 I have a big news is that Andrew Zimmerman has come back from China. Hello everyone you know this is between the two possibilities this is a much better one. He's back here in Hawaii and a, and he's here on the show. Welcome to the show Andrew nice to see you. Thank you very much for having me Jay it's going to be back in Hawaii. Well you went to Chinese but a couple of years teaching English in China. The first question is why. Why. Oh that's a great question. So there's two things to it I think the first thing is I had long had this obsession with China, probably since I was like five years old, I was, I remember one was the was my favorite movie. And, you know, I figure as soon as I got out of college there's only so long you can make a make a have a chance to live abroad. And China seemed like the really good place to do it is because it's really happening place the political situation is really interesting. And, you know, I know when I'm in my late 20s early 30s, you probably going to start about thinking about, start thinking about, am I going to have a family, and that's going to be really hard to do something crazy like live abroad so I wanted to get it done as quickly as I could and I ended up making a really good choice and picking a good time to go. I think so many people I know have actually had that same thought, and China has been so exotic, even increasingly exotic in, you know, in the difficult times and I want to talk to you about that. But how did you, how did you find your job, you had a job before you left here to go there right it was a job teaching English, and where was it in China and how did you connect up with the job. Yeah, so I got a job up in Shanghai with education first. But there's a lot of companies that are constantly hiring foreigners to come out to live in China. The demand for English teachers for an English teacher specifically, even ones that don't have very good qualifications is always really really high. So if anybody's interested in doing so teaching English is a very, very good kind of window into that and even most foreigners living in China today. They're English to their English teachers by far the most popular profession for foreigners because a lot of things companies would prefer locals. Well now does that fall within the, the news story two weeks ago about how the Chinese government had terminated all tutoring arrangements. You must have heard about that then one one fine day Xi Jinping said no more tutoring. And we're terminating that whole, you know, area of activity and teaching, and you can't do it anymore and it's against the law. How does that affect what you just said. Sure, well, one of the big problems that they're having in the market is that the demand for it is so massive that the schools are becoming less and less regulated, more and more often they're breaking right now. The law says that you can only be from one of about seven countries where the native language is English. That would be things like Canada, America, New Zealand, for example, but a lot of sort of out of the way kind of tutoring schools would start hiring, for example, Russians, or maybe they would even just hire local Chinese which is not so which they're not supposed to do if they're advertising that we have international teachers here. Not, there's now there still is absolutely a market for private tutoring, but they're starting to put it under new regulation and I think that has a lot to do with the pressure that the students go under you know. In China you take the cow cow, which is like the college entrance exam. And once you take that test it's probably going to determine how a lot of your life direction goes. So there's a huge problem of student stress, huge problem of even students suicide. And I think the government's trying to start taking actions about that and one of those things is going to involve maybe not, you know, after the kids are done with 10 hours of school maybe let's not throw them into a tutoring center or at least not give them so much homework out of it. You know my impression just me now was that this seemed to be part of the government's attempt to control education. The government did not want external forces external educational sources and forces teaching kids teaching students about things other than the party line literally the party line in school. So therefore let's terminate the tutors. So we don't we don't have a leak in the boat so to speak. Is there any truth to that. Well, make no mistake if you may or if you were doing my job right and you started telling the students that Taiwan should be its own independent country, you would be at least fired, probably arrested and deported that's absolutely true. However, I still think that the government realizes that there's important value to having foreigners and especially foreigners with native English accents. So it varies healthy market for foreign adjunct professors who are doing a lot of really interesting scientific work as you know China is currently outspending us an R&D. And I think that that's going to continue for a very, very long time, and the government is of course always going to have kind of their finger on the pulse when it comes to education, but I don't think that it's quite this foreigner crackdown that's kind of made out Western media. But viewer question me because it does relate to what you just said. I'll read it to you. We appreciate your questions you know it gives us a handle