Back to School?
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Hello and welcome to another edition of Barbarians at the Gate. This is Jeremiah Jenny broadcasting from Geneva, Switzerland, the city by the lake. And I'm talking, as always, to my co-host David Moser on the other side of the world in the evening time in Beijing. David, how are things in the old town tonight? Pretty good. My environment, it doesn't seem to be as romantic as yours is at the moment.

What do you mean? I mean, it's Beijing. It's the city that has 3,000 years of continuous unbroken history, despite the fact it's been sacked and destroyed many times. In fact, one of the things we want to talk about today...

UNESCO designating the central axis of Beijing as a World Heritage Landmark. Not necessarily any particular building or any particular structure, but a line on the map that stretches from the Yongding Gate in the southern part of the city right through the heart of

of the capital right through what's today Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City. In fact, today it extends even further beyond the old confines of the walled city and is also the axis of the Olympic Green, something else we can talk about today too because I'm an Olympic geek and I've been watching the Olympics a lot from my perch here in Europe. But David, before we get into topics of axes and boundaries

I was going to say triple axles, but that's the Winter Olympics. Axies and athletes. It's almost back to school in Beijing. Wanted to know, are you teaching this semester? And what does it look like? Students going out from China? Students coming into China? Where are we right now? You know, I follow this trend.

pretty closely, at least as closely as I can. And it seems to me, my university and then some of the other universities I've been to for various reasons throughout the last year, there are foreign students coming back. And I sort of try to listen in on the discussions and I realize a lot of them aren't speaking English. So,

So a lot of the people, the foreign students that my university is teaching at are, they're foreign students. They're not necessarily doing a sort of study abroad or sort of academic exchange programs. A lot of students are there doing four-year degrees and they're getting serious education and want to get that degree and go back to their home country and get a job.

So those people are definitely coming back because they have a really good reason to come back. Some of them were delayed for a year or two during COVID. I don't know how many of them weren't able to succeed in getting their undergraduate degrees. But a lot of those people, a lot of those students are really dedicated because they're not kidding around. It's not just China they're interested in. They're interested in the degree. And this is a trend we've talked about before, something we've been seeing going on even before COVID.

this shift in the international student population in cities like Beijing at universities. Fewer of the Western students study abroad,

practice the Chinese, go to the bar, have the experience and a lot more students who are coming, particularly from the global south and from Eastern Europe, who are there, some on scholarships, some not, but with the intention, as you said, of getting a degree because Chinese universities offering training, particularly in the sciences, at a level that might not be found in their home countries. And that does change the dynamic on campuses. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So I think things are slowly regaining some kind of cross-cultural, cross-nation academic exchange. I think it's probably going to look different than it did in the early parts of the 2000s when we were most active. But something is happening. And also, I'm becoming aware of lots of little programs that are springing up now that either were sort of nascent programs

before COVID or maybe have been around a long time, I just didn't know about them. I've encountered or heard about or talked with people from two different kind of interesting programs that are high school programs for high school students, American students to come here to China for two weeks, three weeks. And they're put together with Chinese roommates and they have shared activities and all these sorts of things. These seem to work quite well. The short-term programs

Worked really well because it's total immersion. It kind of blows the minds of the American students anyway, if not the Chinese students, because they're really seeing a very, very different society. And a lot of these students, two of the women, I asked the two of them, the sisters, how long they'd been studying Chinese. And both of them had been studying Chinese since grade school.

