DISCLAIMER: My apologies to Kelley B. and anybody else who follows me on Facebook. Some of the thoughts and passages below are recycled from our back-and-forth there.

Let’s get something straight: We’re not going to be #1 forever. In fact, our reign as the world’s sole economic superpower is already over. China has it’s own financial “Atom Bomb” that it could drop at any moment. Namely, their massive foreign cash reserves and their artificially deflated currency. They could ruin the US (and most of the world) tomorrow if they decided to suddenly float their currency or dump their dollars.

Imagine all of those “low, low prices” at Wal-Mart going up 500% overnight. Imagine the cost of your hotel room in Paris going from $250/night to $1,000/night in the blink of an eye.

Similarly, we could decimate their reserves and export-dependant economy by simply telling them that we will not honor any of the Treasury Bonds that they are holding, and that we will slap huge tariffs onto all of their products. Maybe we might even blockade some of their major ports. How would they stop us?

Imagine all of China’s vaunted cash reserves becoming worthless overnight. Imagine all of their factories shut down and riots of millions of unemployed migrant workers in the streets.

If this is a real fight, there ARE ways to hurt the enemy. So why don’t we do it? Well, here is where the Cold War analogy fits again: Mutually Assured Destruction.

China would absolutely ruin itself in the process of taking down the US and the West. Sure, hyperinflation would ravage us, but we would undoubtedly retaliate in kind. Unemployment would skyrocket in China as everybody stopped buying their exports and massive social unrest would soon follow.

In short, we’ve got each other by the balls.

This is why, after a lot of consideration, I’ve decided that Google’s stance is really the wrong way to approach their problem. They’re letting go of China’s balls!

This is a country of 1.3 billion people. BILLION. Our biggest TV event? The Super Bowl. We might touch 100 million viewers someday (last year it was 96 million). TEN TIMES that many watch the yearly CCTV New Year’s Eve variety show. These are not abstract numbers. The streets of the major cities are choked with people. Shanghai is 2.5 times the size of New York in terms of population. There are far more web-surfers (“netizens,” as they call them here) than there are people in the US.

With that in mind, when Google says that they’re going to pull out of china and give up on $300 million in revenue, you have to understand how huge of a failure that is for them. With barely 35% of the search market share here (and shrinking, with other home-grown, well-financed competitors on the way soon) it is a great time for Google to leave business-wise, their socially aware stance notwithstanding. If they REALLY wanted to effect some change here, they would engage even more. Flood the market! They should be doubling their presence here!

So what if Chinese people can’t look up “Dalai Lama?” 99% of them couldn’t care less. They’re not stupid. They know that government propaganda is all lies. Their desire and respect for a strong central authority and for a “harmonious society” allows them to not give a shit.

I have looked into the eyes of a well-educated, Westernized Chinese man and seen how little he cares about what may or may not have happened in Tiananmen Square 20 years ago. I have seen a non-political, educated woman get fire in her eyes as she reminded me sternly that Taiwan IS a part of China.

If you just left a village where all of the people are scratching out a living from the dirt and you get to the big city, get a job and are able to move your family out of that hell and into a 2-bedroom apartment with running water, electricity and plenty of food to eat, what the FUCK do you care about what’s going on in Darfur? As long as the oil is flowing and the lights are on and your mom & dad aren’t emaciated you’re thrilled! And just who the hell do those rich, imperialist motherfuckers in the West think they are telling you that your gains are ill-gotten?

These are not mindless masses who are towing the company line. These are real people and these are their truths. You will NEVER convince them that their views are incorrect or invalid just because the West says so. What you do is piss them off.

I’m not saying that I agree with the Chinese government’s policies. Nothing could be further from the truth. But we need to accept that, at least to the Chinese, these are valid worldviews.

If you can do that, then you can ENGAGE them! You want to change their mind? You don’t stomp away angrily in a huff and threaten to take away your shiny new toy. You keep coming up with new toys. “Look what else you can get if you keep acting a little more like us!”

It’s the old Levis and McDonalds argument: We attack in secret. Young people love our fashion and our food (lord knows why). Even while Ayatollahs denounce us, young people buy our clothes, watch our TV shows and drink non-fat lattes.

Right now there is a veritable flood of Western economic immigration into china. That is, people are coming here to work. We bring our ideas and values with us. We talk to people. We work alongside them. We steer clear of political discussions. We help them grow.

They ask more of us to come.

Google literally has more cash than it knows what to do with. They should be buying up all of the best talent in China and beat Baidu and the other search engines at their own game. Keep providing insanely good and convenient service. Show them that our way is better.

It’s no mystery why Google itself hasn’t been blocked in China yet. Too many people depend on it! Millions and millions of Chinese – including people in government and business – depend on it for all of their communication needs. The numbers of businesses that use Google’s free, open-source suite of office management tools is probably VERY high. The government can’t afford to shut them off.

So why walk away when you’re winning?!

Here’s another tactic: Give the people who want to work around the “Great Firewall” the tools to do so.

The US, along with a consortium of allies and West-based technology companies, should massively fund and operate a Voice of America-style VPN service. The Chinese are consuming our media at a prodigious rate and that’s not going to stop. Give them the tools to keep doing it.

The difference between the first Cold War’s VOA is that the US won’t have to generate any content. The signal can’t be jammed and there’s no “intrusion” into any other country’s airspace, territory, etc. Instead of pulling out, we should engineer a massive deployment.

In BOTH directions.

Flood the innertubes. Make them compete. Start some websites that provide subtitles for Chinese media (just like Youku does here with Western content). Pit a few Chinese shows on the air via a BBC America-type channel. If our ideas are so great, then why not place them into the marketplace and see who comes out on top?

Make it as easy for Chinese students and highly skilled workers to go to the U.S. as it is the other way around. You wanna know what you need to be able to live in China? A job. That’s it. Get yourself a simple tourist visa, hang out for a little while looking for work, get employed and BAM! You can be a resident alien.

How hard do you think it is for a Chinese person to get to the states for work or school? INSANELY hard. We put up huge barriers and set political limits because we tend not to like foreigners. Never mind the fact that if we let them come here we will infect them with OUR values and they’ll bring them back home with them.

Keep in mind that the very nature of America means that we CAN’T lose a battle like that. If we find something that we like/admire in another culture, we steal it and make it our own. We’ve been doing this since the beginning. Where the hell do you think Santa Claus came from?

Our ace in the hole, our weapon of mass destruction in this culture war is that our culture thrives on change! So what if we start saying “laowai” instead of “illegal immigrant,” or “jaozi” instead of “dumpling?” (Two things that I believe will happen eventually.) Ask the French what they think about our appropriation of “rendezvous.”

We basically beat the Russians by outspending them. That won’t work this time. Not only are we already too deep into debt but China will, within a generation, surpass the US as the world’s largest economy.

We can’t beat ‘em, but we can get them to join us.

