Exacerbating all this is inflation at a time when higher food prices mean real trouble, and a pernicious drought. Because America is so busy minding her upsetting business, Chinese woes have been swept in the corner.

Each chapter is topic based – the economy, the labor unions, Vietnam, the fall of the Soviets etc. He maneuvered his tiny little-non-nation cum nation through the treacherous waters of enemies on every side and inside too. He must have appeared to be tyrannical, but his success speaks for itself. Singapore government is demanding but it meets also the demands of a civil society. World leaders would be well to learn the lessons he demonstrated in his own country.

I was sorry to hear from a classmate of mine who served in Singapore, that his son has not done as well, but this can be expected. The record of inherited headship through blood lines is notoriously poor.

For you, if you are planning to live and work in Asia, might best use this book on a table beside an Asian history compendium and read the history of each period alongside Lee’s opinions. I wish I had had this before I went to China in ’05.

For example, Mao Zedong, who as dictator presided over the starving death of 30,000,000 people, is not personally blamed but “government policies” were at fault. How obtuse is this? Mao was in charge – he told people what to do – and they died! Mao’s record put him far ahead of Hilter in the ranks of genocidal maniacs but China draws back in on herself to protect her own.

This business is schizophrenic at best, the instability results from trying to hold two opinions at the same time. America is showing the same stupidity by allowing President Obama to continually blame Republicans as though he just moved into the White House and bears no responsibility for the economic mess of the past 3 years. Schizophrenia in Greek means “doubled mindedness” – you cannot have an individually trained workforce and a collective nation and be anything but unstable.

Second addendum, since our national economic miseries started many more Chinese students are studying in the states as colleges need students. Some institutions even have marketing efforts in China to get well-off graduates here for advanced work particularly. After all – why not. China is handling our debt.

Are Chinese children smarter than American kids? Chinese children study much harder. They go to school longer hours, and frequently they attend private school several times a week. They have no team sports or after school activities. They stay in college 2 more years than we do. So they appear smarter. But in school they have limited information. They focus on math, science and languages. There is almost nothing about Western history, social sciences, culture and much of what they are required to read is falsified or distorted. For example, a recent textbook I saw about America indicated that all black people live in abject poverty. Every attempt is made to picture our nation as cruel and so awful no one would want to be here, however, the Chinese still say what they want is “to come to America” more than any other wish.

So how do they field sports teams? Gifted athletic children are taken from their homes at an early age and put in sports schools away from their families and trained for sports performance. These children are as young as 5 years old. They can go home a few times each year.

What do they do for fun? People work many longer hours than Americans, and except for construction jobs, these jobs are all low-effort. They have a 2 hour lunch which they use for a nap; all businesses have beds for noontime naps. They have TV, games, and they play sports with their families. I saw people playing badminton on the street (no net, no court) on their lunch hour. They like to hike.

Do Chinese have freedom of speech? In their personal lives the Chinese speak freely, otherwise all information is tightly controlled. NO one is permitted to criticize the government in any way. TV, radio, textbooks are all confined to what the government (Communist) wants people to know. This also applies to religion. The law says there is freedom of religion but in actual fact, not so. Google blocks any search for democratic ideals, truth, or facts. You could probably not locate your own church’s website online. Anything critical of the Beijing government, that mentions the protesters in Tibet and other areas of China, and violations of human rights are blocked.
Doesn’t loss of human rights bother the Chinese people? Yes it does, but only a few years ago they were starving. Chairman Mao’s foolishness caused 30 million people to starve to death. Their standard of living is so much better now they don’t want to contest the government. But this will change.

Are Chinese all very short? They used to be but with so much more food and better nutrition they are growing taller each year. They are still several inches shorter than American kids of the same age.
Do they earn more money since they work so much longer? No, average wages are $100-$150 per month. Government (Communist) workers earn 3 to 5 times that much. Farm families earn less than that and 65% of the Chinese are still rural.

Is it true that American manufacturers have sweat shops and pay low wages? Some companies in the big cities are shameful employers; others are run much better. No employee has any benefits other than a vacation and wages which means products are very cheap.
Why doesn’t China stop pollution? I read that it is killing people. You are right; pollution is killing the waterways, the air quality, and then the people. 20% of San Francisco’s pollution comes from China. Very strict laws are simply NOT obeyed and government employees do not enforce them. In every town there are local officials who ignore Beijing’s commands on literally everything.