And so they already spoke some pretty decent Chinese. And so we were able to have a pretty interesting experience. So the myth or the sort of, I would say the trepidation that people have that that the US government and politics

And the news cycle has terrified so many Americans away from China that we were never going to get students back here because parents would be afraid and students think it's a good thing for their future, so on and so forth. I think that may be somewhat of a myth. My feeling that there are lots, well, I wouldn't say lots, there are some students,

parents, people from various walks of life who for whatever reasons think China is a pretty interesting place. They still see it as viable for career perhaps in some way. And they may not be as numerous as they were. They weren't as just clueless and curious, but sort of interested like during the height of our teaching during the Olympics, the 2008 Olympics.

there are people who actually know something about China and they really do want to come and get to know it better and to learn the language. That's a smaller group than what we saw before. But I think there might be some optimism thinking the numbers might be smaller, but I think the quality of the students or the interest of the students is stronger.

and deeper. So maybe that's a way to look at it. I'm a little more optimistic than I was a year ago. Yeah, I think there's, we've talked about this, there's always going to be that cohort that wants to come to China. There's always going to people who are fascinated with China. What I don't understand sometimes is this notion that

If you want to go to China, that must be because you have you 100 percent support everything there is about China. Like you have to if you're going there, it must be because of your deep abiding, unquestioning love for the country. And this idea that you can go to a place that.

Maybe there are things you don't agree with. Maybe there are things that you have questions about. I feel like that's okay. As long as you go there with an open mind and are willing to ask questions and be ready to hear different perspectives. I don't necessarily think that means you have to show up with this notion that, oh, my presence here in some way shows that I am in support of the party or I'm in support of the government. Neither do I think that it matters too much if somebody leaves China

and has this, takes away this feeling that this is an amazing special place. You know, one of the, I think one of the challenges that

I've had in working with some of the state-affiliated actors in terms of talking about international education is this idea that they want the students to come and they want to use it as soft power. They want to change minds. They want to tell China's story. They want to correct the biases that have been indoctrinated in these students or in these people by the cruel and evil Western media.

And that's not necessarily wrong, but there's a lot more to it. And I've been up front in my entire teaching career, whether with programs that I've taught for, with people that I've spoken with on behalf of those programs, on behalf of myself when discussing or at conferences about education, or frankly, with the students I've taught.

It doesn't matter to me whether the students who are in front of me, who I've talked to, who I've worked with, whether they like China, whatever that means. My goal is to get them to understand China.

And to have a way of appreciating and thinking about the country, whether that means that they love the country, whether that means they end up, you know, posting YouTube videos talking about how, you know, they met a Uyghur, he's happy, it's all happy and CNN blows, whatever.

It's that's not my goal is not to not to change minds. It's to help to open minds. And I think most teachers, most teachers like you and I feel that way. But I don't know if that's necessarily the approach that some of these programs that are now working with foreign students, working to attract more foreign students. I'm not necessarily sure it's the mindset they have.

Yeah, no, you're right. It's very complex. We know very much, even what we taught was certainly not that China was the perfect place and that everyone was getting them wrong. I mean, quite the contrary. Not to mention the fact, Jeremiah, I think you're on the same page as I am on this. When this topic comes up,

There's always this something that I like to point out or mentions that when you're an American, are you on board with everything the American government has ever done in the last 50 years? Surely, surely you think it's worthwhile to know something about America and to enjoy what's good about America without agreeing with everything the American government has ever done. I mean, come on.

It's a little bit sensitive to bring that up in that way in China. You have to be very careful when you say anything that sounds like, well, I love the people, but I'm not so much a fan of the government.

you'll get a lot of pushback very often by some people because I don't think they quite understand the way I look at my own country. But I mean, I think that's the importance of doing what we're doing is none of this will ever be resolved unless you actually get the people to people exchanges together in the same room and start hashing these things out. You know, I mean, it's just like our political schism in the United States. You know, I mean, we've

if we want to ever get out of what we're, of this, this infight, this, you know, left-right war that's going on, we need to get people sitting down in the same room and finding common ground. And I think,

I think especially if you're talking about young people who don't yet have fixed ideas, you know, and are just exploring the world, to first get a very, very different take on their own country before they come here with a lot of inbred sort of ideas. So I don't know. It's complicated, but I'm a little more optimistic because not only students, but the tourists are coming back, too. I've driven past Tiananmen Square three or four times in the last month.

And there's a whole lot of foreign looking faces in Quentin Square. So, I mean, this is all good. I mean, it's all a great thing. I want to mention one thing quickly, not to dwell on it, but we've talked in the past about this information asymmetry problem. I think we've done that to death, sort of.

