 Aloha and we want to welcome everybody to our last show of the year for China, Hawaii and you. We're really, really excited for all that we've done so far and we're really, really excited for what's going to be coming in the future. We want to thank everybody that's watching. It's the goal of this show. I want to be really clear. This is not a politics show. I think a lot of people might have that this impression is not a politics show. This is a show about China in all of the ways that manifests. So in the future, we are definitely interested in talking to more attorneys, our professors to talk about lots of different things that are happening, but we're also really interested in talking up to language experts. Last time we had on a missionary, we were hoping to have on some international students from China that have been studying in the U.S. and talked about their experiences. And we have a whole wide, wide range of hosts and all of that said, I don't think we're going to possibly find a guest next year that can top the guest today. And that is because guest for today is my beloved mother, Debbie Silverman. So first of all, I want to say, mom, thank you very much for coming onto the show. We're very, very, very happy to have you. And I know that you probably have a lot to say when it comes to your son running off to China, don't you? Well, I'm flattered that you would give me the platform to talk about that, Andrew. Of course, of course, of course. So the very first thing I wanted to do is I imagine myself as a parent sometimes in the future, you know, holding my child when they're like four or five years old. And I know that I'm going to spend some time wondering to myself, gosh, I wonder what this kid is going to end up doing when they're 20, right? And I imagine that you probably went through something like that when I was maybe three years old, right? Would you, in a million years, guess this child is going to run off to Shanghai and get flown in Mandarin? Yes and no. I always knew you were going to something incredible, but I wouldn't have anticipated it with the Shanghai China. Well, make no mistake, I think you caught a lot of people off guard. But you know, I'm a really big believer in people finding passions in life. Sometimes, you know, even later in life, I think there's a lot of people who find their careers in their 30s, 40s, you know, there's a really famous story about Colonel Sanders, who didn't invent the KFC thing until he was already retired at like 65. But nonetheless, you know, discovering China was undoubtedly one of the most impactful things that ever happened in my life. And, you know, I'm sure that you guys noticed that it gradually elevated from, oh, cool, he can maybe say a couple words to the waiter in the restaurant or something. And it went further and further up to like my son is moving to a communist country and we have no idea when he's coming home. So I wanted to first ask you what was the reaction he specifically had when I said like I would be moving to China, as opposed to somewhere like, you know, where the normal popular study abroad places are. I think in the US, the most popular study abroad place in the United States is Paris. And then it's followed by a bunch of European cities. Maybe you'll find Tokyo on that or something. But China doesn't rank super high. So what was the first take that you had with me moving down to what is a country that has certainly a little bit more muddled relationship than something like the US and France? Well, my first reaction was, well, Japan is a very nice country. Have you thought about Japan? South Korea could be an interesting venue. What about Australia? China was definitely not my first pick for you. I'm sure it wasn't. But nonetheless, I do think one of the things that kind of limits students in their study abroad experience, especially if an American was going to Australia, and this is no respect to Americans that do indeed make that trip. But I kind of think that one of the problems that you might run into that is you might not even realize that you're outside of America. The only thing, when I was in Australia, I went to Australia briefly after my first China trip in 2017. And the only clue I had that I was actually in Australia were accents and people driving on the wrong side of the road. That was it. So do you think that even if it's not certainly like your most comfortable thing, that going somewhere that is so dramatically different in lifestyle to the United States might have maybe really, really valuable benefits that aren't necessarily obvious at first? Oh, absolutely. I mean, China is a superpower. And it's considered a nemesis for us. And so trying to understand that culture, I could see the benefit to you in your moving forward in your life. And, you know, because we had, we have like an adopted Chinese son, a student that she met at Capulani, who we became became a close family friend. I think that I was a little more comfortable sending you off to China because he assured me it would be fine. And he has kind of changed my perception a little bit, softened my perception a little bit of China. Yeah, I'm sure Leo has been really, really helpful to you in, you know, maybe you went on those times when you see like a scary news article come out or something. It's definitely helpful to have somebody just on speed dial and say like, Hey, should I be, should I be nervous here? That's exactly right. And his mother is still in China. