Z invited me to dinner with his two friends, L and C. L is in the education business. His school in Songjiang, Shanghai, has more than 5,000 students. He went to Fudan University in 1977, which means he was the first batch of university students after the Cultural Revolution. L told me he lived in the US for over twenty years and married a Western wife with two kids. However, very interestingly, he kept advising me that I should teach my two daughters to keep their Chinese identity, which is puzzling. Annoyingly puzzling. I think L is old, not in age, but in psychology. To me, it’s just his negativity due to his inability to fit into Western society.

I expressed my disapproval, which obviously irritated him. Then, he asked me to show him humility, making me feel funny. This is precisely the evidence that shows he is mentally unfit to stay in Western society. He is in his sixties. How could he succeed in the US if he hadn’t learned how to deal with different opinions in a conversation at this age? Now I don’t blame him that he insisted on instilling in me the outmoded concept of “Western society discriminates against Chinese.” How pathetic! I know, for a fact, that there are too many so-called “highly educated Chinese” or “intellectuals” like L in China. They believe they know everything about the world and human nature, but the CCP brainwashes them. As a result, they know little about Western history and culture, even though they have spent years abroad.

C didn’t receive a college education. He is much more grounded than L. I like him better because he didn’t believe such crap as “Chinese cannot be successful in the US.” C’s son just started his semester at SIM, a Singapore education institution.