully vegan” interiors for them!). An attractive salesman eagerly told me that it gets more miles per charge than a Tesla, at a similar price point. I’ll admit, it was such a beautiful car that I seriously considered putting the requisite $5000 refundable deposit on my credit card to take it for a test drive. But where would I charge it?

Not all EVs cost the average $67k that RNC Research tweeted a few days ago. I was in Malmö, Sweden when the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes $7,500 to buy an EV. It made me feel like I could show my face in Scandinavia again. Maybe.

One night after dinner in Malmö, my host, a dear friend from China who is Mexican and grew up in the US and Europe, suggested that we use the dishwasher. Her fiancé, a Swede, furrowed his brow, and said that electricity prices had hit all-time highs a few hours earlier. We washed the dishes by hand.

Their beautiful apartment is a block from the sea, and if you have really good eyesight, on a clear day you can see the huge wind farm south of the Oresund Bridge. My hosts do their laundry in communal washers and dryers, an arrangement I’m told is standard in Sweden to save energy. In China, I had my own washing machine that I bought for about $100 and I have Chinese friends that even have a separate small washing machine for their children's clothes. Middle-class Chinese mothers were shocked when I told them that no, a separate washer for the kids was not the norm in America. But dryers are a luxury that hasn’t seemed to catch on with anyone in Beijing beyond long-term ex-pats and foreigners whose compensation packages stipulate that they be supplied one.

China consumes the most energy in the world, but its population is more than four times the size of the US, in a roughly equal size geographic area. It turns out that per person, according to 2021 data from the International Energy Agency, Americans use 88% more energy on transportation than the Chinese. (If my math is wrong, please correct me, but I was so stunned that I quadruple checked)

China currently gets about 10% of its energy from renewables, US 8%. Denmark gets 50% of its energy from wind and solar, and most of the rest from biofuels (aka human and animal poop). Sweden gets about 33% from renewables but has been steadily upping its nuclear production, too. After all, Russia is staring them down across the Baltic Sea.

72. Portugal Edition (2022-08-20)

Graffiti is something I only ever saw in Beijing in arts districts like 798. Instead, first tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai (and probably others too) spend gobs of money decorating their main streets and highways with flowering plants, which are regularly watered and changed with the seasons. With cameras everywhere, folks are hesitant to tag publicly visible spaces. So one of the first things I noticed in Israel, and subsequently in Portugal, were images and text painted onto publicly visible places. Some amazing, some eye sores. “Portugal is about 30 years behind America with things like that,” a Tunisian-Portuguese guesthouse host explained to me in Lisbon when I asked. “We’re just coming around to cleaning it up.”

Unlike America 30 years ago, Portugal is consistently ranked as one of the safest countries in the world. When I asked the same host why he thought Portugal was so safe, he mentioned that Portuguese people tend to avoid confrontation, have a relatively low cost of living, and are geographically isolated (they only share a border with Spain). And, he added, Putin was all the way on the other side of Europe and they were protected by the NATO umbrella. They’re a nation that seems to be aware of and is content with having had its imperial peak a few hundred years ago. 

On the streets, their graffiti boasted varied political messages, evidence of the stable democracy they’ve had since the peaceful Carnation Revolution in 1974. After their long-term dictator Salazar (a Franco ally) died from a cerebral hemorrhage, they didn’t even have the stomach for another monarchy, like Spain did. 

This seems to be Portugal’s summer. By May, tourism there was almost back to 2019 levels. It’s the lowest income country in Western Europe, with an annual per capita GDP of about $24k, compared with the Eurozone’s overall average of about $42k.  For American tourists with USD to spend when the euro is almost at parity, this translates into delightfully inexpensive summer sales at Spanish mega brands like Zara and Massimo Dutti. Some small restaurants even accepted dollars, something I hadn’t seen since a visiting China over a decade ago. The whole place seemed to be set up for the parallelity of supporting locals and tourists. Want to rent a bike through Lisbon’s docked bikeshare program? You need a residence ID number. Want a reusable metro card that won’t charge you an additional 50 cents every time you want to take the train? They’ll only mail it to your Portuguese residence.

But they know how to make guests feel welcome. When walking around Lisbon’s imposing Campo Pequeno Bullring, my parents and I started chatting with a man who had worked the recent bullfight. He explained the differences to us the differences between Spanish and Portuguese Bullfighting traditions (the Spanish kill the bull during the fight; the Portuguese only stab it with weapons that resemble spears with ribbons, prior to turning it over to a proper butcher). Then when we ran into him on the other side of the building, he had the house turn on the lights and gave us an impromptu private tour of the arena. In Sintra, a town filled with palaces outside Lisbon, a nearby shopkeeper warned me that I might get a ticket leaving my car in what I thought was a perfect spot. He found me another spot and offered to park the car for me so I wouldn’t lose it (it was obvious that we were Americans not fully proficient operating our rental’s manual transmission). I hopped in the car with him and when I saw that the meter didn’t take a credit card, he insisted on giving me a 2€ coin (I found him later and paid him back). 

Portugal’s human landscape reminded me that I was continuing to move away from China and closer to America. There are massive, elaborate churches everywhere, something rare in China and present, but infrequent in Israel. I was always vaguely aware that the wealth used to build the churches largely came from the Portuguese spice and slave trade, which started in the 1500s and began to decline the 1700s (I learned this more from my own Googling than from stories shared by tour guides and posted at tourist attractions). 

Portugal was the first European power to successfully trade at a significant scale with the Chinese, when the Ming Dynasty allowed them to set up an outpost on the Macau peninsula near Hong Kong (where the local authorities conveniently ensured that the Portuguese traders were dependent on the Chinese for food). In India, they roughly colonized Goa. And in South America and Africa, they were instrumental in starting the trans-Atlantic slave trade, lucratively and brutally stealing humans from Africa, shipping them to South America to work on plantations, and then shipping the commodities to Europe. I was only reminded of the cost of the architectural grandeur surrounding me when I met Portuguese from Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau, or saw Southern Indian restaurants honoring their Goan heritage. I was too busy enjoying the graffiti, shopping deals, tiled buildings, fresh fish, and yummy wine to think about it much.

71. Israel Edition (from Sweden!) (2022-08-10)

Hello from Malmo, Sweden!

A note about this Dispatch... I'm in the midst of circumnavigating the globe on my way home to DC (Beijing->Shanghai->Israel->Portugal->Sweden->Denmark->DC), so I'm sending this out a bit late. More to come soon! I hope you're all well and look forward to seeing many of you Stateside soon!

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Israel was the perfect place for me to go after leaving China. As the plane was lining up to the jetway, I saw a guy on groundcrew reach onto the edge of an open baggage compartment on the plane he was servicing, do a couple of pull-ups, and then go back to work. He’s free, I thought.

No one yelled at me to put on my mask in Israel. No one yelled at me to scan a QR code. There weren’t any megaphones blaring directions on repeat. There were metal fences along the sidewalks by intersections, but only for a couple of meters, not the length of the street like in Beijing. Instead, I was free to get a ticket if I walked across the street where I wasn’t supposed to (as I was warned would likely happen if I tried). I was free to get COVID (like every American I know who’s returned from Israel in the past few months). After all starting last week, the Israelis, who have universal healthcare, require foreign visitors to show proof of travel health insurance covering COVID to enter the country.

People cue not because someone else is telling them to but because if they don’t someone in line will tell them to. In reaction to overdue light rail projects, dock-less scooters are everywhere in Tel Aviv and come with helmets and license plates in compliance with Israeli municipal law. One German-based company’s scooter has a hidden compartment that houses a French-made collapsible helmet, and a cell-phone holder that charges your phone wirelessly.

When I landed at Ben Gurion, I was greeted by American flags flying next to Israeli ones, in preparation for Pres. Biden’s arrival a few hours later (they also shut down the highway just as I was landing, preventing a friend from picking me up at the airport). American flags also flew interspersed between Israeli and Jerusalem ones along the city’s major roads (including in front of the US Embassy). A day after I arrived, I went to the opening ceremony of the Maccabi Games in Jerusalem.  There were rumors that Pres. Biden was going to make a speech there, but instead he stood behind a bullet-proof glass enclosure in the stands next to interim PM Yair Lapid and waved to the huge American delegation.

It surprised me how excited people were for Pres. Biden to be there. From little kids to elderly folks, this invite-only crowd got silent every time there was movement above us. Benny Gantz, a former head of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) appeared first and was greeted with cheers, but it paled in comparison to what Biden received. Right before Biden appeared, apparently there was an electricity outage in the area, causing the bright lights and music to go out with no notice. Since our cell phone signals had all been jammed in preparation for Biden’s arrival, we assumed it had something to do with that…until he left, our cell phone service was restored, and we got news again. (While the service was jammed, my friend stuck her phone out of an entrance to the arena while holding her phone, she was immediately able to get a signal. How do they do that????)

Israel feels so alive. There are so many children. Happy children with attentive parents. Not just ultra-orthodox large families, but also hipster mothers and fathers pedaling custom bikes and adult tricycles with two or three kiddos in tow, as I’ve only seen in the Bay Area and Brooklyn. Israel has the highest birthrate in the OECD and you can see it. They’re also having trouble hiring and retaining good teachers, just like in America.

In Tel Aviv, which felt like a warmer San Francisco with New York sensibilities and food, I was reminded of how much organic street art adds to the feel of a place. And graffiti with political messages and incomprehensible gobbly gook. And the smell of weed! At a Jerusalem coffee shop on the patio of an outdoor mall, I spent a lovely Thursday afternoon overhearing men with American accents arguing in English about the Torah, the Jewish holy book. On their table were stacks of old books in English and Hebrew, coffee cups, and cigarette butts. But my nostrils told me that they weren’t just smoking tobacco. When one of their daughters showed up later, I heard one of the men summarize their day’s arguments and the dozen or so people who’d shown up. (I never heard her speak). When I texted an Israeli friend in Beijing about what I was observing, he wrote, “I keep on telling people it’s the weirdest place on earth. I love it.”

Everyone has a cell phone, but they’re not all looking at them all the time (data show that Israelis on average look at their cell phones more daily than people in China, but that’s different than what I observed). They’re looking at their children, or at people around them, or at books. There are book stores! There was a protest in Jerusalem led by a small group of people who were claiming that COVID was fake! A yellow poster proclaiming the late Rebbi Mendel Schneerson would soon return as the messiah next to a rainbow flag! Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men at light-rail stops getting men to lay tefillin, and offer tea candles to women on Friday to light the Shabbat candles! There were Ukrainian flags hanging from balconies! Ethiopian refugees walking around wearing Tigray flags as capes!

Even though the Israeli Government collapsed in June, in response to higher than expected tax revenue, the government announced a reduction of in the gas tax. Even though their Government collapsed, they still struck a deal with the US to begin the Iron Beam, the cost-efficient successor to the game-changing Iron Dome. At Shabbat dinners, Israelis argued about the upcoming November election (the 5th in 3 years). Some told me they liked Bibi (“He’s the one who got the deal with Pfizer for us to all get vaccines before anyone else. And after all, what politician is totally clean?”) and others gave me dramatic eye rolls. Biden? Too old but nice that he’s showing up for Israel. Trump? Good for Israel, especially after 8 years of being snubbed by Obama.

I didn’t talk with Israelis much about Gaza and the West Bank. It felt secondary. After all, I had flown there directly from Abu Dhabi on Etihad Airways, a route that launched in March 2021, following negotiations by Jared Kushner. And by the time I left, it was announced that Israelis would now be able to fly over Saudi airspace.

Not dissimilar to Americans who, under a massive security umbrella tend to forget about foreign threats, their attentions were turned inward. Israelis discussed the high cost of living. Schools have trouble hiring and retaining good teachers. Complained about Israelis complaining and not doing much about it. About how there are too many parties in the Knesset to make the government operate effectively. The Haredi (orthodox) not participating in the economy, starting with sending their kids to restrictive Yeshivas from early childhood where their education focuses more on religion than core subjects. How much of the new natural gas deposits found in Israeli Mediterranean waters should be pumped and how much of an environmental threat it creates in the interim. It felt like home. 

70. Airport Indicators (Abu Dhabi Edition) (2022-07-14)

Airports are interesting global indicators. I’m sitting at an airport lounge in Abu Dhabi, 70% through my 30+ hour journey from Beijing to Tel Aviv. It feels like the Before Times, except for staff wearing masks properly and some guests wearing them under their chins. BBC is playing in English on one TV, and Arabic on another. The Call to Prayer was played over the PA system at about 4:30 this morning as I was walking through Duty-Free. I’m not in China anymore.

I’m beginning my own “revenge traveling”, making up for the immobility of the past two and a half years, like much of the rich world is doing this summer. And my airport experiences over the past two years have been dipsticks approximating the state of the world.

October 2020-When I was returning to Beijing from DC after 9 months in lockdown, Reagan National Airport was empty, and so was the puddle jumper I took to JFK. JFK’s sparkling new Terminal 1 had no one to show off to—everything was closed, save a dreary lounge. But after my first quarantine, when I flew from Shanghai to Beijing, the plane was so full that I was nervous. Nervous to get a virus that still had no vaccine. More nervous that the sold-out two-aisle plane was traveling between China’s financial and political capitals, as I had just done on my empty Embraer in the US.

Summer 2021- I (gutsily) visited the US, arriving in the iridescent weeks before the Delta variant emerged in the US. I was one of a handful of passengers on a double-isle long hauler that was only open to US Citizens and Permanent Residents. But from Seattle to Washington, DC, it was hopping. America wasn’t dead! We would survive!

A month later I started my month-long journey back to Beijing (totally worth it). My Chinese was probably the weakest of anyone on the plane from Seattle to Shanghai, save a few of the crew, who I flew with on the flight over, and who joined in celebrating my travel feat. I was one of the very few people on the half-full plane to not be wearing full PPE, including a white marshmallow suit, goggles, and shoe coverings.

Yesterday through now-This is the first time I’ve been out of Beijing since November. Beijing Capital Airport, is, in normal times, bustling with both domestic and international flights (it served over 100 million passengers in 2018). It was so busy that the government built the glittering new Daxing Airport an annoying 90 minutes outside the city, in preparation for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Last week my flight from Beijing to Shanghai was canceled 3 out of 7 days, so I booked a train instead. Since I wasn’t able to forfeit the first leg of my flight without losing the whole ticket, after assurances from Trip.com that Hainan Airlines wouldn’t cancel my flight, I had no choice but to take the risk. The airport in Beijing was isolated on Tuesday afternoon, but not empty. The ultra-luxury retail shops were open and the Starbucks queue was long. But Shanghai was eery. Hongqiao, the massive combination train station-domestic airport that in Oct. 2020 startled me by being so packed with Chinese travelers, was desolate. It took me almost an hour to find the shuttle bus to transfer to the Pudong Airport across town, only to be told that the next bus wouldn’t be for another hour. When I finally ordered a Didi car, it took 10 minutes for me to find it in the isolated parking lot—I couldn’t even find someone to ask for directions.

Pudong, which served over 76 million passengers in 2019, was even creepier. The queue for my once-weekly Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi was long almost four hours before departure. Chinese and foreigners alike were standing in line with the amount of luggage one only has if they’re moving or smuggling. And our bags and bodies were searched as thoroughly as if it was assumed we were smuggling. Passengers were no longer wearing marshmallow suits for the long-haul flight. Beyond my lone flight check-in were retail shops filled with empty mannequins, and a lone café offering $15 noodle soups that probably had a $14.75 markup.

People were wound up. Agents in full PPE, including hair nets, staffed every desk, sometimes running between kiosks as busy-looking supervisors supervised. I got giggles from workers in the baggage-search room next to the kiosks when I pre-emptively went to open my luggage for them, only to be scolded loudly. A lady who was previously preoccupied on her phone outside the office raced in to see what was going on (my profuse apologies in Chinese, followed by my palpable delight at being able to locate my toothbrush got the room to smile amongst our common humanity).

Almost two hours after I arrived, I was waiting to go through passport control, I heard screaming in an Irish accent, “I’m sick of this fucking country! I get a COVID test every day! Now, what’s the problem?” It was coming from a pleasant Irish woman I’d been chatting with minutes before, who was leaving Shanghai after 6 years (I later saw her successfully board my plane).

And when I went to board, in my final moments on Chinese soil, I was confronted with more aggression than I ever remember experiencing before in the placid Middle Kingdom. A gate agent called and waved someone from the Economy line to board the Business line. Since it was the end of the boarding process and the business line was empty, I assumed he was opening the second line to speed things up. So, with my expensive economy ticket, I walked over. Before the agent said anything, a man came over and started screaming in my direction. The gate agent calmly told me that I needed to go to the Economy line. Flustered, I explained that I misinterpreted that he was opening the Business line to all passengers. Besides, what concern was it of that random passenger? The angry man started screaming at me, pointing so close to my face that his finger almost touched my nose.

A few minutes later the gate agent really opened the Business line to all passengers. As I walked through, I passive-aggressively (and unnecessarily) muttered, “Oh, so now I can go in this line?” The angry man was still standing there, staring. He screamed something indistinguishable to my novice Chinese ears. “I don’t think I even feel comfortable with him being on my plane,” I said loud enough for the gate agents to hear. A female supervisor standing behind the desk offered a modest apology to me in English. I walked down the crowded jetway and said goodbye to China. 

69. Privilege (2022-07-10)

I’m leaving China and traveling to Israel on Tuesday, before continuing to meet my parents in Portugal, visit friends in Western Europe, and then return to the US at the end of the summer. When friends and colleagues here ask me where I’m going next and I tell them, universally, I get a melancholy stare in response.

At my raucous going-away barbecue on Friday, I asked a senior Chinese colleague what his plans were for the summer. I’ll be in Beijing, he told me. I need permission from the local Education Bureau to leave. He looked forward to the borders opening again so that he could come to visit me in the US and go to College Board conferences, as he used to do annually. Then he asked, when do you think you’ll return to China? When I no longer need to scan a QR code to go anywhere, I heard myself blurt out. The only response was silence.

My colleague’s restrictions of movement aren’t unique: Healthcare workers with Chinese passports and government workers are similarly discouraged from traveling (I tried finding a source for this but couldn't on the English-language Internet...I know several Chinese healthcare workers who are required to follow these restrictions). Chinese friends and colleagues tell me that they look forward to the number of cases going back down to zero so they can travel outside of Beijing again. Then they usually say, without being prompted, that it’s all too much. From elites who’ve gone to a university abroad and have foreign permanent residence cards to low-paid bao ans (保/security guards) and ayis (阿姨/literal translation is aunt, but is the term used for domestic workers). Foreigners talk about how many people are leaving and wonder if it’s time for them to leave too. But for long-term ex-pats, most of their professional and personal networks are in China, making it challenging for them to return to their home countries.

I’ve stopped talking about the absurdity of the constant ambition to achieve COVID Zero. Even the government rhetoric has shifted to “Dynamic COVID Zero”. Publicly, entry and exit policies have loosened a bit—nationally, China has theoretically cut the quarantine time in half to 7+7 (7 days hotel quarantine + 7 days home observation). One Chinese Canadian colleague who previously was a vehement defender of China’s homegrown vaccines, bitterly told me that they were “little more than water” (studies have shown that Sinovac and Sinopharm do have some efficacy against varied strains of COVID-19, but the Singapore Ministry of Health, among others, recommends that people get boosters of an mRNA vaccine after receiving these conventional vaccines). While I have had the privilege of getting two Sinovac shots in Beijing and two Pfizer-BioNTech shots in the US, I intend to get a booster of another mRNA shot when I arrive in Israel and brace for getting a light case of COVID myself. When I tell Chinese that I fully expect to quickly contract COVID after leaving China, they look stunned.

Over the past year, folks keep hoping that things will open after certain milestones. Surely, the Government will let people visit family for Chinese New Year (that was in February). No? Ok, things will relax after the Winter Olympics. Not yet? Maybe we’ll be able to travel freely after the Central Government’s annual Two Meetings in May. Still not yet? We’re still striving for COVID Zero, at least Dynamically? The next milestone to look forward to, and this one is a biggie, will be the National Party Congress of the Communist Party, in November (it’s literally colloquially referred to as the 20th Big…[èrshí dà/二十大]). 

The economic impact of static or Dynamic COVID Zero is palpable. From professionals having salaries cut to empty storefronts, there’s a feeling here that the boom times are coming to an end. Even if the air is cleaner and people are richer. But because at its core China is still a poor country (which is easy to forget when surrounded by expensive cars and ultra-luxury European and North American brands), the inflation I’ve heard so much about still hasn’t quite hit daily life here as much—yet. At least not for comfy ex-pats like me.

There are some signs of daily life getting more expensive. The price of pork, a commodity watched as closely in China as gas is in the US, was up over 10% since last month. Fruit is more expensive now than it was last year at the same time ($1 for one apple? Really?).

But I still was able to buy over a kilo of freshly harvested edamame at the supermarket yesterday for about 80 cents. I remember buying a quarter of that quantity at Trader Joe’s for at least $3…. more than three years ago. I still pay about $15/month for my cell phone service, and that’s with frequently using my phone’s hot spot data. A 10-mile cab ride will cost me about $10. A medium latté at Starbucks is about $5, as it was when I arrived three years ago. 

So to prepare for my departure, I’ve stocked up on things that are more expensive outside of the Chinese market like prescription glasses (got a fabulous new pair for about $50, including an eye exam by a guy who may or may not have been a licensed optician), Eileen Fisher silk and linen clothes from my lady at the Russian Market who sells the products rejected from the factory for slight defects or made “overnight”, and electric adaptors that are 2-3x more expensive outside of China.

I appreciate the privilege of being here this past year, the privilege of being able to return home last summer, and the privilege of living in Beijing since July 2019. I appreciate the privilege of being able to leave with fond memories, and close friends, many of whom have become my chosen family. I appreciate working for a company that always paid my staff and me on time—even while we were stuck abroad for 9 months and teachers all over China stopped getting paid. I appreciate that I always knew that I could turn to a Canadian ministry for support (and that I never had to). I appreciate knowing that my work was meaningful and that I was able to build a strong team and school program that will continue to develop after I leave. I appreciate that this country has wooed me back every few years since I was in high school and has always, ultimately, made me feel welcome and helped me grow. And I appreciate that I am free to leave. 

68. Consequences (2022-06-26)

“Elections have consequences,” my dear college roommate texted me hours before SCOTUS officially released the decision that will change the lives of so many women in America. And the day after the same Court made it the law of the land to be allowed to carry a concealed firearm without having to show proper cause. Like so many of my friends in the US and Europe, she recently came down with COVID for a second time, after having been vaccinated, boosted, and careful. In China, where I’ve had to explain the anti-abortion and second amendment rights arguments to baffled Chinese, my chances of getting COVID are probably the lowest of any country in the world. But if I did, I would have to bear consequences beyond viral symptoms.

Just as elections in America have consequences, the lack of elections in China has consequences. Getting COVID in Beijing is dreaded. A positive test would probably land you in a central fever clinic, protected by nurses and guards in hazmat suits. Your apartment building and surrounding community would be sealed off for at least two weeks. A red dot would show up at your home address on map applications. Your case would be announced at the daily 5:30 pm press conference. Your neighborhood would be avoided by Beijingers who could avoid it for weeks, ensuring that the local economy would take a hit.

While there is no recent reliable public polling in China, there’s a sense that patience with COVID restrictions is beginning to wane. A colleague recently took her child to a smaller province to ensure that she had more consistent access to in-person school than she would in Beijing. A tour guide told me about how his business has been decimated in the past year. If you only consume Chinese Internet, news, and social media, you’d probably be unaware that the rest of the world is opening. I routinely talk with educated Chinese folks who are stunned when I tell them how many vaccinated and boosted people I know who have gotten mild cases of COVID, and the resurging open international travel accompanying the contagions.

My school is now entering week 10 of having a “closed campus”. This means that any staff who live on apartments or dorms on campus may not leave without permission from the Party Secretary, and only for an Essential reason. If they do leave, they are required to promise that they will only have “point to point” travel. Commuting 9th grade students and teachers are permitted to come on campus at the beginning of every day and go home in the evening, but are required to sign a pledge that they too will restrict their travel. Starting Monday, all students will be allowed to return to in-person learning, at the parents’ discretion. But we will continue to have a “closed campus”, per the direction of our local Education Bureau.

On my Essential Travel trips off campus, I’ve seen drastically inconsistent implementation of COVID restriction policies. The bar/restaurant I go to for my Thursday trivia has been shuttered for over two weeks. The other restaurants on their block are open for indoor dining and there haven’t been any cases announced in their neighborhood for weeks. A local Tex-Mex chain is again allowed to have all its locations open for in-person dining, but their Central Business District location—their largest—isn't permitted to serve alcohol. While I’ve started seeing more locals out and spending money, anecdotally, I’ve also seen many newly empty storefronts.

This past week, the Beijing HealthKit was updated to conspicuously show your vaccination status, and how many days it’s been since you’ve gotten your last COVID test. It saves the user from the inconvenient three extra taps to pull up the information when asked. Local officials can and do go through video footage to match the people who scan the QR codes when entering a public place (including parks), and punish business owners who don’t ensure that patrons comply. Cab drivers can also be held liable if their fares don’t match the QR codes scanned.

It’s unclear how often this is actually done, but the fear is enough to push some businesses to have staff stand behind you to supervise you scanning their QR code, rather than just pulling up your own HealthKit profile or a screenshot. I often have cab drivers who will drive slowly or not at all until they see a confirmation on their phone that I’ve scanned their personal QR code. Once, I went into a store where the guard didn’t understand or recognize my English HealthKit, and refused to let me in at all. At an outdoor mall downtown, when I showed a screenshot instead of scanning, security guards rushed after me and blocked my path until I went back to the QR code at the checkpoint. At three different entrances.

You can’t (legitimately) get a SIM card in China without registering it to your national ID or passport, so your location can always be traced with some precision. But even if it is superfluous and stifling, there is something empowering about the QR code system. It gives me a sense of comforting control, that I am doing something to contribute to a cause larger than me that I really have no control over, and that I’m being looked after in return. As a close Chinese friend once told me, “We like to have our government take care of us. We don’t want to be left alone.”

Technically, I could leave Beijing right now, but it would be a gamble. Crowdsourced WeChat information tells me that I shouldn’t have trouble leaving at a train station or airport in Beijing, but the city I arrive at has the right to deny me entry upon arrival. My travel history app has an "*" next to the “Beijing” below my green arrow, showing that my “city is currently at medium or high risk.” But, the note adds generously, “Risk areas do not mean that users have actually visited these medium and high-risk areas”. The asterisk only disappears if an area has no more than 1 new case over 14 days. So if I tested positive for COVID, it could impact all 20 million people in Beijing. The mystery surrounding the policies and their implementation seems to be more effective than the policies themselves.

Last week, during a doctor’s appointment, I complained about how frustrating it is to have my freedom of movement so limited. My wise middle-aged Chinese doctor gave me a patient smile. If I was a woman in a rural Chinese village no more than 30 or 40 years ago,  I probably would have spent my entire life within a 20 km radius of where I’d been born. This idea of moving around the world so freely is still new in China. As a consequence, he said, it seems to have made people more fearful of letting their children wander and play freely, and of anyone making mistakes. Foreigners, he said, seem to be used to this idea of moving around freely and so it’s more difficult for them when it’s taken away. Between my freedom of movement restricted here in the name of safety and my civil rights being curtailed at home in the bastardized name of preserving liberties, I’m enduring consequences all around. 

67. Frustration. (2022-06-09)

I shrieked with frustration. Fortunately, my Tencent virtual meeting with the Education Bureau was muted, and my neighbors confirmed afterwards that they couldn’t hear me while they were teaching online. I’m at the end of week 6 of living on our “closed campus”, where no one is allowed on or off. The city’s restaurants and bars opened on Monday, and museums last week. The Education Bureau officially announced that school would resume in person on Monday. But instead of giving us our freedom, we were told by the Education Bureau health inspectors that they expect our campus to be extra sanitized between now and Monday. In preparation for the inspections today, our facilities team prepared a detailed memo with photos of empty public spaces, and details of how they’ve been disinfecting all surfaces in the vacant rooms every day. Even cleaning the windows and delivery packages.

During the brisk virtual meeting, I frantically messaged my kind Communist Party Secretary, asking if it would be appropriate for me to directly ask if teachers on campus could be permitted to leave before Monday. I heard the officials, all men (half of whom weren’t wearing masks while sitting at a conference table), start asking individual schools if they had any questions. Still no response from my Party Secretary. So, I wrote my question in the chat box, first in English, then in Chinese. Then the meeting ended with no answer to my question.

I checked my WeChat and she said that she asked, and they confirmed we weren’t allowed to leave before June 13th. Then she got a phone call (perhaps in response to my question?), confirming that the school was to have a “strictly closed campus”, and that the Education Bureau would start inspections tomorrow. Presumably, we’ve been having inspections this entire time? And if it wasn’t strict before this, what was it? And did I just make it worse for all of us by asking for clarification about when we’d regain our freedom of movement?

My frustration isn’t just that I’m not able to go to trivia tonight, which will be in person for the first time in a month. Or go away with friends this weekend to the Great Wall. Or help my teachers go to a barbecue with their friends on a nearby farm. It’s my powerlessness. In the US and Canada, not only would this not happen this way in the first place, but there would also be things I could do and people I could lobby for our release. I’d have elected officials and reporters to call. Social media to post on, without fear of my post being quickly scrubbed. Our illogical situation could go viral.

But what is our hardship compared with the 8 weeks folks in Shanghai were forced to endure in their tiny flats? We have our comfortable apartments, full salary, remote work, and ability to move around outside within our campus walls. We don’t have food shortages. No need to do group orders or hoard staples. Who am I to complain compared with the woman who unsuccessfully pleaded to be let into a hospital in Xian to give birth? The elderly folks who begged for and were denied immediate medical attention? Pets euthanized after their owners were put in quarantine?

I continually get a similar response to my frustration from many Chinese friends or expats who’ve been here for a long time: we can’t do anything to change the situation, so stop fighting it. They’re not entirely wrong. After all, the only leverage we have is to threaten to go to the airport and leave China. Sadly, regardless of whether it’s intentional, I’m starting to think that’s the larger message.

66. Dystopian Anniversary (2022-06-05)

Dystopian China is usually below the surface. If you took a trip to Tai Koo Li mall in Beijing or Shanghai, you’d have your choice of places to buy a fantastic $6 latte, shop at anywhere from H&M to Balenciaga, and eat at Shake Shack, Red Lobster, European-style cafes, and Asian restaurants. You might see kids walking down the street with eerily-real-looking toy machine guns, but it’s almost impossible for a civilian in China to get a firearm. There’s a utopian arrogance to those plastic guns, and it motivates those with means to try the real thing abroad. Pre-pandemic, gun-centered vacations drew Chinese tourists to Texas, Canada, Scotland, Russia, and South Africa.

In Shanghai, all the things that were closed for two months reopened last week. In Beijing, rumors of businesses reopening in Beijing for in-person shopping and dining were confirmed today. Schools are to reopen on June 13 for the final month of the school year. In this city of 21 million that has been averaging about 20 new cases a day.

Frustrations have been bubbling in response to lockdowns. It's reassuring for me to know that civilians in China don’t have access to firearms but helps me better understand the original inspiration for the Second Amendment. Earlier this week, the South China Morning Post put a video on YouTube of a crowd of protestors trying to cross a checkpoint from nearby Hebei province into Beijing. No thoughts and prayers here.

The protesters were at a checkpoint in Yanjiao, a suburb 20 minutes from me where several of our staff and students (used to) commute from. For months, those staff had to quarantine in their homes and potentially lose salaries or live on campus for months without seeing their families. Our classes routinely had a few students who joined live classes remotely because they were stuck in Yanjiao. I shudder to think about what may have happened if those protesters (and police) had access to guns. Especially this week, when exactly 23 years ago tanks rolled into Tiananmen with live ammunition and cleared out the square of peaceful protestors.

This time, peaceful protest seems to have worked. I haven’t heard of the video making it onto Chinese social media, but the local government has started letting commuters back into Beijing from Yanjiao. It worked last month for students at Peking University last month, too, who were periodically protesting being blocked from leaving their dorms by metal barriers. These students—the academic elite of China—put the videos on social media where they stayed up long enough for chatter to grow.

I’ve been locked down in my apartment for over a month because our local education bureau has directed that all schools are “closed campuses”. This means no one is allowed to enter or exit campus unless they have special permission from their supervisor and the Party Secretary, both of whom are held “responsible” if anyone the approve gets COVID.