on what our viewers are thinking. What has been the private versus public reaction of Chinese people, you were there. You talked to them so you can say what the reaction was. You know the recent actions taken by the Chinese government concerning business and education in China and I suspect that inherent in this question is a discussion of Desmond shun, who wrote a book called red roulette, which is about how the business has changed and how you have to be very careful if you're doing well in business. And, and you know he was he did a video talk show recently. Not with us I wish it had been with us where you know he talked about how the power structure in business had changed and the state owned enterprises have risen up again. They have declined but now they've risen up and rock risen up again. And the hierarchy is all built on how close you are to government. One she has changed one she is now, not so much as you know somebody a long time. It's, is the person you're dealing with higher up in the government. So anyway, but the question posed is, what is the reaction of Chinese people that you met that you, you know, that you have to the Chinese government changes in business and education in China and I suppose that would include the red roulette concept of a change in business culture in China. Good question. So, most Chinese people were, you know, because they went through they went through standard education that was designed by the party. What we need to get is sort of the story of beginning in the Maoist era where we tried complete rejection of all private enterprise, you know that didn't work out so well. And so the next solution was not quite full openness of the market right but let's, you know, sort of use the with the goal of controlling it for the common for the common good or the further strengthening of China. Now here's the thing. Sometimes private businesses in China do things that are tremendously unpopular. So one example that people was point to is Jack Ma, you know he was trying to get like and financial going on. That program in China was actually quite unpopular because many people kind of recognized it as a loan shark program. It was there were like exorbitantly unfair interest rates and people within the China within China are very angry. Another example would be as you've heard the Evergrande crisis that's going on with the real estate development right. A lot of people are in the offices in Evergrande probably right now because it's like in the morning in China screaming at the CEO so we want our money back. And so I think when these things happen right when these things happen where businesses do really bad things. It really really is good for the party in kind of a roundabout way, because suddenly people think like, huh, maybe Mao Zedong was right about that whole don't fully trust those private businesses kind of thing. And so, because we're in a cycle like that right now, especially with those two examples that I've cited about Evergrande and and financial. I think that popular support around the party is probably going to be really strong. And that's coupled with the fact that right now, there's no obvious screaming, horrifying scandals going on within the CPC the way that there are and for example, Russia, or North Korea. And so I think in a roundabout way, people kind of support the party for this reason. You know, the party party support is, for the most part, actually quite popular, even when you're talking to people that have completely like Chinese people that have left China, and like even America. They will still say like, yeah, I think, usually, they'll usually say something like, yeah, I think the party's probably trying their best. And now of course you have people that say no that they're doing a horrible job but as far as I know, even American run polls, rank the approval of parties quite high within Chinese people. So did, did you talk to people about these things. You talked to people about Evergrande and Jack Ma. Yeah, I was already gone. Evergrande crisis. That's recent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was very, very, but you talked about Jack Ma. Can you, can you validate, you know, what the polls were saying can you validate what the government was saying about the popularity of Jack Ma's program. Yeah, I'll tell you why I'm asking, I'm asking because you know the early day of Xi Jinping, which is what 10 years ago so he was using a parent corruption. Because sometimes it wasn't really corruption at all. When, when, when Joe bow when she went when Joe bow was an example of that, where it was a businessman, making money operating within, you know, the business culture of China. But he would seize on this one person or company and use the rubric of corruption in order to make, you know, him disappear. I mean disappear from the business world or maybe worse. Okay, and what you had was sort of the transformation of the notion of corruption of the notion of rivalry into a claim of corruption. So one possibility right now is that the same kind of thing is going on in the nature of, well if it's unpopular with the people, we are going to come down on it. We're going to come down on on Jack Ma. And we're going to use that, that, that, that sheep's clothing of, you know, public unpopularity as a way to, as a way to reduce Jack Ma. Is there any, any truth to that. But that very well could be the thing that I think Chinese people have this awareness of is