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's, I think she's probably going to be there her whole life, I think. Yeah, and I did have some business acquaintances that, you know, work in China, I've gotten to know some Chinese people and, and through my, my work and they were good people. And so I do think, you know, while my major reaction was of great concern, when I reflected upon it further, I thought it made some sense. You know, one of the things that you said that really interested me was that she said China had a, the words you used was like a nemesis relationship to it. And I've, I've thought about that actually for quite some time in terms of like exactly what kind of relationship does China truly have. And I actually think, you know, I've, I'm having people of all kinds, like in China, I was friends with, you know, party members or something like that, they're everywhere. I think it's like 10% of the population. And I think I've like made a joke or something about being pro CPC or something like that. But the truth of the matter is, I think that the best way to describe American China relations, I think the best way I've ever heard it put was by the current Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, which is that the American China relationship should be competitive where it can be cooperative where it should be and adversarial where it must be. I think that's actually a really, really good way to describe it in the sense that the goal should be common prosperity, but I don't necessarily think that you should compromise your own values just to continue good diplomatic relations. Yeah, absolutely agree with that. Great, great, great. So the next thing I wanted to talk to you about was, you know, clearly there's a lot of benefits to study abroad in somewhere that's very different, right? So we've met plenty of people, I'm sure in our lives, that got really into Korean because they really liked a K-pop band, or maybe they got really into Japanese because they liked the anime, right? Or maybe they ended up going to Thailand just because they wanted to retire. I think Asia sort of has this wall of the speak to it, right? But what do you think is the unique benefits to it that a student would get if they were studying abroad specifically in China? What are some of the unique things that the students, that you think that they would bring? Well, first of all, I think studying abroad anywhere is really important. I think that's the only way you can really learn about other cultures is through your firsthand experience. And so I was very, very excited for you to do, to go abroad. And I know, you know, if you know, I personally did a semester abroad in Vienna, Austria. And that's a time that I will never forget as one of the most valuable experiences of my life, right? So I really want you to go there somewhere. China, that's a little different. They have a very different form of government, right? And the central planning. And, you know, that would, I would think, shape some of your world of political views. And that would be very interesting, you know, to experience that firsthand. You know, I think that freedom of expression or lack thereof would be very interesting for you to experience. You're a very verbal, opinionated guy. And, and so, you know, I thought it'd be interesting for you to experience what life is like over there, if there were restrictions and how that impacted them. You know, just the culture and the way of thinking and the way of life, you know, I wanted you to have all that. And I think one benefit of China was I didn't worry about violent crime. Because China takes care of that pretty easily, you know, the central planned government very efficiently. Yeah, I felt like, you know, as long as you didn't step out of line, you would be extremely safe. So that was one of the benefits, I think of going to China. Yeah, no question. There's plenty of stories that you can read about crime in China that gets caught very, very, very quickly. But I think more than anything, you know, one of the things that you brought up was about how they have laws around freedom of expression, right? I think the biggest thing that I learned there, right, was that people self-censor in life for a massive variety of reasons. And I learned in China that the self-censorship that people do, do is often not necessarily because they're trying to like, for example, not get a knock on the door, right? It's more likely that they're trying to avoid, you know, serious job like job threats, or maybe if they would like say something that would be too controversial and the company wouldn't want something to do with them. Maybe they wouldn't want social ostracization, right? Because if you say something, for example, if you said something, if Chinese people, even opponents of Xi Jinping, which there are plenty of them within China, right? If they talked about Xi Jinping the way that opponents of Joe Biden talk about Joe Biden, right? The way that people would look at them is that this is a person that doesn't respect people that are in power. This is a person that doesn't respect their elders. This is a person that basically doesn't conform to the social standards of Asian culture, really, right? And I think that Americans do have this idea of like, there's a billion Chinese people just waiting on the tip of their tongue to say like, you know, what they really, really think, but for fear of, you know, getting that knock on the door. When I think at the end of the day, and this is what I really learned out of it, what they're really trying to do is they're trying to do something that all of us have to do to more or less that extent, which is self-censored where we have to, right? And yeah, that's definitely something I had to learn, which was that you had to learn twice. There's just, there's no question about that. And I wanted you to have, and I think you really got, was a sense of adventure and wonder for the world and inspiration for learning. And I think that you've always loved learning. I think this was just a platform to catapult your love of learning. And so that was really, really powerful. And I think that, you know, sometimes in life, life might get a little mundane in spots, depending on what you do. But to have had this experience of great adventure that you can always hold on to, and it will give you hope of a venture in the future during times when they might not be as exciting as when you're in Shanghai. Yeah, sure. I think the acceptance that your life won't always look like an action movie is a really, really important thing for everybody, right? Especially because in modern society, we are exposed to, through countless sources, absolute wonder all of the time through our