Stalker Story

I told the story of my stalker to my parents the other night and so I totally forgot to post it on here. Alas, here it is.

My Chinese friend and I were on the subway, and were talking about Sino-American relations because this was right before the G20 Summit in Seoul and the Chinese media was busy blasting Americans Quantitative Easing policy and he had asked me what I thought and as many of you know, this is a subject that I have a lot to say about.

Anyway, I was right in the middle of talking about the next step of the Chinese economy, in terms of moving away from cheap manufacturing, and towards an ideas-based or knowledge-based economy, when my friend told me a story about how is journalism teacher doesn't let students talk about certain subjects and how he will openly and in-front of the class criticize students who don't "believe" a certain way.

It was at this point, that a Chinese woman interrupted us and started to belligerently yell at my friend in Chinese, in front of a packed train of Chinese people! She accused him of being un-Chinese and not loving his country for criticizing China and some its policies in front of a foreigner (there is a belief among Chinese people (I wonder why...cough cough Propaganda Dept), that foreigners only hear negative stories about China and that Chinese people shouldn't add to this by telling more negative things to foreigners). Essentially, this woman was making the exact point my friend and I were saying, and that is, if China wants to move to a knowledge-based, service economy you need the freedom to express creativity and your own views...that doesn't happen when you get yelled at on the subway.

The exciting part though only began. While the woman was yelling at us, my friend and I missed our stop on the subway, so we had to get off and double around, then switch off and transfer to another line. While we were doing this I got this weird feeling like we were being followed, and no not by PSB. As we were walking to through the transfer tunnel, I noticed a guy following a little behind us, listening to our conversation and then he continued to follow us on the subway platform to were we stood waiting for the train. After we got onto the train, he spoke to my friend in Chinese and then turned to me and said, "so what do you think of China?" We then got into a discussion about how I viewed China and many of the issues regarding the freedom to criticize the government etc. Basically we talked about all the is wrong with China. He then asked me what I think will happen with China, and I responded that I don't know but that whatever happens it will be because the Chinese people either stood up and said enough is enough or they don't. He agreed with that, but then went on to say, that it is his great hope that people like me come to China and aren't afraid to tell the truth and that because he met my friend and I he has even more hope for China.

On a side note, to give everyone an understanding of how sensitive of a topic Liu Xiaobo is in China, it was the one thing he refused to talk about and when I asked about Liu he looked around before he even refused to discuss him.