“Cold War”

You don’t see that term bandied about by the media, but it certainly feels like one. I grew up in the 1980s, so I remember what a Cold War feels like and today it smells a lot like what I remember from back then. China & The US (along with its Western allies) seem to be locked in an endless tête-à-tête online with hackers as the frontline soldiers. It’s getting so that the daily newspaper has started to read like a bad Will Smith/Gene Hackman movie.

This whole Google vs. China vs. The US vs. the UK thing has started to really dominate conversations of late and in the past 48 hours I’ve spent a lot of time considering it all.

Last night I had an unexpected, very long dinner with my close Chinese friend Melody. Over some Sichuan food we fell into a deep conversation about the seemingly intractable problems that face most Westerners who try to reconcile their cultural differences with Chinese culture. How to live here? How to develop lasting, meaningful relationships? When you get down to it, there are many different ways of thinking about things and many cultural expectations on both sides that seem to clash interminably.

Her example was serving tea: When you tell a Chinese person how to properly serve tea, you tell them to first put some leaves into a vessel, then add hot water. Pour some water into a cup, then empty the cup immediately, filling it again. Continue to empty & re-fill until the tea is right color. To a Chinese person, this all makes perfect sense and they can immediately carry out each step. But to a Westerner… Melody predicted my reaction exactly: I wondered, how much tea goes into the vessel? How much water gets added? How much do you pour out? Which color is the right color?

I needed specific measurements and instructions. A Chinese person would just KNOW. They have access to some general social knowledge that I just don’t have. I’d have to learn it from scratch first, have it spelled out for me.

It works the same in reverse. Try explaining baseball to a Chinese person who has never heard of the game before. I have. It’s hard. There are simply too few common cultural reference points for information to be easily communicated without having to continuously stop and explain simple terms like “inning” or “pitch.” Even the most sports-oblivious American can understand what those words mean in the context of game.

In the end, it’s really the same as any relationship. You develop your own language. Melody & I are in the process of developing ours, as I am doing with my other close friends here. We ended our discussion with the knowledge that, based on our own experience, people from our two very different cultures can, with just a little bit of openness and effort, bridge our divides.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening in the world right now.

Shortly after dinner ended I arrived at work and I plugged into my Twitter feed. I saw this article posted by one of the laowais that I follow. It was a short piece about how Google is attacking the Chinese “problem” the wrong way. I liked the comparisons of China to Apple, but one passage really jumped out at me:

It’s easy to sit over here on this [US] side of the world and look down upon the spotty human rights track record of China and turn one’s nose down in disgust. However, whether it’s in marriage, business, politics or friendships, I have never seen a lasting resolution to differences of philosophy come without first having empathy for the other person’s viewpoint. Shouting louder or pushing harder may give way to temporary change, but it lacks the conviction to make that change lasting.

That’s a really great worldview to have, and it made me wonder why our political leaders don’t speak that way a lot more and why the people at Google didn’t sound more like an offended partner rather than an assaulted victim.

I quickly re-tweeted the link and posted a copy of it on my Facebook page. It garnered this response from my friend Kelley:

Mike – explain to me what it is about this article you like? He says Google is screwing things up & doesn’t know how to get things done in China. What things- making money? He doesn’t suggest any alternatives, just points out that the US has no moral standing to judge China’s human rights issues. He implies China’s censorship is based on a fatherly desire to shield its citizens from porn! Mike, you can’t search “Dalai Lama” on Google in China. Maybe you won’t even see this post now. I appreciate a company taking the right stand – what appears right can have a big impact.

Kelley challenged me and asked great questions, while at the same time illuminating some of the differences that cause Westerns and Chinese to misunderstand each other. Where we see “censorship” the Chinese see a necessarry reaction to something that may cause chaos within their society. And if you know your history, whenever you get chaos in Chinese society you get millions of people dead in bloody struggle. That’s just not something that the Chinese are willing to risk for our quaint ideas about “free speech.” Especially not when they have another 1 billion people to raise up out of poverty.

It is misunderstandings like this that are causing us to view our clashes in a militaristic light.

First, let’s get over the whole spying thing. Is it bad? Absolutely. Should it be happening? Of course not. But don’t fool yourself. Everybody is spying on EVERYBODY. We spy on the Canadians and they spy on us. We spy on the Brits and they spy on us. We spy on Israel and they spy on us. Sometimes incursions even get exposed and make it to the front pages (hello, Jonathan Pollard), but they never provoke the kind of threatening rhetoric that China’s attacks do.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be pissed of and that we shouldn’t even retaliate. But we need to put what’s going on into perspective, like we’ve done with our NATO allies, among others. These are squabbles amongst friendly competitors, not clashes of nations whose goals are to dominate the other.

So what about the rest? What is Google getting wrong and why are they really pulling out? What about America’s moral standing and right to criticize? What about censorship? How SHOULD Google/the West fight back?

I’ll get to that next.

My recent trip home has caused me -as more than one long time expat has said that it would- to go into a period of serous introspection. Seeing my home and my friends after more than a year of living in Beijing and, as a result, with a different perspective, has forced me to deal with some realities that had kind of crept their way into my life but that I’ve never had to deal with head-on.

During these days that I’ve been going through my life, taking inventory so to speak, one of the things that I have NOT been doing is questioning my decision to move to China in the first place.

I was surprised to take a look back at my blog’s history and not find one entry explaining why I picked up and left for the Orient. Surprised, because it’s one of the most common questions that one is asked as an expat- both here and by people at home. Of course, I’ve got a by-now-standard answer:

“I just woke up one morning and KNEW that I needed to move to China.”

Honestly, that is exactly how it happened. I remember the morning. I remember waking up with a start and I remember calling my best bud Josh almost immediately to tell him. Then, a day or two later at one of those rare times when Josh, Bry, Joe & I were all sitting around a table together, I told the other guys.

I told the rest of my close friends within several weeks (when we were all together at a pool party) and I was off to the races.

It was all really that simple.

Since that morning 3 1/2 years ago, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on the reasons  behind my epiphany. Even though I didn’t realize it at the time there was obviously a lot more to it than just some miraculous revelation. A LOT more. While I had never given it any serious thought before that morning, my subconscious had been working on it for a long time and was pushed into action by a confluence of events that I didn’t quite understand until several months later.

First, and most importantly, I had been to China before. As I have mentioned in this space, I took 2 trips to Beijing & Hong Kong back in 1999-2000; once with Josh & Joe and the second time with Josh & Bry. Josh had lived in Beijing for several years back in the mid-90s and we’d had lots of conversations about his time here. More than once he had implored me to move myself. Then there was the ambitious plan to start up a China-based business with those guys. Finally, I had become good friends with Josh’s best buddy in Beijing, Alex, and he even came to visit me in Boston once.

So China had been on my mind a lot.