But I've been sort of curious. I don't really get on Weibo much, but the last few days I've been interested and curious about how much about the presidential election in the U.S. is there on Weibo. And I would assume that probably there's, I'm sure there's lots of it, but I thought that maybe some of it would be censored or would be sensitive. And I was surprised to find, first of all,

All the comedians that depend on humor about present politics are all on Weibo. Not that they post, but there are Weibo accounts that regularly post excerpts from Jon Stewart, from Jimmy Kimmel, who are the other ones, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Meyers, and all those programs.

they put all those jokes on with Chinese subtitles and, uh, subtitles. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, I mean, they're mistakes of course, but we're not, but basically their English is good enough. They, they get it. Jon Stewart has had a fan base here since 10 years ago. So, and, and also, uh, all the, all the, all the speeches that you see on YouTube, uh, whatever with, with, uh,

with Trump and then Harris and all the complaints and even all the news items. They're there in clips. So I just want to point out that this is just another case where, first of all, the Chinese political system is so opaque, it's not very interesting to even try to find anything about, and they really can't say much about it anyway.

But American politics is blood sport and it's very entertaining. And the Chinese, for if not reason only, are really interested in it and know a lot about it, albeit through this lens of social media and that type of thing. But they're very cognizant of what's going on. They know the issues.

They know the Constitution, they know the electoral college issues, or at least the ones who are paying a lot of attention. I think that's wonderful, but it's another example of just an incredible amount of asymmetry in our two cultures.

They get it. They understand what's happening and they're rooting for one or the other. They're very engaged. I don't think that any most young people, people on social media can know a thing at all about China and what's going on here. So just something to think about. Do you think that part of the fascination

tracks a little bit with the way that many people in the United States, not all, but many, have this kind of odd fixation on the British royal family and royal gossip. I've often heard Brit say that, you know, you Americans actually are way more interested in this than we are. And I kind of think it's all this notion of

that I'm glad we don't have this system in our country, but damn, it's fascinating to watch it play out in yours. You're right. No, I think you're totally right. Some people in my family have watched those. There are TV series about the communion process

Prince Charles and all that. Everything I know about British history, I got from the crown. Right. From the crown. Yeah. So you're right. You're right. There is a kind of a fetish or sort of curiosity about the British monarchy that it does sort of mirror the

The fascination with Trump. Trump is a very, very, what I put it, entertaining guy in the sense of horror shows. In the sense of really, really black and white, good guy, bad guy kinds of movies and TV series. Because he's so, so transparently evil. But also evil, you know.

The villains are always the most fun, right? So he's, you know, people are obsessed with him and really want to keep up with everything he's saying. So it's not necessarily a good thing. It's not necessarily a healthy thing, but it results in, in both cases that you mentioned, in some sense, a greater understanding of that system and what's going on. What's so bad about that?

I suppose. Yeah. One thing about the presidential race I've been watching, I've been actually fascinated with the whole Tim Walls saga. And when I was teaching, and I don't know if you've gotten this question too, I've gone on those tours where we go to the United States, we try to recruit students to study in China. And

And almost everywhere I've been on those tours, I get at least one student who's like, I want to work for the government. I want to do this. I want to do that. Will my going to China help?

I don't know if I want to go to China because that might affect my ability to get a security clearance or that might affect how my future bosses might see me if I spend too much time in China. And I have heard, maybe this is urban legend, but that the longer you do spend in China, not so much the harder it is to get clearance there.

