Chapter 3: Coming to America (Continued)

 

Far,

We've been traveling far

Without a home

But not without a star

 

Free,

Only want to be free

We huddle close

Hang on to a dream

 

On the boats and on the planes

They're coming to America

Never looking back again,

They're coming to America

 

. . .

 

Everywhere around the world

They're coming to America

Ev'ry time that flag's unfurled

They're coming to America

 

Got a dream to take them there

They're coming to America

Got a dream they've come to share

They're coming to America

 

They're coming to America

They're coming to America

They're coming to America

They're coming to America

Today, Today,

Today, Today, Today

 

. . .

 

 

Houston was such a flat area and David heard a joke about its flatness before heading there. An employee in a Floridian location of the Burrito House told him that an eight foot mound in Houston could be called a hill. So David paid extra attention to constructions more than eight feet high when living in Houston and found many of them. Working in the city of Houston it seemed that joke fell "flat" because many of the ups-and-downs close to highway intersections were more than eight feet. David later learned how fast those ups and downs got flattened quickly whenever there was a heavy rain, and that was the start of the problem for a place being so "flat". The Floridian guy was also the first person who explained to David about hurricanes, words like "tail span" and "hunker down". These were not words that David had learned when living in Midwest or Pacific Northwest. There were tornados or earth quakes in those areas, but not hurricanes. Hurricanes are the kind of destructive strong storms formed in the Atlantic Ocean. If the same thing happened in the Pacific, they are called Typhoons, but since David lived in the inner China, not the coastal areas, he had never experienced or learned about that sort of natural disaster either.

 

In 2005, David's knowledge about such natural disasters suddenly accumulated exponentially. In his brief trip to the small Florida branch of the Burrito House, he heard there was a Hurricane Dennis approaching and then experienced the dreadful driving condition in the "tail span" of that hurricane. Dennis left falling branches everyone on the road with eye-blinding rains and falling objects dropping from the sky seemed every other two minute. It was something David no longer wants to encounter again, but most of the local residents and his Floridian co-workers seemed to dismiss it as just a normal summer. When David traveled back to Houston, he started to see many other forms of inconvenience under the influence of the Hurricane. When it rained in the summer, it rained really hard in Houston. Water quickly accumulated along the highways especially in the side roads along those highways where the unique Texas style "U-turn lanes" were built. In places where water fast accumulated and drainage quickly clogged, small cars like the Burrito House delivery cars which David was assigned had the tendency to float like boats. To avoid such awkward scenes and avoid been just another TV screenshot or floating vehicle statistics, David decided to go to work early or stay late to avoid being caught in the rain whenever heavy rains were in forecasts.

 

When darkness fell, the usual hassling-and-bustling Houston quickly turned into almost another city. There were very few people staying outside in a not-so-great neighborhood where Burrito House head office was located. The only people staying outside are mostly rowdy teenagers with conversations such as "Want some crack, man? Top quality! Best kind! Only five dollars"! Occasionally, David also saw big and fat middle fingers sticking out from some beat-up GM Buick that were running the red light, but acting like police cruiser. Driving out of evening downtown Houston heading west, once after the Elgin Street turned into Westheimer Road, especially when getting closer and closer to Galleria, it looked like the movie Wizard of OZ turning from black-and-white movie into a colored one. Houston suddenly became one of the nicest cities in the world, with bright and shining constructions everywhere along the road and even in the middle of the road the road signs looked like neon lights or small scale triumphant arches. Many fancy cars were roaming the streets in Houston. The theories behind fancy cars in the Houston streets and the urban legend about the life of Houstonian were: they enjoy the big city salaries, but were not burdened by big city expenses for house hold items or big city mortgages for real estates. Therefore they could often afford luxury cars and like to show off those luxury cars in and around the areas of Galleria and Rice University, or drive to Galveston for weekends to see Gulf of Mexico.

 

In the summer, the unique Galleria cooling system also served as a tourist attraction and a breath of cool air outdoors. The water carrying hot air out of Galleria was cleverly crafted as a gigantic man-made waterfall falling from almost ten stories high. The falling water splashed into small cool breath again and greeted tourists with small breezes. Such a half natural cooling facility fits Houstonians and the city of Houston flawlessly because summer in that city is generally renowned for its length and intensity.

 

In the midst of the summer, there could be sudden chains of thunder and lightening accompanied by down pour of rains and then all goes quiet and peaceful again in the sky, leaving tens of thousands of people frustrated on the ground, in this American's fourth populous city.

 

2005 was an unusual and ominous year for the entire world. Right before the New Year, the Asian Tsunami killed tens of thousands of people in Asia and devastated countless number of villages, towns and cities. In the summer, the whimsical mood of the "mother nature" or "mother weather" did not change.

 

One unexpected storm of thunder and lightening crashed the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for the computer room of the Burrito House. Before the UPS could be repaired, another storm came and took out the email servers of the Burrito House head office. It was a very rudimentary SMTP server, with a couple hundreds of mailboxes on a Linux workstation doubling as a server. All of a sudden, people in Burrito House appeared as if they could no longer work properly and many kept on asking: "how did we work 10 or 15 years ago, when there was no email?" Without finding an answer to their own questions, many of them started running around like headless chickens. Usually Bob Sutton's son -- Rob Sutton -- would come and troubleshoot the email server for Burrito House, since he was the one who built the Linux mail server. But with the water on the road that day and Rob been far away from downtown Houston, not to mention still tied up by his fulltime regular job, he could not arrive until after seven o'clock when everybody would have been gone. Burrito House CEO Ruben Turner kept on coming to IT department to ask for the status of the mail server. Knowing it probably wouldn't help, he kept on coming once every 15 minutes just to put pressure on the IT staff.

 

Ruben's anxiety was triggered by the incident when UPS was fried by the lightening several days ago. When the UPS went out, the power supply was naturally affected and the entire building went dark and email server was stopped for 15 minutes along with call center and other important business departments. Later on, that particular 15 minutes was discovered to have delayed several very important emails to Ruben, therefore he couldn't help but worrying that more email would be lost this day when the entire hard drive of the SMTP email server was fried and the recovery work would not start until seven o'clock in the evening. He kept on walking into the IT department and his inquiries turned from polite to instructional to reproaching. He started yielding to Terry Collins, the IT manager of the Burrito House, "I told you not to let this happen again, can you hear me? You got to fix this problem and that battery too" pointing to the UPS and referring to it as a "battery". "There is unlimited budget for this, alright? Thank you!!!" Of course, the "thank you" had another ring to it.

 

Terry started asking Bob "can you ask Rob to come earlier?" Bob answered: "he really can't".