In the winter and spring of 2006 I was 3 1/2 years into my stint with old employer and it was growing very, very quickly. They were morphing into a different kind of company than the scrappy, wholesome startup that I had signed on with and I was in danger of being pigeonholed. I had just spent several months doing some of the best work of my life writing  a business plan for my team, because nobody in the new hierarchy seemed to know what to do with us. I worked closely with the other members of team and some folks from other departments. The result was an 80 page document that I am still incredibly proud of.

It was roundly ignored. This, along with a lot of other issues in the workplace, made it clear that the company was not a place that I could grow in and that staying there would lead me nowhere. But I was also faced with a dilemma: Once I had 5 years in with this company I would get a nice little bonus, as well as a 1 month paid sabbatical, on top of my regular 3 weeks+ of vacation. Basically, at the 3 1/2-year point you had to either leave or stick it out, as bailing after that point starts to actually cost money.

At the same time, Deval Patrick was getting his nascent campaign for governor of Massachusetts off of the ground. I was impressed by his message and was feeling the pull of politics on my heart strings. I hadn’t felt that engaged or passionate about politics since I had worked on a failed campaign for State Representative back in 2004, but the then-recent Supreme Judicial Court ruling making marriage equality a reality had stoked the fire in my belly. I was deeply involved in the fight to stop the decision’s repeal in the legislature and I was thinking that politics could, in fact, be my calling.

I got in touch with the Patrick campaign and asked about joining up. In the end, I was told that I could come on, but, of course, I would starting out at the bottom and would have to work my way up onto the writing staff… and, oh, by the way, there was no pay. And even if Deval won, there was no guarantee of a job in the administration.

Conceptually I had no problem with this, but practically it was a tough thing. I had already sacrificed 6 months of wage-earning for another campaign, and while I did not regret it at all, doing it again was a big leap to take. If I was going to do this it was going to be all-in and that meant full-time. If he lost, or if I couldn’t get a job after a win, I was looking at almost a year of making nothing and then maybe having to start all over again with a job search come  the following January.

I didn’t want to stay at my job anymore. At all. And I wasn’t really comfortable with starting in on the ground floor of a dicey political campaign.

Then, in the middle of all of this, I had my epiphany.

As I realized in the following weeks, the timing could not have been better. With the Olympics scheduled in 2008 I would have over 2 years to save up money for the move, use my regular vacation for a couple of pre-move trips to pick a place to live (it was a split between Beijing or Shenzhen), and then use my sabbatical for the move itself. I could enjoy the Games while still on my company’s payroll and then… just not come back.

All of a sudden I had a goal, a direction. I was on a mission. Enduring the crap that was happening in my office became a lot easier once I knew that I was just biding my time for a couple of years. And the urge to get back into the political arena evaporated almost completely.

There were other things as well. Some issues in my personal life all seemed to line up with the timing, as did my living situation. I distinctly remember that when I told my best friends at lunch that day it was as if a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. This was the RIGHT thing to do.

Since I have arrived there have been lots of other affirmations that this is the best place for me right now. The apartment that I found (and the crazy circumstances that forced me to find it), the job that found me, the people that I’ve met and the opportunities that I’ve come across… The list is endless. Frankly, when I think about it, I realize that I wouldn’t believe the serendipity of it all if I heard it told to me by somebody else. Even some long-lost family history that was revealed to me a few months before I left helped to make sense of my decision.

All of which I’ll cover in future posts.

I came to China because it was the right time for me to come here. And after my trip back to Boston, I am more sure of that than ever before. Now I just have to figure out what’s next.

While I work on a really long, multi-part post that attempts to sum up my thoughts about completing my first year living overseas, here are random thoughts that I had during/after my first visit back to Boston as a non-resident. (I have posted some of these on Twitter or Facebook while on vacation. If so I apologize for the repetition if you follow me there.):

A couple of days before I started my trip, I had a 2 hour sit down with a 9-year American resident of Beijing (who has been coming back and forth since 1989) and he told me what to expect from my trip. He told me what questions I would be asked, in which order they would be asked, the look in people’s eyes as they asked them and the conclusions that I would draw from my experiences. I’m here to tell you: He was almost 100% correct. It’s actually pretty scary how spot-on he was. Apparently, there a lots of other people in the world who move away from home to live in a foreign land. And here I thought that I was unique!

Opening weekend was spent in West Hrtford, CT with Josh, his wife Kate, their son Bennett (“Max” to me) and their soon-to-be-delivered fetus. Had an amazing, relaxing time. Could not have asked for better accommodations. I love staying with them.

While in NYC on my way home, I had a great moment with my buddy Helen that turned into a blog post by her. Then I had another great moment when I switched into “professional editor” mode and helped her polish it. (Hard to believe that I’m a “professional” anything!)

Speaking of Helen, she is a wicked awesome Scrabble player. I actually toyed with the idea of staying in NYC for another day just to get another couple of games in with her. (She absolutely, mercilessly kicked my ass. Damn, I miss her.)

Boston is no longer my “home.” It’s “where I’m from, originally.” Always part of my identity, but no longer a place of being for me.

Nightlife in Boston vs. nightlife in Beijing? Not even worth comparing. I look back in bewilderment at myself for being as enthralled as I was by it years ago. Wow.

Oh boy did I ever appreciate the fact that most people don’t smoke. And the few left who do are forced to stand outside. I miss smoke-free bars & restaurants!

While in the US I did not miss the ever-present spitting.

I watched almost zero TV while I was back. I thought that I would have wanted to watch more. Aside from a couple of late-night movies, a stray episode or two of The Daily Show and a Patriots & Red Sox game, I didn’t watch the TV at all. I didn’t even realize it, but while living here, I have developed a habit of NOT watching TV.

On a related note, I finished two books while I was there, including one that I had intended to bring back with me. Had to buy a replacement.

Tried watching the pilot episode of Mad Men on the flight back. It was OK, but it didn’t really hold my interest. I had no trouble changing the channel about 2/3 of the way through it.

I didn’t know it until I was walking down Dongzhimen Wai towards my apartment, surrounded by the great unwashed masses (me included- good LORD did I ever stink), but I missed hearing Chinese all of the time. Even more, I missed hearing all kinds of languages being spoken all around me all of the time. Boston’s an international city, but not really.

One of the coolest Chinese people that I have ever met lives in Boston and I got to meet her on this trip. She even cooked me dinner and let me crash at her place for a night. I hope that Haiyan includes Beijing on her next trip back here.

America’s subway & rail system is a freaking EMBARRASSMENT compared to what people have got in Beijing and elsewhere around the world. It’s incredibly sad and people should be pissed.

Time waiting at Customs upon arrival in the US (in the US Citizens’ line): 30-40 minutes. When I got back to Beijing I was through 2 health checkpoints and the foreigners’ entry line in less time than it took me to actually fill out my forms. Why the hell can’t we do that in the US?!

