Time is winding down rapidly as the school year (or at least the portion I am contracted for) peters out. As of next week, our finals will be past and from here on, be freed from work and duty obligations. So that has also meant a flurry of recent activity trying to maximize my time in Shenzhen, and this in spite of the ever increasing heat and mugginess that has accompanied the arrival of monsoon season. As an Oregonian, it is strange to realize that summer is not the nicest time of year in some places.

Recently my activities have included a wonderful hot pot dinner with one our Chinese friends who made it at home, as well as playing pool in the back alleys and going out for late night barbeque on the streets, which is a personal favorite of mine. We went out with some friends to one of the bars in Futian, watching what I can best describe as a Chinese jam band play a long set using some traditional and Western instruments before doing a night of KTV (karaoke) that included a nice long buffet line. Last week we paid a visit to a friend in the hospital whose wife had just given birth to their new baby boy. Just the other day, Andrew and I visited the Dafen Oil Painting Village and chatted with a man working there from Hunan.

A couple weeks back we ended up joining with a number of our students to paint a wall at the school, under the theme of the Olympics. We disregarded the theme, opting instead to paint up the flags of the US and China, a symbol of our friendship, particularly at the school. Later on that week we came in to discover the flag painted over. A number of other flags were now up, obscuring the American one. China’s was of course, untouched. Our students told us that the headmaster had seen it and become very angry, sure that the Chinese flag was smaller than the American, and demanded new flags be painted. The school line on this was that the theme was Olympics, and our painting didn’t match that. No explanation was offered for covering our flag and not theirs.

In a nutshell, the last two paragraphs are my feelings on China as well. Most of the time it is great, and I have a good time, genuinely enjoy being with my Chinese friends here and we all get along. And on occasion, a disturbing incident comes along, usually nationalist in nature. I feel like places like Taiwan and Korea, even Japan, are not so worrisome to Americans specifically for the reason that they are democracies. China’s size no doubt has a role too, but I can’t help but feel that China would not seem so threatening if its people voted for their own leaders. Or if the people had unfettered access to information, not only the government-approved line.

Hopefully as time passes these elements will change. One of our smarter students did a painting that included the words “China is not the best but also good” which to my delight has escaped our zealous censor’s eyes (and probably his language ability). Watching a Chinese movie led to a discussion with Sunny in which he was telling me on how he feels he should set an example for less-educated people here to behave better. Andrew and I had dinner with some people he tutors in which they expressed their own frustrations with the government’s news machine. Sunny said to me that I’ve been here long enough now to understand China; I replied no way. Even in a year’s time, a country this big and diverse is hard to get a handle on. For now, I speak some basic Mandarin and have an idea of the thought process of the people. Past that, it remains very much a mystery.