 

David felt he could no longer continue with his programming project with many the commotions going around in the IT department, and offered: "actually, building a SMTP server only takes but about 2 hours at most, if you have a list of users and passwords". Terry was happy beyond recognition and said, "Well, I have them all in a spreadsheet!"

 

Afterwards, David quickly installed a Red Hat Linux with minimum setting plus SMTP and POP3 servers and turned the Excel spreadsheet of users into a shell script to add all of the hundreds of email users with their mailboxes. Bob started setting passwords for all the users one by one, and Terry started calling all the employees to start checking their email. Starting from big shots at first as a matter of course, then to average employees, everyone at Burrito house finally got their email box filled again before the end of the day. Terry couldn't stop thanking David after the mail server was running again, and Bob kept on saying that Ruben should take David to a Rockets' or Texans' game with the company season tickets and let David picked out a certain date. Unfortunately, it was not in the basketball season and Texans' football wasn't that good. Houston Astros were very good that year, but nobody wanted to spare a corporate season ticket to David, so that offer got put on hold.

 

The hurricane season dragged on. But when all the email servers were functioning properly, days went by just like any other days. David continued to work on the Burrito House POS project and the project entered post-development training and documentation period. In order to prepare for the final deployment, the system had to be used by selected restaurant employees to test its usability. The first step of the beta test was to train employees who would most likely be the first ones to use the new system. In between training sessions, David continued to travel between Vancouver, BC and Houston, TX. During one flight from Vancouver to Houston, he saw many airline passengers having their eyes glued on airport TVS watching many taking merchandises from shops while complaining about the terrible conditions in New Orleans, Louisiana or at the Superdome. That was when David heard that Katrina had struck the Big Easy and a levee had been breached.

 

The following work week, people in the office started talking about Katrina all over the places, and it seemed like a large number of victims of the Hurricane Katrina started heading to Houston the fourth populous city in the United States. These people were first called "refugees", but after Reverend Jesse Jackson said "we are not refugees . . . but evacuees" on TV, then it became politically incorrect for people from New Orleans to be called "refugees".

 

More reports and stories suddenly erupted onto all forms of the media in the United States about Hurricane Katrina, especially in the Gulf Coast regions. After the hurricane breached the levee of New Orleans, New Orleans police department (NOPD) could not control many looters taking goods and merchandises from local stores or near by office buildings. Nor were effective efforts organized to gather local police force in the city. Some police felt too ashamed to see the scenes and committed suicides. The city was taken over briefly by anarchy.

 

Since one side started using Hurricane Katrina as political weapon, another party quickly responded. The general picture portrayed in the air wave, silver screen and on the newspaper quickly turned into political infighting: People at the left were complaining President George W. Bush did not care much about New Orleans because the city was mainly black and poor. People at the right were defending President Bush and the federal government as wanted to respond immediately, but with their responses delayed by the Louisianan state governor, because she did not want to compromise state rights and delayed the deployment of national guards from other states to enter the city to control the riots and help with the relief efforts.

 

Since either side scored higher than others, another round of finger pointing started. The Left accused the Right for not protecting the environment outside of the city of New Orleans which served as a natural buffer zone for strong hurricanes. The Right held their usual position to simply point out environmental changes would have mattered little, because the city of New Orleans had always been in a geographically precarious spot that was much lower than the sea level. They also pointed out that there had been many floods in the history of the city and suggested people to rebuild the city in a higher spot.

 

Eventually, both sides agreed that there were plenty of blames to go around. Therefore a poor guy named Mike Brown was quickly fired, because he made a few statements on TV saying the federal government was doing as much as they could and therefore doing a "good job". The agency he worked for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was also ridiculed ruthlessly. One rightwing radio talk show host said the name FEMA was too feminine, didn't sound like having enough power to do anything. Therefore he jokingly wanted to start a federal crisis management agency in a different way. He wanted to first come up with a name such as MACHO as an agency name, and asked audiences to call and help figure out what the agency would eventually stand for. Eventually he selected the explanation of the abbreviation MACHO as "maybe Ala can help out" from a caller's suggestion.

 

Despite of all the arguments going on in the media, most of the Houstonians quietly and voluntarily started helping out evacuees from New Orleans. Everyday, when returning to the hotel, David noticed more and more vehicles in the parking lot started appearing with Louisiana plates until two thirds of the lot were filled with them. Those people stayed for long term, just like he did and they are the relatively wealthier ones who left the city quicker or the ones got government sponsorship sooner. Many other evacuees were not so lucky and still gathered around the Reliant Stadium and waiting to get help financially and administratively to start a new life in Houston or elsewhere from that point onwards. Financially, Katrina victims were eligible to receive money to help on renting or staying in hotels temporarily. Administratively, many non-for-profit organizations went to Houston to give medical or consoling help to the victims and some also organized them to find new homes in other areas of the country. When it was weekend, David went to Reliant stadium to be a volunteer along with hundreds of others and often saw there were usually three or four times more volunteers in supplies than demands. He started to believe what Bud Westwood had been telling him all along that Houston really was a nice city. As a matter of facts, that was how most of the American cities look like. Average people were usually very nice and friendly, especially when natural disasters struck their neighbors. David saw similar long lines of volunteers along Ohio River in Cincinnati, Mississippi River near St. Louis and now in Houston.

 

Unfortunately, the international image of the US was simply a stark contrast to any average people could be seen in the volunteering line, so when he told some Canadians "Average Americans are usually more polite than you guys", several Canadians jumped on him. President George W. Bush once said "we are really nice people", the clip was played over and over again on Canadian TV screen as a mockery and a joke. But to majority of the people who had ever lived in America, they invariably felt it was not a joke and felt sad for such a bad choice of statesmanship for anybody to make such a statement. American people are generally nice to strangers for two reasons. One is a widely held belief about themselves, widely believed by other peoples of the world too: America is so rich with everything; they usually do not need to be nasty to each other in order to fight for a small amount of food or clothing (仓廪食而民知礼节). Another reason is because American had been peaceful for so many years and people had learned to be polite to one another for so long, at least superficially, majority of them had got the habit of being nice to people.

 

All the hurt feelings and hardship seemed to have settled down a little, when another Hurricane was gradually forming in the Gulf of Mexico. This one was called Rita and from all indications it was going to be a category V heading towards Houston, TX and would have leveled Galveston on its way. With recent memory of the Hurricane Katrina, flooding and looting scenes vivid in Houstonian's mind, the city was visibly shaken and stirred. Government officials and employers were not taking any chances this time and encouraged average Houstonians to prepare themselves for the worst as early as possible. It seemed every Burrito House employee's routine was interrupted as well, interrupted by management requests to fortify different office and restaurant locations all over the city. Residents swarmed to local grocery stores to stack up non-perishable food, bottled water and healthcare supplies. While on their way to various places, they also noticed other people were storing gasoline in plastic cans or in any other reasonably usable containers they could find. More and more people started stocking gasoline as well. Very soon, almost all the gas stations in Houston area started having lineups of automobiles.

