When a Deng Xiaoping-Approved Marriage Spurred the Hunan Democracy Movement — with Judith Shapiro
42:31 Share

For us, as critics of the US because of the involvement in the Vietnam War, there was a notion that we had, a kind of romantic notion that Chairman Mao had done something wonderful for China and the people's communes were good, as he said. Hello, listeners. Welcome to a new episode of Peking Hotel. I'm your host, Leo.

The 80s in China is often remembered as a decade of political opening. As China woke up from the nightmare of Cultural Revolution, a civic energy was unleashed across China that led to the democracy war movement, political reform agenda, the rise of liberal public intellectuals, and of course Tiananmen.

Now, this story often gets told from the perspective of Beijing and neglects development all around China. And so today we have Professor Judith Shapiro with us, who taught English in Changsha in 1980 and was center to its nascent yet impactful student democracy movement.

Professor Shapiro is a professor at American University. She studies China's environmental politics from Mao to now. She once worked as a senior program officer at the National Endowment for Democracy. And she was also the first American to marry a Chinese national in China, a marriage that set off a chain reaction that led to the Hulunan democracy movement in 1980. And so today we'll listen to her story with China. Enjoy.

All right, well, welcome to our recording, Professor. Thank you. And to begin our conversation, I would like to take you back to your first trip to China. Could you talk about it? Do you remember it? Sure. Yeah, it was 1977, and I was a member of the U.S.-China People's Friendship Association. I was doing a master's degree at the time in the Midwest.

there wasn't a lot of competition for those slots from the Midwest. I think if I had lived in New York or California, I might not have been able to go so early. But yeah, in 1977 July, yeah, we had a chimp, hey, you know, like a guide who was with us all the time. And then in each locality, we met a local guide. And

I was in Shanghai when Deng Xiaoping came back to power. There was a lot of noise, a lot of symbols, a lot of flags. And I said to our guide, I said, "What's going on?" And she said, "Deng Xiaoping came back." I said, "Who's Deng Xiaoping?" She said, "Deng Xiaoping was a good comrade."

That's all she could say. So I didn't know I was there at a really historic moment. And I was really moved by how eager people were for our help. A lot of people said, you have to come back and help us. We need you.

you know, at that time the women all wore long braids and everybody was in bicycles and everybody looked very, you know, slender and strong and the women and the men seemed very equal, you know, and for us,

critics of the US because of the involvement in the Vietnam War there was a notion that we had a kind of romantic notion that Chairman Mao had done something wonderful for China and the you know people's communes were good you know as he said and

Yeah, and I'm particularly interested in the fact of women holding up half the sky. It was very appealing in 1977 at the very beginning of, you know, a kind of spread of feminism within the U.S. Were you a good student of Mao at the time? I was a good student of Mao at the time. Yeah, I mean...

I don't think I was a deep student of Mao. I think it was more, you know, we had our own sort of cultural revolution in America. It was a very different cultural revolution than China's. You mean the civil rights movement?

civil rights movement, but also kind of the hippie movement and the anti-war movement. And, you know, young people in America were also experimenting with communes and, you know, the very different kind of commune than they had in China. But there was a feeling that

you know, maybe there were some good answers in China. And of course the information that was coming out of China was extremely limited, you know, almost non-existent. So it was easy to have those romantic ideas. Did you find China quite what you expected? Of course not. Of course not. That's a big question, right? It takes a long answer. But even just for that first trip? Oh, for the first trip?

For the first trip, I think my positive impression was reinforced because even though there were some indications that things were not what I imagined them to be, I don't think I had the context to interpret what I saw. So I'll give you a story. At one point, our train stopped. I think it was in Xi'an. And it stopped for about 15 minutes. So our guide...

got off, I was sharing a compartment with her, and the guard got off, she stayed off for a while, and then she came back and she was crying. So I said, "Why are you crying?" And she said, "Well, I just saw my son for the first time since he was sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution." So, you know, this kind of thing, I didn't have any context for that, right?

But I could have guessed, you know, things maybe were not so wonderful, you know, going, the educated youth going to the countryside, maybe it wasn't so wonderful for everyone, right? So. And so you went to Princeton, I mean, what did you study? Who were your mentors? So I started my Chinese in Princeton. So I started Chinese my sophomore year at Princeton.

