 It's three and a half years since I was here last because I left January 2020. And it's in many ways the same and also more. And I don't even know how to describe them what more means. But there just feels like there's a robustness. And I don't know if that's what the US felt like after COVID, you know, like, there's just a lot of it's a lot of people out. Maybe it's just because it's spring and summer. So one of the things I didn't notice before but I've noticed in every city here since this trip. The flowers. And so maybe that's because it's spring in the beginning of summer. But she has this commitment, you know, to clean air clean water and the floor and fauna. He has a whole campaign. And it's called flowing waters and lush mountains or something like that. In every city, they're along the main streets. There's flowers, but I want to say, like, more flowers than I've ever seen in my entire life. And I'm a flower person. So like in Beijing, it's cut down every street is just crazy amounts of roses, just thousands and thousands of roses. And in Dali, it was Bogembia. It was for Santhemums in another city. So here it's. I forgot what they're called, but it's just this abundance of flowers and, you know, before I really recognized the greenery like there's parks everywhere and they're well kept and they're full of people. I mean, I think that's the other thing is this is how many people hang out in the park has always been something I've witnessed, but the dancing, the bird cages, the playing games, the kids that just, you know, what life in a big city. But you've got you've got this like life that happens in the park that I that I find fascinating. So started out in Shanghai, and I got to listen to some reports from the team that had just been here, which was, and teams will talk about it when we put that recording on with the Dong Sheng and the tri-continental put on a conference of global South media to talk to each other about how do we share better how do we understand each other better and so there were porters and academics and political people all together about, you know, how do we tell stories not propaganda how do we share information. And so there were still a couple of the people here. And so I got to hear a little bit of stories of what it was like to come. And, you know, it's funny because you have your own experience but you're not sure like what ideas you have that create the experience for you. But every single person I talked to was just like, wow, we're so lied to, you know, just the, the amount of lies that they have that they arrived and they're just nothing connected, all the lies they'd heard and then what they were experiencing. So, then I didn't feel like it was just about me. But I also brought my son who had the same experience. And he was already, you know, he already has loved Chinese he loves Asia. And, but just to watch all everyone have this experience of like, oh my God, I've just been so lied to. And one of the first people also that I talked to had just come back from Xinjiang and he talked about the effects of the, the cotton boycott I guess from the West. His first thing was he, you know, was more beautiful than Switzerland. But also that the way the cotton is grown, there's no people. There's no such thing as slave labor there that it's all done by cotton machinery. He watched it happen. It's like, fast, fast, fast. And that all the cotton is picked and, and a cone and everything by machine. There's not people involved, except the people running machine. So that was the first thing then we went to Sonya. And there, you know, it again was just robust with people, and in a way hadn't seen it and people on the beaches, and weakers were dancing. And just the thoughtfulness and the curiousness of the people that, you know, couldn't speak English with me. And Sonya is an island and it's committed to it's one of the zones that's committed for biodiversity. And so there you see a lot of not only a lot of greenery but a lot of agriculture projects. And, but it from when I had come before to coming now, it felt and I think this is a little bit because it was more a tourist place for like Russians and that's, and in the winter for those who lived in really high in the very north of China, and a lot of the folks from the very north of China were relocated to Sonya, because it wasn't like poverty was rampant and it wasn't. It wasn't a place they could actually make livable. So they just moved them all to Sonya, which made everybody very happy because they had lived in Harbin, you know around Harbin where it's like minus 20 for like long months of the year. But what I found was that there was a lot more tourism from other places around China that were there, a lot of joy and a lot of laughter. So, then we went to Beijing and Ting's held a dinner for me of a lot of her friends. And what was fun was that there were, it was a dinner of 12 people, and they're from different countries represented. So just the interconnectivity of everyone and one of the most interesting people that I met was a Cuban journalist, and she'd been living in Beijing for four years, and she reports on China in a paper and in Cuba. And what I learned from her was that she because of the sanctions against Cuba, she can't open a bank account in China, because those banks would be, would be violating the sanctions. And it was like, I know what it's like for Cubans in Cuba, but to come to China and experience what it was like for Cuban in China, and her difficulties living because of the sanctions even outside of Cuba was fascinating to learn like not something I expected. A lot of the Brazilians that were here. They've been down looking at agriculture projects and really learning and