A Second Cup

Tad and Nort continue their conversation at Starbucks.


I found it interesting that you said you felt freer in China. That is not what we hear over here. In fact we hear the opposite: How tightly controlled and regulated, and top-down, everything is. The emphasis there is unity and not freedom, at least individual freedom!

Yes, well in part I am speaking as the foreign traveller. Whenever I travel abroad, I find it liberating. You leave your baggage at home. You only take what you need; What you want to take. Also, in China, as in many countries and cultures, people are favorably disposed towards the stranger, the traveller from afar. The culture prescribes hospitality. You feel welcomed. However the freedom I speak of is more than that. It struck me the first time I visited China thirty years ago, travelling there with my family. It was the freedom of "individuality" and by that I mean the individual personality. That unity you mentioned is a shared sense of a common humanity which tolerates a great range of personality types. It seems to me that all types are accepted there, even the most eccentric. Whereas here in our "free society" there is in fact such pressure to conform to one type or another. I find it ironic!

Well, I did find a definite graciousness in the hospitality of the Chinese people, in spite of the circumstances I was in. They made the quarantine all very tolerable. I guess that is ironic, too, even metaphorical!

Ha! You have this preconceived prejudice of China as this monolithic entity. That image no doubt is what the government wishes to project to the world, however the people are truly diverse and it is the people with whom we need to keep faith. There is much we can learn from China! Do you have time? I need a second cup of coffee!