Earlier this week we were told by the education bureau that no deliveries, including food, could be brought onto campus until they have been allowed to sit out for 24 hours, after being sprayed with disinfectant. My remarkably patient staff almost rioted. The regulation hasn’t been enforced nor discussed since. The education bureau has yet to tell us if opening the economy will also allow us freedom of movement.

At around 8:00 am every day, someone drives by on a motorized tricycle with a megaphone repeating directions to wear a mask and check the health code on your phone. During a brief furlough off campus, I saw a toll booth worker spraying the road in front of the car with disinfectant. Walking a friend’s dogs in a quiet neighborhood, I was stopped by a security guard across the street from a popup COVID testing site, asking me to put on my mask. When I told him I didn’t have one and tried to keep walking down the empty sidewalk, he was insistent, so I turned around and returned to the gated community I’d just left.

On the surface, there’s some normality. I can still order almost anything on my phone and have it delivered promptly, including $6 lattes, clothes from H&M to Balenciaga, and takeaway from Shake Shack, and Red Lobster. Some cab drivers insist that I prove that I scanned their HealthKit QR code (which, in theory, could be checked by the government against the rides they’ve given). But most have been satisfied with a screenshot and don’t bug me to put on a mask. And, unsurprisingly, there is no mention of the heavy symbolism of this week’s anniversary. But there’s been plenty of coverage of the thoughts and prayers accompanying America’s mass shootings.

65. Mafan (2022-05-23)

Mafan (麻烦) is my favorite Chinese term. Urban Dictionary defines it as “being pained or annoyed by something, about the same meaning as 'troublesome' or 'bothersome'.” It’s sort of like mishegoss in Yiddish.

After three weeks of online teaching, I was informed on Friday at 11 pm that I had an emergency meeting at 9 am Saturday morning. Our Communist Party Branch Chief told us over Tencent Meeting (which looks eerily like Zoom) that effective immediately, we were not allowed to leave campus, and no one was allowed on campus. The local education bureau visited on Friday and wasn’t satisfied. Even though we made sure to wear masks outside in preparation for their visit. And only about two dozen students are left on campus. To comply with their “suggestions” about how to ensure we had an adequately “closed campus”, it was interpreted that no one was allowed in or out. Mafan.

An hour later, an American teacher who had not yet been notified about the policy called me from the gate. The bao an (保安security guard) wouldn’t let him on campus. Then a Canadian teacher who’d stayed over on campus but was returning to her apartment down the block called me. The bao an wouldn’t let her leave. My intervention only went so far—they only relented when authorized to do so by our Party Branch Chief. Mafan.

We’re still allowed to get deliveries, but only after they are disinfected with an unknown substance that comes out of a container that looks like Miracle Grow. Yesterday, when I mindlessly went in the exit door to get my COVID test in our gym, I was reminded by someone staffing the test to go in the correct door. Later it was explained to me in Chinese that the government was checking the cameras to ensure we were complying with their procedures. Mafan.

Today there were three new COVID cases were identified in Tongzhou, my district of about 2 million people. It’s unclear what will happen if we get to 0 new cases, and it’s unclear how long the 0 new cases would have to continue for it to make a difference. Mafan.

I’ve been locked down for two and a half days and I can’t stand it. And unlike folks in Shanghai who've been locked down for over six weeks, I’m allowed to wander around my school’s campus, where we have a track, a small gym, and an office I can work in. There are people in my building who I can spend time with. I have an exercise bike in my apartment. I have plenty of work to do, fresh food, air conditioning, a washing machine, art supplies, Netflix. But it’s a result of mafan that I’m locked down, not safety, not science.

Outside my window, there is a pile of bricks next to the wall that separates our campus from the sidewalk. I’ve thought a little too hard about how I would build steps to get to the top of the wall, and I’ve already identified a ladder that I could lower down the other side. (My neighbors, who are teachers on my team, first spotted this)

Last week, in the final days of our lovely spring, I discovered long bike trails along the man-made river going up to the Beijing International Airport that not so long ago had dozens of flights going all around the world. I relished watching families barbequing, fishing, exercising, and relaxing in and outside of tents. There were no bao an’s regulating anyone. The air was clean. People were smiling, laughing, and exercising. They were healthy, happy, and safe. And so was I. Now I’m enduring mafan.

64. Rumors and homogeneous forests (2022-05-13)

Yesterday rumors spread around Beijing that we were about to go into a three-day Shanghai-style lockdown. WeChat groups like “Safe and Sane in Beijing” erupted with photos of crowded grocery stores and anecdotes about people seeing frenzied stockpiling around the city. After all, Shanghai’s now six-week lockdown was originally only supposed to last 4 days. But at the daily late afternoon press conference where the talking heads drone on in detail about the latest numbers district by district, the rumors were quashed.

The genesis of the rumors wasn’t altogether unfounded. On Monday, parts of Shanghai were required to enter a “quiet period”, where they could only get deliveries from government sources, if at all. Wednesday WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, oft-criticized for being too lenient with China, said that a shift in China’s zero-tolerance COVID approach “will not be sustainable. … A shift would be very important.” The hashtags for “World Health Organization” and “Tedros” were promptly blocked from Twitter-like Weibo.  

Then yesterday afternoon the municipal government suspended all taxi and car hire services in two districts and part of a third. A few hours later, after being told on Wednesday that we’d only be required to get COVID tests on even days for the foreseeable future, the direction was revised to resume another round of city-wide testing for three days straight. All of this led me (and others) to wonder if the Government really had planned to implement a hard lock-down in Beijing until they saw that it was politically untenable.

Just like Spring and Summer 2020 in America and Europe, in lieu of shopping, eating out, and working in offices, people are outside, enjoying spring. In central Beijing, large green spaces like Chaoyang Park remain closed (parks in China often have walls around them with gates you need to go through to enter). But out by 5th Ring Road where I am, people are barbecuing and hanging out on hammocks under the newly blooming trees, surrounded by wildflowers.

Even though the trees are planted in laser-straight rows and have grown unnaturally fast, I appreciate Beijing’s mega afforestation project to “increase carbon sink capacity.” Especially when I sense that the air is cleaner when I’m in the artificially homogeneous arboretums. I even appreciate the expensive expansive rows of roses that have been appearing along the main roads in my district, replacing other flowers that were there a few months ago that outlived their usefulness. They distract from the peeling paint on bridges they often decorate. And the half-a-kilometer-long COVID test lines I see now see people unproductively waiting in during the height of the workday. 

Here are some pictures from my recent lovely bike rides. 

63. 2020 2.0 (2022-05-05)

New COVID culprits abound. Earlier this week, a public toilet in central Beijing was linked to 40 COVID infections. Last month, it was bananas at a stand in Tongzhou, my district, and Shunyi, a nearby wealthy suburban with lots of expat families. While bathroom COVID transmissions might sound bananas, Science Magazine reported way back in 2020 that poop was found to carry and transmit COVID. Taking all the money from the banana stand, however, ignores that the WHO debunked this myth back in 2020 1.0, when identifying the virus as a respiratory illness that requires an animal host to survive.

My subconscious seems to remember what soothes me during home isolation. Like in 2020 1.0, I’m finding myself gardening (every inch of the floor along my large windows is covered with edible and decorative plants, many from supermarket cuttings), baking (these sesame whole wheat crackers are yummy and easy to make), and biking (I’ve recovered since my fall).

I went for a long bike ride on Sunday, roughly paralleling the ancient Grand Canal that runs from central Beijing to cities hundreds of miles away. As I pedaled on the protected bike lanes, I spotted at least a dozen popup COVID testing sites, efficiently sampling neighborhood residents. COVID tests are cheap or free now—about $3 around the corner from me, or free if I show up within the hour or so the local hospital is on campus swabbing our mouths. Today was the first day in a while when I noticed they put my swab in its own test tube, rather than batching as they’ve been doing for the past month. Fortunately, no one has stuck the swab way up my naval cavity recently. Let alone tried to do an anal test.

Midway through my ride, I met up with friends and spent a divine afternoon picking along the Liangma River that connects with the Grand Canal, near many large embassies and fancy stores. There are really no open container laws in China, and we saw Beijing’s bold and beautiful lounging on the grass and drinking champagne while holding coifed dogs and taking selfies. A bit haughtily, we observed that the spring breeze was no match for preventing Omicron transmissions at this outdoor party. The whole scene reminded me of socially-distanced meetups with friends in DC’s Kalorama Park, back when the original variant of COVID wasn’t as easily transmitted outdoors. Except back then there weren’t COVID vaccines yet. And unlike now where I so often feel like the only thing I have to fear is fear itself, we knew so little about the virus.

The next morning, my WeChat exploded with messages announcing that parts of the Liangma River promenade had been closed off with tall barriers to prevent crowds. On Weibo, the Chinese Twitter-like platform, people complained that it was all the fault of the mask-less foreigners. (Ok, I was a maskless foreigner, but there were way more Chinese than foreigners. And most of them weren’t wearing masks either!) Well-behaved English expat magazine the Beijinger promptly published an op-ed titled, “No, Covid Rules Don’t Single Out Foreigners”.

While public transit continues to run, some of the busiest subway stations have been closed and bus lines suspended (including the bus across the street that takes me downtown for 30 cents). As I waited at an under-staffed bank today to wire money to the US, I practiced my Chinese by reading a crisp local newspaper. The front page mentioned only new construction and infrastructure projects, praising their progress. At the bottom of the second page was an article about COVID restrictions on restaurants and takeout food. Next to it was a large colorful picture of a well-stocked supermarket shelf—proof that there was no need to hoard. It reminded me of Boris Yeltsin’s impromptu visit to a Houston supermarket in 1989, when he was more amazed at the variety and plentifulness of products available in the freezer section than by what he saw at NASA down the street.

62. The calm before the snowday(s) (2022-04-28)

Here in Panem, the beginning of this week felt like the day before a snow day. We were excited about an anticipated change, and took bets about what would happen and when. This is a funny concept to explain to South African colleagues who’ve never experienced snow, but I think they appreciated the analogy once they lived it. 

On Tuesday, my weekly Operations Meeting with my Chinese administrative colleagues was dominated by us watching a live broadcast of the local Education Bureau’s emergency COVID meeting. At 3:00am, my Communist Party branch chief sent out a WeChat saying that she had received a phone call instructing my school to immediately transition to online learning. My phone buzzed all morning with parents confirming they had picked up their boarding students, as it had in Spring 2020.

Then the buzzing transitioned to teachers re-engaging with online learning for the first time in two years. Our challenge now is less about how to do online learning and get our materials digitized and more about figuring out what platform to use. Zoom? The company halted direct sales in Mainland China to insulate itself from collaborating with the Chinese government minding (their CEO is Chinese-born American). Our homegrown platform? Parents and students complained about its clunkiness. Alibaba’s DingTalk? Lots of features but it’s mostly in Chinese and is starting to crash with so much of Beijing going remote simultaneously.

Like the day before a snow day, international media continues showing images of Beijing grocery stores with emptying shelves. People locally have told me about similar experiences, but when I shopped yesterday at the local farmer’s market and grocery store, they were well-stocked. A friend told me that the Beijing government has been instructing stores to restock their shelves three times/day to prevent hoarding which is continuing to happen (with good reason) in Shanghai.

For now, I’m free to travel around Beijing if I avoid low, medium, or high-risk areas. My avoidance is more a product of wanting to maintain my COVID-free green code rather than concern about catching COVID.

So yesterday morning I took advantage of the clean, dewy spring day and went for a bike ride before it started to rain. Unfortunately, my new-to-me snazzy road bike hydroplaned on a turn, and I slipped and fell over. Before I could get up and examine my injured hands and arms (as always, I was wearing a helmet), several cars and tricycles steered around me, without stopping. I had to remind myself what I’ve told friends who’ve been in similar situations: this is a country that is constantly managing generational trauma. What feels like aloofness may be instinctual detachment resulting from years of having to prioritize the survival of self and family.

And then before I lost all hope in the humanity of my neighbors, a suave-looking man in a Cadillac pulled over to check on me. As I hobbled home, a man who looked older than he probably was slowed down on his rickety bike to check on me. In between cigarette puffs, he asked me in Chinese if I was an English teacher at the nearby school, and where I was from. He only sped up again once I assured him that I lived nearby and was ok.

When I arrived at the gate to my school, where I live on campus, I was greeted with a flurry of parents picking up students and their books. The baoan's (security guards) vaguely knew me. But they wouldn’t let me in without scanning the health kit QR code. I angrily showed them my hands dripping with blood. I just wanted to go home, I said in English and Chinese. When that didn’t work, I said I needed to go to the bathroom. Some Chinese teachers on the other side of the gate recognized me and looked between the baoan’s and me. Then the baoan’s consulted each other and confirmed that they needed to have me scan. So, smearing blood from my thumb onto my phone, I pulled up a screenshot of my green code. They let me in.

Again, to calm my emotions, I reminded myself about the generational trauma. Parents were watching them. Beyond that moment, I was in a position of power, and they were vulnerable. One complaint from a parent about them letting a foreigner on campus without scanning their health code and they could be fired. The interaction could be spot-checked by local authorities. And I wasn’t above the rules.

As the grip on Shanghai continues to hold (now green metal fences lock in some residents), we continue wondering if that will happen here. Beijing is so symbolically important that China’s national emblem (seal) is the Tiananmen Gate at the entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing. 

Would China's leaders impose such draconian measures on themselves and their families? And if they wouldn’t, are over 90% of adults in Beijing really fully vaccinated against COVID-19, even with a home-grown jab? Months ago, I remember being told at meetings that over 90% of our students and staff had been vaccinated. But then we were scolded by the education bureau for having a lower vaccination percentage than nearby schools. So, we bugged parents and staff to get jabs. Now the government is again pressuring us to encourage students and parents to get vaccinated. What gives?

61. Shanghai ignominy distracts from Ukrainian grief (2022-04-17)

Ukrainian solidarity continues to be displayed outside of most embassies that house democracies here in Beijing. The other day I went to an event at the northern European country’s embassy, which had a huge Ukrainian flag hanging prominently on its outer wall. I stopped and took a picture, smiling sadly. Unlike Shanghai, China’s fancier first-tier mega-tropolis, life continues with relative normalcy here in Panem.

Outside the northern European embassy, a formally-dressed Chinese PAP (People’s Armed Police) guard stood on a raised platform between the black fence put up by the Chinese and the wall where the embassy started, choreographically stoic. He called out to me in eerily perfect English after I took my photo. “Hello,” he said. He couldn’t have been older than 22. I never heard a PAP guard speak before and was a bit caught off guard. Usually, I’m resisting the urge to take pictures of them or try to make them laugh. Particularly when I see them pedaling in perfect formation on former share-bikes that have been spray-painted black (with the share-bike graveyard photos I’ve seen on social media, it’s a resourceful way to extend the life of the bikes). “Hello,” I responded in English. “May I help you?” he said. I said no, thank you and walked away. Maybe it was my blue and yellow “I stand with Ukraine” phone case that caught his eye. I was glad that I had taken off the “F*CK Putin” one that I use when I know I’ll only be around foreign friends.

In 2006, on one of my first trips to Beijing, a white male American classmate downloaded Team America: World Police, a satire about Kim Jung Il, in the days before the Great Firewall. Then he bought a crisp Tsingtao beer at a bodega, sat on the curb in front of the North Korean embassy, and settled in with his laptop. I walked there with him to see what would happen (while keeping my distance). The PAP guards there didn’t flinch, let alone talk to him. How things have changed.

There were more foreigners at the event I attended than there were Chinese. The hosting ambassador welcomed us by solemnly reviewing the latest statistics about Putin’s War. Over 4 million Ukrainians have fled to other countries. Over 6 million internally displaced to date. I saw diplomats from democratic countries nodding solemnly as I felt tears swell in my eyes.

At dinner afterward, a senior diplomat from the hosting embassy talked with me about the impact of Putin’s War back home. Concern about the War is “pulling the air out of the room at every meeting back home,” I was told. “The threat is real to us.” And about the Chinese? The analysis was that some Chinese leaders truly don’t believe that what Russia is doing is so wrong. Beyond that, “it’s far away for them, it’s not as real.” As a Summer Child who’s only known the safety, comfort, and competitive spirit of America’s privileges, this was a sentiment with which I could begrudgingly empathize.

Besides, folks here continue to be distracted by the current ignominy in Shanghai. Rumors are circulating about people jumping off their balconies to escape their apartments. A Weibo video of a police drone calling out, “Please control your soul’s desire for freedom” went viral before being scrubbed.  Photos are appearing of people putting their refrigerators on their balconies, open and empty for all to see. A colleague told me that her friend’s apartment door was taped closed by the local authorities, the way I’ve done with high schoolers on overnight trips, and something I've heard from several friends. Then she showed me a photo her friend took of an apartment door across the hall from her, where a neighbor had tested positive for COVID. A wooden slat had been nailed across the door, with the residents inside. 

A couple of months ago, Shanghai was well-run and rich, even in the wake of the Pandemic. Last year, the Japan-based Institute for Urban Strategies ranked Shanghai 10 on their Global Power City Index, ahead of the likes of Sydney, LA, Toronto, and Shanghai. Business consulting firm Kearney also ranked it 10th in the world last year, up two points. TimeOut Magazine ranked it number 1 for safety and food and drink.

These accomplishments mean little now for 25 million people who are in week 3 of an open-ended lockdown. The Wall Street Journal reported on April 15 that 40% of China’s human economic output is currently under lockdown. The approximate population of the United States + Spain.

Brunch small talk has morphed beyond the weather to the discussion of COVID, and what we heard last from friends in Shanghai. Folks here and in the US are working with friends and family in Shanghai to help them get grocery delivery slots through apps across time zones. It’s a far cry from the Dairy Queen, Shake Shack, Carrefour, and sushi deliveries I enjoyed during my two hotel quarantines in Shanghai.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zalenska beseeched, “Don’t get used to our grief.” It’s becoming an increasingly hard ask in this country where freedom of movement is increasingly restricted in the name of freedom from COVID.

60. F*CK PUTIN (2022-03-28)

“F*CK PUTIN” and “I Stand with UKRAINE" written in English and Russian caught my eye. It was on a canvas bag held by a young woman at my favorite cauliflower pizza health food restaurant. We were in the communal bathroom area, washing our hands. I told her first in Chinese that I loved her bag and asked where she got it. She quickly switched to English and told me that she was from San Francisco, making sure to point out that she was American (she looked like she was of Chinese descent and had a slight Chinese accent). I asked her again where she got the bag, and she told me she designed it and offered to send me one, and matching phone cases. 

A couple of weeks later, the bag and phone cases arrived as promised. When I tried to give her money, she told me that this was her “way of rebelling.” I gave the bag to a dear friend who’s walking the Camino de Santiago in France and Spain, trepidatious to wear it myself on the streets of Beijing. But the “I Stand with UKRAINE” bright blue and yellow phone case is in my hand every time I send someone a WeChat message. The more provocative “F*CK PUTIN” phone case with a footprint over his face is on my desk, next to my American flag that says “MADE IN CHINA” on it in small letters, and my freshly-arrived absentee ballot application.

There are quiet, present displays of protest in Beijing against Putin’s War. NATO and EU countries are flying Ukrainian flags at their Embassies. The Canadian Embassy has “We stand with Ukraine” written outside their walls (it was vandalized soon after it was posted). The US Embassy is lit up with blue and yellow lights at night. A Chinese friend apologized to me for China not saying and doing more to support Ukraine, while we were having tea in a private home. Others felt the same sorrow and frustration, my friend said, but couldn’t say it on social media or in public. I was touched and somehow it made me feel even sadder.

COVID is distracting Chinese people from Putin's War. Here in Beijing we're not in lockdown like techy Shenzhen just emerged from, or like nearby Jilin’s 4.5 million people, Shenyang’s 9 million people, and Shanghai’s 26 million people are experiencing. (To put this in perspective, Texas has 29 million people) A few days ago, the Shanghai government wasn’t calling their closed schools businesses, and stores a lockdown. They said that halting commerce in the megacity would be too economically detrimental and even went so far as to ask people to stop spreading rumors on social media. Friends in Shanghai canceled a call with me for tonight, saying they needed to try to get to the supermarket before the lockdown started. They hoped there was food left on the shelves.

Parts of Beijing have been having remote school in response to outbreaks (there have been 146 identified cases in the past 10 days), and we’re bracing for the same. Our school is testing 20% of our community’s population daily, which works out to testing everyone weekly. Before last week, tests were done by the local CDC but are now contracted out and managed internally. Even though the local government was incredibly efficient and well-organized with their testing, it just became too much for them to manage on their own.

Chinese and foreigners alike are afraid of testing positive or having their health kit change from green to another color, which could happen if their phone is near someone who soon after tests positive. For Chinese, going into isolation or quarantine may very likely mean a couple of weeks of no pay, and perhaps no job to return to. If they get COVID, it’s seen to be their own fault, and they are to be held accountable for their carelessness. Foreigners tend to have more compassionate employment situations (and leverage). They are haunted by stories of uncomfortable fever clinics rather than not being able to make rent or buy food.

Some folks are starting to simply show screenshots of their health kit app if they can get away with it, rather than scanning the QR code of the business or cab they’re entering. There are rumors that businesses have got in trouble if they let people in without scanning their QR code. I was told at a meeting that the government would spot-check our cameras to make sure that everyone was scanning when they entered our campus. Whether or not all this is true is unclear, but it could be. The consequences are also unclear, which ominously makes the policies more effective—to a point. I have friends who’ve even started carrying around cash, so they don’t have to use WeChat Pay (people in China barely remember what cash looks like). I don’t know if these tricks work; ultimately our SIM card tracks our movement regardless of whether we scan QR codes. But it’s one less thing to get flagged if someone who you may have been standing near tests positive for COVID a few days later. 

Putin's War is simply getting pushed farther down in the headlines.

59. The 3 T's (2022-03-10)

When I looked at my students, I used to just feel sad that they either didn’t know about or had very limited and curated access to information about three T’s: Tiananmen, Taiwan, and Tibet. Then Hong Kong. Then Xinjiang. I’ve heard countless first-hand accounts from long-time ex-pats here about the summer in 1989 when they thought there were fireworks and saw instead soldiers shooting at unarmed students. I’ve teased Taiwanese friends who insist on identifying as Taiwanese, not Chinese. And I had the privilege of visiting Tibet in 2006, before the arrival of Starbucks and WeChat. But I’m not related to any of those peoples. I can convince myself that it’s not my business and that it’s all distant abstractions.

Ukraine feels different. Very different. I feel an anger and sadness that surprises me. Maybe it’s because the refugees look like me with little melanin in their skin and often speak excellent English. In photos, I see them traveling with carry-on bags that a few months ago may have been used on an airplane. Maybe it’s because all my ancestors fled that region and found refuge in America only a couple of generations ago. Or that if anyone tries to question the validity of the war, I am ready with anecdotes and photos on WhatsApp about friends of friends who have fled Ukraine to Poland and Hungary.

This week, one of my 9th graders’ vocabulary words is “carry-on bag”. Flipping through my students’ now-banned textbook, I saw a reading exercise about a science museum in Kyiv. While my students had the Cambridge-published books abruptly confiscated in December, as a foreign teacher, I’m still permitted to use it as a reference and a supplemental class material resource. More than once, I’ve considered giving them that reading and showing them a photo of refugees with carry-on bags fleeing their homes.

The narrative about Putin’s War is growing increasingly pro-Russian here, under the guise of something reminiscent of Trump’s “very fine people on both sides.” Today, the Global Times, an English state-run paper, published an editorial Europe needs to sharpen eyes to see through US ‘tearjerker’. Just like the weather reports here cite a lot of meteorological reasons to explain away the 220 AQI air that I’m currently hiding out from, the editorial cites gas import statistics that highlight Europe’s disproportionate dependence on Russian fossil fuels relative to US needs. “…some netizens have commented that Washington is trying to ‘kill’ the EU and disguise it as a "mass suicide," writes the tabloid, not identifying the social media source.

Long-time ex-pats here are angrier and more saddened than I’ve ever seen. Several have told me that this feels like the first-time people here have had no access to objective news. I want to be angry at someone. I want to be able to do something. But how can I be angry at people who don’t have access to the information that is making me angry?

So instead, I’ll keep ensuring that my students are getting excellent English language instruction. We’ll teach them with every relevant piece of information and resource that hasn’t been banned. And I’ll continue to build lasting relationships because I’m not sure how much longer my beautiful students will be allowed to learn with foreigners. 

58. Wūkèlán (2022-03-07)

Unsurprisingly, ninth-graders in Beijing are little different than their American peers. As my last hurrah (I’m returning home to the US this summer after the school year is over), I decided to teach our hardest class in our 1000 student grades 1-12 school. Their English skills range from beginner to somewhat conversational, they are all well-fed, come from families that can afford our school’s approximately $20,000/year tuition, and are Han Chinese. While I’m not a psychologist, I’m fairly certain that there are students with undiagnosed learning disabilities and untreated emotional needs, most notably depressed boys who sit at the back of the class and sleep (with me, their naps aren’t quite successful but they still try). 

I’ve been very, very careful to only discuss topics that I know the strict local education bureau would approve of. For our first unit, our topic is “travel”. Appropriate to their 13-year-old brains, the students are testing me and figuring out the boundaries I'm establishing. One day during an English art class we were making posters advertising travel destinations around the world—places that in normal times these privileged kids might visit with their families.

A girl with strong conversational English was making a poster advertising New York City and pulled out a sticker with Donald Trump’s face. She asked me if she could put it on my poster. Sure, I said, he is from New York, but keep in mind that most people in New York don’t like him. I like him, she said. He’s funny. I nodded with a sad smile and moved to another student. I noticed she didn’t put the sticker on her poster.

Another day, a boy with limited conversational English was writing a response to “If you could travel to anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?”

Boy: Can I put Wūkèlán?

Me: Huh? 

Boy: You know, the place where all the [13-year-old boy bomb noises] are right now.

Student next to him: Teacher, he means the place where the war is.

Student behind him: [says Wūkèlán into her Apple Watch to translate]

Me: Ukraine! Yes, but why?

Boy: [nervous giggles, then looks at his notes for reasons we learned about why you’d visit a place] Because they have nice hiking trails and mountains and [more giggles] there are lots of girls.

He put together perfect English sentences, was being honest, and trying to figure it all out. To his surprise, I told him that was fine. He wrote it down.

The next day, I accidentally arrived at class two hours early and saw the students watching a CCTV documentary about the US Civil War. There were drab images of Abraham Lincoln and shameful photographs of poor sharecroppers. Half the kids were asleep and their Chinese teacher stood at the podium in front of the laptop, about two meters away from the students, silent.

When I returned a few minutes before my class started, their energy was transformed. I was greeted by an eager mob of young teenagers asking if we could listen to music before class started, as had become our ritual. At their request, I put on Katy Perry’s “Roar” and told them that I sent that video to friends on WeChat as part of my Chinese New Year greeting to celebrate the Year of the Tiger. I wondered if they made any connection between the dull documentary and the vibrant music video. And the interests competing for their eyeballs. 

57. Putin at the Olympics (2022-02-25)

Today the Olympic Blue Skies grayed to a dreary 160AQI. By the end of the Olympics, after Putin’s awkward non-handshake with Xi before the opening ceremony, Beijing started getting into the festivities. Skiing has grown in popularity here, which was probably helped by Eileen Gu’s omnipresent face (and the Tiger mom’s trying to learn from her Chinese-American mother), the near-perfect air, $30 lift tickets, and constant reinforcement to stay in Beijing.

50 years ago this week, Nixon came to Beijing to meet with Mao but I've seen limited coverage about it. The only references I’ve heard were a brief BBC radio story, and an expat friend who's been in China longer than I've been alive mentioning a few events that the Shanghai business community had to celebrate. But there’s a different huge distraction from the new COVID cases manifesting in Beijing post-Olympics, or the feeble emerging marketing for Shuey Rhon Rhon, the red lantern Paraolympics mascot designed to Panda Bing Dwen Dwen’s buddy.

“Guys, I’m sad about Ukraine,” I told a small group of colleagues this morning. A Canadian and South African sadly nodded towards me. Another South African colleague asked what I was talking about and looked shocked when the others summarized the events of the past 48 hours as they noshed on McDonald's delivery breakfast.

“It’s not about who’s right, it’s about power,” a Chinese colleague said without emotion. “Ukraine just won’t exist anymore.”

Later, I sat down to eat lunch in the cafeteria and joined other Chinese colleagues who were continuing the conversation. They spoke in Chinese over plastic trays filled with yummy rice noodles in soy sauce, steamed bread and white rice, and stir fry dishes with cabbage, tofu, chicken, celery, and winter melon. All for the low company-subsidized price of 30 cents. I’m routinely the only foreigner in our school’s cafeteria, but today a Canadian (whose Chinese is limited to ni hao and xiexie) joined us.

My Chinese colleagues knew that I could understand about 30% of their conversation in Chinese, and I knew that they were proud of my effort and limited mastery of their challenging language. When I joined the table, they were discussing which countries would benefit from Putin’s War. China and America for sure, they said, because they are big countries and the instability of war can help stable countries get richer. Mongolia and other smaller nations near China? TBD.

When they switched to English, the conversation shifted. And I understood more and they were limited with how much nuance they could express linguistically. The conflict in Ukraine is a good test for what would happen with Taiwan, a colleague said, with a hint of pride. China is like a growing teenager, and Japan and Taiwan are dying old men. Besides, they told me, don’t I know that the violence in Hong Kong a few years ago was completely backed by the Japanese and the Americans? They gave them money. And it’s the same thing in Taiwan. If I get a chance, I should go to Hong Kong and talk to people on the street there; they’d tell me the truth.

Me: What about what the people there want, the people whose home is being invaded? Does that matter?

Chinese Colleague A: What the people there want isn’t the issue, it’s how power can be wielded in your own best interests.

Chinese Colleague B: The rumor is that President Xi will annex Taiwan by 2030 or 2035. And that Japan has helped fund and fuel Taiwan’s development with the ultimate goal of invading China and trying to take it over again.

Me: Where did you see this?

Chinese Colleague B: In a bunch of posts on Chinese social media.

Me: This sounds a lot like what happened in America during the last election, with the Russian trolls posting fake things on Facebook. How do you know this is different?

Chinese Colleague B: Because I recognize that it’s real and I keep seeing it often.

Me: Share a screenshot with me the next time they see it, even if it’s in Chinese.

         Chinese Colleague B: (Gives me a blank nod)

Canadian Colleague: This is why it’s so important for us to teach our students how to evaluate sources.

Chinese Colleague A: It’s like what’s happening in Xinjiang. How do you know that’s real?

Me: There’s evidence from multiple newspapers, I’ve talked to people who’ve been there and saw and experienced things themselves. The New York Times published some videos a few years ago. Governments have also published evidence. I’d be happy to share it with you if you like.

Chinese Colleague A: But how do you know what you are told is true is true? And that the pictures you see are real are real?

Chinese Colleague B: Have you ever seen any photos of those other non-Han Chinese people actually getting killed in Xinjiang?

Me: No, but I have read evidence of forced sterilization.

Silence and pensive chewing.

Me: Do you believe that the Holocaust happened?

Silence.

Me: The genocide almost 100 years ago in Europe, where the Nazis killed almost 6 million Jews and 6 million other people?

Chinese Colleague A: I don’t know. I don’t know enough about the history.

Chinese Colleague B: Yes, I do.

Me: Why?

Chinese Colleague B: Because I’ve read a lot about it and when I hear people talk about it, you can tell from the way they’re discussing it.

This is the first time in a long time that I’ve felt homesick in China. Except in America, instead of people disputing the validity of genocide in Xinjiang they might be disputing the validity of vaccines that have been proven to be safe and effective. And the Holocaust could or could not have really happened. But the air would be consistently clean, the water potable, the internet open, and school lunches probably less flavorful and nutritious.

56. Dogs Off-Lease (2022-02-11)

There are two places in the world where I have consistently seen dogs off-lease trot behind their humans politely: Spain and China. I’m not sure how this is achieved, nor the multitude of other places where I’d imagine this phenomenon exists, but this interdependency (or obedience) is something that I’ve seen consistently over the past decade on the streets of Barcelona and Madrid, and Beijing and Shanghai. Both places have been shaped by civil wars within the past century. They’ve both managed conflating interests of preserving a large federation to enjoy economies of scale at the cost of regional or smaller cultural identities. Both have beautiful food, cultures that value family and communities, and are two of my favorite travel destinations.