that for most for the for the most part, if you're they know if you're a regular person that you're influenced on the state of society is going to be slim to nothing. Right. I mean, this is this is true. This is true in most societies just by law of averages, you know, we can't have everybody running the country wants. I think what happens is when they see someone like Jack Jack Ma, they see somebody that runs the company, you know runs the most powerful company in the country, and that they have no actual control over right. The thing is, if you contrary to popular belief you actually can vote in China you can actually vote on quite a lot of things right. But in some sense in some senses there are some votes that you have to be a party member for, but there are like 150 million party members. So I think that their logic is, well at least I have some margin of control over what goes on in the CPC. And with Jack Ma, he's just this billionaire who can do whatever he wants that maybe they kind of feel that sort of separation from power that makes them resent. The other question that you brought up was about dude does, you know, especially someone like Xi Jinping use corruption to make political enemies disappear or something right. There's a lot of micro cases where I think you could look in, you could look into many, many details for a long, long time. And I'm not going to say that that doesn't happen right but what I will say is corruption really is a massive problem within China, especially at lower levels, paradoxically, because lower levels is where they get money to sort of implement the party and then suddenly you find out that all of this money got slushed out to some overseas fund. And so I think the challenge the CPC is kind of facing right now is how do we kind of give the impression. How do we kind of convince the world that we really are pursuing corruption without people just immediately go into the cry of like political purge. I think that's the big challenge that they have right now on the international scale. How are they meeting that. That's a great question. That's a great question. On some level, I don't think that they care so much China is a really internal. It's a very powerfully internally functioning country in the sense that they believe they are very big on giving other countries their internal sovereignty. So, when Israel was founded this is a little known factor when Israel was founded it was really founded about about the same time that China was, and China was the first country in Asia to recognize Israel as a real country, and Israel was one of the first countries in the Middle East to recognize China once the Maoist Revolution came on right when the Taliban took over Afghanistan, China was also one of the first countries on earth to recognize the Taliban as the rightful leaders of Afghanistan. Two weeks ago. Yeah, exactly. And so I think because they have this attitude of like, you know, recognize countries have their own rights to do whatever they want and they sort of expect the same for themselves because they have this attitude. And I don't think that they care so much if the rest of the world is saying this country is corrupt or anything like that, because they have their own internal model and they say, you guys go figure out your own model. It's very refreshing to talk to you because, you know, while you were away, and increasingly China got involved in all kinds of criss-cuffles. In Hong Kong and threats on Taiwan, South China Sea disruptions in the South China Sea, disruption, you know, with the US and changing foreign policy stress points and foreign policy. And, you know, we have an image of China as doing debt traps on the Belt Road initiative. We have an image of China suppressing people in Xinjiang, suppressing them in worse. We have an image of China, you know, changing things to make the life of the individual maybe a little less democratic and so forth. And I wonder, you know, so you had two years there. And during those two years, a lot of these things were happening. Did these things come to your attention? Did they come to the attention of the students that you were teaching? And big question, did you discuss them with the students you were teaching? Well, I think most of my students were somewhere between the ages of four and seven, so I don't know if they're really interested in the conversation about the South China Sea. What absolutely was, you know, you can imagine most of my friends are my age in their mid-twenties. And yeah, we would actually bring that kind of stuff up. I was for a while actually dating a girl, my girlfriend for a long time, was, I think she was a half Uighur. She was very supportive of the government's action, even when I would try to, because I was interested in the sort of what the Chinese side of the situation was, right? Because that's not really something you're going to hear in the West most likely. So I was interested to see what they say. And my girlfriend, it blew my mind how supportive she was, not just of the situation, but if I would try to kind of, you know, you ever try to like fraud somebody's police and maybe get them to say like, yeah, okay, but I don't really like that. No, no, she was very, very firm. Like, yeah, there's a terrorist of problem in Xinjiang. We have to fix it. They're trying to make, you know, sort of a Chinese Sharia within their own borders. And we're going to make sure that that doesn't make a problem