 

Although the scene in the streets looked much worse than normal, David felt Houstonians performed superbly well considering the circumstances. After all, the city was a place with ample supplies, large buffering capacities and a wide urban sprawl. There were plenty of food, water and fuels for people who were driving around looking for them. Except some complaints, impatience and crazy driving close to gas stations, there were really no visible violence or even quarreling anywhere. To be totally objective, the chaotic scene in Houston was much better than the experiences David used to have when trying to buy train tickets to go home for Spring Festival holidays while he attended university in China. But that was only Wednesday.

 

More and more hurricane pictures were appearing on TV, with predicted tail span, eyes and the points of touchdown. It appeared that Rita was going to wipeout Galveston and then sweep through Houston on Saturday morning. David's hotel manager started passing out leaflets about how to secure the hotel rooms and how to survive the days after a major hurricane. One of the advices was to store a full tub of water in the bath tub, just in case clean waters would run out after the disaster. Next door, evacuees from New Orleans felt they were victims again because they would need to evacuate to another strange city further north or further west. They were not taking Rita lightly after suffering from Katrina.

 

Thursday morning, there were still long lineups outside of almost every gas station David passed on his way to work, but it seemed the lines were much shorter. It also seemed there were much fewer cars driving on local streets and it was much, much quieter, because birds usually disappeared early from the sky, if an area was going to be struck by hurricanes. While continued on with his driving in the quiet morning sun, towards the Burrito House headquarter, David was suddenly awed by the spectacular image when passing the overhead bridge of highway I-45.

 

Like the biblical scene of Exodus from the movie "Ten Commandments", only ten times more stunning and real, he saw millions of people sitting in the traffic almost without move. To save gasoline, many of them turned off air-conditioning. Although this was only morning, the Houston temperature was already punishing if one did not stay in an air-conditioned confine. A few cars in front of and after David's simply stopped at the overhead bridge. Some people took out camcorders, not the improvised kind that came with a phone, as though they were prepared to take videos and started shooting the motionless elongated parking lot that used to be called interstate highway. There were also others simply using camera phones or video phones to record the slow moving traffic for only one or two shots.

 

When finally arriving at the office, David noticed a local flood and hurricane relationship map was posted on the wall at the office building entrance. With different colors highlighting regions with hurricane category numbers, the map meant if the hurricane were in category I, then Galveston would be affected. If it were category II, III, then more areas between Galveston and Houston would be affected including the area where NASA mission control center was. If the hurricane continue to gain power and became category IV, then half of the Greater Houston area south east of highway 59, would be affected. If the hurricane continued to grow into a "cat 5", then a large portion of Greater Houston would be affected by flood as well.

 

Wow! The image of a flood triggered many unhappy thoughts in David's mind especially in Houston. Imagining cars would float in the roads merely after heavy rains, the prospect of flood in such a flat city was not something to be toyed with. While David was still engrossed in his thoughts, Bob Sutton walked in and half yelled at him: "Still here, go home! What are you doing here today? Why do you even come? Are you supposed to fly back to Canada this weekend?" David said: "yes, but not until Friday night. And I'd better check with Bud. I haven't seen him today yet and he didn't ask me to go home". Bob said: "Bud is not going to be in today. The entire city is evacuating and this place is going to shutdown. There is nothing for you to do here anyway. You would not have network pretty soon".

 

Bud called shortly after and only told David to put his computers on his desk and get out of Houston immediately. He was already on his way to Dallas with his family and he told David to get advices from Terry to drive out of Houston locally to the airport. "Don't take highway" was what he said. It took his family four hours to move what used to take twenty minutes to move.

 

After getting directions from several delivery drivers, Terry showed David how to get on the Houston International Airport via JFK parkway instead of the usual highway 59. Then he also told David that Ruben had instructed him to park the company car in the concrete protected building, at the expense of Burrito House, instead of the usual outdoor parking lot. David moved all his computer equipment to the top of the desk as mandated by safety officers of Burrito House hoping it would not come down to that dire a scenario to rely on desks to save the computer workstations.

 

Outside, highways were parking lot while local roads were only roamed by low volume traffic. However, it seemed every gas station and highway entrances were turning into road blocks similar to how magnets radiating with magnetic fields. And the ill positioned cars fighting to advance every inch very much resembled iron dusts scattering under the influence of those magnetic fields. In order to avoid those road blocks, David was forced to turn into several residential areas to test his luck of getting around to the next stretch of the local streets that could possibly lead to JFK parkway. Many residents who determined to hunker down were fortifying their houses with big wooden boards covering window glasses. One neighbor was shouting at another "You did this all wrong, these are in perfect missile sizes, and when the hurricane comes, guess where they are going to fly into? The houses", pointing at bundles of small twigs cut down from a big tree by the neighbor.

 

David noticed the entire demographics of Houston were so different from that of Cincinnati, Ohio or Seattle, Washington. It looked like there were many Hispanic neighborhoods in Houston, many black neighborhoods in Cincinnati and many Asia neighborhoods in Seattle, living with predominant "West European white" population in those areas. "How are they really different?" are Hispanics "white" as well, just like the "Eastern European white" or "Russian white" or even the "Middle East white"? Yet, it feels something creepy are making the differences between this white, that white or any differences in colors and the creepiness was very real for people who could feel it.

 

Finally, it was the airport and getting into the concrete garage became quite a challenge too, as oppose to a normal business day. The concrete garages adjacent to terminals C, which was the biggest one in the airport belonging to the Continental Airline, was all filled up. Only choices were to get the first concrete parking garage available, David thought. His departure was supposed to be at terminal A, but after making two driving circles around the airport with "no vacancy" signs on both terminals A and C, he had to try terminal B. Terminal B parking garage was still accepting vehicles but it was approaching capacity as well. There was a warden directing traffic in front of it and when she walked a few steps forward to count how many more cars were still be able to come in to warn the cars afterwards not to wait in that line, a Honda Accord suddenly cut behind her and tried to merge into the line. She had to walk back and raved and shouted at the Honda driver for been such a jerk. But the Honda ignored her and continued into the garage.

 

Luckily David was able to squeeze into the terminal B garage following the line, but was only able to park at the top of the concrete building. He amused at the prospect of the poor Burrito House delivery car under the prospect of a hurricane. It was supposed to be flipped over and bump into other cars if parked in an outdoor garage on the ground, but now it seemed to be heading towards a fate of being thrown down from a six storey concrete garage and smashed completely. But there was no time to think about many other things, because all the radio news channels were already talking about flight cancellations while David was driving to the airport. Some radio news even rumored that IAH was going to be closed for all flights and advised Houstonians not to drive towards the airport.