They also have complex relationships with telling their own histories and truths. When I spent about a month traveling around Spain a few years ago, the only place I saw any direct acknowledgment of the pain of the Spanish Civil War was Picasso’s Guernica.

In the early days of lockdown in May 2020, one of my favorite viral videos was of Spanish police officers in Mallorca who parked on a village street and started singing to families locked down at home. Spain, with over 80% of its population fully vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine, is open to folks who can prove they’ve been vaccinated and are COVID-free. Their health minister advised against a vaccine mandate, citing that Spain is “one of the leading countries for vaccination in Europe and the world, including inoculations with a third dose.” Their unemployment is decreasing at record rates and is now lower than it was before the Pandemic. As Omicron becomes omnipresent, the world outside of China is learning to live with COVID as an endemic pandemic.

Here in China, life also goes on. The authoritarian social compact provides the alluring comfort of knowing that the government must maintain a safe, stable, prosperous environment to stay in power. Not just a few elected officials or a party, the whole thing.

Before Western governments started announcing they would soon lift restrictions, I caught myself shaking my head in astonishment when I read stories about people running away from quarantine hotels in rich, stable places like Amsterdam and Sydney. How would I have escaped from quarantine in Shanghai? Figured out a way to deactivate the alarm on my hotel room door and escape down the 11 flights of stairs during the cover of darkness, hoping that there weren’t infrared cameras or motion detectors? Then where would I go? How would I pay for anything? Even cab drivers and produce-sellers on the side of the road here scold you for trying to use cash. And if in the unlikely event I did manage to make it back to Beijing, what would I say when comparing quarantine stories with friends? Even though I’ve been double-vaccinated (two Sinovac and two Pfizer shots) the guilt would be overwhelming.

But here’s the rub: I have had Sinovac and Pfizer-BioNTech because I could. I’m finding myself feeling increasingly angry when I hear a Chinese person (or foreigner) say things that have been proven untrue, like “no vaccine can protect against the Omicron variant” or sound afraid of COVID for reasons that they can’t quite articulate. Or, even worse, an ex-pat not realizing that they are not as protected with Sinovac or Sinofarm as they would be with an mRNA vaccine. And for those who are aware and are starting to travel outside of China, they’re now strategizing where they can get an mRNA vaccine before inevitably catching COVID.

There have been murmurings of a Chinese-BioNTech collaboration since last spring, including questionable gray-market waiting lists to get the first shots in Shanghai. It still hasn’t come to market. Unlike much of the population of the poor world, China could get mRNA vaccines if they wanted to (11% of people in low-income countries have had at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, compared with 78% in the rich world). International media attention has focused more on China’s zero-tolerance COVID policy than its prioritizing saving face and maintaining control over solving the problem and moving forward.

Even though information here is increasingly curated (one of my high school students loyally calls it the “domestic internet”), I sense that folks here are tolerant because everything is simply good enough. So many Chinese friends have told me that their country isn’t ready for democracy because the people in the countryside are still too uneducated. All they know is what they see, hear, and read from state media. After all, they remind me, education became compulsory in China within my lifetime. There would be chaos and there wouldn’t be the political stability necessary to support the rapid pace of change.

My idealistic American public educator optimism instinctively recoils at statements like these, even if it’s been argued by people around the world since Socrates.

Ten years ago, back when they still had a Beijing Bureau, the New York Times ran an article about Beijing’s growing luxury dog industry. That seems so quaint now, after reading stories about quarantine officials killing beautiful a pet Corgi in November when implementing a third-tier city’s quarantine. Or after techy Shenzhen banned the consumption of dogs and cats following the suspected transmission of COVID from animals to humans in Wuhan. In a country that’s long had a stereotype of eating dogs, I’m more likely to see a dog in a stroller in Beijing than a stray. 

**Correction from my last Dispatch: In one of the photos I shared, I incorrectly identified a building on the east side of Tiananmen Square as The Great Hall of the People. It’s the National Museum of China. Thanks to Peggy for catching this!

55. Weird Spring Festival (2022-02-01)

The air over the weekend was insufferable. Over 200 AQI. They were cutting it very, very close. It snowed and I winced when I saw children making snowballs that had most likely attracted and pulled the PM2.5 from the air and was concentrated in their hands. Then, like magic, the smog blew away. The sky is bright blue, the air is crisp, clean, and dry. Perfect for the opening ceremony on Friday at the Birds Nest Stadium.

Tiananmen Square is glistening with classy red lanterns for Chinese New Year. Tourists—almost exclusively Chinese—obediently get their national ID cards scanned on street corners by police. Like most police officers in Beijing, they are not visibly armed. For the first time in a while, the middle of Tiananmen Square, the equivalent of China’s National Mall, is open to pedestrians. In the middle, between Mao’s tomb and the main entrance to the Forbidden City, is a 5-ish story high landmark with the 2022 Olympics logo superimposed on a Chinese knot, which looks like a cross between a square knot (a symbol of good luck), and a Pan Chang knot (a Buddhist symbol of good fortune).

Across the street on the northern end of the Square there are long, clustered cues to enter the Forbidden City, which is strange because there is a ban on large gatherings for COVID prevention. To the left of the Forbidden City is the entrance to Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the Party and the Central Government. Pedestrians could be seen strolling by its grand opaque gates under the watchful eye of formally dressed, visibly armed guards. But, as normal, no one stopped to take pictures.

Chinese friends, particularly doctors, have been careful to follow the COVID restrictions, knowing that their movement is being closely monitored. Foreign friends have started to avoid large gatherings too, wary of ending up in the infamous fever clinics for unknown periods of time if they test positive for COVID, regardless of whether they are symptomatic. I even heard a rumor of a working dog decked out in a hazmat suit (complete with a face mask!) spotted last week at a Chinese airport monitoring passengers arriving from abroad.

Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) feels like Christmas in China, so much so that I keep getting caught off guard when I don’t hear anyone wishing each other happy new year when I listen to Western news. Typically, the air in Beijing would start to be thick with smoke from firecrackers, even though they’re illegal in the city. My apartment is close to the border with neighboring Hebei Province, and I could hear a few last night, but very few. I was surprised to see a few small bonfires on sidewalk corners last night within the second ring road, and out near my school, warding off evil spirits.

This isn’t a typical year. Beijing feels a bit like New York in the fall during the UN General Assembly, or when the President comes to town—the Olympics seems like more of an inconvenience than an honor. And with Omicron casting its imminent shadow over the city, everything is even more subdued. On Sunday, we got a public service text message reminding us to not drive in the Olympics-only left lanes and to be courteous to the winter Olympics vehicles. “Show the good image of the City of the Double Olympics, hospitality, civilization, and law-abiding, and provide traffic security for the successful holding of the Winter Olympics,” they wrote in Chinese.

Yesterday I saw community officials in an empty market in the hutongs (traditional courtyard shops and homes) putting up pink 8 ½ x 11 flyers that read in Chinese, “The Spring Festival and Winter Olympics are approaching, and epidemic prevention needs more attention…Do not leave Beijing to go to the risk area, return to Beijing and report to the community….Epidemic prevention and control depends on everyone.” It seemed more like they were putting them up for the sake of being able to say they did more than anything else. But people are dutifully putting their hands in front of infrared thermometers and scanning the Jiankang Bao (Beijing Health Kit; 健康宝) before entering any public place, at this point even without being asked. I even had to scan a Jiankang Bao when driving into a mall parking garage the other day with a friend (and then again when walking into the mall itself, and then again whenever walking into every individual shop).

There is finally Olympics branding up around town, complete with banners and landmarks with the Olympic and Para Olympic panda mascots. “Together for a Shared Future” can be seen on banners covering construction sites and shining from large screens. It’s unclear who the audience is for these English messages.

I know a few people who got tickets to the Opening Ceremony on Friday, mostly through national chambers of commerce. But there are rumors that if anyone within 500 meters of you tests positive for COVID after the event, you’ll be required to quarantine for 14ish days. At least one person I know decided it wasn’t worth the risk. And while I’ve decided to prudently stay in Beijing during the Spring Festival, hearing these rumors reaffirms my decision to give up my ticket to the first day of the Games. 

Attached are some pictures from around Beijing this week:

Pedestrian Street in the Dongcheng district bordering the southern end of Tiananmen Square: (That is an overpriced Starbucks Reserve on the left, a historic streetcar leftover from the foreign Legation Quarter colonial era days, a Beijing Olympics thingie behind that, and a restored version of the ancient southern gate to the inner city of Beijing in the background)

Zhongnanhai, HQ of the Chinese Communist Party and Central Government (on the left in Chinese it says "Long live the great Communist Party of China!" and on the right it says "Long live Mao Zedong Thought on the street!"):

Olympics landmark in Tiananmen Square with Mao's tomb in the background and the Great Hall of the People on the left. It's decked out with all the flags for the New Year.

54. Omicron's arrival (2022-01-23)

Omicron has reached Beijing. According to the Beijing CDC, the culprit was (conveniently) a package from Canada that had traveled through the US and Hong Kong before reaching the Chinese Mainland. Shortly after this information was released, we received a notice from our Canadian-Chinese HR director advising us to “pay extra attention to the packages you receive from overseas. Local authorities have shared with us that the risk of coronavirus transmission through goods shipped from overseas is escalating now, even though the outside of the shipments have all been disinfected at the customs. Please try not to order any items from overseas. If you did already, please make sure that you wear masks while opening these packages and immediately disinfect what’s inside thoroughly.” The Canadian Health Minister responded to the Chinese CDC’s claim by saying at a press conference, “I find this to be, let’s say, an extraordinary view.”

For months, any mail or packages we receive from abroad has come with a sticker on the outside with a “warm-hearted” reminder from China Post advising us to take precautionary epidemic prevention measures when opening our foreign parcel. It reminds me of the early days of the Pandemic when we’d leave our groceries on the porch for a few hours after spraying it with disinfectant since there was little known about how the virus was transmitted and how long it lived on surfaces. The CDC, WHO, and various epidemiologists have since stated that the risk of the virus living parcels is low. But just when I find myself snickering at the absurdity of it all, I remember how I snickered at first when folks in China were wearing masks at the beginning of the Pandemic.

In the midst of this propagandic silliness, I’m navigating the strange and fascinating experience of living in a city that’s hosting an Olympic Games that’s being diplomatically boycotted by my own country. I agree with Pres. Biden’s decision to boycott the Games, and to allow US athletes to still compete. It was announced last week (finally) that tickets to the Games would be given out by invitation only. My school was given 9 tickets, probably to help get some foreign faces. The lucky few who get the golden tickets are required to report their body temperature for two weeks prior to attending the Games, and for 7 days after. They need to have had three shots of “the COVID-19 Vaccine” or 2 shots within 6 months prior to the Games. They need to get two COVID tests within 96 hours prior to the Games, at their own expense. They may not leave Beijing for two weeks prior to attending the Games, nor for two weeks after. Tickets are non-transferable.

To fairly distribute the tickets amongst our many teachers who wanted to go to the Olympics, I created a digital raffle that I was able to record on my phone. I won one of the coveted golden tickets, but not wanting to be forced to stay in Beijing, gave it to the first person on the waitlist.

Spring Festival, as Chinese New Year is known here, is normally the busiest time of the year for travel in China, but I knew that this year would again be different and looked forward to traveling to Chongqing, Kunming, and Xishuangbanna. I really want to go to Xian, but they’re still locked down….

To get into the tea shop I'm sitting in now, I had to have my health kit phone app scanned four times and my Didi driver had to scan his health kit just to get into the mall parking lot to drop me off. The State Department issued a travel advisory for China last week, advising Americans to reconsider travel to the PRC “due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws and COVID-19-related travel restrictions.” I’ve decided to be responsible and stay in Beijing for the Spring Festival.

If I believed that these restrictions were based on data and science, I would acquiesce in a heartbeat. But there is no sign of an mRNA vaccine making its way to the Chinese Mainland anytime soon and studies are showing that the Chinese Sinovac doesn’t adequately protect against Omicron. And the AQI in Beijing today is over 200.

In the Didi on the way here (while wearing an N95 mask), I smelled a chemical that I could only describe as artificial mint. When I googled it, I found that I might have been smelling methylcyclohexane methanol, a liquid toxic to animals and humans if breathed, swallowed, or touched by skin. It’s used “in the process for ‘washing’ coal”. The Atlantic published a story back in 2014 comparing the chemical's impact in West Virginia and Beijing. They wrote about a company called Freedom Industries letting the chemical seep into West Virginia’s Elk River, contaminating the water supply. It led the article with images of yellow water coming out of a tap in someone’s West Virginia bathroom and the smoggy skies of Beijing in the days when 200 AQI was something to be celebrated.

So when innocent the server at the tea shop asked me to scan my health kit yet again before I walked in, seconds after a bao an (security guard) within sight five feet away asked me to do the same, I lost my temper. The friends I was meeting saw my frustration and soothed me with yellow chrysanthemum tea and a seat near an air purifier. I apologized to the server as he took my order for organic cauliflower-crust pizza.

Expats and Chinese alike are murmuring that a lockdown is coming to Beijing soon. There were 9 new cases of Omicron reported here yesterday, and there have been 49 new COVID cases here since Jan. 9. Deliveries are already being delayed so they can be disinfected. People seem calm and appear to feel well taken care of, but without polling and open reporting, it’s difficult to really know what public opinions are. Part of me wishes I too could enjoy such blissful ignorance.

53. Silently silent cities (2022-01-09)

Something interesting happened: One of my Chinese colleagues told me about the woman who lost her baby in front of a hospital in Xian before I read about it myself on my VPN-empowered internet. Then another colleague told me about a man who had a heart attack in front of a different hospital there before being allowed in—both because they didn’t have recent enough negative COVID tests to be admitted. Then I saw the stories come up on my WeChat news feeds from the English-language expat news I follow. Critical stories like this are usually scrubbed from the Chinese Internet and social media people can read them, including English news.

Since early in the Pandemic, anyone visiting a public or private hospital with COVID-like symptoms has been required to wait in a fever clinic for a negative COVID test result before being allowed into the general population. So the few casualties that have been publicly reported from Xian are predictable hiccups. What’s interesting is that these stories are being allowed to remain public. Maybe to show commitment to accountability.

Stories are beginning to emerge from Xian that are reminiscent of the experience in Wuhan back in 2020. Wuhan’s experience is celebrated here as a city that came together to keep themselves safe and take care of their community—which they essentially did. Wuhan coming together and kicking COVID’s ass is a deserved point of pride. A similar narrative is starting to bubble up about Xian. Except now we know what it is and, largely, how to deal with it.

Here in Beijing, unless you talked with someone about it or read the news, you’d have no idea that 700 miles away there’s an eerily silent city that has roughly the same population as New York City. Daily life here feels quite similar to urban live in the US in Normal Times. Yes, people wear masks outside out of habit and indoors out of compliance, but folks in large Asian cities tend to wear masks in winter anyway to empathetically prevent the spread of germs. There are the annoying bao an’s (security guards) who inconsistently yell at you to scan the health code, but the annoying bao an’s were there before the Pandemic too. It’s a job in a country that has a lot of people, which, within the past century, was embroiled in a chaotic, dangerous civil war. Folks value security and stability here because it’s still a relatively new achievement.

Everything is open (mostly) and school and work are continuing as normal. Remote learning only happened in Spring 2020, right before the rest of the world had to follow suit. I can expect that if I buy cheap stuff that’s made in China from one of the myriad of shopping apps, it will arrive on time, without many of the supply chain disruptions that friends and family in the US and Europe complain to me about. For about $10 and an hour or two wait, I can order enough groceries, including great (non-organic) produce, to last me all week. Bubble tea? Starbucks? McDonald’s? Lunch? Dinner? Cosmetics? All the things can be delivered to me promptly and cheaply. And there certainly haven’t been any runs on toilet paper lately.

What is different are the challenges posed by leaving this bubble of normality. When I moved to Beijing, I understandably had images of spending fall weekends drinking soju in Pojangmacha tents on the streets of Seoul and winter holidays skiing in Japan. With Chinese New Year break looming in a week and a half, friends and colleagues keep comparing guidance and regulations about leaving Beijing. At my school we’ve been told by the school and the local Education Bureau that we’re not allowed to leave Beijing. But if we do need to leave Beijing, which we should not do, we need permission from our department’s supervisor. The individual leaving Beijing and their supervisor are required to take responsibility for any repercussions from leaving. It’s unclear what “take responsibility” means. And when I asked for clarification, I was, perhaps intentionally, given an equally vague response. Regardless, compliance with this unclear mandate would certainly help prevent the spread of the Pandemic in China. 

52. Dangerous books (2021-12-20)

Books, it turns out, are dangerous things. My school was recently told by our local Education Bureau that effective as soon as possible, our elementary and middle school students were no longer able to use any textbook that wasn’t on the government-approved list, including the ESL textbooks we use. Inspections would happen to ensure compliance, without prior warning, at any time of day. Teachers would still be permitted to use them as reference material, but children may not. My teachers’ were surprised last week when all of our student textbooks were removed from classrooms, just in case bureaucratic inspectors showed up unannounced.

To put my frustration in context, one of the first things I did when I started my job two and a half years ago was work with my teachers to order about 1500 English-language books from our state-owned book supplier. Many folks here, Chinese and ex-pat, suggested we just order pirated copies off of Taobao or another Chinese shopping app. As the leader of a Canadian school that follows copyright laws, an American, a writer, and a guest in this country, I insisted that we follow our hosts’ rules.

It took over a year and a half for the books to arrive. Yes, COVID happened in between, but whenever I checked in with the supplier, the response was that they were still being reviewed. My predecessor told me stories of books that arrived censored with removable post-its covering some parts of the text. Eventually, the books did arrive little by little, without the gift of sticky notes.

Now, those same books are being “reviewed” again, to ensure that there is nothing in them that would conflict with the new education regulations, nor be interpreted as offensive towards China. I’ve read the law and analyses of the law; there’s nothing in those young adult novels and children’s books that is a violation. That’s not the point.

I grew up in communities that proudly celebrated Banned Books Week. While working through my book frustration with my also-frustrated Chinese colleagues, I told them how my local librarians and teachers would discuss this with us each year. How we had whole units of study where we read novels like Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Giver, and others.  We were told that they were banned in some schools in America, and we debated whether or not this was a violation of our civil liberties and civil rights. (As I look at the list of the “Top 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books 2010-2019”, I see many I’ve either read in school myself or that my students have read, including The Bluest Eye, The Kite Runner, Hunger Games, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Glass Castle, Of Mice and Men, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye…..)

My also-frustrated Chinese colleagues looked at me perplexed.

Almost as perplexed as I am when I read about the animated powder kegs that are lighting up school board meetings across America. I still am not quite sure what Critical Race Theory is; Education Week cites legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, and others defining it as “a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.” This statement sounds more factual than theoretical: FHA loans were systemically and systematically denied to African American neighborhoods and African Americans. The Supreme Court did have to rule that separate but equal is unconstitutional for our country to continue on its ongoing journey towards integration.

So maybe I’m more perplexed about why Critical Race Theory is so controversial in our schools, rather than what it is. How do you teach Americans how to be good republican citizens and responsibilities and rights thereof without reflecting on the root causes of our current conflicts, inequities, systems of governance, and successes? Isn’t this part of preparing the next generation of leaders?

Having my school’s books censored here makes Banned Books Week—and open dialogue about the importance of learning and teaching truth—seem even more important.

Soon, we anticipate, any classes outside of the Chinese National Curriculum, including our English classes taught by foreign teachers, will be relegated to happen after 3:30 pm. Except per the new education laws, elementary school students are no longer allowed to have academic classes after 3:30 so they don’t get overworked. For now, high school is mercifully exempt because compulsory education in China is from grades 1-9.

When I ask Chinese friends and colleagues what they think about how new education restrictions will impact their own kids, I’ve been told that in China, the group is more important than the whole. Kids everywhere are overstressed and the country is becoming too unequal. They’ll just give their kids private lessons at home to get around it. And, they say, they wish that they were able to get off easy like these kids are; in their day, they needed to work hard to prepare for the gaokao, the super-duper university admissions test (which doesn't seem to be going anywhere).

My frustration isn’t that our students’ workload is being reviewed and reduced, that was so necessary; it’s that the true purpose of the new laws is so hazy.

There isn’t reliable polling in China, so I don’t know if this is popular. But I know that parents have been calling the 12345 Beijing government phone line to complain about these restrictions. A year ago, a call to 12345 would have sounded alarms; now it seems to be dismissed. We’re all scratching our heads trying to figure out why.

51. Pleasantville (2021-12-13)

One of the most relaxing parts of my day is when I do eye exercises with our elementary school students (here’s a Wall Street Journal video showing this looks like). At most schools in China, teachers move and students don’t, from grades 1-12. In between classes, students have breaks that range from periods of unsupervised chaos to hyper-structured activities. Kind of like China itself.

A 2015 NIH study found that Chinese eye exercises have a “clinically insignificant effect” on preventing myopia in children. I too was skeptical about the efficacy of massaging your eyebrows, tapping your head, and rubbing the area where your spine meets your skull. But then I tried it. I started sitting down and doing the exercises with the kids as the recorded calm female voice accompanied by upbeat music counted in Chinese and told me what to do.  Initially, bossy student supervisors would timidly correct me when I did an exercise wrong. Now, during those five minutes, I feel safe, cozy, and relaxed. I look around and see students who were wound up self-soothing. After eye exercises, I usually feel like I’ve just done Shavasana, the meditative pose at the end of yoga sessions.

When classroom student supervisors don’t adequately ensure that everyone in their class complies, they’re corrected. Older students patrol classrooms armed with a red sash and a clipboard (it reminds me of the sash I wore when I was on Safety Patrol in elementary school). The student supervisor supervisors make note of who is and isn’t doing the exercises (including teachers) and share their reports with Chinese administrators. During breaks when there aren’t eye exercises, students go outside for physical exercises on the field if the weather and air is good, or stay inside and do an awesome group dance to Chinese pop music inside their classroom. Here too student supervisors and student supervisor supervisors are omnipresent. And because they maintain order, I can do silly freeing things like learn the Chinese pop music dance with the kids.

There’s so much that I don’t have to worry about in China because it’s taken care of for me. When I arrived in August, I didn’t have to worry about arranging my own quarantine hotel like folks in Hong Kong or Taiwan are obligated to do. I don’t have to worry about getting COVID because you need to have been in China for at least three weeks to come into Beijing, and have a COVID test within 48 hours just to enter the city. I don’t have to worry about carrying around cash because no one uses cash and I pay for everything with WeChat. I don’t have to worry about the subway breaking down or suddenly changing lines because that simply doesn’t happen. And if I didn’t use a VPN, I wouldn’t have to worry about learning about anything bad happening in China now, or within the past 80 years.

The longer I’m here, particularly during the Pandemic, the greater the allure of authoritarianism becomes. There’s a strong social compact between the Party and the people. As a collective governing power, they arguably have more to lose if they don’t deliver than a legitimately-elected official in a republic. Inconveniences like not being able to watch Netflix or having to be mindful of what you do on your phone are tolerated because everything is so much better than it was within recent memory. Life is good enough, at least for now, so why challenge the status quo?

But something specific has been picking away at the safe feeling that authoritarianism gives me: there are still no mRNA COVID vaccines in China. I find myself feeling increasingly angry when I hear a Chinese person (or foreigner) say things that have not yet been proven true (or have been proven false), like “no vaccine can protect against the Omicron variant”. Sometimes it’s simpler, like people who’ve never met anyone who’s had COVID being terrified of the virus for reasons that they can’t quite articulate. Certainly, there are plenty of places where falsehoods abound beyond the Great Firewall (with lethal consequences),  but at least there I’d be able to search for evidence to try to prove truth.

There have been murmurings of a Chinese-BioNTech collaboration since last spring, including questionable gray-market waiting lists to get the first shots in Shanghai. It still hasn’t come to market. Unlike much of the population of the poor world, China could get mRNA vaccines if it wanted to (only 0.8% of COVID vaccine doses have been administered in low-income countries). But international media attention continues focusing more on China’s zero-tolerance COVID policy rather than its prioritizing saving face and maintaining control.

Recently, I was invited to participate with other expat youth in a “talk show” event hosted by the China Youth Daily, a state-run publication. We were to discuss “what democracy means to me”.  Eager to hear how others answered this question, and to truly engage in dialogue, I agreed. Then, as the US-led Summit for Democracy approached, I was asked screening questions on WeChat. “I’d like to know your opinion on this topic ‘Summit for Democracy.’” “Could you tell me your views on the war in Afghanistan and democracy?” I took a lesson from Chinese etiquette and didn’t respond to the questions. Then I began wondering if I should pull out of the event. Before I could decide to drop out, I was mercifully uninvited. “The theme of the talk show’s discussion was the ‘war in Afghanistan’. We fear that topic will have bad effects on you so the head decided to invite you to discuss on other topics, sorry,” I was told after digging for a reason for the same-day “rescheduling” of the event.

I feel like I’m in Pleasantville and starting to see flickers of color for the first time. The comforting structures that I feel during eye exercises and on the clean subway are still there, but the cost somehow feels greater. But I can’t just escape into a colorful new TV world as Reese Witherspoon did in the 1998 movie because the world beyond China’s strategic bipolarity of controlled chaos and hyper-structure seems like a purgatory of uncertainty. 

50. Thanksgiving (2021-11-21)

Yesterday evening my colleagues and I feasted on dry turkey, Ocean Spray cranberry sauce, veggies, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin and apple pie. We washed it down with some Italian reds and whites and Canadian ice wine. Our team, who hail from five continents, celebrated what I’ve begun branding International Thanksgiving. It’s a month after Canadian Thanksgiving, and two weeks before American Thanksgiving. After two years of hosting this tradition, this was the first time I successfully got several of my Chinese principal colleagues to attend. I followed Chinese tradition by sitting in the middle of the table to the left of my boss. And I wore my cozy new cashmere hat that I bought on sale as my 11/11 “Singles Day” treat.

It almost could have been a beautiful Thanksgiving scene in America, complete with shopping deals.

When you look beyond the increasingly revisionist information my students have access to or the Party meeting this week where Pres. Xi was awarded the same honored status as Mao, China and America look remarkably similar. We’re both huge, diverse nations that have an affinity for being run by powerful men. We’re both satiated by buying stuff on days that have become devoted to celebrating sales. We both love cars and built tremendous infrastructure to support the obsession. And we both have a massive global presence. (If you have some time to nerd out, check out the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index)

What’s strange is that we’re beginning to live in increasingly parallel universes. Social media is omnipresent in China and the US, but I doubt most of you have been on Weibo, let alone heard of it. They allow 140 characters to Twitter’s 240, but had 248 million daily active users in September compared with Twitter’s 211 million. One is already heavily regulated by its government, and another one has sort of regulated itself while its government figures out if and how to regulate it. Both have enabled messages to be magnified with noteworthy consequences.

This past month, some of our elementary school students were learning about American culture as part of a unit on travel. They grumbled to one of our Chinese English teachers about how they hated America and didn’t understand why they had to learn about it. Even though they weren’t quite able to articulate why they hated America, it’s something I couldn’t fathom hearing in China when I first visited in 2002, let alone when I first moved here in 2019. It’s not much different on the US side, where I can reliably (?) quote polls instead of 10-year-olds. In 2018, the Pew Research Center found that 46% of Americans had negative views of China. In March, it was up to 67%.

China will head into the Western holiday season trying to simultaneously maintain a sense of normality and a Zero-Tolerance COVID stance while many Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving in person with others for the first time in two years. China’s borders remain closed as America’s opened back up this week (including to Chinese visitors!!). Earlier today I sat on the subway across from Communist Party videos, making sure my mask was covering my nose and mouth so that I wouldn’t be scolded by the passing security guard. Meanwhile, we’ve had more people die from COVID in America than there are people in Seattle.

Can China remain sealed off from the world while everyone else starts opening up again? The path forward, living with the Endemic Pandemic, seems to be the new reality outside the Middle Kingdom. But I’m not sure China is ready to give up its quarantine, or the controls it affords. 

49. Showing up for the environment (2021-11-06)

As the COP-26 talking about talking about climate change in Glasgow winds down this week, the rain is finally bringing the air here below 200AQI. I thought I woke up this morning with a red wine hangover, but when a few friends who hadn’t drank alcohol last night lamented that they too had headaches, it became clear that it was the pollution. The local CDC mandated that all school windows are open for 30 minutes a day three times a day for pandemic prevention (even though the local education bureau finally told us to cancel outdoor activities because of the air quality). It was pointless for me to point out that our air purifiers, I would hope, should be a more effective solution to ensure that the air in classrooms was well-circulated, safe, and clean. Pick your poison, I suppose.

It’s just fog, Chinese and foreign Beijingers keep telling me. I used to go outdoors for a run when it was anything under 200, expat friends admit and boast. This is so much better than it used to be, they say. And the thing is, it is! My retort: I wouldn’t have lived here five years ago when 200AQI was just an average day. It’s why I felt frustrated when Pres. Biden said that China didn’t “show up” in Glasgow (Pres. Xi Jinping hasn’t left China since Jan. 2020 because of COVID, which, admittedly, is convenient). All that cheap stuff that we like to buy cheaply….it has to be made somewhere.

Maybe all the rhetoric is getting to me too. After all, over 1000 factories and dirty plants were moved out of Beijing to help clean up the air. And, following a brief dip in 2016, China’s per-capita CO2 emissions are at an all-time high.  

I found myself arguing with a Chinese 12 year old the other day about which is larger in area, the US or China (the answer is that it depends on how you’re measuring land area). Then which was harder to learn, English or Chinese (he told me that Mr. Xi said that Chinese is the hardest language in the world to learn….as someone who’s been studying Mandarin for 15 years, I won’t argue with that claim). The other day a Chinese colleague asked me if there was a synonym to the word “news” that he and other English teachers could use. “News” had developed a negative connotation recently.

All week I felt lethargic, even while wearing my mask designed for noxious construction sites, and air purifiers going at full-speed.  As I walked down the street wearing my super-duper pollution mask, I found myself staring more at people smoking cigarettes than they started at my rare foreign face. In restaurants, I conspicuously coughed in front of people smoking in front of the no-smoking signs. They didn’t seem to notice. All the loud coughing, throat clearing, and spitting, things that I always took for granted as merely impolite habits by Western standards, I wonder how much they’re actually the symptoms of prolonged exposure to bad air.

I think what frustrates me the most is how I’ll never really know. The Education Bureau’s memo instructing us to stay inside because of air pollution stated the meteorological reasons for the bad air. “Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas will be subject to static stability, temperature inversion, and high temperature. Influenced by unfavorable diffusion conditions such as humidity, a heavy pollution process in an area with a large scope and long duration will occur,” they wrote in formal Chinese. But what they didn’t say is why there was “heavy pollution” in the area. My personal theory is that they’re trying to get production in before they need to start tidying up for the Olympics (I admit that I incorrectly predicted that we were already in the tidying up phase).

An American-born Chinese acquaintance of mine who works at a pro-Chinese Communist Party think tank has repeatedly asked me why I need to know. Why I should be allowed to know. The best response I can come up with is because it’s my right to have clean air to breathe and truth leads to accountability. But that’s a good enough answer yet.  It’s too American to be heard in the Middle Kingdom.

48. Scary Air (2021-10-31)

On Monday, the air in Beijing was no longer beautiful and breezy. When we stood outside for the Monday Flag Raising Ceremony, the air was above 200 AQI. My AirIQ app showed that I should have been wearing a gas mask. When the air quality is bad, the local education bureau tells us that we need to cancel Flag Raising and move all classes indoors. Not unlike moving PE inside in the Bay Area during increasingly bad fire seasons, or a snow day on the East Coast to save bad drivers from themselves. So, I waited, wondering if this stunning change in air quality would lead to a directive to protect our lungs. Silence. I sent a WeChat message to colleagues with a screenshot of the purple gas mask, asking if we would be moving inside. Silence. Maybe it will blow away, I hoped, at least in time for our students to do their dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller on the field for our Halloween celebration on Friday.