I have heard that China is now a capitalist country. The Chinese will say no, but I have to agree. The nation is one giant yard sale on weekends as people earn extra money. The epidemic of corruption by officials is the big problem. Bribes are demanded to do the smallest thing at all levels. If anything destroys China it will be corrupt officials. Resentment against these people is growing alarmingly and there have been unpublicized protests.
Do the Chinese ever come to America? No, not often. A non-business Visa is nearly impossible to acquire. Visitors to America must pay a $50,000 fee to the government when they leave China and if they stay here the money reverts to the government. Even then 30& of the Chinese do stay in America anyway. Some students enter with fewer restrictions. It helps to have contacts in government to get out of China.
Are Chinese different from Americans? Yes, very. The Chinese are highly focused and motivated. They are not friendly but they are very kind They have many false assumptions about the West but they do want to know Westerners. This limits to some extent their ability to get to know and understand Westerners.

Things always happen when I go shopping. I wander through sidewalks where merchants have placed metal bins of feed, tubs of grain for people, and burlap bags of tobacco, some in the leaf. You need to walk in the street to avoid stepping on someone or something. Vendors have some new plants for sale, but the soil is so impacted around the roots I don’t know how they survive, no mulch, no nothing. It is not necessary to go into anyone’s store, and no permission is needed to park on the public streets no matter what you sell. This week they had several dozen piglets in tiny cages waiting for a home. (I wish someone would teach these people how to cure bacon!)

Anyway, at this shop an older woman was speaking Mongolian so I offered her the Bible I had with me. And here is where I learned how valuable it is not to speak the languages you are hearing – you can look at the body language and facial expressions and learn perhaps more.

She became animated – keep in mind I have no clue what she is talking about – and started singing, and dancing, bowing and waving her arms, which I construed to be gospel songs. They were all upbeat in major keys. This went on for about 10 minutes as they prepared my purchase.

Then she draped a yellow scarf with great fanfare around my neck and insisted on finding me a taxi home. The taxi driver also was Mongolian and so he helped out too. In this little tableau I saw that the Chinese hold the Mongolians as inferior, something to be endured. (Now why they should think this when they are the interlopers on their land one can only guess.) The Mongolian woman was very outgoing and pleasant but the Chinese man disassociated himself from her with an amused smile. She paid him absolutely no mind – as though he was not there at all.

This confirmed what I had suspected both from my experience and from my reading that the Mongolians ignore the Chinese, and the Chinese are mildly amused, perhaps even contemptuous of the Mongolians. If the man even knew any Mongolian he did not indicate this. She spoke both languages and as so often is the case between these two groups, she was unaffected in her public dealings, and he stiffened up as though he would lose face or credibility if he had anything to do with her.

Mongolian 3 wheeled taxi

I gave her a flyer for the school, hoping that she would come around for more books. If she knows a Mongolian dance she probably also knows where the church is hiding out and meeting in this town which will open doors for us since I am convinced that the Mongolians are much more easily reached than the Chinese. Mongolia has a long history of egalitarian public behavior, shared power among leaders, and the equality of women, which has not been true in China.

This is how the gospel goes out – one person at a time. I’ve met almost enough for a house church.

I asked one Mongolian why they are so much happier than the Chinese and she said with a smile, “We know this is our land.”

Restaurant yurt taken at night in Daban

All this smothering attention to Chinese visitors had me curious until I read online news regarding protests in Southern China over shoddy school construction (which is the rule) so the political types are increasingly wobbly about their ability to rule. I can imagine managing some foreigners, but watching Chinese from Hong Kong? Makes you wonder. There have been police clamp downs on Bibles in registered churches in Inner Mongolia, places where legally restrictions are in place. But we are increasingly learning that legal is only an ad hoc local term applied as seen

Unfortunately no Hong Kong teacher will come. And the future distribution of the Mongolian Bibles is in the planning stage too but the van arrived, and it seats a large group – more skinny Chinese than beefy Americans of course – and we have a number of churches who want more scriptures. That is top priority because we know the Bible in and of itself has the power to change lives. In fact we are counting on that since we have so few people for such a huge area.

Follow-Up While in the Chicago airport I heard some people speaking in Mongolian. I turned towards the man in the crowd to tell him that I had been followed in China because people thought I was part of the Mongolian dissidents who wanted a return of their lands. I assured him I had no involvement but I was curious about this movement. He mumbled an answer and after a few people left the elevator I looked around and he and his companions were gone. Clearly, there is an underground movement. This is not surprising. Asians have very long memories. Mongolians have a great deal of patience but I doubt they will ever be satisfied until their land, probably the oldest civilization on earth, has been returned.