really fascinated by what was happening in agriculture, the commitment to regeneration that how quickly China moves once they see something and that it's like, there's investment made by, oh, let's try five different ways of doing this. They invest in all of them, get the feedback. And then when they find something that's work, then it's shared with everyone. And the Brazilians were really fascinated by that because it's like, they're stuck in ways that have been there for, you know, decades and decades and nobody. They don't get investments to change, but nobody even talks about changing. And the changes are multifaceted they're about how to make sure all the workers and everyone's get making enough money live. It's, it's supportive to the environment not devastating to the environment, and the infrastructure necessary in the community for all of that to happen. So a lot of the Brazilians had gone down and seen some of these projects and they were really, really fascinated. Also, just, you know, I think we stayed, we stayed up till 3am talking and singing they like there was there's a lot of singing, a lot of joy and music and coming together I asked everybody like what do you do after work and you go to somebody's And I think what we did is after dinner went to someone's house, singing, talking, sharing. It was, it was quite fun. And the other thing that I noticed was that Shanghai, you, you, because I always, I feel like I'm going to step off the street in front of a motorbike, because you can't hear them, so some big fear. In Shanghai, it's all these electric bikes, mostly driven by women. And then in Beijing, it's still bicycles. And there's just, it's really interesting and very, very different. And in Beijing, there's bike lanes, and there's thousands of bicycles. There's the three bicycles so there's, you know, like 50 on a street and trucks moving them from the places where people drop them off to get them back so it's a very bike friendly city and also the whole time I've been here, air quality in Beijing and Shanghai has been good. Today I think it was 60 and In Shanghai, it was actually a beautiful day, 70 degrees and I think Shanghai is a much more walking city. As soon as I got here with my son, he reminded me that we'd like walk the whole city. It's like, you're never out of something to see, and you just keep following, which is a little different than Beijing, which is a much busier, more highway, not as much walking. I think, you know, Beijing is DC, where Shanghai is more like New York, San Francisco. So you get the sense of these two very different cities. And then here in Beijing. We went to Dali. Dali is up by the border of Burma. And I got to see two old cities. 1200 years old. They were capitals of what was a not a country but capitals of the landmass that is Vietnam, Laos, and Burma. 1200 years ago. It's a World Heritage site. A lot of the structures are still intact. But what was interesting about this place was I guess 10 years ago or about 10 years ago. The lake was fully polluted, like toxic. It's a giant lake in a mountainous region. And it's a lot of agriculture. So the agricultural runoff had been going into the lake. You know, every, nobody was caring. And so it was like, okay, we're, you know, part of this lush mountains clean waters campaign. They made a plan. And the same, you know, kind of, if you've seen the film about how did they take everyone out of poverty, the same planning, like, what are the five things that have to happen? How do you, again, make agriculture so it doesn't devastate the environment that supports the environment? How do you create living wages for everyone? How do you build it in such a way as the economic structure is going to support everyone? And then how do you make it beautiful? I think the thing, and I know I started this way, but I profoundly am affected by the beauty, the commitment to beauty, and the commitment to what that does for people. You know, like having that care, both in like who's creating that care and their pride and their joy, and then who, what you're, you know, what it does when you witness that, what it does when you're experiencing it. So, so Dolly in, it's, yeah, I wish I could take everyone. I had a profound experience my second day, and we decided to take it, take a bike ride along the lake, a 25 mile bike ride, and, you know, I mean, I'll start with renting the bike. So you go and you rent the bike and the ease of it of just come in, take whatever you want. Oh, there's a backpack. There's a, you know, water, there's a hat if you needed. And here's no one wrote down what we took, no one cared. The level of trust. And that was where I, I mean, we've heard teams talk about, you know, how she's never in her life experience living in a place, and then realizing that she'd been anxious all her life as a woman being out in the streets well, this is was at a different level that trust of just like, doesn't anybody care what I just walked out with. I was on the bikes, and I got a hat and helmet and sunscreen and backpack, and a fabulous bike. And so we start writing and road all day. And there's there are so thousands of people, thousands of people, old young kids. I mean one of one of the moments that really like affected me was just like there was this. You know, we're at 8,000 feet. It's around 8,000 feet, the lake, seven, 8,000 feet. And so a lot of sun. So there was this older woman. She was being written in the back seat of a like, you know, like a very nice seat. And her husband was like writing in the front, and they were writing along and her laughter and her joy. I can see it was just like, oh my God, but you found that when the kids and the teenagers and the young and the 20 year olds