Tuesday morning, when I have my regular weekly meeting with my Chinese principal colleagues, the air was still ghastly. The meeting is a formal affair, with the most senior person in the room moderating participants to share-out information in order of descending seniority. The contributions before me were very COVID-focused restatements of Tongzhou (our Beijing neighborhood) government directives. Tell staff not to travel to specific neighborhoods that have had COVID cases or people suspected to have recently been in contact with people positive for COVID. No visitors on campus, including parents. Use one-way entrance and exit at doors around campus. Masks are to be worn at all times, both inside and outside. Don’t leave Beijing unless completely necessary. And if someone does need to leave Beijing, the supervisor must approve it, and take responsibility if that person gets COVID ("responsibility" is never defined).

As I listened to these plans to maintain our zero-tolerance COVID strategy, I was distracted by wondering if the air quality in the room was good enough for me to take off my super-duper air quality mask and replace it with a more comfortable surgical mask, or be a rebel and not wear a mask at all (only half the people in the room were wearing masks). Empowered by my VPN, I quickly found some studies out of Greece, Milan, and India showing evidence that droplets containing COVID hitch rides on PM2.5 particles, and that exposure to poor air quality leads to a higher likelihood of someone infected with COVID to end up in an ICU. Surely these connections would help everyone pay attention to the plight of our lungs, I thought.

When it was my turn, I summarized the evidence I found about how bad air makes COVID more easily transmitted and more dangerous. Immediately, my Chinese colleagues took out their phones and opened their own air quality apps. Was I using an American app? What was my source? Where was the app from? My information wasn’t accurate, these well-educated educators concluded.

They could have been Americans amplifying the “The Big Lie” or conspiracy theorists challenging the safety and efficacy of remarkable COVID-19 vaccines.

I heard myself retort emotionally that the app was Swiss and was using a Tongzhou source, not the measurements from the US Embassy downtown (not the point). Then, more rationally, I said that my eyes were burning, my staff had started coughing and wheezing, and all you needed to do was look out the window to see the gray haze. They still didn’t accept that the air quality was bad.

We reached a compromise that, unspoken by design, would not be mentioned on WeChat. If the air wasn’t good and the government didn’t tell us to stay inside, it would be at the PE teacher’s professional discretion to go indoors, where we had air purifiers. Complicit in the unspoken WeChat prudence, I shared this scheme with my staff at our meeting on Thursday, and urged them to protect the lungs of their students and themselves.

I’m told that this year skeletons are a big Halloween decoration trend. A friend in San Francisco reported seeing a few homemade ones with signs saying, “I did my own research”. As I hoped, the air was clean enough by Friday for our 600+ elementary school students to stand on the field dressed in awesome costumes, dancing to Thriller. They were princesses, Chinese soldiers, Captain Americas, players in Squid Games, angels, mermaids, ancient Chinese nobles, and representatives from all four Hogwarts Houses. It created one of my greatest Beijing memories. Here are some photos!

47. Breezy Beautiful Beijing (2021-10-16)

On Tina Fey’s 30 Rock, Paul Scheer’s snide head-page character Donny Lawson taunted Jack McBrayer’s Kenneth the Page as they competed to win a free spot to travel to China for the 2008 summer Olympics. “Looks like you'll be stuck here in New York all summer. Fighting the crowds, smelling the hot garbage. While I travel to beautiful, breezy Beijing.” Back in 2008, even with the government swiftly finding ways to reduce the pollution in Beijing by 30% during the Games, athletes competed in some of the most polluted air during the recent history of the Olympics.

Twelve years later, it is indeed beautiful and breezy in Beijing. The heat isn’t on yet (by law that starts in Beijing Nov. 15) and typically the air starts getting icky when the coal gets fired up. But between the recent coal shortages around China, and the government wanting to show off how far things have come since 2008, I expect that it’ll be blue skies ahead through February. Except it’s not clear who’s even going to get to go to the Olympics. The Chinese government just announced that only people from mainland China will be allowed to attend. I heard a rumor that they might take swaths of soldiers and police officers, stick them in quarantine for a few weeks before the games, and then have them be spectators.

Considering that the Olympics start in less than four months there’s been relatively little chatter or marketing about it. I remember visiting Beijing in 2006 and people were excited to show off the Bird’s Nest stadium, then under construction. Now it feels like everyone is subdued by fear of COVID. Except there were only 28 new COVID cases reported in the past 24 hours. In all of China. And they’ve administered 2.2 billion vaccine doses. The efficacy of those 2.2 billion jabs is questionable, but that’s still something. Potentially efficacious enough that starting Nov. 8, visitors from select countries (including China) vaccinated with Sinovac and Sinofarm will be allowed into the US without quarantining.

Even if the case numbers reported in China are artificially low (which they most likely are) there’s still truth to it. So do folks even know what they’re so afraid of? It’s well known here that if you work for the government or a state-owned company and get COVID, you’ll lose your job. If someone at a school or company is suspected of having COVID, that organization is responsible for all of the costs associated with identifying the suspected cases and the inevitable two-week lock-down of the area immediately around the suspected people.

In the two months that I’ve been back in China, wearing masks and scanning health codes have been quasi-ubiquitous, inconsistently enforced rules. Security guards are back at entrances to indoor and outdoor malls, either militantly ensuring that you wear your mask and show them your health code, or they’re watching videos on their phone, or sleeping. I recently went on a walking tour near Tiananmen Square led by an English-speaking Chinese guide, with a bunch of ex-pats, most of whose Chinese is better than mine. As we walked by a group of well-dressed older Chinese ladies, I heard them lament in Chinese, look at all those foreigners not wearing masks! Only one of them was wearing a mask, and it was under her chin. If my friends heard what the ladies said, they didn't let it show.

Things are feeling weirder and the blue skies make it seem even more dystopian. I recently had a newly hired Canadian teacher stuck in Vancouver give up on waiting for a visa. A few days later Meng Wanzhou of Huawei was welcomed back to China as a hero and the two Michaels of Canada were conveniently released within hours of her release. Over lunch, a few Chinese colleagues told me that this was a sign of improved relations between Canada and China. Maybe the Canadian teacher would finally be able to come to China!

I frowned. But the two Michaels were essentially held hostage in almost solitary confinement while she was under house arrest at two multi-million dollar houses in Vancouver. They were resolute. The Canadians were spies, they said. Plus, how do you know that’s even true that they were held in those conditions?

My colleagues’ only source of information had been Chinese news and social media. Their English is flawless, and they know how to and could use VPNs and could if they really wanted to. But they don’t usually bother. Not unlike someone who usually watches CNN switching to Fox News or PBS from time to time. And, it’s something for foreigners. Besides, while the world outside of China is in chaos with pollution and pandemic, the skies here in Beijing are blue and life seems good.

46: Creating Commotion at Tencent (2021-11-20)

I created a bit of a commotion at Tencent last week when visiting with the All China Youth Federation (ACYF). We were on a tour led by very attractive ladies whose uniforms closely resembled Air China flight attendants, complete with a playful red sticker on their disposable masks (theirs were flowers, Air China’s are hearts). In addition to showing off WeChat, Tencent had an installation demonstrating their prototype of an automated convenience store. It seemed like a copy of Amazon’s “Just Walk Out technology”, except with this you simply scanned their store’s QR code, then the product’s bar code and paid with your WeChat pay. So I bought a Diet Coke for 2.7RMB ($0.42) as the guides were chatting in Chinese.

Suddenly, the tour stopped. The flight-attendant-looking staff frantically came over to me and told me that I couldn’t take the Diet Coke. I showed them that I paid for it and said that I appreciated being able to purchase the soda. One of the ACYL organizers asked me with concern if I was thirsty. The Tencent staff said I needed to put it back and that they would refund me the money. Why, I asked? It was a perfectly good Diet Coke and I was using their product for its intended use. We want to keep you safe, the tour guide boss told me. It’s just for the display. It may be too old to drink and it wouldn’t be healthy. I thanked him for caring for my safety, put the soda back, got 2.7RMB back from one of the pretty ladies via WeChat, and walked away wanting a Diet Coke.

Two weeks of quarantine in a Shanghai hotel + a week hanging out in Shanghai + a week hanging out off-campus in Beijing before being allowed to return to my apartment on campus has been a surprisingly lovely way to return to China. Among other things, it’s enabled me to participate in a 3-day tour around Beijing hosted by the ACYF, a Communist Party youth group.

The stated goal of the tour was for foreign friends to work with Chinese youth to brainstorm ways to help the world understand the “real China”. They were contemporaries of the Communist Party, they explained, who wanted to help the world see how China has tackled absolute poverty, among other recent impressive accomplishments. We visited a lovely resort in the mountains where we dressed up in old-style Chinese clothes, learned how to play the traditional guzheng string instrument, and mixed herbs to make medicine. We made dumplings and jianbing together. This group could be a great place to find a girlfriend or boyfriend, they told us with a smile. I momentarily felt like I was on Birthright Israel again.

The group of 20ish Chinese youth were editors and reporters for the state-run China Daily, Xinghua News Agency, and China Youth Daily. There was a Ukrainian grad student who had done some reporting for CCTV’s English channel and spoke excellent Chinese. A Lebanese teacher who had recently published a book about his experience in Wuhan during the COVID lockdown and self-identified as a Communist. A Ugandan princess and her Nigerian friend, both of whom are grad students. A Spanish guy who worked in PR. A Thai woman who posted vlogs on YouTube in Thai and Mandarin cataloging her travels around China. A Japanese grad student who had just gotten out of quarantine. I was invited the day before the tour by an American friend who was asked to bring some foreign friends.

For the majority of the trip, I was a polite, passive guest. I introduced myself as an English teacher and didn’t mention that I was also a principal until I got to know the group a bit more. One night, we were asked to share examples of communications work we had done to help the group improve how they share China with the world. The Spanish guy eloquently advised that foreigners want to read articles that enable them to create their own conclusions, rather than them being told what to think. When the reader is told what to think, he argued, they will have less trust in what they’re reading.

I reinforced this by presenting blogs I’d written for Edutopia.org and ghost-written for a non-profit organization’s website. The sites were available on the Chinese internet and were about universal topics like supporting new teachers. During my presentation, I reinforced how I included a linked reference with every fact in my blogs. I showed how I used information from a variety of sources, including academic studies, governments, NGOs, and super-national organizations like the UN. By sharing the links directly, I allowed the reader to make their own conclusions and learn more if they wanted to.

Yet the group’s conversations continued about how to help China be more fairly portrayed in the international media. Towards the end of our trip, the organizer came to the back of the bus and earnestly asked my friends and me for more advice about how they could more effectively share their message of friendship.

I couldn’t take it anymore. No one is going to take this seriously outside of China when reporters are being told to leave, I told her in earshot only of my friends. But the BBC is reporting things that aren’t true about China, she said. Every publication makes mistakes, I explained, and that’s why it’s important to have access to different sources. I regularly read state media and rarely see anything that’s factually incorrect, I told her, but it routinely cites publications like The New York Times that are blocked in China.

She said she was surprised to hear that foreign reporters had been asked to leave China and giggled nervously about the blocked publications being cited in state media. People who are much more powerful than us are making those policies, she said. Everyone on that bus was young and not in the position to make such important decisions. My friends and I reminded her that many of those young people will be in positions of power in the near future.

The organizer has since mentioned to me several times how much she appreciated that conversation. She invited me to have my students perform songs and poems at friendship events. One of the editors on the trip who works for a small state-run English publication asked me to write an essay about what it’s like to be a foreigner in China. I’m still trying to decide if I’m willing to write something for them that won’t cause too much of a commotion. After all, I think that’s what they really want.

45. Shanghai #2-Quarantine Survival Guide (2021-08-28)

Quarantine may become a new norm for travel. It has for me. Before my first quarantine, I was terrified. Would I fall into a deep depression? Go stir-crazy? This time, I knew I’d survive. I knew how to prepare, what to expect, and how to enjoy it. So here are some tips for when you inevitably have your own 14-day hotel confinement.

1.     Prepare.

a.     Your people. If you’re more organized than me, you might schedule “visits” with friends and family ahead of time. The first time I quarantined, I had my cousin’s bat mitzvah on Zoom a few days into the first week. This time, the Jewish community in Beijing sent me freshly baked challah and chocolate babka that made my whole room smell like home. These treats gave me something special to look forward to and reminded me of all the people who love and care about me.

b.     Stuff. If you don’t have a small Swiss Army knife, get one. Goodwill and Trader Joe’s are great places to prep. At Goodwill, pick up a metal mess kit and a few metal utensils, including a small table knife (I may or may not have borrowed some nice cutlery from an airport lounge). Insulated coffee cups double as a container to cook things with boiling water like edamame, couscous and lentils. At Trader Joe's, pick up some Dr. Bronner’s soap, which you can use to wash dishes, clothes, and yourself. Buy food that is dehydrated to keep luggage weight down (couscous, dried fruit, nuts, jerky). If you care about alcohol and will be able to enjoy it safely while you’re alone, bring that with you too.

c.     Coffee. If you drink coffee in the morning, prepare. Before I quarantined the first time, I took advantage of my Amazon Prime membership and tested a few different cheap camping drip coffee filters in the weeks leading up to my trip. This time, I’m using my AeroPress. A regular Melita drip works too, it just takes up a bit of room in luggage. The night before I left, I got small amounts of 6 different types of coffee from the bulk bins at Whole Foods and ground them there. Then I made myself a little coffee bar with all the types lined up next to each other to choose from in the morning. If you take milk in your coffee and aren’t sure if you’ll have a refrigerator, get some non-fat dry milk and your local supermarket. If you take sugar, borrow some packets from your local corporate coffee shop.

d.     Air purifier. In China, I’m hyper-aware of the air quality (though I’ve noticed that recently it’s often like what I’d be experiencing at home). But when you’re stuck in a room, you want to make sure your air is fresh. Get a small air purifier that will fit in your luggage, just in case you need it.

e.     If you can choose your hotel, do it. Key things to look for: the ability to get food delivered, good air conditioning and Wi-Fi, ability to open the windows.

2.     Make your bed in the morning. I once saw a self-help book written by a retired admiral with this advice in the title. It makes a difference, especially if you’re going to be near that space all day. It’ll keep you from getting back in bed, it’s more calming to look at, and it feels better to get into at the end of the day.

3.     Structure your day. Remember all the recommendations to get dressed in the morning and not work in bed during COVID lockdowns? The same goes for quarantine. Write to-do lists in the morning. Create a schedule and stick to it.

4.     Remember your people. Facetime. Zoom. Have phone calls. Text. Use technology to connect with humanity you know and love, even if they can’t physically be with you. They care about you and will want to check in with you, too.

5.     Maximize your space. Have an armless chair? Put it on a desk or table, place your laptop on the seat, and boom! You have a standing desk. Lots of disposable water bottles? Repurpose them as utensil and pencil holders, dish soap dispensers (use your Swiss Army knife to cut an X in the top, put some Dr. Bronner's and water in the bottle, and squirt your soap onto your dishes), bar soap dish, dish dryer, sponge holder. Have leftover food but no Ziplock bags? Cut off the top of a water bottle, pull a plastic bag through and around the lip, and seal the bag with the bottle cap (see photos below). Figure out the airflow from the vents in your room and when you do any handwashing, place your clothes where the air blows strongest.

6.     Routinize how you use your space. The little bar is my coffee counter, the metal top of my safe is a hot food-prep area, and the wooden shoe rack below it is my pantry. In China, beds are quite firm—this makes for a great gym! I use one bed for sleeping, one bed for workouts.

7.     Be kind to yourself. Only you know what this means for you. For me, this is sitting in bed watching Netflix and crocheting. I earn fun delivery treats like Dairy Queen by getting through my to-do list and doing workouts.  If your quarantine hotel allows deliveries, get fresh produce! You'll appreciate it like never before.

8.     Be kind to the staff. Even if they're grouchy. After all, would you want to spend your days in a hazmat suit giving people COVID tests, delivering stuff, and picking up garbage? Besides, they're pretty much your only live human interaction for two weeks. 

9.     Get exercise. OrangeTheory put out a bunch of great at-home workouts on YouTube during the Great Lockdown of 2020. A friend recommended Yoga with Kassandra, which is a divine way to end the day.

10.     Have good internet and reliable devices. And backups. Regardless of where you are, make sure that your cell phone will have enough data to use as a hotspot in case your Wi-Fi isn’t reliable. If you’re in a place with curated internet (like China), make sure that you’ve tested VPNs ahead of time. Get an HDMI cord to connect from your laptop to the TV and test it ahead of time. I have my work and personal laptop just in case one stops working.

12.  Do projects, both virtual and kinesthetic. Writing this Dispatch is a project, but it involves looking at a screen. Do art. Crochet. Knit. Build stuff out of water bottles. 

13. Daily surprise envelopes. This was my mom's idea and lovely surprise gift the first time around. I asked her to do it for me the second time around. She got 14 envelopes, labeled each one with the day number, and put small surprises in them that were only to be opened one day at a time. (Temporary tattoos, family photos, mini-puzzle, writing prompts, little candies, bookmarks) It works best if you have someone kind enough to give you something like this, but I suppose it could also work if you do it for yourself. 

13.  Recognize the benefits. My skin is rocking, I’ve gotten a lot of work done, and I’ve had plenty of introverted time that’s energized me to be social. I’ve crocheted a blanket, painted some beautiful things, watched a couple of entire series on Netflix, and got better at navigating Chinese wai mai (外卖; food delivery) apps.

21 hours until I’m outta here! (but who’s counting?)

44. Shanghai Quarantine Edition (2021-08-19)

Hello from my 20m2 / 215ft2 quarantine hotel room! This is the first stop on my 3 week + journey back to my apartment on my school’s campus in Beijing (2 weeks quarantine + a week hanging out in Shanghai while not yet allowed in Beijing + maybe another week or two in Beijing before I’m allowed back on campus). When I left in July to come home for a month, I had slight doubts about whether I’d be able to make it back into China at all; a friend poetically told me that following my adventures is “like watching someone dance between raindrops and not get wet.” Tomorrow (August 20), all people arriving from the US and several other countries will have to quarantine for 3 weeks, instead of 2.

I had the same crew on my Delta flight back from Seattle to Shanghai as I did on my way over to the US. It was the first time I’ve ever given a flight attendant a hug when I got on a plane. I think the Chinese passengers dressed in hazmat suits and face shields around me thought I was crazy. The last time I boarded a flight to China was in October when I was terrified of being alone in a random Chinese hotel room for two weeks. 10 months later the process has refined. New arrivals to Hong Kong can shop a growing niche market of hospitality packages like a “Fun-filled Quarantine Stay” at a Marriott that comes with complimentary laundry detergent, or a luxurious stop-over complete with virtual fitness and mixology classes at the Mandarin Oriental.

While capitalism is certainly an opiate of the masses here in the Mainland, unless you know a hack or have serious guanxi (relationships), in Shanghai, you quarantine at the hotel you’re assigned at the airport. For months, ex-pats have crowd-sourced and shared information about the different quarantine hotels. Is food delivery allowed? (no at about half) Has a refrigerator? (most don’t) Has windows that can be opened? (most don’t…. anymore)

I continued my raindrop dance and serendipitously landed at the same hotel I was assigned in October. The Shanghai Hotel, where I’m quarantining for two weeks, was, once upon a time, a 4-star joint in downtown Shanghai, complete with shiny marble floors, snazzy ballrooms, and a spa. Beyond the peeling wallpaper and stained carpet, I’m imminently lucky to have a somewhat roomy space that allows outside delivery three times a day, has strong air-conditioning (that I can regulate), a working refrigerator, windows that open (about 4 inches on both sides), and passable Wi-Fi. I report my temperature three times a day publicly on a WeChat group with my fellow 30+ quarantinees, and if I miss reporting in, someone will call me to ask, or a worker in a hazmat suit will ring my doorbell and take my temperature. Sometimes they ring my doorbell anyway to spot-check. I’ll have three covid tests during my stay here, both the way up the nasal passage and the in-the-mouth kinds. They’re getting gentler with the way up-the-nose test.

While my physical space is almost identical during this quarantine as it was the first time, I feel different, and the world is different. The America I left in October was locked down without vaccines and with the stress of a major election looming. The novelty of Zoom happy hours and baking sourdough with a homemade starter had long since worn off. China, with its early draconian lockdowns, had effectively stamped out COVID. After quarantine, I looked forward to a life like the Before Times with open indoor bars and large mask-less events. (When the NY Times called the 2020 Presidential Election for Joe Biden, I was at the British Ball with 500 of my closest un-masked, covid-free expat friends)

My second go-round,  the Delta Variant and the pandemic of the unvaccinated have somewhat swapped this experience. This time, I left a mostly vaccinated, wound-up America learning how to live with an epidemic that’s starting to seem endemic. But China’s going the other way, getting more locked-down. While talk continues about a Chinese firm Fosun partnering with BioNTech to offer mRNA vaccine boosters in China, data about the efficacy of Chinese vaccines and the Delta Variant remains hazy. So, for now, they’re continuing to do what they do very well: isolate every single case and have mass quarantines and testing as needed.

Only a couple of months ago, I had friends who opted against getting Pfizer or Moderna while visiting the US because they feared testing positive on a COVID test when trying to return to China. As vaccine tourism is becoming more of a thing, lucky folks like me who’ve gotten the Sinovac and the Pfizer-BioNTech can now take a super expensive test that differentiates between IgM and N-protein antibodies, in addition to the virus itself. Its results are usually accepted by whatever Chinese consulate gets to determine your travel fate. But only if you go to a pre-approved testing site that will share your results directly with the consulate, and if you’re photographed while getting blood drawn and a swab stuck way up your nose.

An outbreak of 11 new cases in the Capital last week led to large events again being canceled in Beijing. There are rumors that school won’t start on September 1, as scheduled. But maybe by the time I get back, the raindrops will have stopped falling.

43. American Edition #2 (2021-07-24)

For the past year, I’ve continually asked myself if American republican democracy is worth the 600,000 lives lost so far in the US from COVID. Chinese authoritarianism has helped me feel chillingly safe during the Pandemic. And unlike in Mussolini’s Italy, the trains in China really do run on time. This week, I visited the new Moynihan Hall attached to Penn Station, in the old Post Office Building across the street from Madison Square Garden (MSG) in Midtown Manhattan. The late Senator, the station’s namesake, first championed the project in 1992. It’s an attempt to replace the grand old Penn Station that was torn down amidst much protest in 1963 to make way for the ugly MSG. When I walked in, instead of getting swabbed for explosives and walking through a metal detector as I would at a train station in China, I saw a smiling federal police officer playing with an alert German Shepherd.  A photographic installation documenting the station’s history and connected protest movements line 80 feet of wall high above the gleaming marble floors.

My local subway in New York is the 86th St. Q station, part of the 3-stop 2nd Ave. Subway, which was first proposed in 1922. It was recently lauded by the MTA as the “biggest expansion of the subway system in 50 years”. I waited for the train the other day for over 15 minutes without any announcement about why there was a delay—something that would be unthinkable at any subway in China, let alone Beijing. But unlike the sterile, identical Chinese subway stations, this one features mosaic portraits of New Yorkers by the famed Chuck Close that are themselves worthy of being on the walls of a museum. And unlike Asian subway stations, this had no glass walls that prevented people from falling (or jumping) onto the tracks.

When I lived on 95th and 3rd overlooking what is now the line’s terminus, I’d chat with the subway construction workers as we waited for coffee at the corner stand. They told me that the tunnel for the line was bored up to 125th Street in the ‘70s and was waiting for the funding to be finished. There isn’t a projected completion date yet, but the second phase of the project was just saved (yet again) by federal COVID bailout money.

On the subway, amidst signs reminding people to still wear masks regardless of their vaccination status, I usually only see one or two mask-less faces. The mask-less appear to vary in age, gender, and race (though I have yet to see anyone who looks like they’re of Asian descent not wearing a mask on the train). Unlike my past decade of living in New York City, I have yet to see a single police officer on the subway or platform. I have yet to see anyone corrected for not wearing a mask on public transport. And since I’ve been here, I’ve seen so many people ride motorcycles without helmets in the City that I asked if the law was changed (it isn’t—there’s still a legal requirement to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle in New York State).

Cousins of mine who’ve lived in Asia (though not mainland China) reminded me that New York is known for its character, not its efficient infrastructure. In New York, there were no city officials or elderly volunteers reminding me and my fellow riders to queue for the subway, (though people tended to queue anyway). Intersections didn’t have cameras with accompanying monitors that would show enlarged live images of me or anyone else who j-walked. But when my Citibike was partially obstructing a busy crosswalk at a red light, a passing pedestrian firmly motioned for me to move back. She was right and I was wrong, and we didn’t need any external oversight or direction for that correction to happen civilly.

I was terrified that I’d come home to a desolate New York occupied with empty storefronts and more homeless encampments. Instead, I saw about the same number of empty storefronts as I remembered (usually in the same places as I remembered) and observed fewer people experiencing unsheltered homelessness than I remembered.  (A recent City survey found that there was a 30%+ decrease in the number of people experiencing unsheltered this year compared with last, but there are more homeless people in New York City now than any time since the Great Depression)

Some New Yorker friends (who were born in the late '80s) lamented to me that New York was reverting back to the mayhem of the '70s. And while I did see a bit more graffiti than I remembered, I also saw people carefully enjoying the new Diane von Furstenberg-funded Little Island Park, listening to jazz bands jam on clean streets, and enterprising kids selling lemonade on the sidewalk and candy in the subway. While wandering around the streets of Manhattan, I was offered multiple opportunities to get my COVID vaccination, a free COVID test, or both. The bookstores and magazine stands were filled with titles that are banned in China and content that I usually can only access with a VPN.

While New York felt messier than Beijing, that messiness seemed to yield a of depth of character and personal responsibility that I realized I missed deeply. Maybe this is what is meant by democracy being the least bad form of government.

42. "Post-COVID" America Edition #1 (2021-07-18)

I did something audaciously privileged. I got on a plane and returned to America. I was scheduled to be in a dear friend’s wedding that was already postponed for over a year because of COVID, and I missed family and friends. Over the past few months, I made two shiva calls to friends in the Beijing Jewish community who lost their fathers and had to attend their funerals on Zoom. What’s worth coming home for during a pandemic if I can safely pull it off? A wedding, or a funeral?

To return to China, I required pre-approval from a Chinese consulate in the US. They’re each doing their own thing, with policies changing almost weekly. So instead of looking to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website for instructions, I started with a 50-page crowd-sourced and maintained googledoc that’s circulating on a few ex-pat WeChat groups. Returning to China requires approval from the consulate geographically zoned to cover the airport you’ll fly out of to get directly to China. The NYC consulate and the consular section at the Embassy in DC are notoriously not approving non-Chinese people to travel round-trip from China. Chicago is a toss-up. San Francisco and LA are pretty reliable as long as you have everything on their checklist.

Originally, I was booked to fly Delta round trip through Detroit. I emailed the Chicago consulate everything on the checklist…. evidence of my Sino-Vac jabs (a must to get pre-approval), Beijing health kit app green code, cell phone travel history, work visa valid through August 2021, passport, and canceled passport I used to enter China. Less than 24 hours later, I received a standard rejection from their Gmail address. “The Consulate General in Chicago strongly suggests the foreign nationals currently in China holding the residence permits for work, personal matters, and reunion avoid unnecessary cross-border travel, take the epidemic factors and difficulty in returning to China into consideration before planning to leave China. Your application is currently not accepted.” Changed the flight to Seattle. Sent the identical email to the SF consulate. Received approval within 24 hours.

(Chinese consulates in US all use Gmail, except for LA, which requires you to complete a google form…and yes, Google products are still all blocked in China.)

Because there are so few people traveling between the US and China right now, I’ve become a bit of a mule. On the way here, I brought a delightful K-9 travel companion, just ahead of a July 14 CDC deadline to get dogs from China (and several other countries) into the US because of a global rabies pandemic. When I return to China, friends have so far asked me to bring back hair dye, antacids, multi-vitamins, eye drops, a family heirloom, and half a kilo of specialty yeast for a Beijing microbrewery. If you’re in China and want me to bring back something, give me a shout, so long as it’s legal.

As a US citizen, all I needed to do to enter the US was get a covid test within 48 hours of boarding the plane. The pup needed a pre-departure check-up and exit papers. My flight from Shanghai to Detroit on a large 2-aisle Delta Airbus had maybe 30 people on it. Detroit to Reagan National was fully booked. In both directions, the flights between the US and China stop on the tarmac in Seoul for a crew change and refuel. The vaccinated US-based crews would have to quarantine if they got off the plane in China, but in Korea are permitted to merely stay within the confines of their hotel for their layover before returning home.

To enter China, in addition to my pre-approval, I’ll need to quarantine for two weeks at a hotel in Shanghai (rumor has it that you can sort of pre-reserve your hotel now). Because no one is allowed to enter Beijing unless they’ve been in China for at least three weeks (as the capital, it’s the only place in China with that restriction), I’ll be required to wander around China for a third week outside of quarantine before continuing on. Then, because I live on a school campus, I may have to do at-home isolation for a fourth week (at the discretion of my local Education Bureau). If at any time I test positive for COVID, the deal’s off and it’s unclear when I’d be allowed to return to China. Was I to have a passport from a country that isn’t as economically or politically significant to China and/or has large covid outbreaks, say Mexico or South Africa, it would be practically inconceivable to leave and return to China right now.

This was the longest I’ve ever been outside of the US. When I got out of Customs in Detroit, I was delighted to be greeted by a see a sea of masked people with diverse shades of melanin in their skin, facial structures, and languages. There were magazine stores named for publications banned in China, like The Economist, The New York Times, Time, and The Wall Street Journal. But, just as there were near the gates I boarded at in Beijing and Shanghai, there was also a trusty Starbucks.

My first trip out of the house in DC was to get my Pfizer jab. When I showed up without an appointment, the pharmacist at the local Giant supermarket apologetically told me it would be a 10-minute wait. I spent the time waiting before and after the jab shopping in the well-stocked American grocery store. During my 15-minute observation period, I WeChatted with folks in Beijing to confirm that I was buying the correct hair dyes and antacids. All I could think about was how massively inequitable it was that after already getting my somewhat-maybe-effective-probably-safe-Sinovac, I was so easily able to get that Pfizer jab. Or if I preferred, I could have gotten a Moderna. Or even a J&J. Audacious privilege.

41. Ancient Teenager Power (2021-07-02)

Imagine a high-performing teenager who was the first in her family to go to college. Her parents grew up with enough food to eat but never got to attend university. Her grandparents grew up hungry. As she got older, the teenager carefully studied the world around her. She did (almost) all the right things and got near-perfect grades. She may have cheated a couple of times along the way, but she didn’t see it as too different from what her peers had been doing for years. Besides, the other high-performing teens she competed with came from privileged families.

After years of arduous work, she enrolled at an elite, prestigious university. Much of the world she thought she understood didn’t fit her. She wanted to assimilate but also keep her identity. So, as soon as she could afford it, she started wearing name-brand clothes and drinking Starbucks. But she still only felt comfortable with the other kids who were the first in their families to go to university. When she became a more confident student, she got bolder. She started taking someone else’s research in a lab she was working in, improved it, and published it as her own. The university found out and she was expelled.

Unlike university, China can’t be expelled from the world.

I’ll put aside China’s significant human rights abuses for a moment. There is overwhelming evidence of cultural genocide in Xinjiang, let alone the massive influx of Han Chinese into Tibet in the years since I was there in 2006. It’s a strategic dilution of minority cultures. Movement and digital communication in China are almost ubiquitously monitored. History is actively being scrubbed and rewritten. There really are no guaranteed individual rights. Laws exist and are (somewhat) consistently enforced, but they’re, er, subject to change.

Peace and prosperity in China are remarkably fresh. The first McDonald's opened in China in 1990 (now there are 3,787 places to see golden arches in China). Starbucks? Their first opened in Shenzhen as an economic experiment in 1999 (at the end of Q2 2021, there were 4,973 Starbucks stores in China). Yes, there are more Starbucks in China than McDonald’s. Surprise!

Let’s put this in perspective.

While in 1966 John Lennon was sparking a huge Beatles controversy by telling the London Evening Standard “We are more popular than Jesus now”, China was getting over its Great Famine. As many as 45 million Chinese people starved to death in three years. Their cities were practically in anarchy. And they were about to have as many as 20 million more people killed during the Cultural Revolution. So, while we were sending men to the moon, protesting Vietnam, passing the Civil Rights Acts, and Nixon's resignation, they were losing a population the size of modern-day California and New York combined. At home.

Now think about Chinese President Xi’s speech yesterday at the 100th Anniversary of the Communist Party celebration in Tiananmen Square. He wore a Mao suit while surrounding himself with men wearing Western suits. Did the symbolic children in the audience know that they were standing where tanks rolled by 30 years ago to clear away peaceful protesters who weren't much older than them? Or that so many of their countrymen had died or been killed under the leadership of the man who their current leader’s outfit honored?