but the longer the process is to get clearance for some government jobs. And I don't know if you've heard this too, or if you've had students who've had this concern? I certainly have. In the program that I was working at at Peking University, many of the students who did actually have aspirations to work for the Pentagon or work for the government, the State Department or whatever, were very worried that the fact that they had

they had studied out a program that's funded by the chinese government would look bad on on the record and very upfront about it i actually this was quite if i think at least four or five years ago was quite a topic because a lot of people were sort of worried about that especially because there was a sort of a

kerfuffle where I don't remember when this was exactly probably 2018 when certain students coming back to the US after having studied in programs that were funded by the Chinese government were actually visited by FBI agents that were asking probing questions about their activities and what they did there there was sort of a spy scare which is still going on that you know if

that you were being, if you were working for a program funded by the government, there were probably people trying to sort of co-opt you into going back to the U.S. and doing some spying or something like that. So it's all there. It's all overblown and kind of ridiculous. But certainly that is a worry. And I think part of the worry is that we don't really have an answer. It would seem to me from those events that there is a possibility that the government would look with askance at you if you had

not just been in China a long time, but it actually would involve a program that's funded by the government. I have a little bit of that problem just teaching here because people will say, well, then you're being paid by the Chinese government, right? How do you feel about that? Doesn't that put you, doesn't that, you know, rob your, put a doubt on your objectivity and your ability to have a, what's the word, a level evaluation of the two countries, right? So yeah, it's an issue. It's definitely an issue.

So this has to do with Tim Walls, right? Yeah, so Tim Walls had been to China, was an English teacher in China way, way back. And then the story is, Kardec, he'd been there, you know, he's been to China dozens of times. He honeymooned in China. He may possibly have worked as an exotic dancer in a panda costume. I'm only making up one of those things. And this idea that this somehow has compromised him

to be a Manchurian candidate agent of the CCP. This gets back to what I was talking about before. Just because you go to China, just because you even spend a lot of time in China,

You may be fascinated with the country. You may be fascinated with the culture. And as you said, this may be anathema to the party and its supporters. But there is an ability to like China and not like the party. And I understand that can be a little problematic, but it is possible. And it seems, tell me what you've heard too. From what I've read and what I've been seeing in the background on Tim Walz's, Tim Walz's, Tim Walz's,

Yeah, this is a problem. Where do we put the apostrophe? What I've seen about the man's connection to China is that, you know, he he seems to have an ultimate mind about the country. And he also seems to be critical when being critical is necessary. The whole I'm getting married on June 4th, 1989. Excuse me, on June 4th. So I can remember 1989.

That's a choice. I might have picked another date in history. I personally chose 09... Oh, shoot. I just forgot it. 09...

0-9-0-8-0-7, so that I'd figured I'd remember that except for, of course, the Latin. Oh, 0-9-0-8-0-7, okay. Yeah, except I just forgot it. It seems even back in the time when he was just returning from China, the things he had a, what would we call it, a Hesler, Peter Hesler-esque take on

on his experience there. I don't know if this compromises him at all. I don't, I don't know. It doesn't compromise him at all. Neither does I, do I think it makes him any particular, particularly, I don't know how it strengthens his candidacy either. I don't think this means that, you know, now that Tim walls is an office, he's going to be able to activate his secret power.

dash of china knowledge and and solve the problems of the world right right but i like the idea that we have a candidate who's left the country spent time out of the country and is possibly open to the idea that not everyone in the world thinks exactly the same way as they do in minnesota or for that matter manhattan yeah yeah sure much of this is predictable it's it's the it's the left-right schism and the tribalism and the fact that the right-wing media is going to look for anything to

to tar him with some kind of original sin. So the fact that he's been to China and we're sort of suspicious about China, what does this mean? If you actually look deeply or in detail about his involvement with China, one of the things was he was there during the

the 1989 massacre and talked with some of those kids and was very sympathetic with them. Also met with the Dalai Lama at one point, right? So, I mean, he wasn't just there, you know, sucking up to party officials or something like that. He was involved at a very grassroots level and he was teaching kids for heaven's sake, right? And the fact that he was interested enough to go back several times to do, you know, programs, I would say that's a plus.