 

Luckily, terminal B was not far from terminal A and David was able to walk to terminal B with reasonable ease after parking. Inside the terminals, many airline check-in counters anchored longer than usual lineups that winded like serpents. David again felt lucky that his ticket was with a relatively small airline American West. Other people with Delta, United or American Airline were apparently in much longer lineups even with the help of more ticket agents.

 

In David's lineup, there was a Hispanic couple in front of him, with the women being very pregnant. It was apparent the husband wanted his pregnant wife to get out of Houston at any cost, and therefore when he learned that each ticket to Phoenix, AZ would cost more than seven hundred dollars, he took out that much cash without hesitation. He explained that he didn't have a credit card and he was in restaurant business, and that was why he had many small bills. David usually likes to socialize with people with the opening remark of "oh, we practically work in the same business", because he had worked in so many businesses for so many employers. This time it was very true since he was working for the Burrito House, but he refrained from trying to say anything.

 

It was not an atmosphere for joking or socializing. He simply quietly waited for his turn to get a standby ticket to fly to Phoenix like every other American West passenger in the line. For American West, it was either Las Vegas or Phoenix, and it seemed no more standby tickets were available for Las Vegas and tickets to Phoenix were running out quickly also. Whenever the ticket agents at the counter appeared to make an error or had to pause to ask questions, they explained to customers that they were flown in from Phoenix to help out only that morning, therefore were not familiar with the system in Houston International Airport.

 

After getting his standby ticket and passing through security check, David arrived at the designated gate, waiting for the next available flight. One flight to Phoenix was boarding, but it was not likely he would be able to get in, because many other holders of standby tickets were ahead of him. Most of the ticket holders were like him, who was supposed to fly out in the following days either Friday or Saturday. But since both the radio and TV in Houston started announcing that the airport would be shutdown after that day, many people simply started swarming the airport. David's relatives including his wife and daughter pleaded for him to stay at the airport too, even if he could not get out of Houston. That way, at least they would know that he was staying in a concrete building.

 

Airline employees were doing their best to get people out of the city with help of fellow passengers. Passengers with small kids that were light enough to be held in parents' laps were asked to do just that to make room for fellow passengers with standby tickets. After being skipped one flight, David finally got lucky again to get on another flight to leave Houston. People appeared closer after a dramatic experience and talked more in flight than other times. Fellow business travelers compared how long it took for them to get from hotels to the airport. Invariably, the ride from downtown to the airport was prolonged even after taxi drivers, took many shortcut or trial routes. David was among the luckiest to make the usual 40 minutes drive in less than 3 hours.

 

When the flight arrived in Phoenix, it appeared all the chaos and striking scenes in Houston had suddenly disappeared. Except flashes of CNN headline news updates about people suffering heat stroke in Houston highways, Phoenix International airport looked no different from any other airports. After David took another flight from Phoenix to Seattle, all the Houston Rita evacuation sights seemed to be distant memory. David couldn't help but be amazed by such effect of today's means of transportations and thought it must not have been so easily for people to forget about the Exodus out of Egypt or the great retreat out of Dunkirk. How incredible it was that he flew out of middle of the suffering and hardship in just a few short hours?

 

When he finally arrived at home in Vancouver, Canada, he simply couldn't be happier. On Saturday, the Hurricane Rita finally made its touchdown at the border area of Texas and Mississippi with a force much less than originally predicted category 5. Cities large or small, including Houston and Galveston were both able to dodge a catastrophic disaster, that people with fragile nerves in the Gulf areas of 2005 could not bear.

 

Although it was still a disaster nevertheless for people in the affected areas, Rita did not register into many American's mind except for Houstonians because of the panic and large scale evacuation it caused. They were even casualties in a bus loaded with senior people heading to Dallas, due to gas explosion.

 

After the "Rita weekend", as David called it later, he resumed traveling back to Houston to fulfill contract duties with Burrito House and Bud Westwood. The project appeared to be on schedule and all that was left seemed to be switching the new system and giving it a period of parallel testing along with the old system before full deployment. Inside David's mind, he was not very optimistic about a new system being fully functioning as customer expected. It had been the reality of the customized software development projects, which the prospect of a quick "acceptance" was never great. And eventually, almost all software development contracts drag on for years for the buyers to sign acceptance because buyers would always find disagreements with software developers to accuse them of not delivering what had been agreed upon. Nord Kia project took a year to have its acceptance documents signed, and that was the only big project formally signed by any of the customers David had ever seen in his more than a decade of IT career. The problem usually was because one member on the software developer side, and it did not matter which member, in the course of the development project said something like: "Don't worry. You would be able to replace all your existing business functions in the old system". Later, the buyer side would argue that they had lost functionalities with the new system. And the developers would argue that the "lost functionality" was actually an inefficiency of the old system and there were no sense in carrying bugs from old system to the new and better systems. The arguments would usually drag on for years, while the buyer and seller of the software development services would continue to work, in a "give and take" fashion for years with both sides bad mouthing each other. Amongst the arguments, developers got more orders from the buyers and buyers would always try to milk out a week or two worth of free development out of developers.

 

To put everything in perspective, it is not hard to understand why it is so hard to see acceptance in the customized software development contracts. Among "wars" fought among nations in the 20th century, only World War II had a decisive outcome with two "Instruments of surrender", one in Europe and another in Asian-Pacific. World War I was commented by General Petain as "this isn't peace, this is a twenty year truth in" 1918 and the Second World War indeed broke out in 1939, not to mention other smaller wars or conflicts. It was widely joked among common Chinese that 谈到钱就不亲热了, and the phrase can not be more accurate when used to describe buyers and sellers of customized software development services.

 

Bud Westwood and Burrito house appeared to be very optimistic about a speedy acceptance though and David wasn't exactly sure whether they were just pretending or truly naïve about such a process.

 

But for now, fall was coming and the basketball season had started in all the NBA cities. David was just going to let good times roll, without worrying too much ahead. As promised, Terry invited David to watch a Rocket basketball game against the Clippers at the Toyota Center in Houston one day. It was a game awarded to David by Burrito House for restoring their email system from the unexpected thunderstorm happened after the UPS system was broken in summer. David picked a relatively week opponent for the Rockets, because he did not want to see Yao Ming lose, when watching in the arena. During the lengthy game, the conversation between David and Terry touched upon various topics with very little boundaries and restrictions.