Elementary farm Mongolian school children

Chinese people, when asked about their nation say, “we have a 4,000 uninterrupted history” or the dogma taught to modern children “we will take over the world.” Americans speak in the present tense but in China ancestor worship may be largely gone, but focus on the past is not.We are “now” people and the rest of the world knows it. Apparently this hope-filled notion of America is more deeply rooted than the fear of us as an economic and military enemy, also taught to the young.

The starkest contrast is information, esp. political. We have humongous piles of it, 24/7 TV news, online blogs by the billions, much of it worthless, like being baptized in Michael Jackson coverage so it can be hard to shake off the excess. In China – zip!

You can’t demand high performance education from cradle to high school and then expect an educated upper class to sit back and swallow words and deeds without question. The Internet has made that impossible. While the poor complain about corruption the educated protest the censors. I subscribe to ChinaDigitalTimes. If you ever want to know what Official China is not saying that is the place to go.

Blaming America has somewhat cooled in China; perhaps it generated too much positive curiosity. The Chinese may be cut off but they are not gullible. “How,” they ask “can a mere 330 million people dominate the world when we have five times that many of the hardest working souls on earth?” What is America doing right?

Failed political systems must blame others because they have run out of excuses or valid reasons – Iran, North Korea, and Chavez. Demagogues will always be out there and eventually they fail. Excuses begin to look silly; the dog can eat just so much homework.

Finally, because the two political systems are so completely opposite, the Chinese misread almost everything that our government does. For example, they believed that George Bush wanted to deliberately impoverish Chinese workers by refusing to import cyanide-laced toothpaste and the toys using lead paint.

They think we have only one election for President, completely ignorant of the myriads of other items and persons on the ballot, assuming our President like their Communist bosses makes demands which are carried out by obedient servants. They have no understanding or experience in our political system, the huge quantities of money it takes for campaigns – (what is a campaign?) – or the calming effect that knowing a bad politician can be removed in 2, 4 or 6 years has on a patient electorate. If you don’t like the guy, he will eventually leave!!

The Chinese have no such assurances. They are stuck with these guys. Our new President Obama caused them panic. My good friend in Shanghai asked after the election, “We don’t know how to handle President Obama?” My reply was “You handle him just exactly the same way you handled Clinton or Bush.” That kind of response makes no sense to them.

They personalize everything. We are a government of laws not men (so far) and expect to stay that way. They live in an unstable political world. In a one-party nation, the Chinese have no such hope. Either they work with the powers that be, or they work around them. That is the purpose of corruption, a way to succeed in spite of politics. When the personalities change so does the government and who knows what will happen then?

My friends and I routinely heard our Chinese coworkers and friends say how happy we were – all that hope was showing through.

What is daily life like for you in China? China does not have the public utilities we have here. For example, a toilet seat in a public bathroom is rare. Because the sewer systems are not modern, one does not throw toilet paper in the commode, but puts it in a plastic bag. That makes travel outside of the most expensive hotels a real strain. Since most American travelers stay only in good hotels they do not see this side of Chinese life. A private car for a foreigner is not a good idea, so we take taxis and buses everywhere – or walk. Public transportation is excellent, and the cell phones work wonderfully; cell phones are the glue holding China together. The service is cheap and easy to get. There are almost NO dairy products anywhere except for yogurt – no butter, no cheese (no pizza worth eating), no American goods except Pepsi. Except for birds and fish pets are rare. Because most people do not speak English you have to use sign language and a lot of guessing to get things done, so the Americans tend to stick together. Chinese food is excellent and cheap! Farmers may have single-family dwellings but city folk have apartments which are devoid of items we expect, like a refrigerator, stove, oven, not even cabinets. Also nearly all Chinese food except rice is stir-fried. A woman can prepare a meal for 8 in less than ½ hour. There are no elevators in buildings under 6 stories; the Chinese are very healthy with all that stair-work, and they ride bicycles most of the time.
I hear there is no freedom of religion. The Chinese Constitution allows freedom of religion BUT, there are 10 pages of exceptions and qualifications. Parents are not allowed to discuss God with their own children until age 18. Churches must be registered and preach the party line but many do not. Officially the Communist Party requires members to be atheists but Chinese children are naturally believers in God. I frequently asked them! “Do you believe in God?” Without hesitation they would say Yes. China has a rich history of theism so in recent years Buddhism is encouraged, Christianity smothered, and others tolerated. While the official number of Christians is 1% in actual fact it is over 10 million because there are so many underground churches and believers. You can read about Chinese Christians in prison online at Voice of the Martyrs.