He's not it doesn't make him a China hand in some sense, but it makes him a type of person who is open to that kind of work. And also, I think it does make him not a China hand, but someone who is exactly the kind of person that we're trying to mold. Someone who is is is talking about China from a vantage point of someone who's actually been there.

and seen what it looks like and god forbid could actually speak a little bit of chinese horrors of horrors that he would go that far right

I mean, Jeremiah, you and I have done probably the worst thing. We've married into China. China is our country in law now. So, I mean, that puts us in a very, very suspicious light. So I think it's all silly. I mean, I think he makes a, it makes him much, much more of an attractive candidate in my mind anyway. It wouldn't have to be China. It could be almost any other country. But the fact that he has that knowledge and is at the same time as a Midwest football coach is pretty cool if you ask me.

Assistant football coach. Oh, sorry. I seem to have seen that somewhere. It reminds me of the bullshit that surrounded Barack Obama's biography and the fact that he had spent part of his school years in Indonesia. People were added to this idea among the folks who don't travel a lot that he somehow, again, compromised and has foreign interests or maybe he's a foreigner himself. All I was thinking was,

wow, this is somebody who actually has spent time in the global South and so might have a clue about what the global South has, the issues that are entailed in that. So yeah, I'm kind of hoping that, as you said, it doesn't make him a China hand, but it does make it, I think,

it does make him a more interesting candidate. The other thing too, having spent some time in the U.S. recently for family reasons and spending time in New Hampshire where there are any number of large yard signs supporting the former President Donald Trump, it occurs to me, and I think I may have said something like this before on the show, that the way the West thinks

There's a lot of similarities between the anti-American left and the MAGA folks in how they see the world. Hang on with me. It is striking to me that many of the people who support Trump, particularly in my home state of New Hampshire, don't really like Trump as a person.

They just hate the people who hate Trump. They hate the people from Massachusetts that drink the cappuccinos and drive the electric cars. I'm not denigrating people who drink cappuccinos and drive electric cars, but you've got to think of the mentality of a rural white rage. The fact that the liberal coastal elite hates Trump is enough to like Trump. And I think that's one reason why we see a lot of people around the world who think

will say things to support Vladimir Putin as an anti-imperialist or Xi Jinping as somebody who believes in economic equality and opportunity for all because America doesn't like them, therefore they must be good guys. The enemy of my enemy. And

They do think there are parallels between what we see in the United States with this polarizationist tribalism and what we see in the rest of the world. I'm not saying that America is anything to, I'm not saying that America does not make its share of mistakes. I'm not saying America is a good actor in the world, even. I would accept that premise if it was brought to me.

But at the same time, just because America doesn't like somebody or someone doesn't like America doesn't make them the good guy. In the same way, I want to tell people who are Republicans in New Hampshire, just because this is the guy that the liberals hate doesn't mean you have to line up behind him, close your eyes and just follow him off a cliff. And I think that's kind of what we what I see happening. It's a small digression, I know, but it is something that's been sticking with me.

ever since I sat in a bar in my home state and listened at length to a fellow patron describe to me everything that was wrong with the world. And it was all tied to liberals, communism, China, and apparently tofu. Great. I'm glad you had a great time going back to your home country. You probably feel a little alienated from it at this point. But yeah, it feels comfortable to be back in that sort of discourse world. I know.

Well, one more thing before we wrap up today. I wanted to kind of also give a shout out to my former home city and your current home city, Beijing, to congratulate them for two things. One, for tying up

the gold medal table in the Olympics, which I know is still, it may not be as important in China as it was 10 years ago, but I still think it's something that people care a bit about. And that's always good news for everyone. It's nice to see America and China tied so that they can either jointly celebrate or simply continue to point fingers at each other, cast aspersions and go down a dark path. And the other thing, of course, is that the central axis of Beijing, right? Yeah.

now is going to be a UNESCO World Heritage Landmark.

I have some thoughts on this. A couple of the Chinese state media outlets have called me up and asked me my opinion on them. And I don't talk to Chinese state media anymore. But I have some opinions I want to share here. But David, let me get your take. What do you think this means for our fair city? Well, I did do a couple of state media podcasts, not TV shows, but podcasts on this. Yeah, they've been working at this a long time.