 

Most of their conversations were about China, since they were watching this towering Chinese player playing basketball right in front of them. Terry asked why it seemed there was this sudden jump in production of Chinese big man while most of the Chinese he met were in fact quite short. David laughed and said "yeah, it's a cultural thing" and then he explained what it meant. "I always tell people it's a cultural thing when they see something different about Chinese and ask 'is that unique about Chinese'? But in reality, Chinese are no different from any other people in general. In terms of height, they are on average shorter than people from developed countries but taller than less developed countries. Statistics show that the average heights of countries are highly related to nutritional and environmental conditions of generations. The Dutch, the Germans or the Swedes all took years to grow to their current heights. Japanese used to be short, but no longer so much nowadays. You see Yao to be so tall, but I also remember when I first got to United States, there were somebody asked me: 'how do you guys in China ever find seven footers to play basketball'. At that time, I knew some Chinese basketball players who were over seven feet, but they could not have been as skilled or famous, because basketball was simply not part of the Chinese culture or life".

 

Terry asked with interests: "when was the last time you were back to China, and have you seen a lot of changes?" David said: "Oh yeah, there were indeed a lot of changes. I last went home in 2003. Comparing to when I left twelve and half years ago, my hometown changed so much that I could no longer find the street where I was born and nor could I find the first elementary school that I attended. They were all leveled and then became parts of some other new constructions. When I met, close to my home, a college roommate whose job involved traveling all over China, he told me that my hometown was one of the slowest changing cities in the country. Most cities in China had been dug up, paved with a layer of offices, houses and stores and then dug up again and paved with another newer layer again, and then dug up and paved over again. The difference between my hometown and other Chinese cities was probably that: my hometown had only been dug up twice while most of other cities had been dug up and paved over at least three times already.

 

"How about the political system in the country, is it still undemocratic with many human rights abuses?" Terry asked like an average American reporter with opinions unknowingly censored but appearing to be filled with ideals of freedom. "Well, it's a cultural thing", David grimed like a smart Aleck.

 

"I also tell people 'it's a culture thing' whenever someone asks me about China with prejudgments about her, which I felt out of whack. For example, the first time I replied 'it's a cultural thing' was when a colleague of mine from Taiwan resigned from her job. It was rumored she resigned because she accidentally found out how much money her husband made after her husband lost a laptop on an overseas business trip. Since she learned that her husband was rich, she decided it was no longer necessary for her to work. Other colleagues asked me whether it was in Chinese culture or tradition for husbands not to tell their wives how much they made. I decided to oblige them with the answer 'Yeah. It's a cultural thing'. In fact I knew she told me at least once that she had compared the salaries and benefit packages with her husband's and found what had been raved about her husband's rich and generous employer was merely a fiction".

 

"Another time was when my daughter Crystal used to spend too much time playing with this one girl in kindergarten, that made the girl's mom came to me and my wife complaining Crystal did not leave enough space for her to play with other kids. Out of her snobbishness, she also added 'well I understand that China is a country with such big population, maybe it is the culture for Chinese to be too close to one another . . .' We happily obliged her with a sorry and said 'Yeah, it's a cultural thing' and then just ignored her. What our daughter did with another little girl, whom she viewed as her best friend at that age, really was none of our business. If an adult does not want our daughter to befriend with his or her daughter, then so be it. I am sure there are plenty of little girls in this world."

 

"Another winter I saw two co-workers staring out of the window watch snow falling and discussing how hard it would be to drive home. They watched so intently, so I asked them whether they were trying to 'impose their wills' on the snow to make the snow melt. One of them asked me whether 'imposing the will' on something was an Asian cultural thing. So I answered 'yes' even though it was a phrase I learned from NBA commentators describing Michael Jordan often "imposed his will" on his opponents. Otherwise, how could a China man have such words in his vocabulary?"

 

"People in United States often look at Chinese cultures as they do in the 'Donna Chan' or 'table of 4' episodes in Seinfeld. That probably is the way most Chinese look at the American culture as well. I had the fortune or misfortune to see and hear how both sides making fun of another and it had been really great."

 

"If you want to hear the truth, nothing but the truth, then I will tell you what I think about China. Otherwise 'it's just a cultural thing' that you can picture anyway you like with the guidance of your TV, at the best, to the extent of the "Discovery" channel. Recently, I felt like every time I open my mouth and talk about China, I am offending Chinese and Americans; Republican and Democrats; Communists and Capitalists; left and right."

 

"Come on" Terry said "This is still a free country. You can say any thing you want. Besides I am not a snitch and I will not report you to the SS". David believed Terry would not take him to the SS, because SS no longer existed, but there was almost an urge to tell Terry that he only thought he was free, when in fact he could not escape the mental institution of democracy. As some said, "only truth can set you free". But since that reasoning took a long time when he talked it out with Bud Westwood, David refrained from discussing it with Terry again. Instead, he decided to only stick to the topic of China, and it seemed appropriate while watching a Rockets game after all.

 

"Terry, you said you would not take me to the SS and I think that is one of the problems how common Americans perceive China. SS was in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's. It was under Nazi which was at the extreme right, meaning it was on the capitalists' side and the American side, not the left, which was the Soviet or the Communist China side. But until today, so many Americans would still try to connect Chinese government with an extremely oppressive government existed more than 60 years ago. Do you think it's through the teaching of a fair and objective educational and cultural system?

 

When I left China, I was a rebellious youth filled with anger towards that country. But after living overseas for a decade and a half, I started to sympathize with the country for being unfairly and almost never objectively portrayed in the Western media. Did George Washington warn Americans against having too much passion or resentment towards one nation, at the cost of your own national interests?

 

If you read CNN.com, for the last 10 years, every article that mentioned the "word" Taiwan, there would be a phrase afterwards "a renegade province regarded by China which would be taken by force if necessary". OK, OK, we got the point. Do reporters understand "repetition" is one of the grammatical errors in writing? Maybe they are paid by word count, or I guess every reporter needs to make a buck just like the IT staff in your department. When ask them to try something new that requires independent thinking and creativity, they would always defer to "it's not in my job description".

 

Immediately after George W. Bush took office, he made two important announcements regarding international policies. First, America would not continue to be involved in the Middle East peace process; Second, China is not a strategic partner and nor is it an unpalatable foe, added Collin Powell a little later. OK, China is not a strategic partner, nor is many other countries, but why do you only mention this country and want to make this a headline with the name China in it? I guess good headlines always sell newspapers, such as when a truck driver had an accident with ceramic dishes in his tractor trailer, the local paper would report: "Truck driver smashed China". When a pawn shop pretty much buy everything used from the locals, it would erect a billboard as "We buy China" along the highway with small prints saying that it also buys other things, such as toys and furniture.