I was not shy about waiving down wait staff in restaurants and I missed being able to yell out “Fuwuyuan!” so much that I couldn’t help myself on more than a couple of occasions.

Damn, that steak and cheese sub was tasty! It was greasy and I felt like crap after eating it, but it was so worth it.

I never did get a deep-dish pizza. It’s on the list for the next trip. Had some amazing New York-style though.

I knew that I enjoyed eating with chopsticks, but I didn’t realize just how much until I went to Dim Sum with my cousin Jenine and awesome friend Christine. (Yes, I actually went out for Chinese food while I was on vacation in the US. Look, I haven’t actually had any Dim Sum since I got here 15 months ago so I was craving it. And it was China Pearl. It’s good, dammit.)

It took me a week before I was able to actually finish a US-sized portion meal at any restaurant that I went to. We Americans eat a truly absurd amount of food at each sitting. After over a year eating China-sized dishes, I had forgotten how insane the meal sizes were. For instance, I got a quesadilla appetizer at a bar that was at least as big as a main dish at a restaurant in China… and those dishes are meant to be shared by multiple diners!

I took a 2+ hour train ride to Portland, ME because I wanted a damn good lobster roll. It was totally worth it, mostly because of the company that I had. In case I haven’t mentioned it before in this forum, my friend Jazzie is frickin’ awesome.

And one final note on the crap that we eat. I woke up one morning and went to the supermarket with Alisa. I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet so when I got there, of course I could not walk two steps without coming to a pile of something that I wanted to devour. Somehow I resisted the urge to bite into the food that was all around me and I walked over to the Dunkin’ Donuts stand and got myself a bagel. Just as soon as I finished a few bites and my insane hunger had been sated, it was like a switch flipped in my head: All of a sudden, the piles of Entemann’s pastries, sugary cereals, cakes, potato chips and other displays full of easily-accessible junk food didn’t look appetizing to me anymore. It was kind of gross and more than a little bit disturbing. The grocery stores here are nothing like they are back in the US.

Check out this site for a list of all of the amazing foods that exist only in America.

No surprise, but I gained some weight back from this trip. It was delicious, though.

I still don’t like beer, but I swear that I kinda missed Tsingtao.

Nobody’s coming to visit me, at least not any time soon, except for Josh and Jazzie. I’m actually more OK with this than I thought that I’d be.

I missed my friends in Beijing a LOT more than I thought that I would.

Apple picking is wicked fun and is still one of my favorite activities to do with my brother & my friends. A nice 40-minute drive out to Shelburne Farms for some orchard-walking and cider donut-eating is a great way to spend a Sunday in October.

Watched a bunch of movies on the plane ride home, including “Iron Jawed Angels.” That was a very, very good flick. You should really watch it.

Speaking of the flight, I was surprised at how easy the trip was. In both directions, I had no trouble enduring the 13+ hours in the plane. Honestly, I think that I could hack that every month.

I never get jet lagged. The secret is to not sleep on the flight.

Towards the end of my trip I Went to Bry & Liz’ engagement party. Had an awesome time. (Got pretty tipsy on the wine.) I actually vut out a bit early to go an see 3 of my cousins. One of the 3 (they are all sisters) had a birthday and scheduled a get-together at some skanky post-college meat market bar near Fanieul Hall. I went there and they never showed up. It turns out that some of their party couldn’t get in (because they were young-looking and already drunk by 10:00pm) and instead of coming in to get me they just assumed that I would call them when they didn’t show. Of course I don’t have any of their numbers. Not only did I waste my time by hanging out in that crummy bar for 90 minutes, but I left Bry’s party early. AND my cousins all missed out on getting gifts. It was the only bad experience of my trip.

So now I’m back. I wonder what Year #2 will bring me.

I have stayed in touch with some of the folks that I used to work with back in the US. One of those people is a guy named Rory.

I like him. Smart guy. Great heart. Fashion sense. A big bag of conundrums that I find endlessly fascinating.

He’s also a committed Republican.

We share some friendly jabs via Twitter and the Facebook sometimes. It’s all in good fun and done with respect for each other’s opinions. Recently, though, he kicked out this little ditty on Twitter:

Sometimes Ann Coulter nails it, sometimes she is a bit nuts. In this case, it’s the former: http://s7y.us/11t7 Couldn’t agree with her more.

Normally, I ignore the likes of Ann Coulter, Bill O’Rilley and their ilk. I also ignore the ravings of Rachel Madow & Keith Olberman. I’m an avowed Independent and I hate listening to politicians and commentators spout their party’s daily talking points. I’ve got better things to do with my brain.

But Rory’s a smart guy and he said that she “nails it.” I just had to check it out.

Needless to say, I was aghast. I couldn’t even get through half of it. Here’s the exchange between Rory & I that followed:

@RoryRazon Dude, I got 7 paragraphs in & had to stop. It’s just an absurd, sophomoric diatribe. Nothing accurate. Inane assumptions. U AGREE?

@zax2000 Yes. In particular with paragraphs 9, 10, 13, 14, 15 and 17. But, you didn’t get that far.

OK, so he was right. I did not, in fact, read the whole article. Who was I to criticize, right? So I went back, steeled myself, and plowed through the whole… fucking… thing.

UGH.

I was so MAD at that article! Mad at Ann Coulter for writing it, mad at people for even bothering to read it and mad at Rory for agreeing with it so much that he would declare that she had “nailed it.” I just couldn’t let that stand. And since Rory had pointed out exactly which paragraphs he liked, I thought that I would take the time to go through and explain why each paragraph was or was not complete horseshit.

So below follows my open letter to my friend Rory, which includes my angry, point-by-point dismantling of Ann Coulter’s most recent article, which you can read in its original form here.

Rory,

You’re a great guy and you’ve got a great head on your shoulders. I may disagree with you on some stuff, but at least you’re reasonable.

So WTF is up with the “Ann Coulter… nailed it?”

Do you have ANY IDEA how crazy she is? Did you actually read this column? Do you know ANYTHING about the health care system? I’m not really sure if you do. Please allow me to point out all the ways that she screws with people’s heads & emotions.

All the problems with the American health care system come from government intervention, so naturally the Democrats’ idea for fixing it is more government intervention. This is like trying to sober up by having another drink.

REBUTTAL: None here. This is her opinion. She’s certainly entitled to it.

The reason seeing a doctor is already more like going to the DMV, and less like going to the Apple “Genius Bar,” is that the government decided health care was too important to be left to the free market. Yes — the same free market that has produced such a cornucopia of inexpensive goods and services that, today, even poor people have cell phones and flat-screen TVs.

REBUTTAL: Again, pure opinion. I disagree, but this is what a columnist does. Though I would simply point out that even though there are LIMITED restrictions placed on health insurance companies via a framework of regulations -which exist for every industry, including the personal computer market- our healthcare system operates very much within a free-market system, and has since the 1950’s. Also, there are plenty of other “important” markets that the government does not allow to be completely “free.” Like water, for instance.