I don't know if people know that. They had to jump through hoops because there was a lot of things that weren't quite up to the standards.

of the UNESCO. Like having no historical buildings along the actual line that weren't already UNESCO before? Yeah, that's one of them. And also the buildings that weren't the actual buildings themselves because so many things were torn down. And also a sort of faux extension to the axis that they did during 2008, building those Olympic buildings right on the north-south axis. So now, you know, it's forever associated. That seemed almost a kind of a

callous, what's the word? What's the word for that? A blending of modern kitsch with, you know, ancient nobility or something like that. Something was felt wrong about that. These five Olympic mascots being melded with the importance of the Forbidden City. You know, it's like, you know, but I, you know, it is, I think the Midsummer Night's Dress is kind of interesting. It's kind of cool. I mean, it's more conceptual than anything else. Although,

from the air it's kind of obvious that it's there and it was it's a very confusion thing i mean even though the whole city was built according to the confusion the the

the Confucian book on building that had very, very specific instructions on the way to build a city that included the city wall, how many gates and so forth. So it is cool because it's a living instantiation of that sort of philosophical attitude of this philosophical framework for what an ideal city should be. And of course, it all has to do with feng shui, you know, all of the feng shui

The central axis is just drenched in feng shui. The whole point of it

is to channel the auspicious sea chi from the south to up toward the north and sort of to percolate into the hutongs so that it's sort of a metaphor of a human body with a bloodstream and so on it's it's it's really quite the metaphors are really quite dense and complicated so i i know i think it's a cool thing i mean it's very worthy of being an intangible heritage candidate you know and then they worked really hard to to get it done the thing that the thing that bothers me a little bit is

that this notion of Chairman Mao, the corpse of Chairman Mao, right in the center of the city, right there. Because for me, having studied a lot of feng shui, that's bad feng shui. You don't put a dead body in the middle of the city. You put it out towards the west.

What about a wax replica of a dead body? How does that affect feng shui? Well, yeah, well, see, there you go. They may be technically skirting the violation because the thing that there is a wax dummy and not really a dead body. But that is something we will never know. So all I can do is take it on face value.

that they may have succeeded in creating a great cultural relic here, but they've made a gross mistake. And I would even say some of the disasters that have befallen Beijing in the last few decades might be a result of this violation of the feng shui principles. Wow, that's like a Chinese culture deep cut right there.

I have no problem with UNESCO recognizing the central axis. Central axis is a particularly interesting feature of Beijing, particularly now that so many of the historically interesting features of Beijing have since been, and in some cases long since, been destroyed. I think

UNESCO might have been more interested in the city walls of Beijing, which were the, for most of the city's history, in both the Western and in Chinese travel accounts, were what people were amazed about when they saw Beijing, was the size of these incredible walls and gates that, of course, were taken down under Chairman Mao in the 1950s and 1960s.

And as you said, this has been a project that's been going on for quite some time, in large part because along the access, so much of those buildings and structures had either been taken down or repurposed or otherwise not preserved in a way that would have matched UNESCO's even now somewhat stretchy definition of worth preserving for posterity. I think part of this too, though, is that

It's something that I think is going to happen with the whole central part of Beijing, particularly the area north of the Forbidden City. And it's already happening. I mean, it's going to be depopulated and...

turned into old town with pedestrian streets and shops and retail. And that's something you see in European cities, something you even see in some American cities. But that is the future of the Hutongs, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, yeah. And that's coming soon. You remember a few years ago, maybe five, six, seven years ago, they actually had a plan to

to build an underground shopping mall. They were calling it, they were going to call it the Time, because it was right near the drum tower and bell tower. It was going to have underground parking and all this kind of stuff. They wanted to link the significance of the drum and bell tower with time. I can't remember the name of it. It was like the Time shopping mall or something like that.

And the preservationists were so up in arms. And also, I think the Beijingers who lived in that area that were thinking, oh, no, you don't. This is going to be hell on earth for the next 10 years as you dig up everything and kick us out and turn off our electricity all the time. They did. It was such an outrage about that that they gave it up.