 

After the Wen Ho Lee espionage case broke out and congress conducted an investigation which pretty much used vague languages to say Chinese did learn to use computers supposedly out of their leagues, I later saw many printed or online newspapers used the headlines with something similar to 'China DID conduct espionage on United States'. I had to almost laugh at that poor sap Mr. Lee. He was from Taiwan and was he a guy supposed to be against China according to American teaching? Well, but he looked Chinese anyway and when it became hard to find anything in Los Alamos, a Chinese looking face would do.

 

In the Chinese community, the well circled around story about his espionage case was this: he visited mainland China in the mid 1980's when some Chinese colleagues joked 'Oh, you are from Los Alamos. Can you tell me how to make a nuclear bomb?' and that was pretty much it. Then about ten years after, this Lab of Los Alamos started encouraging employees to report any suspicious activities if being contacted by any suspicious people. Lee recalled the question asked by some Chinese scientists 10 years ago and reported the story to get some brownie points as a good employee. Suddenly, his security inspector's eyes lit up and screamed 'This is a serious security breach!!! You should have reported this incident 10 years ago, because it is clearly written on the employee's conduct book'. Lee did not expect the seriousness of his reporting and did not know what to do. The Los Alamos security officers swiftly conducted a thorough search of Lee's house and found that he took some classified documents home to continue working on them without asking for overtime or authorization. That was when "beans", "garbage" or whatever "more gross" hit the fan and all hell broke loose. It took years for Lee to get his name cleared and I am sure the stories about a cleared Mr. Lee did not get on many headlines. But when Mr. Lee was dirty, many headlines reported about him while news media and talk show hosts had years to make jokes like this: 'China and U.S. are even now, we bombed their embassy and they stole our nuclear secrets' . . .

 

When I was in graduate school doing a research paper about Internet in 1996, I read an article on Business Week predicting 'coming threat from China'. Besides the usual undemocratic political system and poor human rights records, there was one important supporting evidence mentioning one fact of this "China threat", and that was Chinese GDP per capita was reaching $300 per year. A lousy three hundred dollars per year was enough to cause American alarms to go off, when American annual GDP per capita were constantly in the $30,000+ range. Of course, I don't need to mention how many more articles I have read about "coming threat from China" after 1995, as Chinese annual GDP per capita continued to grow.

 

You can imagine how humorous it was when Mr. Rumsfeld questioned he could not understand why China was increasing its military spending at a time when he couldn't figure who was threatening China. I will tell you who is threatening China. According to Newton's third law about motions, actions always cause the equal amount of reactions. Equally puzzled were the Chinese as to who they were threatening when they were merely trying to catch up with rest of the world in their standard of living. Their annual GDP per capita have still barely touched the thousand dollar range, which is far from the tens of thousands dollar range for developed countries. If not this many Western countries keep on mentioning theory of Chinese threat when seeing its GDP growth, then China would not feel as much threatened. Otherwise, only fools would try to create wealth without thinking about guarding the wealth. To quote a famous American statesman -- Daniel Webster: 'seeing their neighbors with wealth could be an open invitation to plunder, pillage and revolution' words similar to that.

 

I really don't know where the facts of 'China threat' theory come from. But I have a guess about the motivations. The motivations consist of "fear mongering" by governments or "get headlines and sell newspapers" by private sectors. To me, $1000 is far away from $30,000. I have another guess about motivations of why countries in the West pretty much follow the choir of the 'China threat' and that is: in a foot race featuring a hare and many tortoises, if the hare determined to pick a tortoise as the next superpower or a threat, other tortoises would probably be happy to chime in and point fingers at the picked tortoise and say "it's him, it's him, it's him. . ."

 

About democracy and human rights abuses, I really don't think it is that bad of a condition in China as long as its economy is growing, inflation is down, unemployment rate is low and most importantly, the country is politically stable. This is not exact scientific statistics, but I believe more than 90 percent of the Chinese people in the country would happily tell you that the country is way more stable under communist party rule than without it. I always admire the American wisdom: "If something is not broken, don't fix it". That is one of the wisest axiom I have learned after living in United States. Speaking of democracy, can you name a dictator in China today? You can't. Many people criticizing Chinese political system would point out that China wrote in its constitution about "the country is under the leadership of communist party". How big a sin really was that comparing to other countries, such as: Japan wrote in its constitution that Emperor is the head of its state or Canada, UK, Australia all stated Queen is the head of their states in their constitutions? If Queen Elizabeth I was able to earn the glory and throne for her many generations of successors with the Speech to the troops at Tilbury, what is wrong if Chinese people want to give a party its constitutionally unique position because of its past sacrifices and glories? Communist party did what Queen her majesty said to the common soldiers also that was to "to live and die amongst you all". It's much more practical and useful to watch a country's deeds than its propaganda. Unfortunately, China had to go through extra efforts to be acknowledged as a market economy and it had to go through extra miles to access WTO all because it was perceived as a "communist" country.

 

If communist party abuses its power, there would be social instabilities automatically and like Jesus said "they have their rewards", but there is no need for Western media to smear its image and be allergic to its name. Was it in Western teaching about laws of nature, which was what American democracy was based upon, that 'no thing can come out of corns but corns, and nothing can come out of neddles but neddles'? Prince Diana got this loving image of "people's prince" because of shaking hands with the commoners or poor people. Do you know how many common and poor hands Chinese communist party leader have shaken with?

 

Then there are the reports about human rights abuses. Yes, it was true that for a long time, China had a birth control policy that allowed one family to have one child. Then I do not see reports about new changes now that the "only child" of the family marrying another "only child" of the family, are now allowed having two children. Yes, China kills more criminals each year than any other countries in the world. But I do not see media conducting a Gallup poll among Chinese and see if more or less criminals should be killed after the survey. From my private survey though, crime rate in China is getting much higher than 10 or 20 years ago. It is very hard to argue that these policies did not help stabilize the country or help its economic growth. Of course, to the Western media, reporting Rudy to be tough on crime in New York City would not attract as much attention as reporting a communist party to be tough on crime in China.

 

When studying carefully, many of the human rights abuses reported about China were simply like Democrats criticizing Republicans in the United States. But reporting anything positive about China is not going to sell newspapers in the West, on the other hand reporting anything negative about China would definitely help media businesses. One such example is Dalai Lama vs. Mao Zedong. Dalai Lama is a Lama who simply said some of the things that many Lamas knew and did something many Lamas did. Then his words, characters and charms were so affectionately and overly exaggerated in the West that made him such a rock star. He is a man of great achievement and character, but an even greater man in many respects, Mao had been simply smeared as a treacherous and wicked dictator in the West. Mao is a much greater thinker, philosopher, scholar, poet, organizer, strategist and motivator who helped unified China and helped brought peace to the world, but only known as "the bastard who killed many Tibetans" as one of my fellow graduate student said in US. William the Conqueror was a bastard, but Mao was not. Nor did he or China "invade" Tibet. Tibet was married into China around the 7th or 8th centuries pretty much like how Europe was merged together by husbands and wives in the fashion of the "Holy Roman Empires". Then the Mongolians broke China apart about the same time they broke Eastern Europe. When China was pieced together by Qin Dynasty, Tibet was actually put into the big puzzle in about 17th century too. If you watch the "why we fight" series of video tapes produced by US government during World War II, Tibet was part of China. But after Chinese communist party took over China, then the story in America became that "China invaded Tibet in the 1950's".