As a result, it’s easier to get your computer fixed than your health. Thanks, government!

REBUTTAL: So a human being is not more complex than a machine? You mean, you can’t just push a “Reset” button and reboot a person?

We already have near-universal health coverage in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ hospitals, emergency rooms and tax-deductible employer-provided health care — all government creations.

REBUTTAL: I won’t even get into the costs that you have to pay to get into Medicare, Medicaid or veterans’ hospitals. Nor will I get into how 20 years ago over 60% of small business offered some sort of subsidized insurance but now that number is under 35%. But calling Emergency Room access “Universal Health Coverage” is not only asinine, but downright dangerous. Please point out the Emergency Room in America that has been designed as a primary care facility. If you have no health insurance and you need to go to the doctor, you go to the Emergency Room and they are required -by law- to assist you, no matter the ailment or your ability to pay. This is how it should be. (Unless you want people dying in the streets, that is.) Of course, this kind of goes against the idea of it being an EMERGENCY room, but I guess that Ms. Coulter has no problem overlooking that fact. Perhaps she’d be willing to force hospitals to open their General Practitioners’ offices to the same regulations: If it’s not an emergency, you head to the general waiting room and then a doctor is required by law to see you and treat you. Yeah, that’s not Socialism at all. And the cost to taxpayers wouldn’t be anything to write home about. I mean, it’s only the most expensive health care venue that the system has.

So now, everyone expects doctors to be free. People who pay $200 for a haircut are indignant if it costs more than a $20 co-pay to see a doctor.

REBUTTAL: I’m sorry, but I’ve never paid more than $17 for a haircut (I’ve reduced my cost to $8.50 by moving to Beijing), and I am squarely in the category of folks who thinks that $20 for a routine check-up is about as much as should be charged to people. I’m not really sure how my single mother on Welfare could have afforded to pay more than the $20 co-pay to bring me to the doctor’s office to have my throat examined when I was in the 3rd grade and had s sore throat hat woudn’t quit. Thanks to that visit, we discovered Tonsillitis and a genetic blood disorder. Good thing that she had health insurance through the state. Otherwise I might not be here. And on the off chance that Ms. Coulter is simply using hyperbole to single out rich folks who don’t WANT to pay more than $20 even though they could, I applaud her for implying that she endorses a progressive fee system based on ability to pay. How very Democratic of her.

The government also “helped” us by mandating that insurance companies cover all sorts of medical services, both ordinary — which you ought to pay for yourself — and exotic, such as shrinks, in vitro fertilization and child-development assessments — which no normal person would voluntarily pay to insure against.

REBUTTAL: So now Ann Coulter is qualified to determine which medial procedures are or should be covered by insurance? What is “ordinary?” Water is an “ordinary” necessity of life and it is provided at a pretty cheap price by public utilities. So is electricity. Rates for all of these “ordinary” things are set by the government or by public/private entities and then approved by the government at some level. If Ann is advocating a similar pricing strategy for “ordinary” medical procedures, then I am all for that! Now, can she actually provide us a list of which procedures are “ordinary” and which are “exotic?” If not, who does? The free market? How many people have to die from a particular ailment before testing for it is deemed “ordinary?” Can she at least tell us THAT? Then, what price points are OK? How much is life worth, exactly? (When all of the policy debates and treatises about the role of government are stripped away, this is really what the Health Care debate is all about.) And what about “Shrinks?” Are they REALLY “exotic?” How many people should we let kill themselves? Are all of the teenage girls who starve themselves, or cut themselves really not “normal?” Because if no “normal” people would ever voluntarily pay for a shrink’s services, then what does that make those folks? (Should I dig up the statistics on suicide rates among LGBTQ teens for you?) Good LORD!

This would be like requiring all car insurance to cover the cost of gasoline, oil and tire changes — as well as professional car detailing, iPod docks, leather seats and those neon chaser lights I have all along the underbody of my chopped, lowrider ‘57 Chevy.

REBUTTAL: Oh, so now an STD test for a girl who was raped is like checking your dipstick? Wow. This makes SO much sense. Why don’t I agree with her?

But politicians are more interested in pleasing lobbyists for acupuncturists, midwives and marriage counselors than they are in pleasing recent college graduates who only want to insure against the possibility that they’ll be hit by a truck. So politicians at both the state and federal level keep passing boatloads of insurance mandates requiring that all insurance plans cover a raft of non-emergency conditions that are expensive to treat — but whose practitioners have high-priced lobbyists.

REBUTTAL: I disagree with some of the comparisons that she draws, but this is a pretty sound -if common & tired- premise: Lobbyists are running amok in Washington. (Though, once again, a commentator simply mentions things that are “expensive to treat” and doesn’t actually talk about WHY it’s expensive and how we could fix THAT problem. Every word spent NOT talking about that is simply wasted.)

As a result, a young, healthy person has a choice of buying artificially expensive health insurance that, by law, covers a smorgasbord of medical services of no interest to him … or going uninsured. People who aren’t planning on giving birth to a slew of children with restless leg syndrome in the near future forgo insurance — and then politicians tell us we have a national emergency because some people don’t have health insurance.

REBUTTAL: Again with the “smorgasbord of medical services of no interest to him” stuff. Can she at least provide a list of what IS/SHOULD BE covered? However, she does make a valid point here after the idiotic opening. An a la carte style of health insurance would be a wonderful option. Too bad that she doesn’t seem to realize that minimal insurance programs actually exist and that hey work very well- especially for the working poor and the young. Guess what they need? Government help to get implemented. Why? Because the free market doesn’t like them! They don’t make the insurance companies enough money! The best of these programs are run by charitable foundations and non-profit institutions, including a massively successful one in New York financed by Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Coulter has conveniently ignored a slew of efforts that do EXACTLY what she’s advocating because to do so would completely undermine her argument.

The whole idea of insurance is to insure against catastrophes: You buy insurance in case your house burns down — not so you can force other people in your plan to pay for your maid. You buy car insurance in case you’re in a major accident, not so everyone in the plan shares the cost of gas.

REBUTTAL: Actually, the entire financial model of for-profit insurance companies depends on the very things that she is railing against here. Simply covering catastrophic problems is not a viable option for them because those costs are so high that premiums would be too high for lots of people to buy and/or profit margins would be way too low. (See my previous REBUTTAL.) The reason that we join insurance companies is because we want a larger community of people to share the cost of our catastrophic -and, yes, basic- health care costs so that we don’t have to do it on our own. ($150 for a 15-minute session with a doctor so that he can glance at my x-ray, confirm hat I have a broken wrist and then direct an unpaid med student to put me into a cast? PLEASE!) What the insurance companies do is simply take a cut of the monies paid as a fee for this service. In return, they -supposedly- handle price negotiations, logistics and other minutiae of the industry on our behalf so that we don’t have to think about it. Now, if only there was some other entity that we paid money to and could advocate on our behalf and handle logistics for us. Perhaps for a lower price point? Hm…

Just as people use vastly different amounts of gasoline, they also use vastly different amounts of medical care — especially when an appointment with a highly trained physician costs less than a manicure.

