While having dinner with a Chinese couple several years ago, I listened as they described their visiting parents’ response to the American landscape. Having recently arrived from China, the parents’ amazement about the Dakotas was particularly amusing. “So much space!” was the loose translation. “They could build so many apartments!”
I laughed heartily at the time, realizing just how different American interests were from those of the Chinese. Americans certainly didn’t need myriads of high rises stretching across the Dakota plains!
But in retrospect, I now wonder if there were more underlying that comment than simply the Chinese need for space. Could such a thought also stem from the communist ideology that pervades China, an ideology that squelches freedom and seeks control over every aspect of life?…