and 30 year olds and the parents and it was just for thousands of people on 25 and coffee shops and tea shops and flowers in the hair and balloons and it was it was joyous. And you're, you're just in a city of like half a million people of a thing was Sunday of just Sunday out. And when they finished that day, I, I felt like I had had a visceral experience of something different. And it's not like I don't live in Venice Beach, California is not that I don't live in an amazing place. But it was then that I recognized, I hadn't seen a poor person, I hadn't seen an unhoused person. I, I was asking around because also Dali is, you know, a majority of the minority of the Chinese minorities, and the bi people are there and they have a commitment. They, you know, one of the things was the commitment to the cultures of the minorities that lived there. So one of the things also that's really beautiful is like you felt like you're agrees because the by color is white and a light blue. So every building is white with this light blue with this commitment to the culture and people are in costumes and like, oh color, just like crazy amounts of color. Just a boldness of dress and color and, you know, what went together and no, no one was wearing the same thing everyone had an imagination of what to wear and. And at the end of the day, I just was like, the next time somebody tells me that China is authoritarian regime. Like, I know what an oppressed person looks like. I know what an oppressed person feels like. There was no one I met that was oppressed. I've also been to like 110 countries in my life and I've been to places like this in every country where there was, there was no begging there was no one anxious that I would buy something I would say pretty to everyone in every place. It's pretty laid back and I didn't really care if you came in or didn't come in. They also pretty laid back. I mean, there's just everybody's like reading or like lounging I mean I went into this one bookstore and the gal was like on a bad reading a book. And I said, could I look at this you see you know she slowly got up to help me. It was super cool. And a little bit it reminded me of being in Isfahan in Iran about 15 years ago, where it's an old market culture and it doesn't, you go you go in and somebody serves you tea and nobody cares where you buy anything or not it's about anxiety and relatedness and so that was also interesting to be somewhere where there was no begging or anxiety around that you buy something. So at the end of it I was pretty high I felt I had a visceral experience of something I'd never felt before. So that was pretty profound. And then I don't know, you know just what to say about the food and every single district city, ethnicity, you know, everybody loves their food and is proud of their food. It was fun to whoops. It was fun to watch the, the teasing and the joyful fun of Shashwan's better than New Han and that that play of you know what's what's the best food. And, and I guess that I just relate to the play that there's a lot of teasing and fun and play. And you realize like that's nobody's duck in their point of view or fighting with you about you know what, there's a lot of curiosity. And then I went to a mosque there I also went to a Catholic church. And the by women there. It's by be a I their income in this project has increased six times in the last 10 years. So, imagine, kind of what kind of happy, you know what kind of happiness I would bring but it, like, pretty palpable, the joy, and the, you know, celebration of life. So, I really did feel that liberation I mean it really was palpable and I was quite taken I was quite moved by it. So, then I came back to Shanghai today. And I've been trying to get some of the folks I've been meeting to open up to me and so I went back to some of the people I was talking to. And there's this one French guy. And so I sat down with him again today. And I said, Well, are you. What do you think about Taiwan, and he said well my wife is Chinese and she just like every other Chinese knows Taiwan's part of China and they're not they don't get the problem. And, and I said but what you know the United States says the China is going to bomb Taiwan he said you're insane. China is never going to bomb Taiwan China. Taiwan is China why would they like if this government bomb Taiwan the people of China that people of China would be really upset. So, I said well, you know that's do not read the news. I mean, what's the news you get here like do you do you don't read that hearing said no. I said oh that's good so it's not causing a lot of anxiety. And he said, Well, I know you're from the United States on. I'm sorry I have to say I worries about saying this to you. And I hadn't kind of said where I was on anything I was just asking him questions. And he said, you know, I'm worried about the United States not China. Oh, that was the first time I got that on the trip. I so later I met a Russian who had moved here and they said the same thing to just the United States not understand like this is a billion and a half people and they love their government. I mean, everybody loves their government. So it's like she said it's not like you, you don't have a complaint about something. But in the end you love your government like it's it's not the complaint doesn't mean you don't love your government it's like we all have something to complain about she said like being locked down with COVID it's like we can complain but it didn't make us not love our government. So that was also super fascinating. But anyway, that's my journey up to now and way is going to play my little conversation with teams. So you can have a little bit of also her experience. Putting on this