And I think it's probably well that they did because it might very well be that the UNESCO people might have said, you know, a shopping mall in the midst of that? You know, I think that kind of blows, you know, the appropriateness for you being a candidate for the award. So I think it's a good thing that it happened. But you're right, it's already happening toward the south with Chenmen that's been so, so changed. It's so touristy now.

It's kind of, it's less grotesque as it used to be when they had Tiananmen Dazie with the shopping mall, with the Gucci and the fashion shops and things. They gave up on that because that was a terrible idea. The tourists hated it. That's the last thing they wanted to see at Tiananmen, right? So they have improved a little bit on the tastefulness of keeping it.

a little bit faux old Beijing, if not the real old Beijing. But you're right, that's such touristy property. And they're trying to figure out how to make use of it without blowing the entire ambiance. It's a tricky thing. Yeah, we'll have to see how the UNESCO designation, if it changes, as you said, if it changes any of these plans or if it just simply accelerates the process by which the old town is converted into a old town trademark copycat.

copyright as we've seen all around the world and particularly all around China. Well, David, thank you for taking some time out of your evening as you get ready for yet another fun semester educating minds. I am actually heading back to the United States at the end of this month. I am giving a talk at Yale University at the end of the month on dead missionaries. Dead missionaries. Mateo Ricci, by the way?

No, no, not Matteo Ricci. I'm talking about the Tianjin Massacre and the riot which killed nine nuns. So essentially, this is a Slayer song posing as an academic talk.

And I'm looking forward to doing that. That's great. I'll also get back to New England twice in the same month, which I think is a record for me in the last 20-something years. That's great. That's great. Somebody just contacted me because there is evidently a musical on the life of Matteo Ricci that's been playing in Hong Kong, and they want to bring it to mainland China. They said a Broadway musical. I don't know if it's a Broadway musical, but a musical about Matteo Ricci.

That sparks my curiosity. I would love to see that. My wife's workout mix since at least 2017 has been a musical about America's first treasury secretary. Anything is possible.

Jeremiah, before I go, I just have to tell you, you know, we've had to reschedule so many podcasts because of construction work going on above us or below us or the apartment next door. Well, right now, I am experiencing that from the inside out. I am now the perpetrator of that because my wife has decided that she wants to remodel our kitchen and our two bathrooms.

And so every day I'm sitting in this apartment hearing right up close all the drills and the pounding and the hammers and the tiles being smashed to pieces. And it's interesting because I do not feel the least bit guilty about my neighbors who are hearing all this and hating it because I went through the same thing with each of them. The upstairs neighbor, our next door neighbor, our neighbor below us. I went through it all three times with them. So

Although I know it's horrible for them, I don't feel guilty. This is not a particularly attractive side of me, but I'll share it anyway. When we moved out of our apartment in Beijing, our landlord, great person, really great landlord, which is a gem if you ever find a good landlord in Beijing. I'd rather have a good landlord than a good apartment. But once we moved out,

He decided he wanted to completely renovate the place and or gut it to remove whatever trace of foreignness was there. And I'm still secretly on the building WeChat group just for shits and giggles. And the noise from that renovation has apparently been of some consternation to the neighbors on all sides.

all of whom, as in your case, have gone through multiple reservations in the 11 some odd years that we lived there. And so, as I said, not an attractive side of me, but I am secretly enjoying this in a way that makes me feel somewhat dirty, but I'm willing to live with that shame. All right. And on that note, we're

We're going to be queuing up some drums for you in a moment. We'll be back in a couple of weeks. Thank you so much for tuning in to Barbarians at the Gate. You can find me on Twitter or X or whatever the hell they're calling it now. The Hellscape, formerly known as Twitter. You can wade through all of the algorithm. I'm on there at Jeremiah underscore Jenny. No, wait, I think I'm just Jeremiah Jenny. One line, no underscore. No.

at x.com and david you are david double underscore moser right right also at x.com speaking of feeling dirty i just feel weird for saying that so you can hit us up there if you have any questions if you have any comments if you'd like to talk to us until then david stay cool thank you you too all right and you all out there stay cool too cue the drums