 

Mao's army actually went through Tibet in the 1930's when he was chased after by the Nationalist. That was not an invasion but a trip to seek refugee, and no one mentioned that trip as "invasion" of course, because it was before the "why we fight" series. Then he went back in the 1950's after communist party gained power, and that trip became an invasion. The guy didn't know what he did wrong really, because he probably simply thought of himself as entering another part of his country that didn't need a passport.

 

In a lame man's eyes, Mao built a country with average life span of its citizens being under 40 before 1950's. And now the average life span is over 60 for all people of all races. He also brought peace and prosperity to 1/5 of the world population in an area that used to randomly spill blood by warlords for most ridiculous and trivial reasons. Such a man can not be called anything else but a "great man", yet he would probably never enjoy such a status in the Western culture.

 

He did cause a lot of death in his later years when even an average Chinese would call him an old fool. For the period, the Communist party finally gave him an official verdict as 70% success and 30% failure. Living in the West, more than 90% of the people would not give him 10% of the credit he was due. But Mao is undoubtedly in many regards, one of the best of the Chinese that have ever lived. If you like any of my work ethic, that was because of Mao's teaching. And I believe your IT department would be a much more productive place if people just learned to eliminate gossips among co-workers and try to appreciate their responsibilities, which were taught in Mao's famous article "Do your job" (反对自由主义).

 

Ironically, one of Mao's famous "old fool" remarks was "You are either with us or against us" (凡是敌人反对的我们就要支持，凡是敌人支持的我们就要反对), which my friends and I laughed our rears off when a communist member tried to quote it in our university after Tian An Men Massacre. I had no idea where President Bush got that idea though. President Bush also demonstrated with his invasion to Iraq another Chairman Mao's famous and controversial quote of '枪杆子里面出政权'. This quote was often cited by the West as a blatant disregard of law and justice by dictators. But Mao said it when his small guerilla band was hiding in the mountains to avoid brutal slaughters by the Nationalist armies, more than 20 years before Communist party gained power. Mao said that more in a way of expressing frustration and did not expect the statement became an accurate description in the affairs of the international politics.

 

Since I am a traitor of three countries, China, US and Canada, I have to make a fair statement that no people are to be blamed for failing to learn the truth about the other peoples. One of the jokes I heard between Canadians and Americans is this: When Americans traveling to Canada, Canadians often ask "What do you Americans think about us Canadians?" And the replies from the Americans typically are: "We don't. I am sorry, but we just don't". While 90% of the Canadians probably know who the American president is, it's probably true that there is probably no need for 10% of the Americans to know who the Canadian prime minister is. For everyday life, it is perfectly OK to be like that. There could be long term effects to that, but who cares about the long term effects as a regular human being?

 

Trying to mesh Chinese thinking and American thinking into one brain, has always been a logically sloppy and messy process. When I first arrived at the United States, I simply couldn't understand the terms "conservative" and "liberal". Because People's Republic of China was founded on leftist ideas, so "conservative" in China meant all the "leftist ideas" while "liberal" meant the "rightist" ideas, which were totally opposite to how the term were used in United States. After I straightened out the "conservative" and "liberal" ideas in America, with helps from Rush Limbaugh, Larry King, and fellow workers, I always got a kick out of it when Rudy Gullialli refused to shake hands with then Chinese president Jiang Ze Ming. Rudy must have felt like a hero as this American "conservative", who refused to shake hands with this Chinese "liberal". But in fact, Rudy and Jiang both were mayors of the biggest city in their respective country; both were for big businesses and both were tough on crime, both made names out of the crisis in their respective countries, and needless to say, both had presidential aspirations. But I guess in the eyes of the West, Chinese are pretty much like what has been said about the white witness looking at Black people and said: "they all look alike".

 

In the meantime, Chinese look at Americans and think they all look alike too. Since China had been so poor and oppressed for so long, starting from the 1840 Opium War, the entire country first even look at everybody in the West as all look alike. Notice communism was never a native product of China. It went to China from Europe after Chinese looked upon many other Western religions once or twice to look for messiahs. Another earlier attempt to use Western ideals to save the country was the 太平天国 around 1851. For a long time, China along with many countries in Asia have been trying to imitate the West pretty much like 6th graders trying to imitate 12th graders. Finally, China was able to tell that Westerners are not entirely all look alike. And still as a 6th grader finally found that while many 12th graders are cool, but there is this extremely cool kid in school which is immensely popular and that is: America.

 

In many ways, China is more American than American these days, it is not hard to see the country is filled with conservative American ideas that focus on economic growth intensely with pragmatism. For one, did conservatives always wanted to lower taxes? For all I know, the tax rate for average Chinese is just about zero. Many Chinese are feeling the country is too obsessed with money and economics and therefore are trying to introduce religions, moral standards and western ideologies into the system, but unfortunately, most of the cultural imports were turning into the "coolest kids imitating syndrome" again and again. Many imports from the West were things that happened to be deemed popular at the time. Some examples are, because of valuing importance of the English language, Chinese language were deemed not as useful; because of importing Western medicine, Chinese medicine were doubted as not really working; because of importing Christianity, traditional dragon image of China were feared; because of importing productivity, environment was regarded as less importance and pollution ran rampant.

 

Then, there is this worship about democracy as be all and heal all panaceas. Every time, you pick a book in China introducing Western culture, there are so many descriptions about how wonderful democracy is, as if democracy created the golden rule, polite people and prosperity. It seemed like even Chinese have forgotten that everything has two sides Yin and Yang ( 阴阳 ), while Westerners are starting to use the words. Yin and Yang mean that even good things can be harmful if there are too much 福兮祸所依，祸兮福所伏. People like to quote Winston Churchill as saying: "democracy is the worse possible political system, but it is the only system that works". Well historically, it worked at times in Anthems, and Rome, but then it didn't work in those places some other times. It worked for America for many years, but is there a guarantee that it will work for any other places and worth spreading like gospels? Can people realize stability is more important in many countries than democracy? Can Western countries realize that Chinese people undoubtedly believe that communist party is the only party that works in the country? Chinese supporting Chinese Communist party, in a sense, is a form of democracy, which means the government is based on the consent of the governed. A more cynical question along the same line is: can Bush and neo-con acknowledge Saddam Hussein worked better than the so called democratic system is being installed in Iraq? A destabilized country usually takes many people to cast their votes with lives and blood for many years to finally select a form of government which majority of the people can agree upon. It is a painful process that nobody wants to go through unless being forced upon by outside forces, which were the period in China from 1840 to 1949.