REBUTTAL: Wow. She starts off wonderfully, but then goes right back to the crazy. In what world does a visit to a doctor cost LESS than a manicure?! The only time that it does is when the insurance company covers most of the price and we are then only responsible for the $20 co-pay! Back in paragraph #4 she complained that costs were being kept artificially low, but now she seems to imply that we don’t even need mandated coverage of “ordinary” things because they cost so little anyway! That just doesn’t make sense.

Insurance plans that force everyone in the plan to pay for everyone else’s Viagra and anti-anxiety pills are already completely unfair to people who rarely go to the doctor. It’s like being forced to share gas bills with a long-haul trucker or a restaurant bill with Michael Moore. On the other hand, it’s a great deal for any lonely hypochondriacs in the plan.

REBUTTAL: Again, a nice premise, but she completely misses the point. Government mandates a certain basic level of services to be covered, but the companies themselves add on all of the other stuff, because the free market demands it! They exist to make money. Viagra makes money. The more people use it, the more money they make. Her argument seems to be against government-mandated healthcare (she strongly implied via sarcasm back in paragraph #5 that government mandates were bad), but she fails to recognize that without them, the free market will dictate more coverage of high-margin procedures & drugs and less “routine,” low-yield things. Ugh.

Now the Democrats want to force us all into one gigantic national health insurance plan that will cover every real and mythical ailment that has a powerful lobby. But if you have a rare medical condition without a lobbying arm, you’ll be out of luck.

REBUTTAL: First – NOBODY in a serious position of authority is advocating a single-payer system at this time. It’s not even on the table. So right away, she’s lying by saying that Democrats want to “force us all into one gigantic national health insurance plan…” Also, in a single payer system EVERYBODY would be covered for EVERYTHING. So, again, a flat-out lie.

Even two decades after the collapse of liberals’ beloved Soviet Union, they can’t grasp that it’s easier and cheaper to obtain any service provided by capitalism than any service provided under socialism.

REBUTTAL: Wow. I’m a liberal in many ways, but I certainly didn’t love the Soviet Union. Nobody in my I’d-Rather-Vote-For-Satan-Than-A-Republican family liked them either. I’m not sure what casting aspersions against a group of people does to further the cause of health care reform, but I guess it makes for nice hyperbole. However, her blanket statement that “it’s easier and cheaper to obtain any service provided by capitalism than any service provided under socialism,” is just plain wrong. Is capitalism the ideal? I’d agree to a certain extent. But is it always “better & cheaper?” Nope. Try riding the subway here in Beijing, for starters. If you’d like I can list all of the infrastructure accomplishments that have been made -just in China- that have been done with a speed and efficiency that is -no hyperbole here- absolutely frightening. Our free market, capitalist system can’t even come close.

You don’t have to conjure up fantastic visions of how health care would be delivered in this country if we bought it ourselves. Just go to a grocery store or get a manicure. Or think back to when you bought your last muffler, personal trainer, computer and every other product and service available in inexpensive abundance in this capitalist paradise.

REBUTTAL: Hm. I can’t say that any of the crazy is apparent here. (Though is the U.S. really a “capitalist paradise?”) But, again, she’s comparing luxuries & peripheral consumer products and services with something that is essential to the life of every single person. Everybody requires health care to be born. Everybody requires it to die (or it will be provided in order to stave off death for as long as possible). A more accurate comparison would be to the cheap price of things like water, basic foodstuffs, electricity, heat, etc. But, again, she would be forced to acknowledge the role of government in controlling those costs and she would be undermining her entire premise.

Third-party payer schemes are always a disaster — less service for twice the price! If you want good service at a good price, be sure to be the one holding the credit card. Under “universal health care,” no one but government bureaucrats will be allowed to hold the credit card.

REBUTTAL: More absolute statements that, without qualification, can only be called lies. Are single-payer systems ALWAYS a “disaster?” And what constitutes a “disaster” in the first place? Is it simply a failure to adhere to her personal political/economic ideology? Is Ms. Coulter aware that recently Canada was ranked as #8 in the world for life expectancy while the US was ranked #50? Is she aware that in European countries with single-payer systems (and, admittedly, smaller and more homogenous populations) people in surveys have responded that they are, on the whole, happier than those in the US? This is not to say that single-payer systems are a panacea. They have their problems, just as our system does. But you can HARDLY call them “a disaster.” They’re just different. And as for the bureaucrats being the only ones who “will be allowed to hold the credit card,” this is yet another lie. Any reform plan passed will be voluntary. A government-run plan will be an OPTION for those who want it. Nobody will be forced to subscribe to it. If you like your profit-driven insurance package, then you are welcome to keep it. You may even see your prices go down and your services go up because of the new competition! Hooray for capitalism! (For somebody who advocates for capitalism so passionately, she seems to get unreasonably upset at the idea of added competition within the industry.)

Isn’t food important? Why not “universal food coverage”? If politicians and employers had guaranteed us “free” food 50 years ago, today Democrats would be wailing about the “food crisis” in America, and you’d be on the phone with your food care provider arguing about whether or not a Reuben sandwich with fries was covered under your plan.

REBUTTAL: Another lie. We currently have “universal food coverage.” It’s called food stamps and/or WIC. And nobody claims that it’s “free.” It is paid for by taxes on those of us than CAN afford food. And guess what? Under these food-assistance programs, you are absolutely restricted on what you can buy: Staples & essential foodstuffs. As somebody who lived off of them for the first half of my life, I can tell you that we never complained about what was and was not covered. We were just happy to be eating. This is a ridiculous and insulting analogy.

Instead of making health care more like the DMV, how about we make it more like grocery stores? Give the poor and tough cases health stamps and let the rest of us buy health care — and health insurance — on the free market.

REBUTTAL: Ok, now she is actually making a cogent and agreeable point. Unfortunately, she is also contradicting herself in sequential paragraphs. First, she implied that there was no “universal food coverage” and now she is advocating that people be issued “health stamps” a la food stamps. Huh?! And, incidentally, just who will be issuing these “health stamps?” Why, the government, of course! And what kind of “free market” will it be when 1/7 of the industry’s customers would immediately be government-subsidized? (That’s 50 million out of a population of 350 million.) How does that promote competition? Where’s the incentive to improve if a big chunk of your bottom line is simply government largesse? Furthermore, why even offer services in poor areas where you’ll only be able to offer the most basic of services because it is all that the “poor and tough cases” can afford? And what about the millions upon million of people who are teetering on the edge who would jump off of the insurance rolls in a minute if they could go from paying their constantly-increasing premiums to getting a government handout for basic care? Isn’t this the very scenario that she’s spent the whole column arguing AGAINST? Now she wants to bring it about in a different way, with less people getting covered, and causing an even bigger strain on our budget & economy than simply offering an insurance program would do?