anymore. No matter what I tried, I tried to get her to say anything bad about it. She wouldn't. And then that's the thing. It's not just that she wouldn't, she didn't agree, is she actively thought of reasons that it was wrong. So I didn't suspect it was like kind of hiding her true beliefs. Now as for the other things, right, I think the biggest thing that was scary to me actually was the Chengdu embassy was shut down in response to the Houston embassy being shut down by the department. Oh, I remember that, sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember actually telling my boss, hey, I'm just gonna let you know. If the Shanghai embassy gets shut down, I'm like first flight out of there. I am not, I am not going to consider it a safe place for me. But fortunately that situation kind of just casually died down quietly. But there were really a lot of interesting political developments around that time, and maybe some people would have left. But I think the biggest thing that inspired me to say was the biggest political event of the world, by far, which is COVID was handled within China, inside of a couple of months, Wuhan was declared COVID free, the Wuhan the origin of virus was declared COVID free on April 15. And so that kind of made me say, Okay, well, no matter what 1520 2020. Yeah, exactly. So three and a half or so months after the outbreak. And so that made me say, Okay, well, even if you know, things are not maybe so great in international relations right, China is still the safest place for me to be by far. That was kind of my logic. So, yeah, so that that's so interesting. How do how do people in China feel the people you consorted with how do they feel about the origin. I mean there's a, you know, huge international debate going on, which is actually going to go nowhere as we as we as to whether this was, you know, the implementation of the virus in the Wuhan virology Institute, or whether it was just present there because somebody got sick or they were they were working on trying to, you know, otherwise deal with it as a medical issue. What do people feel in China. What's not the dominance theory is that it's actually America's fault. There was a, there was a big military, I think it was had something to do with the military Olympics that all countries would participate in, and they hosted it in October. And there's many Chinese people I would mostly talk about this with things like taxi drivers, and the dominant theory was they said like, Oh yeah, it's probably America, there's a fort in, I think Maryland called Fort Dietrich where they think the the actual virus came out of and then Wuhan, they say was just the first spot of like outbreak. Now, that's not, that's not that's probably not with the, I don't know if I would say the majority of people believe that but a very surprising number of them do absolutely none of them would accept the idea that it came out of the biology lab. That's, that's definitely not true. Well, they wouldn't say it's true I have no idea personally. I would say a lot of these things kind of come down to image and blame, because I think if America was able, for example to prove that China through irresponsible biology created coven right well that would open maybe some kind of like international lawsuit. It might say who's responsible for vaccinating the third world. It might have a lot of different other international repercussions, but I think for a lot of it is, it's just sort of posturing. And it's for a question that's never really going to be satisfied. Totally agree it's never going to be satisfied. It's never going to really let us inside that lab, you know. So the question really is the propaganda, you know the taxi driver has been affected by the propaganda. And you know the PRC was, you know, doing propaganda and does propaganda. You're an American in China like you are being exposed and then you've got to learn Mandarin and, and that's really something because then you could see the flow of information or maybe disinformation, the flow of propaganda around you. How did you keep your head straight about that, you know because you know propaganda. You know, it's pernicious you, you don't know exactly when it's being thrown at you. Did you, did you use your critical thinking that you have to determine what was true and what was not true. Yeah, I think there's definitely some parts of my personal worldview that were influenced by things that I learned in China that you would even push me to what I would call like pro China right that definitely there were some parts of my world where I was talking to my girlfriend about how the situation is not nearly as bad as what everybody is saying. I think there's definitely probably some legitimacy to what she said. Oh, sort of a Western we get like the Western side of what's going on but not necessarily what China says going on. That's definitely true. But at the same time, there were some things about China where I was actually by speaking Mandarin I was actually even more concerned about with it about the society. I think one big example is I remember there was a news article on by do that I saw where it said, as you as you know there's a big crisis of not having enough single women to marry right. So you're 30 years old because of all the rules. Chinese like young men don't they they like that. They like to have male babies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So well so they're trying to make sure that