Princeton was one of the few schools in America at that time that had a really good Chinese language program. Most of the teachers were from Taiwan, so I didn't know that. I thought they had a bad accent. Now I see they had a really good accent, but they didn't differentiate the "s" and the "sh" sometimes. But no, it was a really tough Chinese language program. And I was also, I was an anthropology major, but a minor in East Asian studies.

But just to underline the fact that people were not feeling like a sinology in those days, there was this guy Frederick Mote, and it was all about how, I don't know, the Ming Dynasty was so wonderful, and Confucianism was so great. And so my interest in contemporary China and Mao and all that, I didn't have any mentors for that.

at Princeton anyway. Nobody was interested in what was going on inside of the mainland at that time. After I graduated from Princeton, I went to the Midwest to study dance for a year with a friend, and I also did a literature degree at the University of Illinois.

Then I went to China, that was July '77, and I was scheduled to go to Berkeley to do a PhD in comparative literature, but I became so interested in China as a result of that trip that I switched from

comparative literature into Asian studies at Berkeley. So then I'm halfway or most of the way through my master's at Berkeley when the Chinese government decided as a result of the foreign modernizations program that they needed to have English teachers. So those first 40 English teachers were all people who had gone to China

as part of the US-China Friendship Association. Oh, interesting. And so they phoned, and I think this was March, maybe late 1978, early. I arrived in China as a teacher in March of 1979, and I was assigned to Hunan, Changsha, to the, at that time they called it Shi Fan Xue Yuan, or the Shi Fan... Shi Fan Da Jue, yeah.

But now it's Daxue. Then it was Shuiyuan. Yeah. I was the only foreigner there. Probably in the whole town, in the whole city. I believe I was the only foreigner in the province when I first arrived. I mean, a few more sort of came a little later, but at the Shuiyuan, I was always the only foreigner. Hunan University, they got a couple...

maybe six or eight months after I arrived and we became good friends, you know. Tie Dao, Tie Dao Xiuyuan also got a couple. It was later, you know, but I was the first one. So yeah, did I change my mind? Did I learn a few things? Absolutely. And how did you get the opportunity to teach? Oh, they called me up, the liaison office. It was a telephone call.

Which liaison office? The Chinese liaison office. In Washington, D.C.? I guess they were in Washington. I don't know where they were. Yeah. And they just said, you know, get ready. You know, when can you be there? You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know

Treating you as a sent-down youth from America. Right? So, and at the time I was like, what does that mean? Hunan, I had to look on the map. Where is Hunan? Maybe disappointed it wasn't Beijing or Shanghai. But, you know, like now I know how lucky I was that I was in a more remote area. Well, it's more remote, but not so remote. I mean, it's the sort of cradle of Chinese civilization. No, but then it was remote. It was remote. Yeah. And why Hunan Teachers College?

Because it was the biggest, it was training English teachers for the whole province. It was actually, there were like 400 English majors in that province, in that department, the Waiyushi, 400. And so, yeah, it wasn't like a university level thing. It was all of those students were supposed to go on and stay in Hunan and teach English. So they really needed a native speaker.

But when I first got there, they weren't letting me teach the students. They wanted me to teach all those old Russian professors because they were supposed to... To get them converted to English? Right.

And they couldn't learn it, right? They were like in their 50s and 60s and really set in their ways. And so then the 77 grade came in through examination. Which was the first year of Gaokao. Yeah, it was the first year of Gaokao. I taught the last of the Worker Peasant Soldier students were there when I got there.

And then it came in the people through the examination and those old Russian teachers couldn't teach them. So they had no choice but to give that very precious foreign expert to the students. Yeah. And how was life like in Changsha at the time? Well, they gave me what they thought was a fancy, like a professor room, but they would have to carry the water up

you know, on the pulp buckets, right? A lot of the professors were using outhouses in those days. Still, there wasn't any flush toilet. I think we had to, like, dump water or something. And they gave me an air conditioner because it's, you know, so hot there, but the electricity wasn't good enough to run it, and if I turned it on, you know, everything shut down, so. And walk, I was up on the hill, walk down to the classroom, and

- You know, taught a lot of classes. I gradually combined my students into bigger groups so they could all listen to me because I knew that was more important. The most important thing was that they get the most amount of time listening to a native speaker, right?