conference and then what she learned thanks way. And then we'll come back for questions. Hi teams. Thanks for joining me this late afternoon. It was great to see you in Beijing. And I wanted to start by asking you. I've been traveling in Shanghai for quite a while even through the COVID lockdown, and then you move to Beijing. As I've been traveling around, just like in the United States, every city in China has a different personality. I call Beijing DC and Shanghai kind of the, the cross between New York City and San Francisco, except there's no one house people in any of these streets. So thanks for you moving from Shanghai to Beijing. First of all, thanks dirty and it's nice to talk to you and via you to the code pink team and share some thoughts. Yeah, I spent about almost two years maybe a year and a half in Shanghai. Right when COVID started so my experience is a bit. Really post COVID era. Including the lockdown, as you said, but there's a constant competition for a very long time between Beijing and Shanghai. And then I moved to Beijing about a year ago. I have to say, I have to admit, I am on the Beijing camp in terms of cities that I enjoy living in. I'm someone who actually quite enjoys history, both sort of the red history of modern China. You know, history of communism in China, but also, you know, the ancient history so Beijing being an ancient capital for, you know, hundreds of years, you just turn around a corner and you can see you know bell tower from 800 years ago, or Lake that was built 800 years ago. And then you can see, oh, here was the May 4 movement where the students had uprising against the, you know, imperialist forces and then here's the establishment of the People's Republic of China. So for me as a kind of history nerd and getting to live in it. I love Beijing for that. Shanghai, of course, is a much younger city and has its own linkages with the West as being like ports city and also part of China that was colonized so it has. Let's say some westernized feel like the East meets West if you'll cut vibe has streets for wandering much more than Beijing does that's for sure. So there's kinds of benefits of both both are beautiful cities. Cool, thank you. And always just thank you for being a friend to code pink and giving us insights into what China's like. And that's one of the things I'm getting from this trip is I just want to bring everyone with me because of watching our friends have their experience of China I have mine, but it's fun to watch those reflections from other people. Yeah, I mean, it was pretty exciting moment because of course, China's zero COVID policy, which meant there were very strict border controls of inflows of people went that was really hard to receive. It was an exciting moment because of course, China's zero COVID policy which meant there were very strict border controls of inflows of people went that was really hard to receive visitors these last few years. So, most people who came around came for a conference that we helped organize which was at the ECNU the East China only University in Shanghai. We had maybe up to 200 journalists popular communicators people work in communications academics from China but also from many countries around the world from about 15 countries mostly from the global south to talk about global south So we use that opportunity to bring a lot of our friends and comrades, including, you know, you know, BJ, the executive director of try continental we had friends from breakthrough news in the US, or people's dispatch, or also, you know, from from from all across Latin America from Africa so it was really amazing time it was really interesting to also see the different people's experiences of China and luckily many people did get to step out of Shanghai, you know the big cities to get to even visit some of the countryside or smaller towns and get to see for themselves what life is like get to talk to people which is something that I think a lot of people don't get access to, because the realities in China so filtered through the lens of Western mainstream and corporate media that it almost feels like they aren't real people. And that's one of the reasons we want to have a conference anyway, because one of the things about, you know, this new Cold War, suppose a new Cold War because I don't think the old Cold War really ended in terms of, you know, the war industry around it. But we can get into that later is also about the media communication media media control the Gemini over media the platforms, and the stories so how do we, especially people from the left, people who are for peace people are from the global south how do we get to share narratives and talk to each other directly. So I think your trip, particularly is really important because you're getting to go to different countries and basically see for yourself, you know, I'm sure in all your experiences you've had any kind of barriers to just talk to someone aside from obviously language but people are open and quite friendly actually to share their experiences. So here from some of our friends that came from other countries and what did how did they reflect on their experience of China back to you. Yeah, I mean, I had a chance to spend a few days from with a delegation from Africa, and there are friends from South Africa, people come from unions, specifically the National Union of metal workers of South Africa, we had the national spokesperson as well as friends from Zambia the Socialist Party, my friends from Ghana and also other regions. So a few of us actually went on a short trip down to Jiangxi which is the home of the first Soviet in China. As in like the cell workers and peasants self governed territory which was, you know, in