there's no what they call leftover women. So if you're the idea is that there's some like public scrutiny or shame to be being a woman that's think over 30. I remember, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember reading this article on by do that said in this was all in Chinese I would have never known this if I didn't speak Chinese. If a woman hits 30 and is still single, what biological changes are going to happen to her body. And I remember thinking what nonsense this. I've been talking about here right and it became pretty obvious to me it was just kind of a piece to try to encourage young women to get married as quickly as possible and preferably have a bunch of kids. But yeah, definitely definitely there's you have to keep your head. You have to keep your wits about you. I understand that there are some people that have been just fed information for their whole lives and they're never going to change their mind. And in large part because, you know, it's possible, changing their mind would have a lot of social consequences for them. But even if it didn't. It's a lot to ask, I think, if somebody to completely change their word of their worldviews around something that is just wouldn't what is the information that they've gotten all their lives. That goes for Americans to that goes for Americans to right there's I'm sure there's many people that you know, in like your own life that have political views to horrify you. And you have to sort of at some point say, this is what you've been fed for your whole life, and there's just no changing your mind. True. Well, let me ask you one other thing that's relative to that is, you said you had to be careful. And I suppose you had to set up your own guardrails so that you didn't run a foul of the PRC. What, what kind of way I want to call it, sacred cows were there. And did you ever worry about running a foul and having someone knock on your door and make you take you away for retraining. And let me go further and say, we also and you must have seen this too. While you're in China the main incident. We're at the request of the US. Canada detained Meng. Meng Meng Zhou is, I think you're referring to. Meng Meng Zhou is the CFO from Huawei, who was arrested. That's the one. Yeah, and then China in return detained the two Michaels referred to as the two Michaels, you know, for no reason at all but just just sort of a tit for tat kind of thing. Well, they use them of, they accuse them of drug smuggling. And like I said, I'm sorry, I shouldn't interrupt. No, no, I think I think that's a, you know, that's an appropriate piece of information. But, you know, there you are in a situation where there are geopolitical frictions, where any day, because of something you said, or did, or something you didn't say, or do, you could be on the wrong side of the curve. Yeah, how did you deal with that were you concerned about that. You know, I will admit to you for the first couple of months, I was concerned that I would like get a knock on my door for like, for like, even what I would consider at the time relatively minor. Like even like a question or something. I was, I was kind of concerned about that. Eventually I kind of got the sense that probably no one really cares. Now, the biggest thing I think that China does to exercise social control is not even like arresting people for saying bad things on the internet, not that that never happens I'm sure that there's some except there's some case of it. But I think the big thing that is why you don't for example see a lot of conversations about cinnamon square, for example right. And at the end of the day, most Chinese people don't want to talk about something like that. Right. Like if you were if you were going to talk about like, maybe something something you didn't like about the party. Probably most of your friends would say something like, Why are you talking about that what why this is, this is such this is such silly political mountains let's go back to drinking by Joe or throwing darts or they're doing something more I think a lot of Chinese people in this sense are actually quite a political. And that maybe because their system allows for less ease of access into politics. Maybe that's not always such a bad thing, because, you know, when we when what they would say is that when you get hyper involvement input in politics, like, regular people get hyper involved in politics, you get things like what was the what was the name of the guys in Michigan to try to kidnap the governor, yeah like some kind of weird revolutionary type thing where people where they would say, Yeah, we're doing this because of our political freedom so we want to kidnap the governor and remove all the covert restrictions right. I think to Chinese people that this is not freedom to them, this is not how they want to engage in their political society. And so, that's the big way that I kind of control it is not even that I have to, as I'm talking I have to think like, Oh God, am I saying something that's going to get me thrown into prison right. I'm actually thinking myself, am I saying something that the person is even going to want to hear or or have some kind of interest in, because at the end of the day, Chinese people I think don't really want to hear about a foreigner's opinion on why they're on my problems with their country. I think that's the really big thing about it. It's less it's less of a political control thing and more of more of a. It's, it's