And so, one thing that I found I could do that was very valuable was I knew how to paraphrase things. So I knew how to say the same thing in multiple ways. And to them that was like so amazing, you know? Like some kind of magic that I could do that. And yeah, I feel like the students were so good. They were so smart and they had experienced so much hardship.

to come to school was so precious for them. It was a great time. And how did that experience of teaching change your views on China? Well, partly as I got to know my students, they would tell me more about what they had experienced, whether during the Cultural Revolution or in the countryside. We would have

conversation class and I would say, "Well, you know, tell me about how wonderful it was to go to the countryside to learn from the peasants." And they would say,

Actually, it wasn't wonderful at all. So that gradually educated me, right? And when you went to Hunan, at the perfect time, because in 1980, the democracy movement erupted in the Hunan Teachers College. And some even say that was the precursor to the whole period of liberalization in the 80s in China. Well...

What do you think? That's not how it happened. That's not the way it unfolded, though. Right. Okay, it only unfolded like that because I had married Liang Hang. And if he wasn't married to me, he wouldn't have run for local People's Congress and the movement would not have broken out. Do you want to elaborate? No, so I got married to Liang Hang, right, in 1980. 1980?

And we came briefly to the U.S. in the summer for him to look around. He was very struck by the free speech. And, you know, I remember I was with some friends at Berkeley and they were complaining about Ronald Reagan as such a bad president. And he was like, oh, my God, can you say that? And then when we went back to China for him to finish up his degree, there was elections for local people's Congress. And he ran as a candidate, even though...

the local party had picked their own people. So he was running as a, you know, independent candidate, but he would not have done that if he wasn't married to me. So he wouldn't have been protected. So it wasn't like I got there just at the right time because there was a democracy movement. No. I was actually instrumental in like my role. I mean, not me personally, but the fact of

the U.S. person being there enabled that democracy movement to happen. Oh, that's fantastic. And there was also Taosan. Yeah, so Taosan was, was he a classmate of Liang Heng maybe?

Yeah, so he got in much more trouble, right? Because what happened after they brought in the work movement and they kind of shut down the movement, they basically said to Liang Heng, you know, we're going to let you graduate and you get out of here, go to America. But some of the other leaders were given really bad job assignments or they were actually put in prison for a while. So, yeah. What do you think about your marriage with Liang Heng now?

I think it was wonderful while it lasted. It was a really interesting...

It lasted about seven or eight years. We wrote three books together. And lots of articles together. What's that? And lots of articles together. Yeah, lots of articles together. You guys became a writing duo. We became a writing duo. We became a speaking duo. We spoke at so many universities, did so many TV shows. We...

were involved with really interesting people in New York City, in Human Rights Watch and other places. And yeah, no, it was a really fruitful time.

And I think, sometimes I think certain marriages, they will survive in one cultural context, but maybe not so much in another one. So maybe if we had stayed in China, we would have stayed together. But, you know, for him in the U.S., with his English not being so good, he felt a lot of pressure, and he was very ambitious. So...

Ultimately, we decided to split up, but the lawyer, when we were doing it, she said, "I never saw two people more friendly when they're doing a divorce." That's wonderful. Yeah. People don't understand. I've read some things online. People sometimes think he used me or I used him or something like that. It was a good marriage while it lasted.

It's so amazing reading about how you wrote directly to Deng Xiaoping to get the marriage approved. Exactly. Very strange story, right? Why did you have the guts to write to the Supreme Leader? Because after we started to work on Son of the Revolution, that was also when Wei Jingsheng was arrested for talking about the fifth modernization and

We became really just afraid for Liang Hung that it would be dangerous for him to continue for us to be together.