the millions of people run by the Communist Party before the revolution. So we got to go see a lot of the original sites and where the Congresses were held, but also get to talk to people and see how that process has really continued in the countryside, you know, how are how is the question of rural poverty being dealt how is the question of getting investments and then people into the countryside, so that you know young people don't have to leave and migrate to the cities to work that there are opportunities for education for employment for children to go to school for healthcare etc. So we walked around and had that experience and I think a lot of her friends are just had their minds blown especially about Pagamilie a friend from numsa the spokesperson I said mentioned, she was just, she was non stop taking videos basically like a live streaming for her young daughter who's I think seven years old now, because she kept saying, in South Africa, after we finally got independence in 1994 we had actually invested in sort of infrastructure that actually supports the people we really address the question of land reform and land distribution we really put an emphasis on preserving our own history or our left history and revolutionary tradition so it was really interesting to see what she wanted to tell to her daughter and preserve and I think it was. And she probably spent, you know, 12 hours a day, you know, doing educational videos for a daughter explaining every single, you know, step of the Chinese revolutionary process because she thinks it's important to share that. Yeah, I saw her and she was just, I mean the hope, and what I got out of her was just the amount of hope it gave her like, Oh my God, this is possible. So, yeah, and it's also it's possible that it's important like I think that's the hope you were saying is that there's a kind of dignity in the idea that Oh, our history is worth preserving that this is worth investing in, and it's actually not just rhetorical. What what shoulders do we stand on and valuing. Yes, yes. And what about your friends from Brazil because you know you've lived down you've lived in Brazil with them what was their experience. Yeah, I think, let's see. I think for a lot of people and talking sometimes some women specifically in Brazil but other countries, one of the first things that people immediately say is just how safe it feels. You know, yeah, as you know like as women in many countries not even just in Brazil but many, many places in the world almost everywhere. And being in the streets itself is something that is dangerous and is exhausting. It's full of anxiety and fear and and it because it's real. Not saying that there isn't you know we've kind of resolved the problem of patriarchy or violence of course not. But that is something that's very palpable when people first come here and kind of feel that you can't really explain it. You know the society is very pretty safe, or that people relatively trust their government and they don't worry about you know, or even like looking at crime rates so it's been consistently falling falling in terms of, you know violent crimes or, you know like doesn't really impact until you feel it. So that's one of the things I remember hearing about. I think some people who have been able to come before in a previous moment in China. Sorry my printers just randomly making sounds. I'm just going to turn it off. It was very creepy it's just starting to print something and it did not send anything. Anyhow, sorry about that. Yes, people who have had a chance to come to China before maybe you know usually either 10 or 20 years ago are really impressed with how fast things change. You know, especially when we're talking about compare with Latin America, Asia, other African countries, you know, in living memory China was as poor if not poor than vast majority of global south countries or what we used to call third world countries. And now when you look at it, I mean, you make the comparison with, you know, like a New York or DC. I mean, we probably should be comparing more with in that sense about where we came from like a Sao Paulo or you know, but the thing is, it's pretty impressive thinking a third world country was able to develop to sort of that first world, especially in the major cities within, you know, a living memory. And I think some people expressed just, they're just like, even 10 years ago, they saw huge improvements. And I also heard another comment I think someone who had come around like 12 years ago. And, and one of the things was noticing the pollution and how much the air pollution was visibly decreased. And also just air quality in general, you know, there's been a lot of control on on also smoking so you walk around you don't nearly see, you know, 10 years ago, maybe not 10 but maybe 1215 years ago, smoking was everywhere like in every elevator and every train and every public space And that plus the big efforts around, you know, clearing up the air from industry and more clean energy and etc has really also been palpable for even visitors who haven't been here for a few years. And so, what, what do you feel, how did China respond to bringing all these people and having this conference was there anything in the news in China did that get covered at all. Yeah, I think there was quite a lot of interest in it because, you know, this was, you know, an academic conference, but we are able to bring many people who are not just academics but also practitioners in the area of media and journalism and popular media. So that's quite unusual. I think what these kinds of events that might happen might happen more official manner in terms of like between, you know, state medias or state to state. So this