Wow! I feel better now… And worse. Funny, that.

I have finally figured it out, Rory. Ann Coulter attracts people because she gives voice to a constituency of people who share a distrust of the government and/or have an almost fanatical devotion to the Republican party. She spews forth indignant, barely-controlled rage at anyone and anything that dares to oppose her worldview without bothering to worry about truth, context or even whether or not she makes a coherent argument.

Forget about ideas, solutions or even an accurate identification of the problem. With Coulter you’re just going to get the Republican party line… on smack.

Keep wasting your precious time on her drivel. That’s the last time that I ever will.

Your buddy,

Mike

I can’t really bring myself to write one of my typically long, exhaustive essays about Josh’s visit last weekend. Just listing the stuff that we did will take long enough and I don’t want to spend two friggin’ nights trying to analyze on paper what happened. Maybe I’ll get to it some day, but not now.

Suffice to say, 99% of the time that Josh was in town was awesome. (Hey, nobody’s perfect.)

- On Thursday night we went to the kick-ass Girls Are Waiting to Meet You CD release party & concert at Yugong Yishan with my Couchsurfer Kathlyn, another and a couple of other CSers, Santiago & Mario. This Beijing rock band is made up of boys & girls, Chinese & laowais. They’ve got 2 violinists, a wind guy (sax, clarinet & flute), a sexy-as-hell chick drummer (I always go for the drummers), a guy on keyboard, a bass guitar player and a Chris Martin-looking brit lead singer who occasionally plucked a lead acoustic guitar. Mixing cultures, musical styles and innovative arrangements, this kind of band is right in my wheelhouse. I had actually seen their 2nd-ever show at D-22 back in November so I was psyched to hear them after all this time. The music did NOT disappoint and the crowd was rocking.

- Friday we played Frisbee in Chaoyang Park, then had dinner at Hotel G before I made my reappearance as a DJ at Club Alfa, with a large crowd on hand. I went on early (8pm) to warm up. I actually like playing to an empty club to start. I can lay down the songs that I want and get into a rhythm. By 9:30-10 the place was jumping. I wrapped up just before 11pm and we ended up staying and dancing our asses off until about 3.

- Saturday was my friend Joa’s birthday. After meeting up in Sanlitun with a group of French, Chinese and a Ukrainian (on their scooters & 3-seaters, even!) we went over to the new French restraint there, Juliette, and proceeded to serenade her in front of everybody. Then we were off to Hohai, where we rented a couple of small 7-10 person boats and put-putted around the lake drinking wine, eating lamb and beef skewers & cake while listening to some of the French folks play music & sing.

(An aside: Honestly, I don’t know how these amazing, incredible nights keep happening to me. It was like we were in a strange post-modern Fellini film. International crowd. Great food. Laughs. Music. One of the most relaxing, wonderful nights spent in Beijing yet.)

- Sunday started with a round of golf at the Beijing Tianzhu Golf Club. Tee time was 10:45am so we were not able to stay out too late with the revelers the night before. Our very good friend Alex arranged for us to play with a cool guy who is an agent for lots of movie star types in Beijing. I brought along my good friend Ye. It was sweltering on the incredibly gorgeous course, but we had a blast and didn’t leave the club until 6:00pm… That night, after a quick stop at home to clean up we met with Josh’s friend Danding and my friends Adele & Ye for dinner at the wicked awesome Wish out in Lido. Holy crap was the food and wine good!

- Josh had to leave on Monday, but I dragged myself out of bed early to meet him for lunch at my favorite neighborhood spot, Club Sandwich, and to give him a quick tour of my apartment complex.

All in all, except for one SNAFU, it was a freaking awesome weekend with my best friend. Not only did we have tons of fun, but he opened my eyes to some things that I wasn’t seeing clearly and he kicked my ass a little bit in a way that I hadn’t really been aware that I had needed.

I’m looking forward to when Joe swings by. It definitely might happen soon.

One year ago this past weekend my best friend lost her husband.

The last time that I saw Ginny smile was when she gave me my going away present last summer: A ticket to see Bon Jovi in concert with her. It was an amazing night. I was on the cusp of moving on to my new life and I got to share my excitement with one of the most important people to me. We sang badly, paid too much for drinks and made fun of all of the 40- and 50-something townies in the crowd. It was an awesome time.

The next day she got the news.

I’ll never forget the first day that I met James. It is a story that I often tell to people.(And I never let Ginny forget that it was the ONLY time that I have ever left a Red Sox-Yankees game before the final out.) I had been bugging her about her bad dating choices and she insisted that I simply HAD to meet the New Guy. He was different, she told me. She really, really liked him and would I please meet them at the Uno’s in Kenmore Square right after I finished working at the ballgame?

I’ll admit it; I was a bit suspect. But this was Ginny asking, so out I walked from Fenway with the Sox up against those damn Yankees in the 7th and I trudged over to Uno’s not particularly excited at meeting some dude who might well be gone in a month or two.

This trepidation lasted all of 2 minutes.

That first moment seeing James is seared into my memory. His eyes were bright, happy and full of life. He enthusiastically shook my hand, pumping strongly and said, “Hi Mike, I’m James. I’m so excited to meet you! Ginny’s told me all about you!”

Flattery will get you everywhere.

I remember that meal as the best that I ever had at that silly chain restaurant (and believe me, after a decade of working at Fenway I had a LOT of meals there). Had he been selling derivatives, I would’ve bought them. Go short on soybean futures? Whatever you say, dude. There was something about him…

The first moment that Ginny & I were alone, she asked me, “So? What do you think?”

“I like him,” I said. “You can date him.” I had a feeling.

If only I could be so very right about anything else in my life.

I must admit that I never got to know James as well as I would have liked over the years. Distance and life in Manhattan tend to limit opportunities. But I always enjoyed the time that we spent together, and I very much enjoyed seeing the smile on Ginny’s face whenever they were together, or whenever she talked about him.

I hope more than anything to see her smile like that again someday.

Fly Casual, James.

I’ve Gotta Get My Ass to India!

My good friend Alya jump-started something in me tonight, something that I’d kind of forgotten about over the past few months. She asked me to check out some songs from an Indian movie that she had posted on her blog. Once I saw them, I got all fired up:

This one is from my favorite part of Bollywood films: The end credits. Frankly, I think that American movies could use more big, over-the-top dance routines at the end of movies. Makes all of the stars dance!

I like this second video best- mostly because it’s filled with hot, scantily-clad girls gyrating about. It’s another song from the same movie, 2006’s “Dhoom II,” a cheese-filled action blockbuster with lots of chase scenes, explosions and, clearly, lots of absurdly great-looking people.