 

When living in China, I used to look at democracy with envy and affection too, and see great statesmen of democracy like Sir Winston Churchill as wearing a bright and mysterious halo. After learning the whole story, I realized that Sir Churchill was not that great after all. First he was an imperialist and second, he was a monarchist. The kind of democracy he wanted was for his elite and civilized English speaking people only, although he was always able to phrase his ideas with grace and elegance.

 

He also wanted to "stare in the eyes of the French" and get a favorable exchange rate for the British people after World War I. Such a blunder contributed greatly to the rapid economic development of the continental Europe especially Germany, after World War I and weakened then British economy. Therefore Mr. Churchill was not that big of a fan for free trade or market economy either. To be fair to the old gentleman, not that many people understood those things that well back then.

 

After seeing many years of free elections, they did nothing but discredit Mr. Churchill's famous remark that 'democracy is the worst possible political system, but it is the only system that works'. In many cases it does not work, especially in international politics when people try to export democracy. The first part might be true though, that democracy often displayed its ugly side. You now see Chinese starting to believe things such as "no publicity is bad publicity". In Taiwan, politicians figured out the often became famous for getting into a fist fight during public debates. You also see people in Taiwan talking about wanting democracy, more than their cultural roots, historical and biological connection with China. If sons or daughters do not acknowledge their mothers and fathers, do you believe they were striving for the good of the 'people'?

 

If there's ever an award for the most awkward impersonation contest of the American Revolution, the struggle for so called Taiwan Independence has to be nominated in the history books. Americans struggled for independence because British levied heavy taxes on them. The Taiwan independence advocates strive for independence because People's Republic of China never taxed a penny from the island, and they are still enjoying the contributions from the people on the island who still view themselves as Chinese.

 

When I first arrived in United States, one day I heard Zig Zigler's motivational speech and I was quite moved by his joke: 'What is democracy? If I see a young man with long hairs, I might not give him a job, but would I die to defend his rights to have long hairs? You bet I would . . .' But that was when I was ignorant about Western culture. An innocent child is always easily convinced, persuaded and touched.

 

Now I am getting more sophisticated about Western democracy and in the process have learned speeches from more greats. One of the reasons Athenians were proud of their democracy was 'we don't resent the fact of being in poverty, but rather the fact of surrendering to it'. If you look around today's Western style democracy, most of them simply give one vote to one person no matter that person fight or give up fight against poverty. Neither do any of the democracy care too much about whether elected officials are bringing financial responsibility or irresponsibility, moral discipline or indulgence, knowledge or ignorance to an office. While borrowing to greatness, lack of moral standards and dismissing intellectuals can win popular votes or even wars, things that gratifying human nature could easily bring long term disasters. Don't forget human nature has tendency to slide downhill, if you remember the fall of Communism, an ideology built on unselfish devotion among one another?

 

What's really evil about a government is the intention to mesmerize general public. Of course, government is not totally at fault according to another greater thinker in the West -- James Allen: Traditionally people despise the master if one man is the master and many others are slaves. But master and slaves are cooperators in the relationship. No matter democracy or totalitarianism, the real evil of a master lies in making people ignorant and then trying to take advantage of them. The real fault of the slaves lies in letting the master think for them instead of using their heads. No matter what kind of social systems, devaluing knowledge and giving others less than divine social values and making others ignorant can not be a good social system.

 

I hope China does not idolize all the garbage from the western culture as God send. I hope people build democracies that are based on consent of the governed, but hope they do not become too foolish, ignorant and blind enough to lose sight of who really are the governed.

 

What good is it, if a democracy encourages 'no publicity is bad publicity' or 'I don't listen to intellectuals'. Those people who advertised to have humble roots and listen to common men are often the rich and well educated.

 

The Chinese social system today is quite possibly not even as good as the Western Style democracy in many aspects, but it is pointless to compare because as Sir Churchill said 'it's the only system that works' at least in present day China. At least the system still encouraged 'knowledge is power' (知识就是力量) on paper, when I was in school and it introduced ideas such as 'stability overrules everything' (稳定高于一切), 'development is the real deal' (发展才是硬道理).

 

No matter Chinese style capitalism/socialism or the Western democracy, the real reason for the rapid development of China is really because that area had been too poor for too long. It's like a half bottle of cold water is destined to be heated by the other half bottle of hot water, when the insulation dividing the bottle is removed. When Western countries are ahead in the game, they like to pin their success on something and that something happened to be pinned to Christianity in the past and now to democracy after separation of Church and State and its demonstrated success in America.

 

If one truly believes in God, a country's prosperity is not the work of political systems, but the work of God. Western religions had burned many heresies alive from the Medieval Ages onward, but there was a Chinese who chose to be burnt for his belief in God a while back. There was a talented guy who lived several hundred years before Christ named 介子推. Since his first name means "push" in Chinese, let's call him "Push". Push helped a prince to go through many arduous journeys until the prince became the king of his country, pretty much like 'Return of the King' in 'Lord of the Rings'. When the king wanted to hire him as an important minister, Push refused. He felt sick and tired of his colleagues who took it for granted that it was them that brought the king to the throne. He went home to live with his mother and said: 'it was upon God's glory that the prince became the king. But my colleagues thought the glories belong to them. 贪天之功'. Then Push moved away from the king and the capital to live in the country. The king led a small army to try to hire Push from the country side. Push tried to hide into the mountains. The king ordered his army to light a wild fire to force Push coming out of the hiding. Push chose not to come down the mountain from the route left for him by the king and eventually got burnt with his mother after the wild fire became out of control. You probably won't remember and probably would scorn at the story of such a fool as I did first time I heard of the tale. But if this story was a like a bubble buried underneath the mud at the bottom of a river, it rose higher and higher throughout the years and grew bigger and bigger when there had been more and more stirs in the water.

"

 

Terry was obviously not paying attention to the story about Push and said: "well, Clippers are not that weak after all". David followed: "Rockets need both Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady to be healthy to make the playoffs. Without either, they are simply a below average team". Speaking of that, David thought: "that was my points exactly: hero means little within the context of historical events. Historical events often take their own courses. China or Yao Ming are both developing fast, but not at the level of the best players yet, and far from their potentials."

 

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