For some time now, I have struggled with what I write about China.  I want to be fair, but what does that mean?  There is so much to write about China, does fair mean a balance between positive and negative?  That would be contrived and inaccurate.

This blog was founded on wanting to represent the China I experienced, the China I was not reading about in the news.  I have done this by including news articles and then reflecting on them.

It's my opinion based on my experiences in China and extensive reading about China.

My last entry troubled me.  Zhou Yunpeng is a wonderful musician, but his lyrics, as translated, are shocking.   They are also fabulous when one considers them alongside Bob Dylan, a musician Zhou Yunpeng admires.  It is within this context that I offer Zhou Yunpeng.

Bob Dylan was my era and he was a spokesman for my generation, then he went on to speak to generations that followed mine.  We loved his social criticism, we held it dear in our hearts.  We came of age during a time when to disagree with the government and an undeclared war was considered disloyal and even traitorous.  Bob Dylan was one of our people who spoke against the corruption of society and government and leadership. 

I worry that Chinese friends will read this blog and see only criticism and negativity, not the stand for dignity and free speech which results in improving a society. 

When I was in China, I longed for dissent.  I write in my book, 
In China, I was learning . . . how integral to justice and human rights free speech is, how essential a free press is for the development of people’s minds. . . . [I was trying to explain this to my students one day, when] I heard a sudden rush of shouting voices[from America], a crowd of marchers chanting, ‘Hell no, we won’t go!’ followed by my black neighbor’s voice saying, “I can’t trust you because you’re white,” then I saw the church members of an African friend sitting on the steps of the federal building downtown Minneapolis protesting his deportation.  I saw Whoopi Goldberg in Steven Spielberg’s film The Color Purple, and film footage of leaders of the American Indian Movement discussing the federal agents at Wounded Knee.  A system god-awful imperfect, but the voices were there, I’d heard the voices daily.  I shivered from the excitement of it, the beauty of it, the mystery of all these voices, a harmony of disharmony, ‘America, the beautiful multitudes,’ and I looked back at the faces of my [Chinese] students.  I was hungry for, desperate for dissent. 

No wonder I felt at home in Xinjiang province.  I had little in common with the Uyghur people except that they understood the importance of dissent -- because they were ruled by people not their own. 

Zhou Yunpeng understands also.  And he is popular.  This is good.  China will develop and prosper because he exists and he is popular.  No country can move forward in providing for its people without accepting criticism.  We must guard the practice of it in America and we must hope for it to flourish in China.