was quite an exciting exchange. We definitely did see them coverage because there was a lot of interest, both from, you know, public media like CGTN, but also from private media like one child quite a big media here want to really influential You know, up and coming private media groups did lots of interviews were just so curious to talk to different leaders and thinkers and journalists from global south and have that direct contact. And then, for example, we had one come out from the socialist movement of Ghana, a Kennedy, who, you know, was asked about the recent trip of Kamala Harris, of course the VP down in Zambia for the summit of for democracy. And she talks as a Zambian and as also, you know, a political activist in Zambia. And she she talked about how it was kind of this irony that was lost to, you know, I think, Kamala Harris that she was there going on and complaining about China's influence in Zambia, while she and she made a comment something like and she said it would be better than I did. I can which is that, oh, she comes, you know, she lands in the airport built by the Chinese. And she rides on a train built by the Chinese, and she has a summit in a building gifted by the Chinese as it not even, you know, just built by the Chinese. And she has a right to tell us that we, you know, basically we, you know, we, we can't be friends with China we can't choose our partners. And that just viralize just that little clip of a longer interview, viralized. So this is the kind of thing there's a lot of people in China that are curious to hear, especially not just, you know, an anti US narrative but also kind of some common sense to say hey, there's a kind of arrogance that we're sick and tired of of the US telling us what we should do how should we should develop who should we be friends with, and thinking that they have like the moral hegemony to say to, in terms of what the so called rule based international order is and I think that time is up and people are feeling that and people are feeling frustrated and excited to see that being shared by friends in Africa and Latin America and other countries in Asia. Well, thank you but I want to take too much of your time up but one last question. So since the opening up where it's now easier for people from around the world to come. Are you experiencing any differences what what is that for you here. Well, aside from being able to receive visitors and be able to move around a little bit easier, which is lovely and it's also summer. I don't I mean I don't think there's been a huge shift. I guess we. One of the things is there's, we still need to have some caution because we know, you know, COVID comes in waves and, and even recently there's some more cases of course, the population is more protected, but you know just by vaccination but we still have to be, you know, be safe and not think that you know virus is over and that we can just do whatever you want without caring for our neighbors and our friends and those around us. Well, look forward to our next conversation and I look forward to hanging out with you this weekend. Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward to seeing you. All right, thank you. Thanks to already hope that's useful. Sorry she couldn't stay up but that also gives you another point of view than just mine. And now, I want to turn it over the way to tell us kind of what's active right now if people want to be engaged and then we'll open it up for questions. All right. Hi everyone, so I know we are sort of short on time here and I'm going to share a lot of links in the chat. I promise I will send out a follow up email to you all, in case you miss any of these things. First of all, I really want to share with you a recent win that we had last Tuesday, the Senate Committee for Appropriations held a hearing on Biden's 2024 budget request, and Secretary of State Lincoln, and Secretary of Defense Austin and Secretary of Commerce Ramondo were the ones who were the witnesses there. So these are the biggest workers in this country, and we made sure that we were there to tell them China is another enemy because the hearing also names China in the title. So we have Medea and another activist wearing t-shirts that said Code Pink is not our enemy. Code Pink is saying China is not our enemy. And our other activist Olivia, who's our VC organizer also held up a sign that said money for the poor not war. She stood up right after Lincoln spoke to disrupt him, and immediately she was told by security to sit down. She got a warning basically. And then later she asked when she decided that it was time for her to leave the hearing because she had another hearing coming up in the afternoon. She left the room, but as she was exiting she held up the sign again, but she wasn't making a noise she wasn't saying anything it was just very peacefully walking away, but then the security still immediately arrested her. So our organizer like had this like experience and we really want to share that story to say that where is the free speech right in the people's house they are shutting down the voices of peace. So, oh, okay. Okay, I can't figure out how to share the links but maybe very quickly. About that. At the same time, some of the ways that you could get involved with our campaign. We have a petition to Congress to tell Congress to stop warmongering China with Taiwan, as Jody mentioned before. This is Taiwan as part of itself and it's, it's just ridiculous to for warmongers to say that China wants to bomb Taiwan. So we address some of these lies that the warmongers have in this petition that you that we that we put up so you click on a link you can read through the petition because it's also very educational. And if you