“The Party will continue to work with all peace-loving countries and peoples to promote the shared human values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom. We will continue to champion cooperation over confrontation, to open up rather than closing our doors….” Xi said to the carefully curated crowd. Then he added, “we will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us. Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

Teenagers crave structure. They learn by testing boundaries. As they learn boundaries, they begin earning and assuming new responsibilities. They start to think more about the people who came before them while plowing their own way into the world. They’re fascinating, clever, and can be a massive pain in the ass. But as great high school teachers will reflect, when you establish with your class a culture of structure, mutual respect, and accessible, relevant goals, you’ll grow so much together. 

40. The Party (2021-06-26)

On July 1, China will celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. Preparations for this are reminiscent of the 70th Anniversary of China celebrations in October 2019. They’re even using the same font on all the marketing. And while it seems like they got started with this campaign a bit later, the propaganda feels more widespread—and the messaging more personal.

All our elementary school students started taking classes about the Party and the 100th Anniversary. Middle and high school students are getting updates by watching the news daily in homeroom. A couple of proud middle schoolers presented a strong speech last Monday during our weekly flag-raising ceremony about the Party’s history and accomplishments.

Last year, Chinese staff at my school were quietly recruited for the Party. High-performing teachers and staff would be privately approached, or those who were ambitious and hadn’t been invited to apply worked hard to be recognized. Now our Party Branch Chief is urging Party members and school leaders to encourage staff to apply. At my school in Qingdao, our Chinese colleagues informed my staff that we needed to block all internet from outside of China leading up to July 1, not just what’s allowed on the Chinese Internet. I gently, but clearly clarified that this was a misinterpretation of the Education Bureau’s policies, and unabashedly leveraged that this wasn’t being discussed in The Capital. Ironically, in October 2019 VPNs only worked intermittently but this year I’ve had no problems accessing the digital world beyond the Great Firewall. Maybe it’s because the VPNs are getting better. Or the Party is getting more confident. Or both.

The Government’s legitimacy is derived from how it transformed the nation from almost starving to needing to combat childhood obesity in two generations. Now that people have enough to eat, its legitimacy is reinforced through fulfilling second-tier needs like infrastructure and access to relatively affordable education. And through ensuring that roads are being excellently maintained, they’re giving people jobs and local officials excuses to spend money on local businesses. The Party is now making sure that folks remember who created all this prosperity. They’re not wrong.

In the past few months, I’ve started seeing the Party’s logo on the doorways of small stores and large multinational chains alike. And it isn’t just in Beijing. Over the past three months, I’ve traveled West to Yunnan Province, North to the Gobi Desert, and South to Shanghai and Qingdao (the namesake of the beer Tsingtao). It’s as though the provinces have been competing for who can do the best job of showing off their Party pride. Airports have extravagant artificial flower arrangements in the shape of “100”. There are upbeat propaganda videos on the busses and subways. Billboards. Flashy posters. It’s not unlike the omnipresence of a presidential campaign in a swing state, except it’s a singular message.

While government officials in China really aren’t elected, the upper-middle-class parents I work with are adept at making the system work for them and their children. When I worked at schools in New York and Oakland, frustrated parents could contact the city and we’d get the complaint quickly through official channels. It was always a big deal and dreaded. Beijing has an almost identical system, except the initial notification about a complaint goes to our Party Branch Chief, rather than the principal.

Recently our local Beijing education bureau received a complaint that we owed elementary students make-up English classes with our foreign teachers (my staff). Because the complaint was anonymous, I couldn’t know what classes we were supposedly short on. But the complaint inspired a remarkable amount of fear. Late into the evening, I got phone calls and text messages about the seriousness of the complaint. I responded with logical clarifying questions: How many classes did we owe? When did we miss classes? What grade was short? None of these answers were able to be given. But because the 100th Anniversary was approaching, it was important that everything looked perfect. The Education Bureau didn’t want to be seen as the only department to have complaints. The unsolvable anonymous problem had to be solved.

Our families are accustomed to being swindled. Around the corner from my school, a construction site for new villas has advertisements with images of city views that look remarkably like lower Manhattan. Grocery stores sell milk from Australia and New Zealand because Chinese milk is less trusted by local consumers. We were recently reminded not to keep electric scooters inside our apartment buildings because their batteries have been known to spontaneously combust.

A new Chinese American friend recently analogized Chinese state media with corporate messaging. Just as Microsoft or Google has their communications team create robust content to support their products and mission, so too does the Party. That comparison helps me be a bit less emotional when reading The Global Times or China People’s Daily. But then I remember that Microsoft and Google have significant competitors that push them to improve. And, at least in theory, when corporations become so big that they do become a monopoly, governments break them up to keep the competition going. I’m still trying to figure out where there is room for healthy competition in the Party’s marketing campaigns.

39. China Annoyances and Appreciations (2021-06-13)

There are some things that drive me bonkers about living in China:

1.     Noise pollution. Sometimes when you walk into a grocery store, you’ll hear a chorus of scratchy megaphones advertising sales on repeat. There may be so many blaring simultaneously that you can’t make out what they’re advertising. Megaphones also bark orders in train stations and airports. Stand in line! Scan your health kit! Wear your mask! Chinese friends tell me that after growing up in a society with so much constant stimulation, they barely notice the noise.

2.     Cell phones. I don’t want to listen to your friend’s voice memo when I’m sitting next to you on the bus. I don’t even like listening to my own voice memos. Don’t talk on the phone during that meeting. Use your earphones when you’re watching that cat video on the subway. I won’t even get into the frustration of knowing that my every movement and purchase is being tracked by the Government.

3.     Personal space. This goes back to noise pollution. I hypothesize it’s because people are used to being closer together because there are so many people in China. I often get offended when someone pushes me on the sidewalk. Then I create a narrative in my head about how obnoxious this person must be. But a block later the same person might offer to help me find something, even without me asking. Similarly, when deplaning, it’s every person for themselves; there is no decorum of each row exits before the one behind it like in the West. I’ve found myself becoming a bit snotty when someone tries cutting in front of me when I’m getting off a plane. Hang on, I’m getting my bag down, we’re all going to the same place! Sometimes they still push past me, but often, the person I just scolded helps me take my roller board down, without my asking.

4.     Irrational, opaque rules. At the beginning of a domestic flight regardless of the airline, the same elegant male voice translates the Chinese aviation administration’s rules. “Ladies and gentlemen, attention, please. I am the security team leader of this flight. According to the requirements of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, it is my duty to inform all passengers on the cabin security of this flight. In accordance with the Public Security and Punishments Law of The people’s Republic of China, and the regulations of the People’s Republic of China on safety and security of civil aviation. You may be subject to penalty, security detention, or even criminal punishment if you are caught with the following behaviors. Damaging the onboard facilities and equipment, smoking, using mobile phones or using other electronic devices illegally, grabbing seats or luggage racks, interfering with flight attendant’s work, and other behaviors that disturb the normal order in the cabin. In accordance with relevant laws and regulations of the People’s Republic of China, the passenger cabin is a public space and will be subjected to audio and video collection. Your support and cooperation is greatly appreciated. To ensure the safety of you and all other passengers, my team members and I, together with the entire crew, will perform our duties conscientiously. Thank you.” Why perpetuate the trivial lie that this person actually is on the plane? This man clearly is not a member of the flight’s crew, if he even exists at all. Just directly remind us of the quite rational rules. And why do I have to take off my earphones during takeoff and landing? Will my little Bluetooth signal really get in the way of the plane’s communication equipment?

5.     Personal space part 2. If you need to clear your throat, must it be so loud? Do you really have to pick your nose and spit? And why do you have to light a cigarette at the table right next to me when there’s a no-smoking sign right above our heads? Why do you have to cut me off in the bike lane on your slow motorbike when I’m clearly biking faster than you with the power from my own legs? And where is your helmet?

But there are a lot of things I appreciate about living in China right now:

1.     Safety. They take safety very seriously here (within a very specific definition, that is). I never fear for my safety walking alone down a street after dark. It’s unheard of to be pickpocketed in a crowded area. And, while Chinese COVID policies often seem irrational and their data isn’t exactly transparent, from the moment I got out of quarantine, I felt like COVID was far, far away.

2.     Produce. Ever tried a watermelon the size of a big grapefruit? A mandarin a wee bit larger than a chubby cherry? A pear-apple hybrid? There’s a greater variety of produce here than I’ve seen anywhere in the world, including the California Central Valley, which produces 25% of America’s food. And it’s cheap and plentiful. Agriculture experts I’ve met here (both Chinese and foreign) tell me that if you wash it before you eat it, the pesticides and fertilizer it’s been doused in probably won’t hurt you. I’ve also been told that the produce is huge because they grow varieties of vegetables that can be cut more easily into small pieces. These veggies sell in the Chinese market but aren’t offered in North American and Europe because people wouldn’t buy something that would go bad before they could finish it.

3.     Shopping. Once you figure out how to shop in China, you wonder how Jeff Bezos can charge so much for products on Amazon. I often cook dinner in a combination crockpot/hot pot/griddle/steamer that I bought on Pingduoduo for about $5. Need a new adaptor to connect your phone to your TV? $4 on Pingduoduo, Tao Bao, or JD. Australian oatmeal? $2 for a big 3-liter container. A clothing steamer? $2. Have friends coming over for dinner in a few hours? Cheap grocery delivery within an hour or so. And these products are usually good! Except for the steamer. I must be careful that the handle doesn’t get too hot and burn my hand, or that the excess water doesn’t seep out the bottom and make a big puddle. But I just wrap it with a clean dishtowel, it works as a potholder and sponge!

4.     Electric Vehicles. Yes, it’s helpful for the environment that China is now the largest EV market in the world. But more selfishly, I appreciate it when I’m walking or biking, and I don’t smell or hear exhaust from busses, cars, or motorbikes.

5.     Community. It’s a running joke amongst ex-pats in Beijing that it’s a very small village of 20 million people. Everyone who is in China right now is either Chinese, an ex-pat who arrived before the pandemic and hasn’t seen their family in a couple of years or had to come through quarantine to be here, expat and Chinese alike. Being so far from home together during such a tumultuous time has created a sense of kindness and helped me build strong friendships that otherwise may have taken years to develop. 

38. Eggy Bribery (2021-05-18)

The local government here is giving eggs to Beijingers who get vaccinated. This week, folks here are freaking out a bit  because we had 15 new cases pop up in distant Anhui Province but otherwise life here is still pretty much like the Before Times (minus the plentiful foreigners and international flights), hence the bribery in the name of public health. As a foreigner I don’t think I’m eligible for the Government’s practical culinary enticement, but I’d prefer receiving this nutritious kitchen staple than a baseball ticket or a chance at winning $1,000,000 to get my shot.

I finally took the plunge and got the first jab of the Chinese SinoVac Covid vaccine. I’ve never done so much research about a shot before, nor have I ever been so scared to get one. A Chinese company bought 100 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine licenses, but distribution (unsurprisingly) keeps being postponed. Staff and families at the US Embassy here in Beijing and 200+ other US government locations around the world have been offered the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine—to my knowledge the only people in China who’ve had access to a COVID vaccine that’s given emergency authorization by the FDA or the EU. (The Israelis have been flying their staff back to Israel to get the jab and British diplomats around the world have been getting the Astra-Zeneca vaccine) US expat groups have been lobbying for access to the US vaccine supply for citizens abroad—as yet unsuccessfully.

To the Beijing government’s credit, after months of silent waiting, all foreigners are being offered either the SinoVac or Siofarm vaccines at private Western medical hospitals, free of charge. The hospitals are told by the Chinese CDC the night which shot they’ll receive the next day. You don’t get a choice about the kind of shot, but you do at least get to know what is being injected into your arm. I chose to go to the hospital where my doctor is, and whose leadership I know well. It was the closest I was going to get to transparency.

Before a nurse gave me the shot, I was calmly ushered into a private room to speak with a doctor. She was a Chinese-born American. Did I have any questions? My Americanness shined brightly. Sure, but I’m not sure if you can answer them, I heard myself blurt. My questions were more like statements. The data from the Chinese vaccines’ clinical trials was opaque. Its effectiveness wasn’t reliably known. There wasn’t any data yet about how the SinoVac would interact with an FDA or EU authorized vaccine (for when I eventually get access to a jab whose effectiveness is supported by transparent clinical trials). She was kind, patient, and empathetic. And had no new information to share with me. But she agreed that getting the shot was low risk, if not high reward.

Even without access to Western vaccine, I’m still on the privileged side of the vaccine apartheid. One of my teachers stuck in South Africa has already flown to Zimbabwe once to get the SinoVac and is returning there next week. He’s been told by the newly opened Chinese embassy in Pretoria that it’s the only way he can get a visa. When he finally arrives, he’s facing potentially a 28-day quarantine, which he’s thrilled to have the opportunity to endure. Teachers at my school in Qingdao  (the city where the Tsingtao beer is from) are still waiting on their second dose even though they were due to receive it two weeks ago. That’s a far cry from being lured with the promise of an omelet.

37. Mosquitos (2021-04-05)

I got my first mosquito bites of the year this week. The mosquitoes in Beijing are different from the East Coast US ones. In the mid-Atlantic region, they’re big bloodsuckers that usually try to be stealthy but they’re too big to really hide well. When they strike, they leave behind big itchy bites that often take surprisingly long to heal. If you scratch them, they get bigger and can get infected. The ones in Beijing are tiny, industrious, and numerous. I have screens and keep my windows closed and yet when it gets really warm out, I can look up at my ceiling and count a dozen around my bedroom. The worst is when they buzz in my ear at night, waking me from a really deep sleep. If I didn’t already know that spontaneous generation isn’t really a thing, I’d swear that Beijinger mosquitoes just appear out of thin air. And their tiny bites only take about a couple of days to heal. But they’re diligent and frustrating.

I may try to avoid the mosquitoes this weekend by shopping at H&M, where they might have some good sales because it’s in vogue this week to boycott the popular European clothing brand. The biggest challenge in my job is figuring out what my teachers and I can—and should—say to students (and Chinese adults), and what crosses the somewhat opaque, evolving gray line of Topics Not to be Discussed. The H&M boycott is making this gray line smokier.

A high-performing G12 girl told me that she wants to go to The National University of Australia to study government in a place where she won’t have too many distractions. By learning about politics abroad, she told me that she’ll better be able to help her country in the future. I recommended that she may want to study abroad in Washington, DC at some point. She smiled politely. I don’t think I’ll want to, she said. Why? She remained silent, wanting to be respectful. You’re not going to offend me, I’m really curious, I told her. She was gently resolute. I don’t agree with some of the things that America’s leaders have been doing. For example? The Americans are keeping the Europeans from buying cotton from Xinjiang because they want to stay on top and keep China from rising. When I asked her if she had heard that there were any other reasons this was happening, she said that she didn’t see anything else in the news. I encouraged her to go back and look into it a bit more.

With Chinese colleagues, I’ve been a bit less restrained. Over lunch, someone asked me what I thought about the US leading a boycott against Xinjiang cotton. I turned the question around. Why do you think the boycott is happening? Again, the same refrain. America wants to stay on top and unfairly hold China back. Any other reasons? The three Chinese colleagues at the table gave me the same quizzical smile that I find myself often having here. The Uighur labor stuff? There’s really no evidence of that, they told me. I put down my chopsticks. No evidence?! Almost every major international media outlet has reported on it and the government is keeping them from being able to investigate on the ground. Several countries have published satellite images! This seemed to surprise them, and they shifted the topic.

The West is just trying to redefine rules that benefit them that hurt the Chinese, they said. I countered: What about the WTO? China was part of years of negotiations to ensure that they had a role in creating rules that they pledged to adhere to. The Chinese were at a disadvantage there too, they said. Again, they changed the topic. Hong Kong is safer this year after the new National Security Laws. There are no more dangerous protests on the streets.

I picked up my chopsticks again. Isn’t it a government’s role to listen to and take care of the needs of its people? Their emphatic response: yes, of course! So, if a significant number of people in Hong Kong went into the streets demonstrating against changes to their community, isn’t that sign that the people don’t believe their needs are being met? Their counter-argument curveball: How would I feel if California tried to leave the US? My fastball response: They try to almost every year in their State Legislature! It never gets enough support. They’re the 6th largest economy in the world. They could survive independently, but right now the majority of Californians see that it’s in their best interests to stay in the Union. We have systems for them to debate this. 

At this point, we were all smiling, me with the fear that I had gone too far (they assured me it was fine), my colleagues fascinated and perhaps entertained. An hour had gone by without us noticing, and the cafeteria staff was cleaning up.

It was easier to be an American in China when Trump was president. I could get ahead of uncomfortable conversations by freely expressing my frustrations with his governance by tweet. The policies from my government regarding China aren’t much different now, but they seem more legitimate because they’re being built and implemented through coalitions, and with more formal, nuanced methods like speeches and public meetings. It seems that the US’s China policy has become so legitimized that the vilest scandal I’ve heard on Chinese media came in response to the icy meeting in Anchorage. Not only were Secretary Blinken’s remarks “condescending”, but the Americans also had the audacity to have a Chinese woman with purple hair translating for their Secretary. Very disrespectful. Not only that, but her translation was inaccurate. Unlike Chinese celebrity translator Zhang Jing who showed “the elegant demeanor of China's diplomats in the new era,” the state-run Global Times reported.

What wasn’t disrespectful? Kicking out the BBC’s Beijing correspondent this past week and blocking BBC’s online and tv content in response to their reporting of events in Xinjiang. I’m bracing for more mosquito bites in the weeks ahead.

36. China Time (2021-03-25)

Time is different in China. On a macro level, the country only has one time (Beijing time), though it spans five different time zones. So, while I enjoy daylight within regular working hours, out West in Xinjiang and Tibet, they either follow a wonky schedule that doesn’t align with what their clock says, or they just ignore the clock all together.

Time is different on a micro level, too. At a meeting with my Chinese colleagues, I was trying to schedule an event for a non-profit leader to come to speak with our students. It was suggested that I have her come later that week, with two days’ notice. With as straight a face as I could muster, I suggested that we instead have her come the following week, or even two weeks out to accommodate her schedule and give her time to plan, and to allow our teachers to prepare students for the lecture. With an uncharacteristically sarcastic chuckle, the colleague responded, “What do you want, to plan this for a month in advance?” I maintained an uncharacteristically straight face. We settled on a few potential times about 10 days out. The event was a grand success.

Everything in China seems to be in 1000-year cycles, 5-year plans, tomorrow, or in a few hours. The only constants are change and the government. I used to think that last-minute planning was strategic. Unexpected unreasonably short deadlines seemed to be an effective tactic to boost productivity. Creating (and selectively enforcing) rapidly changing policies seemed to build compliance and reinforce authority. But recently I’ve started to wonder if it has more to do with keeping up with the rapid pace of change. Or if there isn’t really conscious attention to how last-minute things often feel in China.

When the air is good enough, I bike ride along a tributary of a 1500-year-old canal that was first built to bring food into the city and the Forbidden Palace. In the winter, grandpas delight in pushing kids on the ice in sleds made of folding chairs, desks, and patio furniture. Now that it’s getting warmer, the grandpas have migrated to fishing and flying kites. Along most of the route, there are McMansions on one side, and tidy uniform rows of trees on the other, most of which are still so immature that they’re propped up with wooden poles. These “arboretums” were planted to prevent sandstorms like the one we had last Monday and eat up the pollution that’s been omnipresent the past couple of weeks.

A year and a half ago when I first arrived in Beijing, I remember driving by those trees, confused about their purpose, and sticking up my nose at how scrawny they looked. Now rows of cherry blossoms are starting to bloom in front of lines of fast-growing trees that make up the “green necklace” that was planted to protect Beijing from the polluting factories in the surrounding Hebei province (the government has since moved a lot of the factories farther away from the city).

Beijing’s wide boulevards are again lined with flowers that seem to have bloomed overnight. They hang from dividers that keep people from jaywalking, and along the low fences that are just high enough to be annoying to step over, but not so high that you’re not able to step over them. In most cases, they did bloom overnight—thanks to the teams of workers wearing bright yellow safety vests who installed the flowering plants. I’ve never been to Xinjiang, but I would imagine that their local government invests more in cameras than flowers.

35. Flag Raising (2021-03-07)

On Tuesday morning, I sat on the stone dais to the left of our school’s flagpole beside my school’s Chinese leaders for the Opening Ceremony of our spring semester. Bad weather (freezing rain and bad air—but mostly bad air) made us reschedule from Monday. Our 950+ students were lined up in front of us on the field in straight lines organized by class, with the tiny grade 1 students on the far right, and giant grade 12’s on the far left. Behind me sat our 20+ international teachers, politely shivering through the 15 min. event.

Two of our highest performing grade 12 students were the emcees for the ceremony, which started with us listening to the Chinese and then Canadian anthems played through the loudspeakers. As two other students dressed in military jackets and white gloves raised the Chinese flag, the students to my right—grades 6 and below—held up their right hands in a Chinese salute. A Chinese salute looks like a Hail Hitler at first glance. But the right hand is held out a bit lower, with a precision I’ve seen enforced many times by adults and bossy small children. The elementary school class student leaders at the front of the lines shot terse looks at classmates who weren’t saluting correctly, which made me sit up a bit straighter. I always clearly know where the elementary lines end and the secondary ones begin by who’s saluting during flag raising.

Our high performing students gave a speech in Chinese and English about the importance of studying hard to help prepare for a good life and strengthen the country. Not unlike the message coming from the “Two Sessions” meeting this week here in Beijing in the Great Hall of the People, the National People’s Congress, and the Chinese People’s Political Consultive Conference. I’ve never been in Beijing during the Two Sessions before--I was with my parents in the DC last year--but I was bracing for sluggish internet with blocked VPNs and remarkably blue skies that accompany any major government meeting or public event in Beijing. Instead, my VPN has been reliably fast this week. This is helpful for streaming Netflix as I ride my new stationary bike next to my air purifier because the “fog” prevents me exercising outside. (Chinese and long-time foreign expat Beijingers continue to tell me how good the air is here now. I continue to remind them that it’s not normal to have to wear a mask outside because of poor air quality.)

As I expected, being in Beijing during the Two Sessions is a bit like being in New York during the General Assembly (GA) week every fall. It generates routine peripheral conversation and fresh energy that accompanies anticipating powerful people making decisions made in our backyard, that may or may not impact our daily lives. Rumors are circulating that China will reopen its borders and start making its vaccines available to foreigners in Beijing after the meetings are over. Brief experience has started to teach me that consistent rumors in Beijing usually tend to have a bit of truth. Reliable information I get about upcoming changes in Chinese government policy tends to come from people I know, rather than the news I consume, Chinese or international.

It’s difficult to gauge whether or not security has increased in preparation for the Two Meetings because it’s become routine to scan QR codes and have our temperatures taken with infrared cameras at checkpoints around the city. Unlike major political events in the recent past, Beijing’s roads and subway stations in and around Tiananmen Square haven’t been closed. It almost seems boastful that the government didn’t take those extra safety precautions this year. After all, China’s borders have been closed since the beginning of the Chinese New Year Holiday and Beijinger’s have come to expect security, stability and comfort. Instead, small groups of formally dressed People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers ceremoniously patrol the wide sidewalks around Tiananmen, along low handsome fences, and below cameras. It’s a striking contrast to the images of the imposing barbed wire fences surrounding the US Capitol, patrolled by National Guard troops.

The other day I stumbled on a China People’s Daily video on my WeChat feed explaining the Two Sessions meetings. An American woman, a distant acquaintance who I’ve met a few times, walked around the Hutongs and asked Beijinger’s about major issues scheduled to be discussed this week in the Great Hall of the People. She’d have them tap a digital wheel spinner, randomly selecting major issues like education, pandemic control, job opportunities, technology, health, and wellness. A 22-year-old college student talked about how he and his friends worry about getting a good job after graduation, and how he looks forward to receiving more guidance and support from the government. A 30-something shared how he thought that the Chinese government was an international model for pandemic control, and he appreciated the strict rules that continue to keep COVID under control here. A middle-aged woman talked about the gig economy and the challenges of having more than one job. But, the woman added, “the good thing is that opportunities are everywhere.”

The video had upbeat wordless music in the background, on a thirty-second repeat. Woven through was a discussion about how the government has been soliciting feedback from Chinese through various online platforms, and how 1400 of these “pieces of advice” will be reviewed at the Two Sessions. How and if these “pieces of advice” will be reviewed was unclear; the meetings are not open to the public, and only select, edited portions are released on state media.

Everything in the video was truthful. There are clear ways for Chinese to submit complaints for the government to address. We dread when parents at my school call the 123 government complaint line, just like we dreaded exasperated parents calling 311 when I worked at schools in New York and Oakland. But I felt somehow betrayed by this distant acquaintance of mine, like she, a fellow American, was supporting manipulation of truth.

I often look at the bright beautiful faces of my students in their lines and wonder how much truth they really know, or want to know, or know that they don’t know. When they go to Tiananmen, they don’t have the same images and stories in their mind as me, and I can’t tell them what they’re missing. For them, leaders are people who are selected because they work hard and demonstrate strengths. Even if they don’t get to directly select the leaders, even within their own class, it’s the people who are naturally followed who rise to the top. Then they sit on a dais and are to be respected because the leaders take care of them and ensure stability.

34. Airpocolypse (2021-02-16)

China’s been kicking my butt recently. I know that I should be grateful for how privileged I am. After all, I’m able to spend my Spring Festival New Year holiday safely going to cafes, restaurants, friends’ homes. Remember hugs? Handshakes even? They’re still how friends and I casually greet each other. My students will most likely resume in-person learning when our classes resume in March. Among my colleagues in China, I’m the only one with at least one family member who’s received a FDA or EU-approved COVID vaccine shot. But I can’t leave Beijing.

Last week we had what I’ll call an airpocolypse, with the AQI (air quality index) as high as 320. Fireworks are illegal within the 6th Ring Road of Beijing for safety and pollution prevention. But smoky balls of fire have been shooting into the air day and night just beyond the borderline, adding particulates to the bowl surrounded by mountains that is Beijing. Air that bad stings your eyes. Even with three masks on, one of which 3M claims has charcoal to help filter the air, I still got winded walking at a regular pace. As recently as 2016, 320 AQI may have been considered reasonable in February. It wasn’t uncommon then to have 24 hours straight with 500+ AQI (good air is considered 50 or below).

Even if I wanted to escape back to America, I’m not sure I’d be able to find a commercial flight before April. Fat chance of me hopping over to breathe crisp Japanese air unless I perhaps I stowed away on a cargo ship. And then I wouldn’t be able to get back into the Middle Kingdom. China’s temporarily closed its borders to everyone except for citizens, permanent residents, and diplomats during Spring Festival. A reporter friend told me that the government suspended new foreign journalist visas indefinitely, purportedly to prevent COVID spread.

Technically, I could leave Beijing. I could go to the airport and take an inexpensive domestic flight to an inexpensive exotic Chinese destination. I’d get a COVID test within 24 hours of boarding and ensure that the negative result was uploaded to my Healthkit. Then I’d order a Didi to the airport, scan my HealthKit in the car, scan my Healthkit to get into the airport, maybe scan my Healthkit before boarding the plane, and scan a different local Healthkit before exiting my destination’s airport. My temperature would be taken at least once with my knowledge at both airports. I’d probably Didi to my hotel, again scanning my Healthkit in the car, then again upon checking into my hotel. When returning to Beijing, I’d probably be able to board a plane or train to return. But I wouldn’t be able to get back onto my campus (where my apartment is) without another negative COVID test and having completed a two-week quarantine in Beijing. And our school’s security would know whether or not I complied with these requirements because I’d have had scanned my Healthkit at all those places. And my cell-phone geo-tracking data is easily accessible via WeChat.

The Chinese government reported that travel is down over 60% compared to 2019, and 20% compared with 2020. Spring Festival is usually the largest migration of humans on Earth—in 2019, 415 million people travelled to celebrate with their families, seven times more people than travel for Thanksgiving. I noticed in the weeks leading up to Spring Festival that there was increased media coverage of COVID cases and positive test results. Cameras that match your face with your temperature popped up in public places. My gym closed. Expats and Chinese started telling me they were afraid of catching COVID if they left home. A delivery driver in nearby Hebei province even refused to bring a small package to me because he was nervous about transmitting or contracting the disease across provincial lines. In this culture where people are accustomed to doing what they’re told ) in return for safety (or finding ways to circumvent rules without getting caught), fear has proven an effective public health strategy.

With remarkably convenient timing, the Beijing Information Office announced last week at their “225th press conference on epidemic control” that Beijing is “free of mid and high-risk epidemic areas.” The air is back down to a delightful 20ish AQI. Even with three air filters roaring in my apartment, I knew the airpocalypse had blown away immediately when I woke up, without looking outside or checking my phone. Several times in the past few days the air has even been cleaner here than in Washington, DC, according to the US Embassy’s air quality monitor.

There’s a vibe in Beijing of being in this challenging time together now….hundreds of millions of Chinese professionals and migrant workers alike won’t get to go home to see their families this year, like their expat comrades. So instead, there are staycation packages at local hotels. Game nights. Pottery. Hotpot. Walking tours. Skiing at the tiny local resorts within city limits. Netflix because VPNs are working well and 5G is up and running. Life could be a lot, lot, lot worse.

Sidenote: In my last Dispatch, I lamented that I was unable to connect my US credit card to WeChat Pay. A friend recently showed me that I can connect it to my WeChat Pay. Helllloooooo credit card points!

33. Chinese Money (2021-02-08)

A friend raised a fascinating question to me the other day: how foreigners visiting China for the 2022 Beijing Olympics spend money? Since I first moved to China in July 2019, it’s gotten more difficult for me to use my US-issued visa card (even though I’m now able to ask in Chinese if it’s accepted). Partly due to COVID cleanliness concerns, cash is becoming less widely accepted. WeChat Pay and Alipay rules the day. But to have WeChat Pay, you need a Chinese bank account. And most Mainland Chinese merchants only accept Alipay that’s connected with a Chinese bank account, not a credit card (I’ve tried all the ways). Whenever I ask why, I’m told that it’s for safety.

When I first came to China almost 20 years ago, I remember haggling with souvenir merchants in Shanghai using US dollar bills. At about 8 RMB pegged to the mighty USD, savings from my minimum wage job at a local law firm made me quite a flush teenager. Now, with the RMB hovering at about 6.46 to the USD, it’s lovely to be an American paid in RMB. There’s catch though: China makes it very, very, very difficult to get money out of their country.

My employer is luckily able to wire my salary to my US account. But for me to transfer money from my Chinese to my US bank account, I need to go to my local Beijing bank branch, in person, with my current work contract, pay stubs, tax payment receipts, passport with visa, and currently active HealthKit. Or find a friend who has both WeChat or Alipay, and Venmo, Zelle or Paypal and, on our honor, make an exchange. Last year, Chinese nationals were able to transfer RMB to overseas accounts through Alipay without a charge. No longer.

There’s a cottage industry that’s emerged to privately connect people who want to exchange RMB and USD. And invite-only WeChat groups where friends of friends connect to exchange money. My most successfully currency exchange relationship has been with a Hasidic rabbi in Brooklyn who wants to buy RMB.

The 2008 Olympics was China’s coming out party. They installed hundreds of public toilets in the Hutongs (ancient courtyard apartments) that lacked, and mostly still don’t have indoor plumbing. They added four new subway lines in Beijing for the occasion. Two additional ring roads around the city. Brought in lots of migrant workers to support a building frenzy. Transplanted long-term residents to help make the frenzy efficient. Rounded up annoying and undesirable folks who were potential party poopers.

Beijing is nice and tidy now. The trains on the subway’s 24 lines run on time. People even que during rush hour, with and without the aid of the bossy volunteers who make sure people are lined up. The public toilets are relatively clean, sometimes have toilet paper, and almost always have someone tidying up with a dirty mop. I can count on one hand the number of beggars I’ve seen since living here.

The technology is tidy too, and it’s efficient for the things that matter: making and spending money for China, in China. I can rent a movie on my Xiaomi television for a mere ¥1, simply by scanning the QR code with my WeChat. No fear of being exposed to lewd content, thanks the to China Film Administration cleaning things up. Groceries can be delivered to my apartment within an hour or two, usually for no more than a $2 service fee, though it’s my responsibility to ensure that the food is safe. The news reliably tells me about the weather, how China is helping the world, and shows me landscapes of the countryside.