phones, so whether that's watching an actor, you know, hang off a flying car or something like that, just like pow powing the bad guys through like, you know, just flying through the sky at like 100 miles an hour, right? Whether it's that in like an action movie, or whether it's seeing some very pretty girls on Instagram that you don't quite look like, right? Or whether it's seeing how successful your friends from high school became on Facebook. I think that an acceptance of, that your life will be kind of normal. I don't want to say ordinary, but maybe I should. An acceptance of that is really important to be functioning as an adult, but at the same time, if you can have that sense of wonder even just for a year or two, take it because you may not get it again. Yeah, and I think that you're right. A lot of us are living our lives digitally, and I really wanted you to have an in-person experience, you know, and not a digital experience. Yeah. Well, I definitely did have to spend a lot of time on my phone in China because there were, I've got to be honest with you, there was a lot of time staring at dictionaries. I remember when COVID first broke out, I suddenly had an unimaginable amount of free time, and that was combined with, you know, having, you know, my salary. And so I spent the day, basically, just sort of wandering the streets sometimes. I would just wander through the road, and I would wonder to myself like, oh, I wonder what that sign says. I wonder what this street advisory says, right? And the whole world was just brimming with the strange Chinese characters that I had never seen before. And I loved it. I loved every minute of it. I love just watching, you know, people write in this strange script that I had never seen before, and it's completely comprehensible to have people around them. You are very hard pressed to find something like that, or an experience like that if you stay in your home country for your whole life. Yeah, that's absolutely right, you know. And now that we've mentioned COVID, that's the next thing that I wanted to bring up with you. So for those of you who don't know my personal timeline, I arrived in China approximately two months before the very first reports of the outbreak, which was in December. And so I got there in October 2019, and by January, the whole country was locked down. So I remember thinking to myself, wow, I think it's an interesting time to go to China. So first thing I wanted to ask was what was your take on, or what were your initial kind of impressions on the fact that your son now lives in the singular global hotspot of the singular most important events since World War II, arguably? Well, I thought, gee, that was bad timing. But it turns out that, you know, adversity brings gifts and opportunity. And I think that you identified some of those. And of course, my first response was, when's the next flight back to Honolulu, right? Time to come home and we can start over again. But that wasn't really possible. Because when you had invested so much in getting all the requirements done to teach language, and you didn't want to just throw those out the window. And then there was the issue of your passport being stolen, with further complicating your return home. So, you know, as a parent, we have to realize, you know, what we can control and what we can't control and having the wisdom to discern between the difference, the two, the two words of the two. And there's nothing I could do and worry would just be a nonproductive emotion. So I decided, I'm just going to go with this, you know? As you know, I'm a Christian and I think God's in control, whatever the outcome is, is going to be okay. Yeah, no, I, and I imagine that it was probably not that long of a time span, maybe only about two or three months before you realize like, okay, not only is it okay that he stays in China, objectively, he's probably safer in China. Yeah, that's true, because they locked you down and it was remarkable how quickly COVID passed through China. You know, in very short time, we noticed that China was probably because of the extreme lockdown measures, one of the safest places to be on the planet, which is the great irony of it. Yeah, no, it was amazing the efficiency that they took. You know, a lot of people would talk to me about how the numbers released by the, released by the government were all fake, and that how they were actually instead of, I believe it was reported about 5,000 people died in China total, and there were maybe about 80,000 infections. And, you know, it's not hard to find a radio host or even just regular political commentators saying like, ah, nah, those are just Chinese fake numbers, right? That, you know, it's clearly it's probably, you know, 100,000 people have died from this, right? And, you know, who knows how many infectious cases. And while I do, if like, this is it's not even a controversial thing that sometimes local governments will kind of fudge numbers in order to make themselves look good and stop themselves from getting fired, which they will. That's just this is just a known thing to happen in China all the time, even like active, like the highest of levels to the CPC would tell you this, right? While I acknowledge that that is possible, the reason that I never really found it convincing is because all it would take is maybe three to five cases in a given city and the whole country's locked down again. Like the whole whole city is like, it's time to go back to online school now, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, and it was really interesting for me to have you in China to kind of compare notes of what was going on from your experience there versus what I was experiencing in Hawaii. Because, you know, I don't always trust things that I read in the media. And so, you know, having somebody that I know and trust, you know, in the country and providing your observations, that was very interesting for me. Ah, thank you. Well, I'm very glad that you've got a you also got a little window into this kind of other side of the world. But the kind of the thing I wanted to ask you for the time we have left is I wanted to ask you about your own experiences when you were first doing your own study abroad. And I know your primary target of your trip was to Vienna, Austria. But if I remember correctly, there were some detours that ended up routing you through parts of the Soviet bloc, whether or not. Yeah, that's correct. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so, you know, boy, we traveled all over Europe. My parents probably died. They knew some of the things that we did because it was so unscripted. And but I did take a tour to Prague, Czechoslovakia. And, you know, I remember having to cross the border on our bus and having a very unfriendly and intimidating guard, you know, walk the aisle, give us all a sting guy, you know, check our bags. And it was scary. And and then when we got into the country, you know, it was it was beautiful. But it was very interesting that I did feel a certain level of oppression. So when we got in the taxis, you know, all the taxis drivers wanted to change money, because they couldn't get American currency. So they would always want to change money with us, right? And I did feel like it was a little bit gray, you know, at that time, a little bit of press. Interestingly, we bond it with the people by singing the Beatles songs, because I didn't check and they didn't speak English. So we bond by singing Beatles. That was our cross cultural communication. They knew they knew like the English words to the Beatles songs. Yeah, they did. They knew the English words to the Beatles songs. Wow, did they did they know what they were singing? Or did they just like have the words down? I don't know about that, because I couldn't communicate with them, but we could laugh and sing. And so in English, and that's what we did. Actually, I remember we sang revolution, you know, say you're on a revolution, and you're singing that in front. But you know, as long as you just mind your manners and play by the rules, you know, I think most people are okay. Yeah, no, no question. I think what comes down a lot to the images that you have of a country looking oppressed. And while that's definitely, you know, true, particularly in the Soviet case, because my God, I've read a lot of Soviet history and all of it just oppresses the hell out of me. But I think what gets conflated a lot is oppression and poverty. Because when I was in China, there were a lot of people I will just tell you outright just looked miserable. And I was talking to a Chinese teacher who had moved to Thailand and kind of just wanted to go live somewhere else. And I asked her, you know, why did you move out of China? And she said, you know, a lot of people just seem like they accept that they don't like their jobs, like they just accept in life that, you know, they're stuck at working at like a family mart or some other kind of convenience store, right, because just because that's the available work that you have to do, right? And I do think for sure, this is one of the things that made me feel very strange about China is there were a lot of people around me that just looked very unhappy all the time. And I think that the best thing that explains why that why that was so is because it's still a developing country, even if it has an extremely powerful GDP, right, that hasn't managed to translate into, you know, wealth for the common people yet, because it can't physically can't. There isn't enough money for it yet. There's a billion and a half people there, right. And so I'm definitely interested to see as China continues to lift more and more people not just out of poverty, but what we in the West would characterize as a middle class lifestyle. I'm interested to see what that kind of translates into for kind of people's personal view of their view of their lives, view of their freedoms, view of their personal agency. And I think it's going to be a really interesting space to watch over the next 20 years. Yeah, I agree with you. Well, cool, cool. Well, we are right about out of time. Is there anything that you want to tell the audience about the work that you're doing or the maybe a passion project that you have or any kind of final words you want to leave with the audience? Yeah, so I guess I would just leave words to parents who are thinking about sending their children overseas to do a work project like you're doing. And maybe even to China, I would just encourage them to let your children go. I think that I would have emasculated you by restricting you from doing that. You're a grown adult now, you can make these decisions. My time to invest in you was in the early years. And if you invest in your kids in the early years, then I think they'll make hopefully good decisions as they get older. And in one way, when I moved to Hawaii from Pennsylvania, my parents let me go. It was hard for them. It's 5,000 miles away, but they knew that was my dream. And when your father moved to Hawaii, his goal was to actually work in Asia. So in some ways, you fulfilled his dream. But we have to let our children, we invest in them when they're early and then let them go and enjoy watching them fulfill their lives. Yeah, well, well, I think that was a really, really interesting, a really interesting talk. Definitely my favorite guest on the show that we've had so far. Hopefully my favorite, we would think. But yeah, I wanted to thank my mom for coming on and sort of just talking about her experiences of like sort of encouraging your child to kind of as the village people song says, Go West. But I wanted to say one more thing, which is I want to thank all of the listeners that have tuned into China, Hawaii and you. We are very, very grateful as well to Mr. J. Fidel for giving us this opportunity and this platform to tell stories that are really, really interesting and don't always necessarily have the voice that I think that they should have. And so everybody that's interested in learning more about China or any kind of political space that entails, we really hope that this show is a valuable resource to you, and we hope that you'll continue watching this space. Aloha.