sign your name on it we will make sure to deliver it to members of Congress in person. And as always, we also have the PBS campaign. I just, I just have a lot of links here. As always, we also have the PBS campaign as Jody mentioned again before that China has this poverty alleviation program that lifted 800 million people out of poverty. And there was a American filmmaker who made a film about it, but then it was censored by PBS. So you can host a screening of the film in your community so we can start a conversation. Oh, technology. Awesome. And additionally, I have a couple of ways for you to plug in if you're in the Southern California area, we have a week of peace. Activities that we call it peace week to resist the US military's normalization and promotion of war down in LA Harbor this Memorial Day weekend. For more information about that you can click on this link. And if you're not in an area to accompany this week of disruptions and kind of like visuals and also arts events. We also have a webinar again with Jody on Memorial Day at the same time. So Monday, May 29 at the same time this webinar started 98 Pacific time and 12pm Easter. Finally, another thing for LA area folks we have work for everyone really we have another teaching by one of our activists for the campaign, talking about navigating the politics between China and the US. It's going to be in person at midnight box in Whittier, which is in California. But if you can attend you can also click on the link and we will live stream it. So yeah that's everything that's going on on our campaign. Thanks Wei. So, any questions that I can answer in the next 10 minutes before we're done. Sorry that was a lot I didn't realize they had so much to say. Jeff, you go by trainer by play. I went around by plane because it was really far. Okay. Yeah, because I went, you know, Sonya and then to Beijing. So the train to Sonya would have been a day and a half. Because you have to, you know, you have to cross the ocean and go to Haiku and then go to the other side of the island. It is lower like Sonya is lower than Hanoi just close to Hanoi. So yeah, it was, they were far distances. They were actually long plane rides. I think it's four and a half hours from Beijing to Delhi. It beats the 12 hours. Linda. Hey, Jodi. Wow, this is so great. Yeah, I took notes and I'll share it with with our local chapter. How much longer will you be away? I come back the second of June. Whoa. Okay, you still have some time there. That's terrific. Yeah. Now, who are you? Are you just randomly talking to people? Are you arranging meetings with certain audiences? Well, so I had my son here for the last two weeks and mostly I've been just trying to show off China to my son. I'm meeting like my community that lives here. So that's taken a while. And then randomly whenever I meet anybody that can speak English, I try to have a conversation and talk about, you know, like, what it's like for them what's happening and learn. So tomorrow I'm meeting with two professors in Taiwan and an interview for a news agency and then I'm meeting with a woman who's got a video production company. She works with Wancha, who I'm hoping will help me pull together a code pink trip here. She's very interested in helping do the trip. May I ask a follow-up if nobody else has a question? Yeah. I'm sure we can fit them both in. Yeah. Go ahead. The other person. Okay. Well, speaking about the joyful aspect of your presentation, yeah, that I mentioned to our code pink colleagues that I stumbled upon a travel blog that's produced by an Italian Chinese couple, Rachel and Luca. And again, every time I watch their pieces, they're so happy and joyful. I've never been to China before, even though I love Chinese descent, but it blew my mind and yes, similarly, your talk today. Yeah, crazy. I mean, it is kind of, it's like, there's this way. I know for myself it's like, I feel weird, like, well, maybe I'm just getting a slice and, you know, maybe I went somewhere else. But this time I went a lot of places, including a lot of, you know, I've been doing a ton of neighborhoods now in Shanghai and Beijing. And it's just, I really got comfortable with, oh my God, this is what it looks like not to be oppressed. And to have, you know, Harvard and Pew have done the study that show that 95% of the people in China, like their government, and it's not propaganda. Like, no, they don't have a gun to your head. First of all, like, you know, now that I've been here, like, it's like, I've been talking to like the police and people about the police, you know, I wanted to understand people's relationship to the cops. You don't have a gun through these little tiny people, you know, with super tiny. And which is like, you know, I've heard a shirt, like no fancy gear, no protection. And they're friendly. And I mean, like, everywhere I go, nobody bugs you or thinks you're wrong. You know, I think that's the other thing. I'm always blown away. It's like, the first thing is support, not anger, hatred, or you're wrong in some way. And that's super palpable also. So, yeah. I don't quite understand that experience of feeling like you're wrong here in the US. Could you explain that a little bit? Whenever you like, you ask somebody at a store and they snap at you like you bothered them or a cop who like all of a sudden is super suspicious or what did you do, you know, there's an aggression in relationships. I mean, especially any of the cops I see like in this neighborhood. They're first of all, I'm blown away by just no coverage, no gun, and just how nice they are. Because we go through a bunch of places where they're, I live in the French Quarter and it's right below us is where Mal had his first meeting with the 