A non-Chinese tourist visiting Beijing in 2022 for the Olympics could easily have access to all the comforts of home. But it seems like in the process of tidying up, China may have neglected to remember that new efficiencies aren’t necessarily more efficient.

32. Making Decisions (2021-01-16)

Making decisions seems to be something that is avoided here. As COVID cases continue to pop up in and around Beijing and the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) approaches, there’s a frenzy of balancing our relatively unencumbered status quo with preventing another initial super-spreader event that happened a year ago in Wuhan. Before our month-long break, I wanted to visit a school I supervise near Qingdao, a two-hour flight south of Beijing. Travel is discouraged, but airports are open, and restrictions are enforced only in housing communities where there have been positive COVID cases. But the Education Bureau has imposed the extra restriction that school employees need approval from their Party Branch Chief to leave Beijing. To return to campus when you return, you must be able to produce a negative COVID test that’s no more than three days old.

Other than the three-day restriction, no one could clearly tell me whether or not I was allowed to go. My Party Branch Chief in Beijing couldn’t get an answer about whether to let me go to Qingdao. My Party Branch Chief in Qingdao couldn’t get an answer about whether to let me in. Friends in the Beijing expat community had flown between Beijing and Qingdao without any issue. No one told me I wasn’t allowed to go. No one told me I was. So I went.

To get my COVID test, I first went to our flashy new public hospital (which is labeled prominently with a sign “Friendship Hospital”) a five-minute drive from campus. It was a futile effort to save money and go on a mini adventure. But the shiny glass building was mobbed. To get into the complex, cars and pedestrians waited to get their Beijing COVID Healthkit apps scanned and their temperatures taken. The facility reminded me of a new Kaiser Permanente I’d visit in the US. Except when you walked into Friendship Hospital, you were greeted with videos of beautiful Chinese women dancing and seniors, doctors and nurses saluting the Chinese flag, rather than information about how to be healthy. I got into a cab and went to an expensive private facility that emailed me my results reliably within 12 hours (I could have gotten it within 6 hours if I paid more).

My trip to Qingdao was thoroughly uneventful. Except once I got there, people were shocked that I was allowed out. Isn’t Beijing in lockdown? Doesn’t everyone there have COVID? We’re not allowed to go there! How are you here?

Initially, my potentially illicit plan was to get a second COVID test once in Qingdao so that I’d be allowed back on campus in Beijing (where my apartment is). The only place to get a test near the Qingdao school is the public hospital, which isn’t nearly as snazzy as Friendship. It was unclear how long it would take for me to get my results, so I flew back a day early and returned to campus in Beijing just as my three-day timer was running out.

In the two and a half days I was away, things changed. Suddenly I needed to scan my Beijing Healthkit app to get into any public place or to take a Didi (the Beijing-based rideshare company that displaces Uber in China). I could load the app that showed where my phone had been in the past two weeks but couldn’t get my Beijing Healthkit to open. Usually, I’d get away with simply flashing my phone and briskly walking by with a confused foreigner look on my face. But a conscientious guard at a nearby mall insisted on seeing my Beijing app. It took ten minutes of pleading in Chinese and English for him to finally let me in. Shortly after, my Healthkit started working and the world again opened up to me.

My international colleagues are starting to wonder if and when we’ll be required to get a Chinese COVID vaccine to continue to work at a school. Initially, I balked at this idea—would the Government really require that we take their vaccine to remain on campus? Especially before it was approved by a rich country’s regulatory agency like the FDA or the EU? On Saturday at 10am, we were told that we needed to report by 1:30pm which of our staff wanted to get the Chinese COVID vaccine. Which vaccine? Unclear. Why such short notice? Unclear. When would we get the shot? Unclear. But anyone younger than 18 or older than 59, pregnant or lactating women, people who get severe allergic reactions, have immune deficiencies or some other stuff would be forbidden from getting it. I scrambled to become a virology expert, googling, texting and calling anyone I knew who knew anything about evaluating the safety and efficacy of vaccines. I wanted to be able to give my staff information to make somewhat informed decisions about the vaccine before our deadline. What would happen if we didn’t make the deadline? Unclear.

Then, yesterday Friday afternoon, with three hours’ notice, we were told to get ready to hop in busses and go to get the jabs. Only to be told an hour later that the foreigners had to wait. What vaccine would they be giving us? Still unclear.

31. Fear Fever Fear (2020-12-31)

In a grade 4 class I was observing yesterday, a bored looking 8-year-old boy was suddenly surrounded by a small hoard of girls. “Come fast, come fast!” they cried in Chinese. A girl rushed over with a touchless thermometer. 36.5 degrees. All good. The teacher turned to me and said that he’d already sent two students down to the doctor that morning because they didn’t feel well. COVID mania has returned to Beijing.

Sanlitun, home to the first flagship Apple Store opened during the Pandemic and a sparkly new Shake Shack, still bustles with masked shoppers wearing expensive clothing and taking selfies. Except to get into the outdoor mall, you now need to pass through a checkpoint where your temperature is taken, and you show your Beijing Health Kit App to get in. Restaurants are at reduced capacity. Door monitors who would ordinarily be paying more attention to their phones than passers-by are now actively doing temperature checks. The Beijing Government has been visiting our school’s campus to check and see that staff and students are all wearing masks. Holiday parties, which were going strong in Beijing, have been cancelled, including our staff New Year’s dinner at a nearby restaurant.

On Tuesday, the local Education Bureau’s Department of Physical Education and Music announced that elementary and middle schoolers would begin their Lunar New Year Holiday early. (my colleague’s theory is that they are given these special tasks because they have extra time on their hands, as their subjects aren’t required like math and Chinese) We assume that the staggered change in our calendar is to help mitigate the spread of the virus. Our new American teacher who is finishing his two-week quarantine in Guangzhou will have another week of quarantine in his apartment in Beijing. We don’t expect to be able to get any other teachers into China for the foreseeable future.

It’s unclear how many new cases there actually are in Beijing. The Government doesn’t report asymptomatic cases from Chinese people, only foreigners (which keeps their COVID numbers conveniently low). One report I saw yesterday said that there were 18 cases in two different Beijing neighborhoods from Chinese citizens, and 13 cases from “visitors from outside China.” The level of COVID risk is broken down by individual buildings and housing complexes, reported rapidly.

The Government seems to be transparent and swift in reporting COVID cases through Chinese and English media, the Education Bureau, and cell phone messages. But last month when I went to visit our school in Qingdao, our staff told me that there had several symptomatic cases in the nearby small town (small=2 million people) of Jiao Zhou. The cases were identified quickly, and the infected people were isolated and recovering. When I told Chinese colleagues in Beijing about it, they didn’t believe me until I showed them the Chinese local media report that my Qingdao colleagues shared with me. It wasn’t hidden from folks outside of Qingdao, but it wasn’t quite communicated, either.

Meanwhile, the Central Government has been flexing its muscles, seemingly to distract from the newly re-emerging COVID mania in the Middle Kingdom. At the end of October, Jack Ma, the richest person in China and founder of Alibaba, publicly criticized China’s financial regulators and state-owned banks as having a “pawn-shop mentality”. Pres. Xi personally responded by suddenly and unexpectedly halting the massive IPO of Ma’s new financial venture, the Ant Group, in Hong Kong and Shanghai. This week Chinese financial regulators further explained how they’ll do this. The next day, Chinese reporter Zhang Zhan was sentenced to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” when covering the beginning of the Pandemic in Wuhan. The Editor-in-Chief of the state-supported Global Times wrote, “By sensationalizing the Zhang Zhan case, certain Western voices are once again belittling China's achievements in the fight against the epidemic in their context.”

Tonight, I’ll say goodbye to 2020 with friends in their apartments, probably without wearing masks. We’ll feel safe and grateful to give each other hugs, knowing that none of us have COVID, and that we may soon be locked down. But we’ll also be talking about how to get the most current, accurate data about the Pandemic’s spread in China.

30. Thanksgiving Privilege (2020-11-28)

I’m sipping a latte at a Starbucks in the China World Mall in Guomao, Beijing. Around me are well dressed Chinese, also sipping their $5 coffees and typing away on their MacBooks or high-end Huawei laptops. Luxury European and American retail stores around us like Arc'teryx, Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Prada are buzzing with consumers as songs like Let it Snow play in the background. To get into the mall, I had to walk through a perfunctory temperature check and past a sign with a QR code stating that I needed to scan my Beijing Healthkit app, which proves that I’m COVID-free. The attendant was preoccupied with her cell phone, so like the Chinese around me, I silently walked in without question.

This Thanksgiving, more than usual, I’m aware of my privilege. Our team of about 30 teachers and staff had Thanksgiving dinner together (IRL!) catered by a Canadian who’s lived in Beijing for over 20 years. For many of our staff, a Greek, some South Africans, and a few Chinese, it was their first Thanksgiving dinner. The Canadians and Americans reminisced about foods from home that, like many things across that long border, are just a little bit different from each other. The Americans had never before heard of butter tarts and the Canadians had never heard of shoofly pie (they’re almost identical, except that butter tarts are sweetened with maple syrup, shoofly pie with brown sugar and molasses). Before digging into mediocre turkey, stuffing, and pie, we each said what we were thankful for. We passed around my laptop so teachers still stuck in South Africa and California could join via Zoom. Over and over people shared that they felt thankful to have a job and be safe. Almost all of my teachers have signed letters committing to return next year, an extraordinary level of retention for an international school.

The most noticeable difference in Beijing compared with last year is the lack of foreign faces. On Wednesday, I chaperoned a school field trip to the Forbidden City in Tiananmen Square. Even though we had a timed entry, the Palace was packed with Chinese tourists. Before we could enter the complex, every adult’s ID number (for Chinese, their national ID number, for me my passport number) was added to a database, presumably for contact tracing. Our temperatures were taken and our HealthKit apps checked. I only saw one other non-Chinese face while I was there, and she too was surrounded by Chinese students wearing school uniforms and expensive name-brand winter coats. When I was last in the Forbidden city about a decade ago, I recall that at least half the people looked like they were international visitors.

The other day, I was in a Balenciaga store looking at $3000 coats that many of my students have. As I browsed, I was listening to a podcast with Stacey Abrams recalling being invited to the governor’s mansion in Atlanta to celebrate being valedictorian of her high school class. The white security guard at the entrance refused to believe that she was indeed a guest until her father convinced him to check the list. I saw some salespeople whisper to each other as I listened, and then one of them came over and in both Chinese and English, asked me if I needed help. Then they conspicuously (and annoyingly) followed me around the store while Chinese customers around me were left to shop in peace. I wonder if that’s what it feels like to be shopping while black in America.

29. US Election Edition 1.0 (2020-11-06)

On election night (for me Wednesday, Nov. 4), I went on a subway for the first time in over eight months. At the height of rush hour, people stood in neat cues, waiting in front of where the doors would open. The train car was packed and silent. Everyone was wearing a mask and I was the only non-Chinese face. Outside the Guomao station in central Beijing, it felt and smelled like late fall. Stalls selling roasting sweet potatoes, hot fried things, jianbing (a crepe filled with fresh fried egg, scallions, black bean sauce, sometimes meat), school supplies, hats.

On the street in Sanlitun, a fancy neighborhood popular with ex-pats and Chinese who wear expensive Western brands that don’t sell well in the West anymore, people were laughing, rushing around, being normal. All wearing masks.

I spent the night (which was conveniently the day after the election in the US) at the Local, an American-owned bar in Sanlitun. Remember bars? Those places where you can have cocktails with friends, meet new friends, have some liquid courage, and celebrate and commiserate together? It was sort of like a bar in DC on election night Before, except the only international news channel they had was CNN and I was the only one at the bar shrieking.

The Chinese are really into this election. In lieu of being able to have their own political dramas, they’re enthralled by what they perceive as entertaining and fascinating. A Chinese driver told me the other day through an interpreter, “Biden is so old! Isn’t he like a 78-year-old grandpa?” Then he told me that he liked Trump. Why? Because he’s so funny! (A few South African colleagues told me the same thing, too)

I’ve been explaining to friends and colleagues from around the world how checks and balances in the US federal government, and federalism itself, are maintaining the American electoral process. “Do you really trust the votes that are counted?” a new South African friend at the bar asked me. I found myself confidently defending how seriously local counties and municipalities take the voting process in America. That there are too many eyes on the counting process while it’s happening. There’s even live streaming of ballot counting! And, local election commissions see it as their duty to maintain the republican process. Voter infringement on the other hand, well that’s another topic.

With Covid controlled here and their previously slowing economy seeming to be reignited, this is also an opportunity for the Chinese to fill the void that America is creating by facing inward. They’re leading in the WHO. Setting ambitious carbon emissions goals while the US is formally pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Enforcing the new Security Laws in Hong Kong. Cracking down even more on Muslims in the Western minority province of Xinjiang. And starting to get an appetite for making a real move on reclaiming Taiwan. One very worldly Chinese colleague volunteered to me the other day, “If we don’t bring Taiwan back soon, they’re going to forget what it’s like to be Chinese.”

English language Chinese business news service Caixin reported yesterday that the hashtag “U.S. presidential election” was viewed 7 billion times on Chinese social media service Weibo. One popular Chinese nickname for Trump is Chuang-po (床破), which literally means “breaking bed.” Fortunately, this aligns perfectly with a classic Chinese tongue twister and now there are memes to match.

To be continued….

28. Student Council (2020-11-02)

On Wednesday, I was asked to give a speech to our high schoolers running for student government. We had six candidates running to lead committees devoted to one of the school’s six core values: internationalism, democracy, environment, adventure, leadership, service.

“Freedom of thought and expression should be encouraged. Students should share in the leadership of the school. Democracy is a kind of freedom to act within the rules,” said the student running to lead the democracy committee. The Internationalism candidate quoted Marx, saying that part of celebrating internationalism is supporting community, leadership, and labor. He planned to “organize events with our international teachers so that we can have experiences with the internationalism aspect that’s been absent here for half a year.”

Speeches were presented in Chinese and English. On stage left, a Chinese administrator held up extra unused ballots and conspicuously tore them up so we could see their destruction. After students cast their ballots for the six unopposed candidates, she sealed the top of the ballot box and showed the audience that it was secure. My speech was to follow.

In the US, I would’ve talked about the importance of registering to vote at 18, ways students could volunteer and be involved if they were too young or unable to vote, and the importance of this upcoming election. One of my favorite memories of working in Oakland was when we helped our students organize a school walkout and march around the neighborhood supporting gun control soon after the Parkland, FL shooting. In preparation, we had classes about the history of protest. Students researched different political views on gun control and the organizations and elected officials who supported those positions. In Beijing, personal guns are illegal, and the city doesn’t exactly have a reputation for tolerating public peaceful protests.

So would I be proselytizing if I discussed my country’s election, the result of which BBC said would have a “seismic impact” on China? There are elections in China, but only for municipal-level positions. The “First Party” (the Communist Party) usually wins. Government positions in China are appointed, usually to technocrats who’ve demonstrated loyalty to the Party and competent administrative skills. Negative discussion about domestic leaders is actively scrubbed from the Chinese Internet. With so many Party members, children of Party members, and new recruits in the audience, would I be discussing a topic not approved by the Government?

On the other hand, the students in that audience were China’s future leaders. It’s the job of my team and me to prepare them ready for the world beyond China.

So I did both. I explained that student government elections embody our school’s ideals. Leadership roles help them prepare for college and strengthen their admissions applications. More students should run for leadership roles so they could have a greater voice in our school! And, in my country, there’s an important competitive presidential election on Tuesday. In the US and Canada, universities also have elected student governments, like the governments in those countries. At the University of Pittsburgh where I went for undergrad, the Student Affairs budget for clubs was managed and dispersed by the elected Student Government Board. If our Outdoors Club wanted University funding for a camping trip, we needed to ask our elected student leaders. When I finished, about 50 pairs of focused teenage eyes stared back at me, and I had no idea what they were thinking.

After the student government assembly, I helped an American born Chinese student with his college admissions essays. We read over a short response about what he thought of art. He found the MET boring but had recently visited the 798 Art Zone in Beijing and was excited to see contemporary installations like sneakers being considered art. His essay lacked depth. Did he know the history of 798, I asked? Nope.

798 was largely started by Ai Wei Wei, a prominent Chinese artist and human rights activist now living in self-imposed exile in Europe. Many of the other artists who helped start the now-trendy art zone have also fled China. My student is a US national but attends a school with mostly Chinese students. So what do I do? Silently, I opened up Wikipedia on my laptop (via VPN) and pointed to it for him to read. Had he heard of Ai Wei Wei? Nope. I opened Ai's Wikipedia page, again silent as he skimmed it. Oh, I don’t want to write about anything political, he said. I felt myself relax, and we moved on.

But a few minutes later, we started talking about doing online research. How did I get so much information, he asked? Again, I paused and told him about my VPN, a popular, benign topic of conversation among ex-pats in Beijing. Why were websites blocked in China, he asked? There are a bunch of reasons, I heard myself deflect. His focused teenage eyes stared back at me and I had no idea what he was thinking.

27.  Back in Beijing (2020-10-28)

Hello from my apartment in Bejing!!!!

I've been back here since Saturday evening and it's already felt like so little has changed since I was here eight months ago. I spent Sunday afternoon at a friend’s apartment, sipping wine, eating cheese, and talking about a podcast we all listened to. There were at least five other people. We hugged each other hello. Sat side by side, mask-less, without socially distancing. It felt like Before.

Life in Beijing is almost completely back to normal. When I first arrived at the gate of my school, I had to download and register for the Beijing Health Kit, a contact tracing Mini Program in WeChat that verifies you’ve had a negative COVID test within the past seven days. I sat in the back of the car, outside the school gate, while my assistant sent my screenshot from the app to our school’s Communist Party Branch Secretary for her to review and approval. Since then, the only other time I had to show my Health Kit was when I bought a gym membership down the street. No one has even taken my temperature before going into stores.

My hour and a half flight from Shanghai to Beijing was on a full Boeing 777, the kind with 10 seats across in coach. I had a middle seat, everyone wore masks, and I felt completely safe. The first leg of my two week+ journey to Beijing was from DC to New York, the comparative cities in the US. It was on a little Embraer jet that was less than half full.

I had been terrified to be in a hotel room alone for two weeks. Would I sink into a deep depression? Would the walls feel like they were closing in on me? Instead, I realized how much of my life has become virtual. I was busy all day working, thinking more about the world inside my screen than the four walls around me. In between, I watched Netflix, painted postcards of autumn leaves to give to friends and colleagues in Beijing, and sent texts to voters in the US. Three times a day, my doorbell rang, and food appeared. When I wanted a break from the overcooked, oily stir-fries, I ordered poke, salad, sushi, Shake Shack, Shanghai soup dumplings.

When the air was good, I'd open up the windows, sip coffee from my Zabar's mug, and watch the sunrise above the Tesla’s on a highway lined with flowers. Not unlike a cat hanging out on a windowsill. There were a few days when the air outside was bad with pollution, and I felt trapped. I had brought a small air purifier and kept it close to me when I slept and worked, but the room still felt stuffy. I called the front desk and asked for an air purifier, but they said they didn’t have one and advised me to open the window. I curled up on the floor in a corner with my air purifier next to me and tried to distract myself.

A couple of days before the end of my quarantine, a nurse in a hazmat suit came to my room to give me a second COVID test. After charging me the equivalent of $25, she took samples from the back of my throat and my sinuses. “Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle,” she said before she stuck the long wooden sticks into my nasal cavities (she was).

I took a Didi (the Chinese ride-hailing service) from the hotel straight to the airport in Shanghai. My driver was a young guy with good English. He used to have an eyeglass store before the pandemic, he told me as he wove through cars on the same flower-lined highway I saw from my hotel window. His customers came from all around the world and taught him English. But during the lockdown, he had to close his business. Instead of trying to get it back open again, he’s started driving a Didi. He was optimistic: The lockdown was difficult, but now we’re free, he explained. 

26. Shanghai Edition 1.0 (2020-10-15)

Hello from quarantine in Shanghai! I’m on day 5 out of 14 of being in a hotel room alone. According to googlemaps, it’s a 4-star hotel, though I think the plunger sitting next to the toilet would beg to differ. But I do have a somewhat cold refrigerator, a tv that plays Chinese state television in English and Chinese, an efficient water boiler, comfy pillows, a decent view, and the ability to order delivery from restaurants all over Shanghai. It could be a lot, lot, lot worse.

The hallway outside my room is lined with tables where food deliveries are placed promptly at 8am, 12pm, and 5pm by a guy in a hazmat suit. If my door is open for more than about 15 seconds, the lock starts beeping. Breakfast is Chinese pastries, a hard-boiled egg, a piece of fruit, and a milk box. Lunch and dinner are served in a nifty 5-part container with a soup in the middle, rice, and veggie, meat or seafood dishes around the sides. I don’t think I’ve ever thrown away so much plastic in such a short period of time before.

Each day mid-morning and midafternoon, I get a phone call from a lady who sounds very nice asking me what my temperature is. Before they let us off the bus when we arrived at the hotel, they handed out small thermometers and showed us how to put them under our armpits to take our temperature. They sort of worked. I use a touchless one I bought on Amazon. No one checks to make sure that I’m actually telling the truth, but my school will need to report my 2x daily temperature to the Beijing Education Bureau.

Initially, I was nervous about the journey here. What Before was a routine direct flight from DC to Beijing for $400 or less one way has turned into a four-transfer journey for $4000, not including the extra $1000 for 14-day quarantine. Masking the whole time didn’t feel weird; at this point I’m used to it. I think the strangest part of the journey was how empty JFK’s fancy new Terminal 4 was. My domestic flights were about 20% full, international to Shanghai about at their cap of 60%.

After we landed in Shanghai, staff in hazmat suits came on board, checking to make sure we had QR codes on our phones that staff in Seattle helped us get. Then, after an announcement by a Shanghai CDC staffer thanking us for our cooperation, telling us that failing to disclose any illness was a crime punishable under Chinese law, and promising that if we were sick we’d get the best medical care in Shanghai, we spent about an hour and a half deplaning.  No one complained. Delta handed us snack packs on the way out to keep us sustained during the health check process.

That’s when I started to feel angry. And sad. We walked through infrared thermometers where CDC staff were monitoring our temperatures, calmly calling folks to the side to check them individually if theirs appeared elevated. Stopped at individual cubicles to sign a pledge that we would be careful during quarantine. Got another QR code. Showed it to CDC staff at laptops who scanned it, printed out labels, and handed us a test vial. Walked outside to portables that had been set up where we were tested using the virus test that uncomfortably but more accurately takes samples from up inside your sinuses. Waited as staff in hazmat suits collected our passports and assigned us to hotels, meanwhile making sure we had our QR codes ready. I think 5 different people asked me if I needed help while we were waiting. One American passenger’s cell phone died. A staffer got her personal battery pack out for her to borrow. Everyone thanked us. People smiled. It was organized. And we were being watched.

Three weeks ago, on the day that Pres. Trump announced Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination in the White House Rose Garden, my parents and I went down to the National Mall so they could see Black Lives Matter Plaza on 16th Street. Unbeknownst to us, there were also prayer marches that day, with Vice President Pence as the keynote speaker.

For the most part, folks in DC have been vigilant about being careful with COVID. People wear masks and remind others to put theirs on. You can’t enter stores or restaurants without one on. I’ve had managers at Panera tell me to put on my mask when I wasn’t sipping my ice coffee.

All around us on the crowded sidewalks, people wearing badges were walking around in groups, mask-less. On corners, people stood in prayer circles shoulder to shoulder without face coverings. By the time we got to Pennsylvania and 15th streets where you would normally be able to walk in front of the White House, I started politely and firmly asking people to put on their masks in crowded places. Some looked at me like I was crazy. Others told me they didn’t need to because they were outside. I couldn’t tell them what to do. They weren’t hurting me. They didn’t believe in masks. They didn’t need to wear a mask because god was protecting them. A couple of people thanked me, but they looked like locals who were already wearing masks.

The TV news here in my hotel room, both in English and Chinese, keeps repeating clips of Trump rallies with people standing close to each other, maskless, in front of Air Force One. They cut between Trump’s tweets and campaign ads featuring Dr. Fauci and Dr. Fauci’s carefully diplomatic rebukes. It’s kind of like watching CNN.

But then they show images of Pres. Xi Jinping calmly smiling in front of crowds of spectators, all in carefully socially distanced and wearing masks. China, the second-largest economy in the world, they say, joined the international Covax initiative to develop a COVID vaccine. “We have solemnly pledged to make vaccines developed and deployed by China a global public good, which will be provided to developing countries as a priority," the Chinese Foreign Ministry added in a statement. I feel angry, sad, and safe. 

25. Summer Child-Washington, DC Edition 11.0 (2020-08-01)

I’m a summer child. When I graduated from Harvard Ed School in 2012, our commencement speaker Fareed Zakaria argued that we live in the most peaceful, safe, healthy and prosperous time in human history.

In short my lifetime, inflation in the US has pretty much stayed delightfully between 1-3% every year I’ve been alive. Violent crime is down more than 50%. The percentage of humanity living in extreme poverty (less than $1.90/day) has decreased from 35% in 1985 to 10%. In the US (where the poverty rate is calculated based the costs in 1964, adjusted only for inflation), poverty decreased from 14% in 1985 to 11.8% in 2018 (an alternate calculation from Columbia University found that poverty decreased from 21% in 1985 to 12.8% in 2018). In 1985, about 84% of Chinese people lived on less than $1.25 a day. Now it’s 0.5%. Even if that data is inflated, it’s unprecedented.

For the past year, I’ve heard so many people say winter is coming. Now that it’s here (in Ned Stark terms, not the actual season), I’m appreciating the safeguards that are at mitigating the pain. Yesterday, Pres. Trump tweeted “Delay the Election until people can properly, safely and securely vote???” Almost simultaneously, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced that Hong Kong’s elections set for Nov. 24 were postponed for a year, citing dangers from COVID.

Reactions were swift in both places. Former Democratic Presidential Candidate Pete Buttigieg tweeted, “The USA held an election during the Civil War, and we will hold one in 96 days. No distractions—let's get to work.” Steve Calabresi, the conservative founder of the Federalist society, published an op-ed in The New York Times writing that “this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.”

In Hong Kong, Tanya Chan, an opposition lawmaker, told the South China Morning Post, “I wonder if our rivals are concerned about the severity of the pandemic or their own election prospects?” Zhu Goubin, a constitutional law professor in Hong Kong said, “Even from a public health perspective, there is no ground to postpone, unless the government imposes a lockdown in the run-up to the elections. Why can’t people go to polling stations if they are allowed to buy coffee on the streets?”

Neither Pres. Trump nor Beijing has directly responded to these reactions, but Trump moved onto tweeting about the Wall along the US southern border. The writers of the US Constitution created a safeguard against this by including in the 20th Amendment, “The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January…” Before yesterday, I had naively interpreted that as the establishment of a lovely tradition.

Economically we’ve had safeguards, too. Even though the US GDP decreased between April and June by more than it has since 1875, but we’re not in another Great Depression in large part because we’re spending $3 trillion and counting (Derek Thompson at The Atlantic argues that it will take $10 trillion). And we have the Internet.

Even with my mighty blue passport handicapped, I’m still enjoying a privileged summer. I am employed while 11% of Americans aren’t right now. And as I wait for my by-invitation-only Chinese visa to come through, I have a safe, comfortable place to live with fast, reliable, open internet with people I love and like. 

The US and Chinese governments are doing a tit for tat dance that’s complicating things for my Southern American teachers who were supposed to get their visas from the Houston Consulate. But I’m a 20-minute drive from the Chinese Embassy, and along the way, I can get some gas for a meager $1.90 a gallon, followed by a $1 hamburger, and then a $5 latte to wash it all down. 

The car I'll drive to the Chinese Embassy will be one of the safest in the history of automobiles. The traffic lights will all work because we have consistent electricity. Cars around me won’t speed (too much) because cameras that were installed by legitimately elected officials will catch them and they’ll get a ticket. And if and when they inevitably do get a ticket, it will go directly towards the city’s operating budget. While we’re not currently in the most peaceful, safe, healthy, and prosperous time in human history, we’re still not far away from it. This too shall pass.

24. Walls-Washington, DC Edition 10.0 (2020-07-19)

I’m entering my fifth month outside of China, and have now lived in Washington, DC for about as long as I lived in Beijing. There's word that I soon may be on my way back to China via a very expensive, very long journey, thanks to the Beijing Government starting to let in small groups of international teachers with special visas. Most of my ex-pat friends in Beijing are also stuck in their home countries with no plans to return soon. Some countries already sent their diplomats back to China, but the US is just now starting to send limited staff back to the lonely, imposing Embassy in Beijing.

School broke for summer vacation last Friday. Students and staff are now freely traveling across China without needing to present recent negative COVID tests. For the first summer in my memory, I won’t be getting on a plane to go on a holiday adventure. My mighty blue passport wouldn’t grant me access to Canada or Europe anyway.

As I spend more time in the US, I’m realizing how important American soft power is, and how much it’s eroding and leaving open a power vacuum. After a week or so of agita caused by ICE’s announcement that international students learning remotely would lose their visas, my students, colleagues, and I were relieved when the Administration backed off the plan. Now, there’s talk of not granting and revoking US visas for every Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member. Over the past few years, it’s become tremendously difficult to earn a leadership role in any sector in China if you’re not a member of the CCP. This would mean that almost all the Chinese educators I work with daily wouldn’t be able to get a visa to come to the US for something as routine as attending an annual College Board conference.

Quiet, structural walls are being built, too. I have some Chinese RMB in a bank account in Beijing that I’d like to put in my retirement fund. The only way I can access it is through WeChat or Alipay. My Chinese UnionPay ATM card won’t work at the half dozen US multinational businesses I’ve tried. Paypal, Venmo, Zello, and other US-based digital services don’t support Chinese bank accounts or accept Chinese RMB. When trying to take out cash from US ATMs, the machine reads my card and then gives me a mysterious error message that not even ATM tech support can understand. Meanwhile, most Americans don’t even know what WeChat is.   

Last Sunday, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro told Fox News that “all the data that goes into those mobile apps that kids have so much fun with and seem so convenient, it goes right to servers in China…and those agencies which want to steal our intellectual property.” He’s not wrong. When Tik Tok started to really take off in the US after Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” became a hit, I got nervous (though the song is fantastic). How much did American users realize that they were using an app that is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, which works closely with the Chinese central government and local public security bureaus to ensure that they’re keeping the internet “clean”? I don’t and won’t have ByteDance, but I use WeChat regularly, and I always assume that my activity is being monitored. So will I now need a VPN to check my Gmail in China and a VPN to check my WeChat in the US?

23: COVID hits Beijing-Washington, DC Edition 9.0 (2020-06-19)

On June 9, the first COVID-19 case in 56 days was identified in Beijing and tracked to the Xinfadi food market in Beijing, a 45 min. drive from my school. It’s estimated that 70% of fresh vegetables and 10% of the pork consumed in Beijing are supplied by Xinfadi market. By late Sunday, the number of identified cases in Beijing had risen to 499. On Tuesday at 11:30 am EST/11:30 pm BJT (Beijing time), a colleague in South Africa forwarded me an article from the Global Times, a Chinese state-run paper, stating that all Beijing schools were to close, effective the next morning. A minute later, I received a group WeChat from my school’s Communist Party Representative confirming this and saying that no one was answering at the Beijing Education Bureau’s office because they were all in an emergency meeting.

By noon EST/midnight BJT, I was on an emergency phone call planning for how our boarding students would get home, beginning in seven hours later. We devised a calm plan to keep our schedule as routine as possible: students would have breakfast as normal, and at their daily morning homeroom meeting, they would make plans to return home. In-person classes that had recently begun with an international teacher on Zoom working with a colleagued facilitating would revert back to online instruction, as before. Our infrastructure was already established to create a smooth transition, even with such rapid changes.

Our high school graduation normally held in the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square and rescheduled to be held on campus was postponed until further notice. The dinner banquet for our seniors was canceled. Socially distanced award ceremonies wouldn’t happen. Graduation exams were postponed.

A few hours later, parents were already asking how they could pick their children up at school, or how their children could meet them at the border between Beijing and Hebei, a neighboring province that many of our students are from. A cluster of parents parked near the last highway tollbooth before the Beijing provincial line, afraid that if they continued, they’d have to test negative for COVID to get out. And they were worried that their children wouldn’t be allowed out of Beijing at all. I sent out a brief WeChat message to our team, updating them as much as I could. Many of them had already heard about the changes from our students and Chinese colleagues.