So then we decided, well, let's get married. That way we'll protect him. So we said to the leaders, we're going to get married. And the leader said, no, you can't. Because, well, they gave the excuse that because he was a college student and college students are not allowed to get married. But I think really they were completely afraid of like, this is a foreigner and, you know, blah, blah, blah. So Liang Hong was the one who wrote a bunch of letters, you know,

you know, to local, like the Jiao Yu Ju, and, you know, but I guess he also wrote to Deng Xiaoping or, you know, Zhongyang Jiao, I don't know. But somehow the story came to us that Deng Xiaoping saw this letter and said, you know, yes, this is a symbol of U.S.-China friendship. It's a good thing. And so all those people, you know,

they all of a sudden were like, "Yay, US-China friendship!" So you guys turned from the culprits to the poster boys and girls. Exactly. So yeah, so I was fine and I think I was the first American to marry a Chinese. I think there had been a French person before that. Around a similar time. Yeah. First American. And what reaction did you get throughout this marriage saga?

From whom? Well, from everyone around you. Different people, teachers, the families, the students. I don't remember. I don't remember any particular reactions. But we, of course, once Deng Xiaoping approved it, you know, everybody was, you know, congratulations, congratulations. And we had some kind of marriage...

we got the marriage license, like with all those flags on it and everything. And I think we did, I think the local officials had a party for us at a hotel. Yeah, maybe Hunan Bingguan or something with some kind of party. All right. And did it impact your work as a teacher? Yeah, well, it impacted my work now that I think about it because...

Once we were married, I think we had a whole other year in China together as a married couple. And so the assumption was then that nobody needed to be in charge of me because Liang Heng was in charge of me, right? So that way we could travel anywhere we wanted. And, you know, there was no, you know, so before there had been certain like leaders who were in charge of

In charge of me, you know? In charge of the foreigner. Yeah, in charge of the foreigner. But now Liang Hong was in, this is China's daughter-in-law, right? So, you know, a lot of that kind of stuff. And so we would, we traveled a lot. We would go to places that were technically not open to foreigners, but because, you know, I was married to him, you know, we could go there. And, you know, it was, it was fun. Yeah. Did anything leave an impression?

Where we've traveled? Yeah. Yeah. Well, fortunately, because I'm short and I spoke Chinese and my hair was pretty dark then. Now it's more gray. And people wore those kojao, right? So people didn't notice that I was a foreigner. So it was great. You know, I went lots and lots of places that no foreigner had ever been. And people didn't even realize that a foreigner was there. That was great. And how did you find the Chinese family?

Well, you know, Nian Hong, of course, had come from a broken family because of the Cultural Revolution. So his mother had been labeled as a rightist and his father was really sick from mistreatment in the countryside. And his two sisters had been sent to the countryside and they were still there. So his family was pretty spread out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what we wrote about in Son of the Revolution. Yeah. Do you feel that was informative?

to your views towards China? What, writing Son of the Revolution? Oh, and just being in that family context. Well, we didn't see the family very often because they weren't... Together. I think after we got married, Liang Hong was able to get his father returned from the countryside to some housing in the Hunan Daily, Hunan Erbao.

But his father was like really crippled almost from lack of medical care. So that was something that Neung Hung had been able to do for his father. But it's not like we had dinner every night, you know. And Neung Hung didn't get along super well with his stepmother. So that was another thing. So I don't think I met the family members.

It was much more writing Son of the Revolution that helped me understand the pattern that so many people in China had experienced. Anybody who had been born around the early 50s

they all had that same pattern, right? Maybe they'd been a Red Guard, you know, maybe their parents had been criticized, maybe they'd been sent to the countryside as an educated youth, maybe they had become disillusioned at a certain moment, maybe at the Lin Biao incident or something else, maybe they had become the

awakened young people, right? The 反思的一代, right? So they said, maybe at some moment they realized, wait a minute, everything that we gave to the revolution was basically a lie. So that's why that book has had such a long history, even though many other books have been written, because in so many ways that story is typical. Mm-hmm.

Actually, as a feminist, what do you think about that sort of dynamic where the man tells the story and the woman writes it? Well, I mean, in a way, initially I was surprised because we chose to make Son of the Revolution completely in his voice. So

It wasn't a male-female decision at all. It was because it was his story. But I remember sometimes being surprised when people would say, oh, I read your husband's book. So then I would be a little offended by that. Who do you think wrote it? But it's his story. It's really his story. So, I mean, I don't feel...

in any way that there was any kind of gender inequality between us or yeah I mean we really each of us got a lot out of that relationship yeah so and so and the whole period of the 80s in China is remembered as a period of liberalization freedom it was amazing yeah no it was such an exciting time for the Chinese people you know