the classic thing about, you know, you can insult your family members, but if other people do it you're going to get really angry. I think Chinese people have the same view when they talk about their government versus they hear a foreigner talking about the government. Did they, did they like you as an American. Did they did they like America. Yeah, they had quite positive outlooks on America, they loved American culture they liked me, I guess, I, you know, I look like I look like an American there's really no one else to say about it. They, they, all of them were listening to Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber and the bubble tea shops, and the little mini restaurants and I'd even asked them once in a while like hey, you understand this music that's going on in the background. Well, I have no idea what it's like. But could you go back, would you go back Andrew. Yeah, I really did have a great time and honestly, I think that for a lot of people, I would strongly recommend if you're just get it just getting out of college you got kid coming out of college. Teach English, get a simple job even a job that doesn't pay that much the experience will be invaluable to you, especially if you find yourself picking up the local language it's going to be a really, really great thing to sort of develop your own personal character. And I really, really think that it even if somebody can't accept, for example, China, which I understand maybe you have like just an irreconcilable political differences. Go to Japan, go to Korea, go to somewhere in Barcelona you there's, there's tons of places on earth and a year brand scheme of things, not that much time. And you will find that there is invaluable things you get for it for the rest of your life. And if you're a young man, go west in my channel. Travel west to get to the east. Boris Greeley said that. Okay, one more. One last question about that. Yeah. I, I just want to know what was the thing that you learned. You know, they you are an ardor play an impressionable young man you were 23 the time you left and went over there for all the reasons we've discussed. And you had a rich experience you learn the language, you met people, you have relationships, really, really important for anyone. But but question, you know what was the thing that changed you. How are you changed. And now that you come back. I suspect that Mandarin is going to be a useful skill for the rest of my life, even if it's not something applied professionally language skill is not necessarily something you need to monetize which I think is the a bad idea that a lot of us have. But, you know, I find personal intense joy when I'm just watching a soap opera. I fully understand everything that's going on past that I would also say in appreciation for working very, very hard, because Chinese people. I don't know if you've heard of the 996 schedule, but that's what a lot of them have to do where they work from 9am, 9pm stays a week. It's a really good way to have some perspective I think on your own life and suddenly makes your situation look not so bad. But an appreciation I think for the work ethic is also really, really valuable skill that I hope to hope to really that I do hope I implement into my own career. You know, in my first trip to China I was just amazed came back from the airport and we're looking at these buildings going up and there are lights from the welding torches on these skyscraper buildings, and it was two o'clock in the morning. And I'm saying these, these guys are working all night long to build that building. And that kind of vitality that kind of work ethic that kind of, you know, commitment to getting the job done. Were you impressed did you see that too. Oh my goodness. Yeah, everywhere and not just with, not just with workers actually. One of the things that really surprised me was that old people, you know senior citizens have a really, really strong volunteering system that they do over there. So, I remember on my first trip to Nanjing, I saw a line of like 50 older people that were doing like hedge art have you ever seen a hedge art where they like have a giant like hedge, like a big shrub, and people like cut shapes into it. There were like 50 old people that were working on it. And the next day we came by that same, that same place it was this beautiful dragon. And that's, that's a really, really cool thing to see. And it shows that like people not just have the work ethic that I was talking about. Even when they're, you know, into their retirement age, but it also shows really, really valuable community involvement, which is one of the things that's great about Hawaii and I think also probably one of our as you know we're very Asian inspired and I think a lot of that community sense that we have from Hawaii comes from comes from that part of the world. I'm so glad you went Andrew and I'm so glad you came back and I'm so glad you had that the interface you had the rich experience you had and actually I, I would like to continue our discussion in another show I have so many questions to ask you. You know, because sometimes you know you need to talk to somebody like you who has been on the ground to really fully appreciate a place. So, Saajin for now. And we will meet again schle schle. I made a say the same to you, Andrew. Oh, no, I wasn't talking to you I was talking everybody watching just said everybody Thank you for watching our program and I hope that you like it.