That night, while I was sleeping, my leadership met without me, editing our class schedules to accommodate edits made by our Chinese colleagues. Before our weekly 8 am EST Wednesday staff meeting, I awoke to a flurry of brainstorms and plans that were (somewhat) ready to be shared with our team spread across four continents. I felt grateful to have the support of such a strong team.

In the past 24 hours, the 67 of our students and staff who live outside of Beijing have been tested and will receive their results in a few hours. All of our students in grades 4-9 have safely returned home a few high school students are still traveling, and several students are staying in their dorm room (without a roommate) until they receive negative COVID test results that will permit them to return home.

Several of the ten or so teachers on our international team still on campus are starting to make plans to return to their home countries. But the first flights out of Beijing are now in mid-July, at premium rates (tickets that in normal times might be $400 one way are now $2000). In the meantime, they again need to start reporting their body temperature three times a day, both electronically to one ministry and on paper to another. All staff must report if they’ve been in contact with anyone who was at the Xinfadi Market, and if so, if that person was sick, what hospital they went to, and what doctor discharged them. The Beijing Education Bureau collects and reviews this information and reaches out to the school if there are any inconsistencies or anything is missing.

This morning, I popped in my Chinese sim card for the first time in months. Immediately, I received an SMS message in Chinese. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Insurance Center wishes you safety: Recently there have been high incidences of telecommunication frauds involving counterfeit Chinese embassies and consulates in the region. We hereby remind you that the embassy or consulate will not notify you by telephone that your passport has expired…. Pay attention to security incidents such as shootings, smashing cars and robbing, and pay attention to disaster warning. The US alarm call is 911.”

Then I received an SMS in English. “AT&T msg at request of the CDC: Recently travelled internationally? Watch your health for 14 days. Find out if you should stay home: www.cdc.gov/COVIDtravel.”

22. Protest-Washington, DC Edition 8.0 (2020-06-12)

On Monday afternoon, I sat down on a bench between the National Mall and Lafayette Park, facing the White House. There was a fresh red carnation next to me, one of many I saw delicately placed along Constitution Ave. It was a perfect spring day—not too humid, rich green trees creating a canopy over the wide sidewalks usually crowded with tourists. Empty tour busses cruised past bikers, kids eating ice cream, and people walking by holding signs saying, “Black Lives Matter.” Most wore masks.

Friends and colleagues around the world who know I’m in DC have reached out to me, asking after my safety. I sat there on what I consider hallowed ground, enjoying my safety, freedom, and reflecting on the privileges that allowed me that moment. A Canadian colleague in China told me that she read on MSN that there was rioting in Washington and other cities around the US, and that Pres. Trump had been whisked away to a bunker under the White House. When she clicked on the links to read more, the Great Firewall efficiently blocked the page, preventing her from seeing beyond jarring coarse headlines.

I meandered towards the White House, following the protestors. As I got closer, I saw energetic groups of teens and 20 and 30 somethings. Jovial police officers from local and federal agencies lingered along the sides. Buildings on the blocks surrounding the White House were boarded up protecting broken windows and preventing further damage.

The block of Pennsylvania Ave. in front of the White House, usually open to the public, was blocked off and used as a staging area for police. There were Humvees, K9 vehicles, horse trailers, National Guard busses that looked like school busses painted in fatigues.

Well-stocked stations were at each corner with snacks, food, water, face masks, and sanitizer for protestors to take. Some protestors walked around with bags, collecting trash. On the left side of Lafayette Park, there a few demonstrators on top of a small burned-out building, which I later found out was a bathroom a few days earlier. An herbal whiff of marijuana emanated from the blackened structure. Police stood in a line wearing helmets and shields about 50 feet across the no-man’s land of Lafayette Park.

It was about an hour and a half before the District’s 7pm curfew began, and more people walked towards the White House as I walked away. Near the Washington Monument, I saw a man standing on a corner holding a large American flag. He was wearing a Vietnam Vet hat and was missing half his teeth. As I walked by, he said to me, “I hope you enjoy your freedom.” I try to, I told him. “People fought and died for it,” he said. I thanked him for his service and glanced at the White House behind him.

During the height of the Hong Kong protests, I remember Beijingers privately asking me what the US government would do if something like that happened in America. Naively, I remember responding that it wouldn’t get that far because we have spaces for people to freely express themselves both in and outside of government so that they wouldn’t have to resort to shutting down cities. The only exceptions I could think of to share were the race riots that we’ve had in America in past years, which had stimulated some change. But not like Hong Kong.

An hour after I returned home, I watched President Trump’s address, at the White House across the street from one of those free spaces. After he finished, CNN mentioned in passing that the block in front of Lafayette Park was cleared by officers who used rubber bullets and some kind of gas. I quizzically wondered what happened at that peaceful assembly after I left, and then watched in horror as my president, surrounded by a phalanx of officers in fatigues, crossed the street I stood on an hour earlier, now empty.

I thought about the young African American woman who offered me pizza dropping the boxes as she scrambled off the street to avoid getting hurt, with no warning. The white college-aged woman who was walking around distributing water bottles from the big camping backpack she carried. Did the weight of the pack make her fall over as she ran away? The reporter for an Arabic news station showing a live feed of peaceable Americans exercising their responsibility to protect our Constitutional freedoms and liberties. The white male Agence France-Presse reporter who clumsily interviewed an African American man, simultaneously trying to understand and acknowledge his own privilege while listening to his interviewee generously and patiently share some of his own story.

Shortly after Trump’s walk, DC Mayor Murial Bowser tweeted, “I imposed a curfew at 7pm. A full 25 minutes before the curfew & w/o provocation, federal police used munitions on peaceful protestors in front of the White House, an act that will make the job of @DCPoliceDept officers more difficult. Shameful! DC residents — Go home. Be safe”

Today is the 21st anniversary of the protests in Tiananmen Square. In Hong Kong, an annual vigil to honor the victims of that day was banned for the first time. There’ve been no public rebukes of this unprecedented restriction in China. If there were, they were quickly scrubbed from the public media.

Conversely, since Monday, outside of China and Hong Kong, prominent companies, religious organizations and leaders both in and outside of the United States have expressed their support for peaceful protests like the one that the president cleared in front of Lafayette Park on Monday, including Trump’s current and past defense secretaries. Which path will we continue to take? 

21: Messaging-Washington, DC Edition 7.0 (2020-06-04)

Before our weekly staff meeting began yesterday morning, a teacher sent me a private message on Zoom asking that we spend a few moments acknowledging and reflecting on the murder of George Floyd. While we have several South African teachers, who self-identify as “colored”, she is our only African American and is waiting out COVID in Houston. I opened the meeting by sharing that here in the US, we’ve had mostly peaceful protests in response to this murder, and that I had gone to the White House last Monday to see some of the valiant peaceful protests. Families have been walking by my suburban Washington, DC house carrying signs that say “Black Lives Matter” and protestors are standing on street corners, getting cars to honk. These peaceful demonstrations, I tried to explain, are in response to an inexcusable murder that simply brought attention to inequity that has always existed in America, and that I will only ever somewhat be able to understand.

I asked our staff who joined the call from seven different countries if anyone had reflections they wanted to share about this or the other protests happening around the world. I counted to 30. Silence. The Houston-based teacher spoke, sharing that she had attended some of the memorials for George Floyd and that it’s a challenging and emotional time in her hometown. Then we waited again to see if others wanted to share. After another 30 seconds, she sent me another private chat. Did anyone else understand what was happening here in America? No, we assumed, and moved on.

Immediately after that meeting, a white South African teacher told me privately that she was thankful to hear that I was inspired by the protests in the US, and that they were peaceful. “That’s not what we’re seeing on news here,” the teacher said. “And in South Africa, whenever we hear about a protest, we avoid it because it means that there are riots and we’ll get hurt if we go near them.” She recommended that I start following China Daily on Twitter, a state-run English publication. Their tweets promote the messages of the systemic injustices in the US to the digital world outside of China. 

Indeed, about an hour ago, @ChinaDaily posted, “The China Society for #HumanRights Studies on Thursday issued an article titled 'The COVID-19 Pandemic Magnifies the Crisis of "US-Style Human Rights".' https://bit.ly/30zh5rs #coronavirus #Covid_19 #US", with a picture of protestors in front of the Capitol dome. Above that tweet is a post with a peaceful green landscape of a Chinese minority region. Below the post about the protests is a photo of China’s latest satellite rocket launch.

This morning, a Beijing-based Chinese colleague who had been in our staff meeting and asked me if I had seen any Asian protestors demonstrating. Though the crowds were racially diverse, I saw few Asian faces. But, I explained, that may have been more a result of the relatively small Asian populations in the DC area, and that fear of contracting COVID is still quite real. My colleague mentioned Secretary of State Pompeo by name to me, saying that videos of his speech about China’s new Hong Kong security laws have been playing daily on Beijing news. The Chinese news is also closely covering the protests, but my colleague hadn’t heard about the peaceful demonstrations before I shared my experiences. I was careful to speak only about my experiences in the US, and not insinuate that similar peaceful demonstrations should happen in China. I wanted to share what I had read in People’s Daily posts on Twitter. I wanted to share the eloquent Washington Post op-ed that Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai wrote last month, appealing for the US to work with China rather than place blame (it even ends with a reference to Pres. Lincoln’s inauguration speech where he appeals for building friendship instead of conflict and aggression). Nevertheless, it made me nervous to even have this conversation over WeChat, especially the week after the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. And Twitter and the Washington Post are blocked by the Great Firewall.

The focus in Beijing continues to be flattening the curve and resuming economic growth. Today Beijing diagnosed their first COVID case in almost two months. Earlier this week, two of our middle school students were found to have a slight fever. Immediately, students and staff began the emergency quarantine procedures they had practiced. The students and their roommates were quickly isolated and sent home. Adults and children who had been near them were quarantined for several hours in their classrooms and cleared by a doctor. Then normal regular routines resumed. No students or staff other than those two classes were impacted.

20. COVID Testing-Washington, DC Edition 6.0 (2020-05-05)

Last Monday, 45 of our grade 12 students returned to campus. Before being allowed on campus, all students and staff were tested for COVID-19. After the first round of staff testing, more people were identified return to campus. So, within a few days, more testing was done. Within 24 hours, results for everyone came back negative. This data was uploaded to the Beijing COVID-19 app, which gives each person a unique QR code which, when scanned, identifies when and where that individual last tested negative for the virus. My colleagues in China who helped administrate the testing asked what they could to do help support my family and me. I asked them to send me masks, which I received after a few apprehensive weeks of wondering whether a government would confiscate them in transit.

A friend asked me yesterday if the COVID tests being administered in Beijing are accurate. I have no idea, nor do I have a definitively credible way of finding out. But I do know that if anyone exhibits any symptoms on campus, they’ll immediately be put in isolation and examined by one of two doctors who are at school 24 hours a day. The campus is regularly inspected by the Beijing government, who gives both the school’s Communist Party leader and the Chinese Principal direction of changes needed to help ensure safety. In true Chinese style, I’m sent daily photo evidence of these directions being followed (students and staff spread out in the cafeteria, using handwashing stations before eating, classrooms with only half of the normal number of students in them). I also know that yesterday the WHO reported 5 new COVID cases in China and 26,753 in the United States.

Over the weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a rare joint statement respectfully declining “the [Trump] Administration’s generous offer to deploy rapid COVID-19 testing capabilities to Capitol Hill.” They stated that “Congress wants to keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly.” As a stable, low-risk individual who doesn’t work in an emergency response sector, the only way I’d be able to get tested here in Maryland is if I was symptomatic and hospitalized. And that’s only after my governor purchased thousands of coronavirus tests from South Korea.

In my February 25 Dispatch, I wrote:

My team’s resiliency around the world makes me think about America’s. What if an outbreak like the COVID-2019 became widespread here as quickly as it did in Wuhan? Would Americans be compliant enough to “self-quarantine”? Might we have protests that would trigger further spreads of disease because of more people congregating in one place? Would the divisiveness of our federal government and contentions between our cities, states, and federal governments lead to deadly inaction?

On Friday, May Day, protestors held annual demonstrations around the world, advocating for workers’ rights, while also observing public health guidelines (with the exception of Istanbul). Greek Labour Union members work masks and stood at least a meter apart as they marched passed Parliament in Athens. Italians tied red ribbons on lampposts in Rome instead of filling the streets. Viennese protestors drew circles on the ground to maintain adequate distancing during their demonstrations. No one carried weapons.

And in America? The spring weather across the country brought protests (without social distancing) in the capitols of North Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, Indiana, New Hampshire, and California. In Michigan, protestors (legally) showed up with automatic guns in hand, surrounded by signs like, “We the People do NOT submit to TYRANNY.”

My teachers and I have the privilege of being comfortably employed during this extraordinary time. I also have the privilege of having a first-hand three-month preview of the scope of life during the pandemic. But with that privilege comes frustrating powerlessness that accompanies resistance to change.

19. Beijing COVID Precautions-Washington, DC Edition 5.0 (2020-04-21)

One of the hundreds of WeChat messages I woke up to this morning was the schedule for nucleic acid pharyngeal swab COVID-19 testing for all 121 staff members back on my campus in Beijing. In precise 1-minute increments, the staff went into the school gym to have their mouths swabbed by health officials, organized by the district education committee and my Chinese colleagues. They waited two meters apart from each other while they were checked in by health officials in head-to-toe personal protective equipment. Less than 24 hours later, we were informed that all tests came back negative.

I’m told by students, colleagues, and friends that life is crawling back to normal in China. While kindergartens have been canceled for the rest of the year, grade 12 students planning to go to university in China will still have to take the Gao Kao exam on July 7 and 8, a month later than originally planned. About 75% of our grade 12 students are returning to class next Monday and Chinese staff who were able to return are already back on campus, completing their required 14-day quarantine.

To prepare, the Beijing municipal government did one round of health inspections, gave a few notes, and are returning to our school this week. Once on campus, staff and students may not leave for two weeks. Every building has a supply of PPE and masks must be worn at all times. Seats in the cafeteria are assigned, with no more than one person at a table. Temperatures are routinely taken. A doctor will be on campus 24 hours a day.

Our staff’s data from their latest COVID test is uploaded into the Beijing COVID health tracking app. Everyone has a color-coded QR code, which confirms the last time they tested negative for the virus and where. As businesses, schools and mass transportation are opening up again in China, it’s becoming routine for the QR code to be scanned to pass security. 

One of the models followed by the Washington, DC municipal government shows that COVID won’t peak here in the DC-metro area until the end of June. After I was arrogantly skeptical of my Chinese colleagues wearing masks everywhere in the past few months, my family and I have started wearing homemade masks a friend recently sewed for us when we’re near other people. The only masks available nearby are $5 surgical or $25 N-96 masks from the local gas station. We’re waiting on a large shipment of N-96 masks that a colleague is sending us from China—they’re stuck in Customs in Beijing. 

18. Masks and evidence-Washington, DC Edition 4.0-March 31, 2020 (2020-03-31)

When we began our online school almost two months ago now, I chose to teach 11th grade non-fiction writing. Our first unit was about epidemics past, present, and future. In the early versions of their papers, students wrote about how Covid-19 interrupted their Spring Festival Holidays with their families (Chinese New Year). They believed in and wanted to protect their “motherland”. The virus was an enemy that needed to be fought, the doctors and nurses, soldiers on the frontlines. It was necessary to “listen to officials, pay attention to personal hygiene, wash hands, wear a mask when going outside and get your temperature taken before going into a public place, and avoid crowds.”  

Initially, when writing comments on their drafts, I noted to students that there was little evidence that wearing a mask was effective if you weren’t infected with the virus. What was their source? Privately I wondered, what was the point in getting their temperature taken before they walked into a Starbucks? They might have the virus dormant in their body without yet showing symptoms. I knew that they only had access to the Chinese Internet and worried about how much information they were getting.

A month later, they’re still wearing masks and taking their temperature before going into public places. But their restaurants and malls are reopening slowly as we’re entering lockdowns.

Saturday at midnight, the Chinese government sealed their borders to all non-diplomatic visa holders, except for humanitarian workers and emergencies. For about two weeks prior to that, foreigners who wante to go to Beijing needed to have a medical screening at the airport, then spend their two-week quarantine in a government-selected hotel at their own expense. Their temperature was taken daily in the morning and evening, and meals (that they were billed for) were delivered to their room. At the end of their two weeks, they were given the Covid-19 test. If they were negative, they were then free to go about their business and were given documentation about when and where they had tested negative.

About half of our teachers are still outside of China, and now everyone is affected by the virus. My colleague in Sweden shared that the government was encouraging people to work from home and socially distance. Restaurants and shops remain open, but Swedes are cooperatively keeping their space. The South Africans were scrambling to get their food shopping done before the national three-week lockdown began. A colleague in Cape Town told me that armed soldiers and police officers are patrolling their streets, ensuring that anyone who is outside has a specific reason to be.

Last week, in between grading, Zoom work calls and remote happy hours, I drove down to the National Mall. There were only relaxed Capitol Police doing routine patrols, biking past joggers and dog walkers who kept their distance from each other. Smithsonian’s stood dark on the sunny spring day, with small white papers on their front doors, explaining their indefinite closure. Major roads like Independence Avenue on the south side of the mall were blocked by garbage trucks, something I’d only seen during Presidential Inaugurations. Hot dog trucks were parked and closed up. There was plenty of parking available in spots that would normally be occupied by large tour busses. Not one person was wearing a mask.

Shameless plug: Check out my Edutopia piece about what my team and I have learned so far about online learning. 

17. 1918 Pandemic-Washington, DC Edition 3.0 (2020-03-11)

In 1918, the world saw the largest epidemic of the 20th century, which is thought to have spread quickly largely because it coincided with a time when people were traveling internationally more than any other time before then in history, WWI.  Now, we’re experiencing a pandemic-like event that, arguably, is the result of one of the longest periods of peace and prosperity in modern history.

Yesterday, the WHO continued to refrain from labeling the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic. “Now that the virus has a foothold in so many countries, the threat of a pandemic has become very real. But it would be the first pandemic in history that could be controlled,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. CNN disagreed, and announced that they’re going to start using the term pandemic. If you Google Covid-19, Coronavirus, pandemic, a bright red “SOS Alert Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)” pops up at the top of your screen. In an attempt to prevent misinformation, Google and other media influencers have started to collaborate with reliable sources to highlight accurate information.

I’ve been teaching our 11th-grade humanities writing course. Over the past month, students' daily journal entries have shifted from writing about how they long to see their friends and teachers, to how they want to help educate people in other countries about how to deal with the Virus. They’re accustomed to the checkpoints that take your temperature and make sure you’re wearing a mask before entering another neighborhood, apartment complex, or store. Empty subways, busses, and streets have become normal for them. It’s routine to wake up to the blaring of speakers on passing propaganda vans, reminding them to wash their hands and stay healthy.

Two weeks ago, I attended a briefing on Capitol Hill about the COVID-19 organized by the US-Asia Institute, with Dr. Leana Wen from GWU (formerly the head of public health for Baltimore and briefly CEO of Planned Parenthood), and Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo from Johns Hopkins. At the time, the only way to get tested in the US was to have been to Wuhan within the previous two weeks and have a significant respiratory illness or have been to mainland China in the previous two weeks and be hospitalized. Then wait for 48 hours to receive results from the CDC. They acknowledged that the Chinese government was initially opaque and uncooperative with the WTO (and the CDC), but hypothesize that their significant travel restrictions and US closed borders may have slowed international transmission by a few weeks. But this precious time wasn’t maximized because of federal inaction, which wasn't helped by CDC, NIH, and public health budget cuts over the past two decades. Their advice? Stay away from places where there are a lot of people infected and wash your hands.

The young legislative assistants sitting around me in the briefing helped spread that message. A few days later, Congress and states passed emergency spending bills. CDC started letting states do their own testing. And we started seeing images of empty subways, busses, and streets in Milan.

In my last Dispatch, I wrote about my fears of Americans being not compliant enough to self-quarantine, or that contentiousness in our government could lead to deadly inaction. I underestimated the power of fear, and effective communications in a critical 24-hour media cycle.

This morning, Chinese colleagues asked me to confirm that we wouldn’t be returning to school until June, as was rumored over the past few days. Where had they heard this? Chinese Dr. Zhong Nanshan, who discovered and helped expose the Chinese Government’s coverup of the SARS coronavirus in 2003 (and was appointed by the Government to lead the investigation into Covid-19). On March 6, Dr. Zhong spoke at a Covid-19 symposium in Guandong Province. In addition to discussing the importance of early detection of the virus, he predicted that the global epidemic would last until at least June.

 My colleagues’ question wasn’t necessarily irrational; the 1918 flu epidemic subsided in summer 1918 and then came back with a vengeance that fall. But I regularly read and listen to reports from media and experts that garner ratings and attention by speaking truth to power. Now that schools here are starting to close, containment zones are being established, and major events are canceled (I was supposed to be at South by Southwest EDU in Austin right now), I’m realizing that Americans aren’t complying with these restrictions, they’re engaging with them.

16. Refugees-NYC Edition (2020-02-14)

UNHCR defines refugees as, “people who have fled war, violence, conflict or persecution and have crossed an international border to find safety in another country.” I have crossed an international border into my own country, where I continue to enjoy the peace, safety, and privilege of the developed world. School will restart for us on Monday as planned, but online-only until further notice. My teachers are spread across four continents and seven time zones, serving students who are almost exclusively in their apartments in China. We’re helping start and teach the largest online school in history.

The United States currently has a Level 4-Do Not Travel Warning for China—the same advisory level as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, and other countries experiencing significant unrest. Almost all airlines have canceled their flights to China for at least the next month. Most countries have sealed off their borders to Chinese. Beijing, a city of 20 million people, had about half of its population leave for the Lunar New Year. Only two million have returned. Friends and colleagues send me images and videos of desolate streets and malls, places that are usually as crowded and lively as Times Square.

My privilege isn’t only the freedom of movement that being outside of China has afforded me, it’s my access to information. Though VPNs have been working consistently in Beijing (I’m convinced that their government is able to control their functionality), foreign websites are still slow. The Chinese government, perhaps in an effort to limit how long they’re a virtual island in the world, is only giving short-term instructions and guidance. Every morning, I wake up to memos forwarded by my school’s Communist Party Leader encouraging us to model epidemic control and prevention practices, work to limit public panic and promote confidence and unity. From 7000 miles away, messaging like this seems to be working. While lonely, bored and stifled, my colleagues and friends talk about a supportive culture in Beijing that reminds me of the unity and generosity in New York after 9/11.

Businesses are adapting to this new way of life. Starbucks, via WeChat, sent out videos demonstrating “First Level Protection” in their stores. They put sealed drinks in paper bags and hang them in their shop to avoid close human contact. Or, if you prefer, a person on a motorbike wearing a mask will bring you your $5 coffee. He’ll transport the drinks in a sealed container (which is regularly disinfected), get his temperature taken before entering your apartment complex, and will then put your drink on the back of his motorbike so that you can take it without ever getting within 15 feet of each other. And, just to reinforce this caring culture of protection, their latest cups have red hearts next to stylized drawings of people in hazmat suits and angels delivering presents.

On the subway and the streets in Manhattan, I’ve only seen a few people wearing masks, and almost always the wearer looked Chinese. In Chinatown, the Hong Kong supermarket featured an entire section of masks, at high prices to meet the demand, with half of the varieties already out of stock. Stores near my school in Beijing are completely sold out of masks. If you queue for about an hour early in the morning at the local WuMart department store, you can buy a pack of 5 masks for ¥80 (a little over $10, and more than double what they would cost otherwise). But, all this vigilance may just be helping reinforce confidence and unity; according to the WHO, “if you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCoV infection.”

15: Online Learning-Washington, DC Edition 2.0-Feb. 26, 2020 (2020-02-26)

Online school started for us last Monday, as planned. As expected, Alibaba added 100,000 new servers to accommodate the expected increased traffic from the 180 million students. Impatient parents and restless children started sending WeChats to teachers and staff, eagerly asking questions about schoolwork. Our team began holding live office hours from 6am-midnight Beijing time Monday-Friday, leveraging our teachers' 6 different time zones. Staff was engaged and excited to get back to work. We were humming.

I waited to see what would go wrong where I least expected it. Then on Tuesday, our site wouldn’t load. My WeChat blew up with hundreds of messages with students, teachers, and parents around the globe sending identical images of a depressingly blank webpage. Like many other online Chinese learning platforms, we’d been hacked, most likely by trolls from India. Then, just as we were able to reinforce our security and get back online, our South African teachers had difficulty connecting. They had to work around pre-scheduled load shedding (rolling blackouts) because South Africa doesn’t have enough electric supply to meet demand. So, they adapted, charging devices when electricity was available, and working off of cellular data when their home internet was cut because of the load shedding.

My team’s resiliency around the world has makes me think about America’s. What if an outbreak like the COVID-2019 became widespread here as quickly as it did in Wuhan? Would Americans be compliant enough to “self-quarantine”? Might we have protests that would trigger further spreads of disease because of more people congregating in one place? Would the divisiveness of our federal government and contentions between our cities, states, and federal governments lead to deadly inaction?

Conversely, as I’ve been preparing curriculum for the 11th-grade writing class I’m teaching, I continue to be thankful for consistently fast, open internet and electricity. For our first project, I’m having students compare and contrast this Coronavirus with past endemics. Before posting a site or video I want students to use, I have to first test if it’s blocked in China (there are several websites that do this), then decide whether or not it’s too controversial. I’m having them do their research from reliable sources I got off of sites blocked on the Chinese Internet. Risqué outlets like the BBC, the University of British Columbia, and Cambridge University (via YouTube).

Most of the 180 million students attending online school in China right now are being taught via lecture following the National Curriculum on DingTalk, an app run by Alibaba. Periodically, I’ll hear stories on NPR about life in Wuhan hospitals. I smile when they inevitably mention students watching classes on their phones. More often than not, they’ll complain about how they’re bored, but then express gratitude for the care they’ve received.

A few friends who do development work around the world recently asked me how students who don’t have internet access are continuing their learning. Not only do I not know the answer to this question, but I also can’t yet find answers on the Chinese Internet or the open American internet that I’m enjoying. 

14: Public discourse-Washington, DC Edition (2020-02-05)

I spent the past two days visiting legislatures, a satisfactory temporary distraction from the Corona Virus. Yesterday, my mom and I waited in line for hours at the US Capitol to see the closing arguments of the Impeachment Trial in the Senate Chamber (when we finally got in, they had just finished and went back to regular session). On our way into the Capitol, we saw a man wearing a plastic gold crown, holding up a sign that read, “Respect the DIVINE RIGHT OF PRESIDENTS ‘I am the chosen one’ -Donald John Trump”. During our wait, we saw European tourists, a Hasidic Jewish father proudly explaining to his perfectly behaved five children how a bill becomes a law, a Mennonite family conspicuously dressed in hand-made clothes and beaming with excitement, and thousands of other Americans of different ages and skin tones, some walking, some in wheelchairs.

Today I visited the Maryland House of Delegates in Annapolis, where I saw my good friend Delegate Jared Solomon on the floor. Outside the State House and in its lobby were lobbyists of all ages wearing bright red shirts that had messages advocating for gun control. A large suburban middle school group sat next to me in the gallery. I overheard their host, a middle-aged Caucasian woman, point to the paintings on the high walls in the chamber. “See those pictures?” she said. “They’re all white men who have been Speakers of the House of Delegates.” Then she explained that Maryland now has its first woman of color as Speaker, the third in the US.

These institutions are designed to and do (mostly) allow for conflict and difference to be peacefully shared, debated, and resolved—in public. A theory about why the Corona Virus was allowed to spread before beginning its containment was that the government covered it up. But this wasn’t necessarily a deliberate, individual cover-up. Public discussion in China about the embarrassing, if not shameful facts I saw discussed openly in these legislatures simply wouldn’t happen, at multiple levels.

Friends and colleagues in Beijing share that the city continues to be a ghost town. It’s estimated that about half of the 20 million people who live in Beijing left for the Lunar New Year this year, as they do every year. So far, only 2 of those 10 million people have returned. To support self-imposed quarantine, the government extended the New Year Holiday. Imagine if Thanksgiving was extended by a few days. Then multiply the population impacted by that extended holiday by more than four, and make it two weeks longer. 

Initially, my school was required to give the local municipal government daily updates about the health of any student or staff member from Hubei province, or who had family who lived in Hubei. All staff, regardless of where we were in the world, reported where we had been in the past two weeks, how we traveled, and the status of our health and of those around us. We were given mandates by the government to check everyone’s temperature at the gate before entering our campus. There were instructions to self-quarantine at home, avoid populated areas, and wear a mask whenever outside. There was advice to fill our sinks and bathtubs with a bleach-water solution to help disinfect the air.

Now the government-defined two-week period of quarantine is coming to an end. There is still no evidence of full containment, but the actual threat of the virus is also ambiguous. Messaging continues to be images of large newly constructed hospitals and reminders to wear masks that may or may not be effective. Meanwhile over a billion people (and my students, families, staff and me) are waiting to get direction about what comes next. Because there’s no place where this crisis can be shared, debated and resolved in public. 

14. Wuhan-San Francisco Edition (2020-01-25)

In China, the Lunar New Year is often one of the only times all year that people return to their 家(jia; hometown; home) all year. It is common, if not expected, that workers will need to make up a holiday on a weekend, often as directed by their local government. But Chinese New Year is different. And so, I’m in America for a month, seeing the people who define my own jia’s around the country.

Now that I’m home, several people have asked me what is most surprising about living in China. It’s discovering how little Chinese know about America and how little Americans know about China. Well educated friends and family asked me how I like living in Shanghai (a 12+ hour drive from Beijing) or Hong Kong (a little farther away from Beijing than the distance from New York to New Orleans). But those conversations with similarly educated Chinese about American cities would probably be no different.

A unifier has been the coronavirus. Friends and family from around the world are reaching out to me, reminding me how lucky I am to have them in my life, and showing me how much they’re trying to connect with what they’re reading, hearing and seeing in the media. As I enjoy my 5Ge American Internet (apparently a marketing tool by AT&T; it’s not the same as 5G), I’m free to compare international media coverage with the information passed to me via WeChat from my Chinese colleagues, who get their updates from their Government and Communist Party contacts at the city, provincial, and national levels.

In China, the collectivist culture is mitigated by the individual's drive to protect themselves, their family and friends. Chinese colleagues and friends, always careful to promote safety, have advised me to wear a mask and stay away from crowds in Beijing (700 miles from Wuhan, the city the virus is thought to have originated from). My WeChat is filled with graphics in English and Chinese with what kinds of masks to wear and not, how to protect yourself, and what to do when you feel sick.

An advantage of China’s authoritarian government is that its citizens are usually compliant. Culturally, appearance is deeply important to the Government and the people. My school in Beijing is currently hosting a “winter camp” where students from across China spend their New Year’s holiday prepping for AP, TOEFL, and IELTS exams. The local government passed along instructions, through our Chinese Communist representative, to submit daily reports about any student or staff member who are from Hubei Province (where Wuhan is), traveled there recently, or spent time with someone who traveled there recently. Those who have are contacted by a school representative, given some sort of physical exam, and their individual travel history is forwarded to the public health department. Travel between Hubei and Beijing is prohibited.

On a larger scale, the Chinese Government started visible public health projects that are photographed and broadcasted in China, and abroad. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that, according to state media, the Government started building a 1000-bed hospital using “35 diggers and 10 bulldozers", aiming to complete the building in 6 days. Images of the frenzied construction site can be seen in every major international news outlet—and state media.

While these reported efforts are significant, there’s also the underlying knowledge that any public information shared in China is curated to create a reality that often appears better than it actually is. The top headline the state-run People's Daily reads, “Xi stresses racing against time to reach Chinese Dream”, right above “WHO says ‘too early’ to declare coronavirus outbreak in China a global emergency”. Their most-viewed story is, “All-out efforts ordered to curb spread of virus”.

13. Outside-Australia Edition (2020-01-12)

Since my last Dispatch, I spent a week in Perth, Australia visiting some friends down under. For those of you who’ve expressed concern, thank you for your thoughts. Perth is about 2000 miles West of the fires, and the wind has been blowing the smoke SE, so while vast swaths of land burned, we had fresh air and blue skies.