13 original members of the party. So let the people go there. And so it's cordoned off. There's two cops that stand on both sides. They've never asked me anything, never like said anything impressive. Never even anything. I just walked through. They're just there. There's no aggression. There's no, you know, how, I don't know, it's yeah. It's just friendly in that way. Supportive. They're in a way that we think of they're supposed to be peace officers. They are peace officers. And there's, and no guns, you know, that's the other thing. Yeah, Duncan. Thank you. That was really uplifting. My question is, somebody said to me the other day that he thinks China has made a lot of progress economically. But this person was concerned about what he thought was the repression of LGBTQ people in China, which he said he thought is getting worse. This is not a person who's ever been to China. So I said, well, as far as I knew that the traditional culture of patriarchal, but I, my impression is that China's modernizing things are getting better. You know, for gay people, but I'm just wondering with my son who's gay. He's finding it quite comfortable. He's come back with lots of stories of the gay man that he's finding to hang out with. You know, I was impressed at how fast you can find people in any city we go to. And he told us this story at dinner about this one guy that he's from the United States. He's gay. And he, somebody took him to the cops and said he'd been raped by him. And the cops said it was kind of obvious that the guy was lying. And but they were super supportive of the guy that Yashu just met and said, you know, we can tell the guy's lying. His story doesn't match and stuff like that. Anyway, there's no law in China about rape of male on male. So there's not even a law that they could take him in on. So that was kind of fascinating to learn. And the guy also said that he had pot and they weren't upset about that either. And by the way, in Dali they grow pot. And there's whole like hills of it and everything. So even what you hear about drugs is I think I exaggerated also. But my son's now at a four story drag club. That's down the block. You know, so I don't know. Thanks. It's, yeah. I mean, look, when I first came, you know, when I came here like three years ago and I used to take pictures of the wedding pictures, like, having wedding pictures is a big deal and it happens in certain places certainly golly is one of them but where we live in Sonya right below that is, is where they do it and I was sending back pictures and some of them were lesbian couples dressed up and people didn't believe me. And I was just like, you know, it's a photograph. I just took the picture. So yeah. Wow. Lots of stories. I mean, that's the thing that everybody here, you know that came from Africa and Brazil and Argentina. I mean, things was saying but when I talked to them. Everyone was just blown away by how light to they are. I mean, they just really felt like to, and also left with so much hope about what was possible, you know, just the hope was profound that actually this could happen. And one of the things I'm learning here is, you know, we're stuck in a Western economic model of consumption. But they really, their model is investment savings and building infrastructure. So it's a very different model than we have in the US that the savings rate here is huge. And, and it's, you know, and they do changes slowly, you know, like, they do changes fast, but they don't do them all at the same time so they do one, let it work, let people see the experience of it because there's always going to be upset when you create change right. So, like in Dolly, I talked to, you know, when I was talking to people, it was like, I said, Well, is anybody upset about all of like, who's upset, like, this is a lot of change in a very short period of time. And they said, Yeah, like about 100,000 rich farmers. It's like, you know, five, but the half a million people and the people that are upset or the rich farmers, but not the people that are really happy. So, Linda. Oh, yeah, I'm, I'm reading a crash course right now. I'm doing a crash course right now on China and they talked about the special economic zones and how these brilliant people in power in government, they, they're very careful what they do, they do it step by step, just like you say. Yeah, so it's good to have that reinforced. You mentioned a couple of times in this webinar, how your friends in the global south where you've heard from people that they were so surprised that their experience of China is so different from what they hear in their homeland are these people in the global south you're talking about as well are they also being lied to and I mean we know we're being lied to because we're in the belly of the beast but are they being lied to as well. They're getting Western, they're getting Western media, I mean because the light is coming from the Western media it's not like they have media here that's reporting back on China to, I mean the whole idea of the conference was that both that in the global south China is not something they talk about they're very deeply connected to the US, and, especially in Latin America, and also China. It's not. I mean, Latin America isn't something China's had an engagement with lots with Africa matter of fact. There's a love of Africa and China that I didn't know, I didn't know, and actually have to get on another call. So, next week, I can go into that a lot more. I learned a lot I can do Africa next week and maybe Mika can be with me or I'll do I'll do a little interview with Mika before like I did with teams. If she doesn't want to see up till midnight. Thanks for joining everybody. Hi. Wait, this is great.