These are probably the equivalent of bad pop songs in the U.S.- the kind of stuff that I usually can’t stand. The lyrics are pretty uninspired and the music is almost annoyingly simple and catchy, but I’m just so enamored with the mix of Indian & Western pop beats as well as traditional & Western dancing that I’m all kinds of crazy for this stuff.

I’m a sucker for mixing cultures. Strike that. I LOVE art that mixes cultures. I can’t get enough of it, especially music & dancing. And I love to dance. I’m not very good at it, but I love doing it. After a few cocktails, of course.

After watching these videos, I’m moved to seek out more… and to explore options for visiting India as soon as humanly possible.

As I close in on my one-year anniversary in Beijing, I can’t help but reminisce about all that has transpired and how I’ve changed. It’s hard to believe, but something ELSE of note also happened here last summer besides my landing at PEK. Some kind of sporting event, if I recall correctly…

It’s just one of those happy coincidences that had my arrival in Beijing take place on the same day as the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics. There have been many, many more such quirks of fate since I landed here. One day I’ll try to write them all down in a way that doesn’t make me seem crazy or paint me as a believer in divine providence (which I am most certainly not).

But that is for another time.

Today, I’d like to direct your attention to a fellow laowai who is a much more consistent (and useful) blogger than I. BeijingBoyce regularly publishes the scuttlebutt from the bar & club scene here, and while we’ve chatted via Twitter, we’ve yet to bump into each other. (Maybe he’ll find his way to Alfa next Friday night between, say 8pm-11pm, while I’m spinning and introduce himself?) Today he posts the first of what I assume will be a series of great reads: He’s looking back at what was going on in town during The Games.

I was a wide-eyed, innocent expat fresh off of the plane when I dove head-first into The Olympics. Those 2.5 weeks are an absolute blur to me. I attended 10 events (12 if you include heading out with groups to watch a an event at a bar), took hundreds of pictures and wrote THOUSANDS of words, all while trying to learn the ins-and-outs of living in China. Thank the gods for this blog, otherwise I’d forget everything that happened!

‘Boyce’s first post is a roundup of silly media coverage of “weird” foods that are consumed in Beijing. As somebody who is now intimately familiar with what people (locals and laowais alike) actually consume here, the absurdity of the coverage is much more apparent.

You can check out his story here.

Living in Beijing is awesome. I don’t regret moving here at all. Ever. In fact, the only regret that I DO have is that I waited so long to move here in the first place. That being said, there are times when I intensely miss being back home.

My birthday was pretty damn hard, because I share it with my little brother and I wasn’t able to see him. That sucked big time. Alcohol helped a lot, as did three different groups of new friends who each met me over the course of the night. And did I mention the copious amounts of alcohol?

October is my favorite month in New England. Baseball playoffs. Halloween. Foliage. But, most of all, a yearly apple picking trip with my friends. It’s always a blast and missing it this year was like getting a kick in the gut. Thankfully I was way too busy with my new job (at the time) to think about it too much. But when I did think about it (like when I saw the video of my friends enjoying themselves posted on Facebook), it cut deep.

Thanksgiving & Christmas weren’t tough. I haven’t really cared about those holidays for a long time.

Super Bowl Sunday wasn’t the easiest, because I usually spend it with my closest friends, but I survived. Mostly by eating too much. And drinking heavily.

Then came my final hurdle of my first year in China: The 4th of July.

Independence Day has long been my favorite holiday of the year. I’m an uber-patriotic American. Anybody who knows me (especially the non-Americans) can attest to that. In Boston, with its Revolutionary significance and history of constant pushing of Liberty’s envelope (the first state to allow blacks & whites to marry is also the first state to allow gays to marry), there is no shortage of pomp and circumstance. From the appropriately Puritanical, understated early-morning flag raising ceremony & parade (which ends with a reading of the Declaration of Independence from the balcony of the Old State House), to the over-the-top, nationally televised concert & fireworks display on the banks of the Charles river in the evening, there is something for everybody.

Each year I would be so excited to go out participate in all of the traditions that the city afforded me. But even more than that, I was excited to be able to spend time with my closest friends. Camping out all day on the Esplanade morphed into watching the rehearsal concert on July 3 and then having a pool party/cookout on July 4, but the end result was the same: I got a whole day with a bunch of my best friends.

This year, of course, I got none of this.

I was like a fish out of water. Truthfully, I was feeling listless and adrift. I had NO idea what to do with myself. What the heck was I -an almost obnoxiously patriotic American- supposed to do on the 4th of July in a COMMUNIST country?

How about a trip to the Great Wall?

Somebody must have been looking out for me, because a huge rave on the beach where the Great Wall meets the ocean that had been scheduled for June 27-28 got delayed a week, and so on the 4th I found myself on a bus with 13 Couchsurfers for the 4-hour ride out to Shanhaiguan.

Of course, we didn’t wait until we hit the beach before we started partying. In fact, most of us were pretty much in the bag before we were halfway there. (I wish that my camera wasn’t broken because I would’ve taken a photo of my 2nd ever beer for breakfast. I woke up at 1:00pm, went straight to the bus and had a beer before I ate anything else.) Lots of off-key singing, flashing of cars on the highway and climbing all over each other ensued.

Yeah, I regressed.

On second thought, maybe it’s a GOOD thing that my camera is broken. Then again, there are plenty of photos of me up on Facebook, and my good buddy Alain wrote up a great summary of the events on his blog.

We hit the beach and from then on everything is a happy, exhausting blur. It’s not that I was too drunk to remember everything- far from it. I pitched a tent at the foot of the Great Wall to store our group’s stuff (and to catch a few minutes’ sleep later on), then hit the stage. Danced up a small standstorm. Drifted down to the water and around to the other side of the wall for some night swimming (I only waded in, but the ladies all splashed around). Danced some more. Took a quick nap. Fought off a sexual assault by my buddy, Fred. Went back down to the stage for some Drum n’ Bass as the sun came up. (Probably my favorite dancing of the party. Those guys are hard core!)

The group got split up by the morning. Some drifted out early for pre-dawn buses back to Beijing. I was on a 5:30am bus with 6 other Surfers, and unlike the raucous ride out, everything was quiet & subdued while heading home. I got back to my apartment at 10:30am a filthy, sandy, sticky, physically shredded mess.

It was AWESOME!

I saw only a few Americans at the party (only 2 others in our group were from the US), but I made it pretty well known where I am from. I had a baseball cap on, a Hawaiian shirt and I was dancing with my American Flag towel. I even downloaded an audio recording of the Declaration of Independence and listened to it. Butt here was no hiding the fact from myself: I had made a complete departure from the traditions had had defined this day for me for so long.

And this, in the end, is the story of my first year living overseas. Through every holiday or life event of note, I have had to forge a new path for myself. I’m slowing making new traditions. I’m discovering new ways to relate to people.

And I’m loving every minute of it.