My first impression of Perth was how diverse the city is, reminding me how I have become accustomed to living as a minority surrounded by Han Chinese. After relaxing with potable fluoride-enhanced tap water, drivers who signaled when they changed lanes, and open fast internet, I started to relish the sense of liberty around me.

In some ways, that liberty was protected by a lot of rules. In Western Australia, you can get a significant fine if you’re caught even touching your cell phone and you’re behind the wheel of a car, regardless of whether or not you’re at a stop light. Abundant speed cameras maintain a culture of driving no faster than the posted limit. Sales tax is 10%, which supports universal healthcare and interest-free student loans. Pets are required to be registered and wear their collar at all times. The gun laws are strict and enforced (though police carry side arms).

A Chinese colleague remarked to me the other day that it is Chinese culture to be fearful. Not necessarily Trumpian fear educed by late-night tweets, but fear of taking risks, of individual thought; a lack of trust. The China I’ve experienced has a reactionary culture, which, I’m realizing, is perhaps a reaction to that fear. It’s standard for parents to have live cell phone video feeds of their child’s daycare to monitor the attentiveness of the teachers. Restaurants routinely wrap dishes in plastic to demonstrate that they’re clean. Sometimes there are TV screens at restaurant cash registers so customers can monitor the cook making your food in real time.

This extends beyond the individual consumer experience and leads to short-term planning in a culture that’s existed for thousands of years. My school is given its calendar each semester from the local education bureau. We didn’t get it until about a month after school started in the fall, and we still don’t have it for next semester. Unfinished ghost apartment buildings 20+ stories tall surround my school’s campus, next to several active construction sites for additional future residential properties.

All land in China is owned by the government, so instead of paying property taxes, property owners pay a long-term government lease. If a developer runs out of money before a project is finished, the financial penalty is the simply the one-time lost opportunity cost and investment.

I believe this reactionaryism is the result of fear conflating with a tremendously competitive culture, and exposure to capitalism and the outside world. According to the BBC, this year China had more sales for Christmas presents than the US. In Beijing there were European-style Christmas markets, holiday music, red Starbucks cups, children sitting on Santa’s knee for pictures, and colored lights at malls. There were no nativity scenes, and I never once heard the words “Jesus” or “Christ”, even in the music that played in stores.

But perhaps because of this fear and distrust, China feels safe, as safe as I felt in Australia. Like Australia, the gun laws here are strict (perhaps for some different reasons), but the police don’t carry sidearms. I don’t have to worry about walking down a dark street alone, and it would be shocking to get pickpocketed. Safety is a point of pride for Chinese people and government messaging reinforces the idea that the capricious world outside of its borders is dangerous.

12. Puppets (2019-12-21)

This morning, a 5th-grade student in a weekend English class I teach told me that he felt like he was “just a puppet in English class.” He attends a local public school and told me, in perfect English, that his teacher has students do reading, writing and listening test-prep exercises for the duration of his class. He now hates English, he told me, because it’s no longer interesting. “Teacher, what should I do?” he asked me. I advised him to write her a polite letter or speak to her in private about his frustrations and suggest what he would rather work on in English class.

Last weekend I went on a business trip to Yanghe, a small city in Jiangsu province, three hours from Beijing by high-speed rail. One of our high school teachers, an American, joined me to help interview teachers at a new school that my company is opening in the spring. Yanghe has been known for little more than producing 白酒 (bai jiu, literally white liquor…kind of like a Chinese vodka) for the past 1500 years. But in an effort to reduce the population pressure in nearby Suzhou and Shanghai, the government is developing the small city and reached out to my school’s parent company to open a campus there.

Our company is constructing a large building to house the new 4000-student school. It has a fake red-brick façade that looks like something you’d find in New England if it had real brick and a smaller footprint. A St. Regis Hotel is going up across the street. These construction sites are surrounded by farms and half-finished ghost buildings on what used to be farms. (In China, all land is owned by the government and people by long-term leases for the right to use the land, rather than paying annual property taxes, so if a company runs out of money for a project, there’s little incentive to finish it.)

I spent my day in Yanghe first getting interviewed by a local tv station about the new school, then being hosted at the local 8000 student k-9 public school to observe Chinese English teaching candidates. The candidates taught lessons from the province’s approved English textbooks, which were printed by Cambridge University Publishing China, and had typos. The classroom we sat in had old green chalkboards and accommodated over 60 students on hardwood chairs under punishing fluorescent lights.

In the absence of real students, the candidates pretended that they were in front of a class filled with students, some even responding to imaginary student responses. I quickly realized that not having students present was irrelevant; the focus was on their teaching, not on the learning they would be leading.

My American colleague sat on my left and we passed notes about the lessons and tried to hold back nervous giggles. Representatives from the local education bureau sat stoically on my right, rating the candidates on a checklist. Most of the candidates mispronounced their English. One was so nervous that she stopped midway and left the interview (my colleague went to look for her afterward to bring her back, unsuccessfully). Only one candidate walked out from behind the podium at the front of the room during her demo, and she was so strong that my colleague and I joked that we wanted to try to steal her for our school. It was clear that all these teachers were interviewing to be the puppet-masters my student dreaded, not out of malice, but because they didn’t know any different. 

11. Oxygen (2019-12-13)

Saturday through Monday, the pollution was worse than it had been since I arrived in August. When I took a breath outside, I knew that I was breathing in, but it didn’t feel like there was enough oxygen. I got a migraine and felt sluggish. When I wasn’t in classrooms (which have air filters) or at home (where I have an air filter), I found myself constantly searching for shelter in places where there might be good air—even though I was wearing a mask. It was stifling. More than once I thought about going to the airport and getting on the shortest flight to anywhere that had clean air (the irony that getting on a plane would contribute to the pollution was not lost on me). Then, suddenly, within an hour, it all blew away and the air was cleaner than any other major city in the world. I opened up all of the windows in my apartment and let in the delightfully frigid, clean air.

Since then, the internet has been the fastest I’ve experienced here. VPNs are consistently working. In the absence of any messaging from the government, I’ve wondered if this loosened access to foreign information is to compensate for the bad air earlier in the week. The only time my VPN dropped this week was when I was listening to NPR streaming on my laptop and as part of a story, someone said, “the corrupt Chinese Communist party.” Two seconds later the VPN cut out, and within two minutes worked again.

Life here continued on through the pollution, I think in large part because the air on those few days used to be the norm as recently as three years ago. The bad air wasn’t something that could be denied; you can report an inaccurate AQI (air quality index), but if people can’t breathe, everyone knows that something is wrong.

Beijing is still considered a hardship post by the US State Department in large part because of the recent historical pollution (American government staff working in Beijing receive a 20% salary differential). But people still flock here from around the world. One of my biggest surprises here in Beijing is how much impact international politics and economics has on my life.

A plurality of my staff is now South African. As my South African colleagues have told me, were they to stay at home, they would have low salaries, large classes, and constantly be watching out for crime. They’re relieved that our electricity never goes out. They don’t have to worry that gas will leak in their apartment. They appreciate the excellent Chinese infrastructure.

The Brits are aggressively recruiting Chinese students to come to the UK. The Conservative Government (which now will continue to be in power) is attracting Chinese students with visa extensions that will allow them to work in the UK for a year after they graduate. The country that used to profit from the Chinese buying and smoking British opium is now luring their descents to be their neighbors.

The Germans have built car factories around Beijing to avoid the high taxes Chinese pay on imported vehicles (that’s also largely why Tesla is opening a plant here too). The government’s very public push for low-emissions vehicles to curb pollution created a significant market opportunity. But because the Chinese consumer doesn’t yet trust Chinese engineering, they’re importing the talent. And because the Chinese are careful to make the first-tier cities comfortable for foreigners, including curbing the pollution, they’re coming, and staying.  

10. Shenzhen (2019-12-06)

Last weekend, I went to Shenzhen, across a bay from Hong Kong to meet with my counterparts from our company’s 15 or so other schools around China. My plan was to go to my meeting, take the subway down to Hong Kong, and fly back up to Beijing from there. I was going to have 48 hours free of VPNs, with people who know and love me. Because of a miscommunication with our visa support staff, my passport was at the police station getting a visa extension and wouldn’t be ready until after I returned. In China, foreign residents can travel domestically with their yellow resident ID card, but, as a stern passport agent at the Shenzhen airport told me, you need a visa and a passport to leave China.

Before I came to China, I asked people who had lived abroad for advice. Both Americans and foreigners who lived in the US told me to expect to feel homesick after about three months and to look for ways to stay in touch with friends and family. Those sentiments arrived right on schedule. Going to Hong Kong was going to be a reprieve from the isolation and suffocation I was starting to feel in Beijing. I needed a VPN to get on the internet. I couldn’t buy the New York Times in print. On the subway, I needed to be careful about what I said because I never knew who would be listening. In Hong Kong I would see people who know and love me, who would feel like home. But my passport wasn’t accessible. I felt imprisoned.

The next day, I was swept into the business of school, and I realized that itself felt like home. No, I couldn’t get the New York Times in print, but when have I actually ever bought a hard copy of the New York Times? I needed a VPN to access much of the internet, but to what end? Watching Netflix and going on Facebook (international news is accessible via kindle and I listen to BBC and NPR on my Alexa)? And, didn’t I watch what I said on the subway anywhere I traveled in the world, including in the US? My friends would still be there another weekend.

As I’ve gotten settled into life in Beijing, I’m beginning to appreciate the comforts of life as a foreigner in a first-tier Chinese city with a disposable income. With 20 min. notice, McDonald’s will deliver me piping hot coffee (with fresh skim milk) for about $2, tip and delivery included. The public transportation is excellent and cheap—my 45 min. ride into central Beijing costs about 60 cents and I conveniently pay for my bus and subway rides with my Apple Watch. While the general sentiment is that the Chinese economy is slowing (though you won’t see that in the pages of China Daily), the education sector in Beijing thrives. Interesting people here—Chinese and foreign alike—are eager to get to know me, both as a person, and as a professional. And the food is great, a point of pride for Beijingers.

So then why do I still yearn to have unrestricted access to information? As a 外国人(wai guo ren/foreigner), I have official and unofficial privileges that Chinese don’t enjoy, like going to controversial lectures at local universities, using a VPN without fear of reprisal, or, in the company only of other foreigners, talking about Chinese politics. But that still doesn’t feel like enough and I can’t yet define why. 

9. Subway Friend (2019-11-15)

Last Friday night, on the subway home from central Beijing, a girl no older than 6 or 7 kept looking at me, looking back at her mom, and giggling. Eventually, at the urging of her mom, the girl came across the car to talk to me, half in Chinese, half in English. She was in second grade, wanted to learn English, and wanted to know where I was from. Then she gave me a box of blueberries from her mom’s bag of groceries, and asked me, via google translate, if I would be her friend. Her mom asked me in Chinese if I was a teacher, and if I would teach her daughter English.

When I told friends and colleagues about this, I expected smiles in response to my tale of this elementary charm offensive. Instead, I kept getting an identical response: a skeptical nod. They cautioned me to be careful to charge a fair hourly rate and think about what I wanted to get out of the relationship. The family would invite me to have meals with them, go to karaoke, join them for Chinese holidays. If I wanted, I could probably be adopted by their family as their prized foreigner friend. There was no safety threat to going to the home of this strange family to tutor this girl—this is China after all. But I should be mindful of the market value of my time.

I decided to take on the adventure and trekked to their apartment on the opposite side of Beijing, in a neighborhood I hadn’t yet explored near Peking University. The girl and I worked in one of their tidy small bedrooms, sitting on the edge of the bed that lined up perfectly with a desk. There were sliced apples on the desk waiting for us when I sat down, and her father kept bringing more fruit and pouring me tea.

After our tutoring session, the mother paid me via WeChat and asked me in Chinese if I wanted to eat dinner with them, and if I liked noodles. She walked with me as the little girl skipped ahead. We talked in a mix of Chinese, English, and google translate. Was I married? Did I have a boyfriend? Where was I from? When did I come to Beijing? How long was I going to stay? Did I like it here?

We had dinner at a local restaurant that I would never have found on my own, where my foreign face attracted attention. The mom and little girl were smiled proudly as the other customers looked at us. Dinner was noodles with a savory meat sauce that’s a local Beijing specialty—and about five other tasty dishes for the three us to share. They brought the leftovers home, and I was instructed to leave my leftover noodles behind because they would be mushy the next day.

Over dinner and on the walk to the subway, the mom warmly demonstrated her determination to build our relationship. Did I want to learn tai chi? Perhaps I’d like for her to teach me ancient Chinese? Would I like to come over to make dumplings with them some time? Where did my parents live? Were they going to come to visit? They could stay with their family! Her charm offensive was as endearing as her daughter’s. And tomorrow I’m again trekking out to tutor my clever new pupil.

8-The Bookworm (2019-11-08)

The Bookworm, a legendary bookstore/café/private library in the trendy Sanlitun neighborhood announced this week that they’re closing. They posted an intentionally vague statement on their website. “Despite our best efforts, we appear to have fallen prey to the ongoing cleanup of ‘illegal structures’, and we have not been able to secure an extension of our lease." It’s in an older, but cozy building surrounded by shiny malls that boast stores like H&M, Coach, and Yves Saint Laurent. There are few English bookstores in Beijing, let and this loss will be felt.

Books imported from overseas must first go through government review before they can be delivered to the customer. About a month ago, I ordered 1200 books to rejuvenate our tired school library. When the books still didn’t arrive and teachers (reasonably) were asking me when they could expect them, I started a daily ritual of politely nudging a junior librarian. Eventually, through a translator, I spoke with the senior librarian. She explained that regardless of the supplier, the books needed to first be checked by the government and we could expect them in mid-December, at the earliest. She couldn’t give me a definitive delivery date because the government wouldn’t give her a definitive delivery date. A Chinese colleague tried to quell my frustration by telling me that she was still waiting on some English books she ordered for her daughter last Christmas.

It isn’t that there aren’t books here. Our high school students have mountains of textbooks on their desks, which are part of the government’s mandated national curriculum. As foreigners, the government doesn’t prescribe the curriculum our international English teachers can use, but they do set clear limits. Ethics class taught in English, for example, was canceled this year at the direction of the local education ministry.  Ironically, our international teachers rely mostly on textbooks because the curated internet blocks or significantly slows foreign websites.

Elementary and middle school parents constantly ask us what additional English workbooks their children can study from. We advise them to have their children read English books they enjoy for at least 20 minutes a night. Then they usually ask us for a list of extra vocabulary words their child could study. Not surprisingly, many of our students state that they don’t enjoy reading.

There is a library in Beijing, but I’m told that it’s a destination more for selfies than books. In the Chinese bookstores, all of the books are wrapped in plastic, so you can only judge a book by its cover. I joined a book club here, but it’s all Americans and Brits and we read our books via Kindle.  

On Beijing public transportation, everyone between the ages of about 8 and 58 is on a phone. Occasionally I’ll see someone reading in Chinese on their phone, but usually they’re playing a mindless game, watching cat videos, or talking or texting on WeChat. Today though, I saw someone on the subway with a book. A real book that looked like a Chinese paperback novel. But just as I started to get excited, I saw that he was holding his book closed in one hand and was fully immersed in whatever was on his cell phone in the other.

7. The Five Relationships (2019-11-04)

When I taught 9th-grade global studies, our students learned about the five Confucian relationships: parent to child, sibling to sibling, teacher to student, friend to friend, and ruler to subject. Rules of those relationships are governed by the concept of preserving face. It didn’t occur to me that this could be governed in large part with benevolent lying.

This week, our students took their first interim English assessment. The exam is loosely modeled after a Canadian exam for English Language Learners and the IELTS, an English proficiency test written and managed by the British Council, which most of our students will take. In an argumentative essay about whether lying is always wrong, even with good intentions,  a 12th-grade student concluded with, “Lying may not bring all bad influences if we can take advantage of it correctly, it will let other people feel better and bring warmth to the world.”

Students wrote about how teachers lie to students about the smartness of the different students in the class. Police officers to parents about the gravity of their child’s actions. Doctors to patients about the graveness of their diagnosis. These are high schoolers, so I would hope that these anecdotes are dramatic fiction, but they’re nevertheless evidence of a cultural imprint.

The other night a colleague and I went to a British Chamber of Commerce event with representatives from British universities and Chinese schools to attract Chinese students to study in the UK. One Chinese British woman promoted the UK’s safety, highlighting that they have the highest density of surveillance cameras per person of any place outside of China.

Police officers don’t carry guns. I’ve never seen a car pulled over on the well-maintained highway. Even though drivers are as pushy behind the wheel as they are in person to get to a ticket counter, I’ve seen few accidents. Speed cameras are everywhere, and you can’t renew your driver’s license or car registration until you pay your speeding tickets. By national law, cars are inspected annually for emissions and safety.

If homelessness, hunger, and crime exist in Beijing, it’s well hidden. This occurred to me by chance when a Canadian colleague and I were brainstorming community service projects our students could work on. She wisely pointed out that services that acknowledge the weakness of society beyond the natural order will be invisible. Senior homes? Animal shelters run by Westerners? Gardening projects? All Kosher. And, perhaps shamefully, I think I feel safer because of it.

Last Saturday, some colleagues and I were walking with newly arrived South African teachers to a Halloween party at a bar in central Beijing. We were in a trendy neighborhood with hutongs—the old traditional communal homes that used to be standard in Beijing before they were torn down and replaced with high rises. As I turned down a dark alley, the South Africans hesitated, nervous. At home, they wouldn’t think to walk around so freely after dark. I found myself comforting them by explaining how the security cameras kept the streets safe, and how the government wanted to make sure that foreigners were safe and enjoyed clean, harmonious streets. They followed our lead and didn’t look back.

6. Individualism vs. collectivism (2019-10-23)

Last Friday, at the request of our Chinese dean of students, I gave a presentation to our high school parents about what Western universities were looking for in students. She wanted me to change their mindsets, to get them to be open to individualism in a collectivist society. For them to understand that their children should be inquisitive. Doing this respectfully, without imposing my own culture was challenging. I wanted to show them the viral video of Greta Thunberg shaming adults at the UN for not tackling climate change. A Canadian colleague (who’s married to a Chinese woman) advised me that her message might contradict filial piety. A Chinese colleague advised that many Chinese thought that she was a troublemaker who should be in school instead of lecturing world leaders.

With the support of a translator, I talked about my former students, how my colleagues and I fostered their diverse interests, and how they successfully ended up in different sectors. Then I showed them pictures of recognizable business leaders and discussed the interests they pursued before landing their CEO roles and the values they have now. Indra Noonyi, a former CEO of Pepsi, started one of the first women’s cricket teams in India when she was in college. Jeff Bezos started his first business, a summer camp when he was in high school. And ended with Alibaba’s Jack Ma’s wisdom: “Today, making money is very simple. But making sustainable money while being responsible to the society and improving the world is very difficult.” At the end of the presentation, I asked if anyone had any questions. Silence. I waited for a full minute. Silence.

In China,为什么 (wèi shén me)/why is a question that I often don’t hear and find myself saying often (to be fair, I ask why a lot everywhere). I spent last Saturday with a few international and Chinese colleagues at a College Board conference in Nanjing, an hour and a half flight south of Beijing. College Board, the organization that runs the SAT, AP, TOEFL and other exams and education programs, has a large, growing market in China. The meeting coincided with an annual large college fair in Beijing, and there were admissions directors from prestigious Western universities like Cornell, UC Santa Cruz, Cambridge, and the University of Toronto. Each had a clear message: our faculty want students who will want to know why. They’re looking for students who are the best fit, whose demonstrated passions and ability to do the work align with the current interests and needs of their school. Test scores are only one part of it.

The participants were a mix of Chinese and foreign staff from Chinese international and national schools (by law, you need a foreign passport to attend an international school in China). During the sessions, people took pictures and videoed with their phones. Afterward, the Chinese would rush up to the presenters, asking them how to get students into their prestigious, well-branded university. Foreigners, including me, would wait conspicuously and patiently on the side of the pack, knowing that they had been seen, and wanting to build relationships.

Yesterday, I was asked by a Chinese colleague I went to Nanjing with what question I had asked the presenters during the opening plenary session (I asked about the relevancy of a liberal arts education in our modern economy). The reason they wanted to know my question? They were writing a report to share with their boss.

5. High Holidays (2019-10-11)

This past week Jews around the world fasted during the solemn day of repentance, Yom Kippur, the end of the High Holidays. For many Jews, it’s one of the few days of the year they go to synagogue. In the New York area, our teachers’ unions negotiated having school closed for the holidays. Outside New York, the High Holidays became the time when my difference was defined. It’s when I separated myself from my greater American community to unite with my Jewish community who chose to pause their routine lives and celebrate together. Even here in China, I broke my fast with a small congregation of expats. There were Jewish foreigners who were just passing through looking for a community to spend the holiday with, and regulars who’ve been navigating life in China for as long as 40 years.

Last week, Chinese paused their routines to celebrate their own progress together. On subways and busses, videos play with footage of Chinese of all ages laughing and crying while waving flags in front of crisp soldiers marching on Tiananmen Square last Tuesday. The films start with black and white newsreels of war with soldiers I assume are Japanese. Then they cut between images of progress—farming, factories and construction—and China’s leaders—Mao, Deng, Jiang, Hu, and now Xi. People in the video go from poor to rich over the years, morose to laughing. Ending with the 70th Anniversary Celebrations. Then shifting to advertisements for restaurants, beer, and clothing.

Initially, I was a bit envious of the passionate nationalism I felt around me for the holiday, regardless of whether or not I perceived it to be authentic. There’s pure, simplistic harmony about it that doesn’t exist in America. And it comes at a tremendous expense. As an American and a reform Jew, I was taught to question, even if that causes conflict.

The New York Times ran a story last week highlighting the bipolarity of the unity that was created in Beijing with the parades and in Hong Kong with the protests: “Protests Erupt in Hong Kong, Overshadowing China’s National Day Parade”. For people who access the internet beyond the Great Firewall, this may be true. But for the 1.3 billion Chinese who celebrated progress and community last week, protests in Hong Kong were overshadowed by dinners with family, watching the parades on TV, and travel.

On Yom Kippur, I woke up looking forward to the community that I would be a part of later that day. I was greeted with developing stories on NPR about Pres. Trump refusing to comply with impeachment proceedings, and Chinese media suspending its relationship with the NBA after the Houston Rockets’ General Manager tweeted support for Hong Kong’s protestors. As I sat in temple reflecting and repenting, I kept returning to how guilty I felt that I couldn’t directly discuss these stories with my students. The passionate nationalism I’ve felt around the National Holiday is energizing, but I’m not sure it’s as unifying as the open questioning and discourse and I grapple with and appreciate.

4. Thailand Edition (2019-10-04)

I’m writing to you from Thailand, where I’ve spent the past week enjoying fast non-curated internet without a VPN, lots of bubble tea, and the Chinese Dream. Most Chinese had this past week off for “Golden Week”, the time surrounding the Oct. 1 National Holiday. My WeChat newsfeed is exploding with pictures of new friends and colleagues taking selfies at the grand parades in Tiananmen Square and enjoying holidays around China and abroad. Chinese and expats (including people in Beijing who are from Hong Kong) have posted celebratory messages with thee red and yellow “70th Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China” logo.

Last Monday at our school’s weekly flag raising ceremony, a 7th grader in described in perfect English the Chinese Dream as President Xi’s vision for China to work hard and enjoy its prosperity. In practice, this looks like comfortable two-kid, two-car families who own a nice apartment stocked with one washing machine for the adult clothing and a mini one for the kids. It’s a new 300 mile 7th ring road around Beijing (the DC Beltway is 64 miles long) and neighborhoods where three-four generations take evening strolls together, enjoying the newly cleaned air. This also means travel abroad, particularly during national holiday weeks like this.

I’ve seen Chinese tourists everywhere around Bangkok and the islands in the Gulf of Thailand. Signs are written in Thai first, English second, and Chinese third. Almost without exception, I’ve seen them traveling as couples in large groups, wearing expensive-looking SPF protective clothing, and eating Chinese food. When I’ve felt someone pushing me in a crowded public space, more often than not, it’s been a Chinese. My ferry from Koh Samui to Koh Tao first stopped at Nang Yuan Island, a picturesque snorkeling destination. They announced the stop several minutes before the boat docked, and almost immediately the hundreds of Chinese tourists on board got up to disembark. The frenzied rush reminded me of the routinized chaos under the board at Penn Station in New York immediately after a train platform is announced.

At my dive center, the Chinese tended to keep to themselves. On the second day of my dive course, one of the instructors, a British woman, lamented to my instructor, a Dutch guy, that she had to work with a large group of Chinese that day. He explained to me privately that while it might be a racist stereotype, the Chinese had a reputation for not being able to swim. Yet here were the grandchildren of the Cultural Revolution, together learning how to breathe under water, keeping up next to the Westerners who’ve never known a curated internet.

Living parallel to the Chinese Dream, particularly this week, helps me understand the prevailing Chinese sentiment that the protesters in Hong Kong are acting like spoiled brats. On my flight from Beijing to Hong Kong last Friday, I asked the guy sitting next to me (who was from Hong Kong) if people there would be celebrating National Day. “The government will be,” he told me with a smile, and added that the government had cancelled the annual Oct. 1 fireworks this year. 

3. Consumerism (2019-09-22)

Dear Friends and Family,

I’m writing to you from Baker & Spice, a café and bakery owned by a Dane. It’s sort of like Panera but better—beautiful baked goods, sandwiches, soups, pasta, salads, and a yellow curry shrimp that reminds me of the gringo Thai restaurants I know and love. I’m the only non-Chinese person sitting in here right now. The café has fast internet and plenty of power outlets, but, the patrons are taking selfies over lattes and tea-based drinks instead of working on laptops. A young family just walked by in the mall outside of the café, two parents pushing a toddler in a Bentley-branded tricycle.

The consumerism that I’ve known in the US, even in New York, is dwarfed by what I see here. Social interaction centers around WeChat, a phone app that was developed and is owned by Tencent, a Chinese company with strong ties to the Chinese government and Communist Party. A programmer friend in San Francisco described to WeChat to me as a super-app: the dream app that so many companies tried to get to catch on in the US and European markets. It’s a phone, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, Google Translate, amazon, uber, and ApplePay all in one. I have entire relationships with my non-English speaking Chinese colleagues via WeChat’s text translation feature. When I posted on my WeChat profile that I’m on a 7-day streak of learning Chinese on Duolingo (the apps can link easily), my boss and Chinese colleagues commented and gave me digital praise.

Credit cards are rarely accepted around Beijing and people look at you funny if you pay with cash. WeChat Pay is expected. Even from the lady selling vegetables on the corner.

So much about what is being called the Chinese Dream is a magnified version of the American one. A few minutes ago, I walked by a lot where the mid-sized BMW sedans looked out of place—they were surrounded by cars like Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, and Ferrari. Directly behind this, like something out of a photoshoot, was a mall with Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, and a McDonalds, H&M, and Uniqlo. All next to a WeWork. Women wearing uncomfortable-looking high heels and lots of makeup pose in front of brick walls and odd sculptures while their boyfriends take pictures of them using fancy cameras, often with an extra person in tow holding a flash. It feels like new money trying to prove and understand its rapid change.

The Chinese name for China is 中国 (zhong guo), meaning center country or middle kingdom. It was first used by the Zhou Dynasty in about 1000BCE, who believed themselves to be the center of civilization. Perhaps this consumerism is to remind the world that China is living up to its name. Or maybe it’s a form of accepted personal expression in a place where the collective is valued over the individual.

2. Security and Safety (2019-09-22)

Last weekend, A Ugandan colleague took me by subway to a new neighborhood in Northern Beijing known for live music. He’s lived in Beijing for several years and has seen the city get cleaner, more organized, more international. But when we were on the train, he calmly pointed out to me that the seats around us on our crowded car were all empty. I was the only Caucasian; he was the only African. People stared at us as we chatted. One woman videoed our conversation on her phone. I sensed they felt endangered.

As we walked down the street, we passed another dark-skinned man of African descent. They instantaneously greeted each other, and my colleague didn’t introduce me. They didn’t know each other, he shared. He wasn’t sure why he said hi, but whenever he saw another black man, they acknowledged each other. They were brothers.

With tens of thousands of cameras everywhere, advanced biometrics, and strict drug and weapon laws, Beijing is one of the safest large cities in the world. It’s known that police occasionally go into bars and get hair samples to test for evidence of illicit drugs. You can still get in trouble if you test positive because you had a joint a month earlier in another country where it’s legal. There are metal detectors at the entrance to every subway station, and often guards will do a haphazard pat-down before you head to the turnstile. When I bought kitchen knives at Ikea, they checked and recorded my passport information before giving me my purchase.

Yet security seems to be something people think and care about. Apartment buildings have guards. Chinese have told me to be careful taking cabs late at night and have even offered to escort me places when it’s dark out. And now with the 70th anniversary of the Communist Party’s rule in China coming up in two weeks, there are soldiers stationed in subway stations downtown. They’re practically teenagers, standing on temporary raised platforms, staring straight ahead, armed with little more than small batons on their belts next to their crisp white-gloved hands. I’ve been tempted more than once to try to make them laugh, as I would with the guards outside Buckingham Palace (don’t worry, I haven’t and won’t).

I read and listen to US and international news daily here and I’ve heard almost no mention of this massive celebration in the Western media. Streets and subways around Tiananmen Square are closing over a week before the Anniversary for military parade rehearsals. Hotels around Tiananmen are having 24 hour lock-downs, with no one, including guests, allowed to enter or leave during the rehearsals. Red banners have gone up on highway overpasses, the sides of buildings and bus stops with the 70th-anniversary logo and messages like, “Support our country, our Party, and our President Xi”. While the pollution in Beijing is far less now than it was even a year ago, the sky has seemed almost artificially blue in the past couple of weeks. The rumor is that the government shut down factories around the city in preparation for the festivities. Our air will continue to be as safe to breathe as our streets are to walk.

1. Welcome to Beijing! (2019-09-01)

Dear Friends and Family,

As many of you know, I recently took a job as the foreign principal at a Canadian Chinese school in Beijing. While I type, Chinese 11thand 7thgraders in fatigues are congregating on the field, preparing for their closing military training ceremony. Their training is like so many pre-class team building programs I’ve had in the US, but with fatigues and drill instructors who giggle when the kids aren’t looking and kids who giggle when the drill instructors aren’t looking. 

My school, the Beijing Concord College of Sino Canada (BCCSC for short), is 22 years old and housed on a lovely, if not tired looking campus. There’s a nice turf field, tennis, basketball, badminton and ping pong courts. In true Canadian style, we’ll also soon have an ice hockey rink. All classrooms for students grades 1-12 have individual desks in rows, with the Chinese and Canadian flags prominently above a smartboard in the front, and the school’s Core Socialist Values of Prosperity, Democracy, Civilization, Harmony, Freedom, Equality, Justice, Rule of law, Patriotism, Dedication, Integrity, and Friendship posted in Chinese and English above student cubbies in the back. For all classes except electives, students stay in the same classroom all day and the teachers move, not the other way around that is typical in North American secondary schools. 

Since 2002, I’ve periodically visited China, and each time it’s significantly different. When I first went into Shanghai as a high school junior, we descended through a thick yellow cloud before a skyline that looked like 5 Manhattans lined up next to each other emerged below us. While travelling with my hosts, school children asked my American friends and me for our autographs and pictures with us, and our hosts proudly showed us the new Starbucks that had just opened. When I visited Western China, Beijing, and Nanjing during and shortly after college, I was able to access the New York Times, Google, and the Washington Post on the internet.

Now 17 years later, I’m sitting below a bright blue sky, and have gotten crafty about using VPNs to read news and information that isn’t curated by the government. My theory is that the Great Firewall is to some degree able to manipulate when VPNs can and cannot work and where. Long form media that I can download on my kindle like the New Yorker, the Economist, and the Atlantic have become my reading of choice. Foreign websites that are permitted, like Microsoft and Apple products and anything relating to money and investing work well and fast—until they don’t. 

Because of this technological oversight, I’ll be sharing my experiences in China with you via email rather than a traditional blog. Feel free to share my dispatches with anyone you think might be interested. I’ll send out my emails weekly, and will try to keep them to about 500 words for expedient reading. 

Please drop me a line and let me know how you’re doing and what’s going on in your part of our world. And if you’d prefer to receive my emails, let me know and I won’t be offended.

Happy Labor Day!

Laurel