Unless my company announces its eventual disappearance within the next week, I am supposed to go to Beijing to chat with some Chinese airline employees. The guy who is really the expert on the subject being discussed, doesn't like to travel. The other expert planned her vacation, and isn't budging on it. So the Chinese are stuck with me, the proxy. We'll be lucky if any of us understand each other.
So I had to race to get a travel Visa. At Kinko's getting the required extra passport photo, there were two guys interested as to where I was going. When they heard China, one asked me if I'm going to wear a "Free Tibet" shirt all the time. "Ah, no."
One of the Kinko guys talked about the dam, the infamously bad monstrous dam, that flooded entire regions, villages and treasures. One mentioned how China isn't exactly Democracy in action and was very oppressive. I agreed, and mentioned how they don't really let folks talk to journalists...over there, if you get very friendly with journalists, it's often you get the 'secret' police down your back. But there the police really aren't so secret. They're everywhere.
The other guy was very confused about whose police force causes the oppression in China, "Whose police do that over there? The American police?"
Oh my. Do people really think we station U.S. police deep inside China to prevent them from talking to a Wall Street Journal journalist?
I got to thinking, maybe this girl isn't the exception.
We not only need maps apparently, but a basic education. The reality is why we need more people like Michelle Rhee - I think she is nothing short of incredible! She's fixing a system that creates such educational output.
But how do our military folks come back after seeing the brutally oppressive regions of the world, and go to Kinko's and find out that the Minneapolis police are stationed in China preventing school girls from talking to the Wall Street Journal. Talk about reverse culture shock! They must just shake their head and wonder how our nation got to be so naive.
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