And how was your life like in China in the 80s? Well, we came back in '81, right? And then Liang Heng applied for a sort of expedited US passport. So we were able to go back and he didn't feel unsafe. And we wrote another book called After the Nightmare, because we had some friends among the leadership who had helped us really to get married. And

So they would say, you know, okay, you wrote about the Cultural Revolution, you know, it wasn't untrue, but why don't you write about some of the good things that are happening in China now, right? So we said, okay, we'll come back. So we did this other book called After the Nightmare, right, where we traveled all around. And that book is out of print now. It's very much more time-specific than Sun of the Revolution, which can kind of stay forever, right? But...

After the nightmare, we just traveled around. Each chapter was chronicling a different kind of experience of Chinese life. People say the 80s was so amazing. Why? What's amazing about it? Well, I think people felt these new freedoms all the time, right? They were in the literature and the arts. People were publishing things. People were able to see films that they hadn't been able to see. The door was opening. The foreign...

artists and symphonies were coming in and

just foreign ideas were coming in. And also people began to feel for the first time as if they could decide themselves what they wanted to do after they graduated. For example, what do they call xia hai, right? Maybe you don't take the assignment that your school gives you. Maybe you take the risk and go off to Shenzhen and start your own business or something like that. So it was a moment when people felt

like free and or more free and excited about ideas and as if maybe this economic liberalization might eventually lead to a political liberalization as well, which of course didn't happen.

But there was a notion in the 80s leading up to Tiananmen that, you know, first perestroika and then glasnost, you know, that that was going to come. Yeah. And as an American going to China in the 80s, how did you feel? I mean, for the Chinese, it would be if you feel like, you know, shackling your chains and gaining new freedom. But those freedoms would be quite familiar to you and...

Yeah, but I was interested in the Chinese people's experience. It wasn't about my experience. No, but what was your experience? I mean, how were you inspired? Yeah, no, I continued to do, I saw myself often as, you know, I never wanted to be a writer. That was never my ambition. But sometimes I felt as if

because of the particular experiences that I've had, I felt certain obligations to tell people's stories because there wasn't somebody else who could tell them. And some people would come to me with their stories, right? And I would feel like, you know, I guess nobody else is going to do it. I guess I have to do it, right? So that was a responsibility. And I think that that's

It's not about me. There's a famous book called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. And he says, our question should not be, what do we want to get out of life? But rather, what does life want to get out of us? We should rise to the occasion. And I think that in many ways, China has...

Not consistently, because I took big breaks from it, but China has asked me to deliver something. I've pulled out something, a contribution that I could make. One pretty influential thing that Yuwan Liangheng started was the intellectual magazine, 哲学分子, which influenced...

not just Chinese students abroad, but many in China too, because they learned about this magazine and I think they later opened a chapter in China as well. Could you talk about that experience of starting this magazine, getting the Chinese intellectuals to contribute, and how it all happened?

Yeah, so that again was more Liang Hung's project than mine, although I was certainly there when he was putting it together and he would approach... His model for it was supposed to be a kind of Chinese New York Review of Books. That was his dream for it. And so he would approach intellectuals overseas, Chinese intellectuals overseas, to write articles. And in those days...

it was really very much about what is civil society, right? There was a lot of curiosity. People didn't know what that term meant. - No. - Right, there was no such thing, you know? And so there was a lot of kind of intellectual work involved with explaining the roots of civil society and what that could mean. And I don't remember how long that magazine went on. I think it was once a month or once every two months for maybe a couple of years.

And there was always a question, how do we get it back into China and who's going to be able to take it to China? And there was a question of the cover and it was going to be, the easiest thing to do was use the same cover each time but use a different color. And I remember that kind of conversation. But then, to be honest, in my later life, I had completely forgotten that we even did that. And I met...

When I was teaching at Schwarzman College, we met some high-level person and a high-level intellectual, and he said, oh, you did Son of the Revolution, you did Gershon Fentzel. And I was like, oh, yeah, I completely forgot about that. So, you know, so that was really Liang Hong's efforts. You're not the first person that told me they got tired of China. Yeah. And I wonder why.

What did it mean for you to be so tired of China? What is it about China that got you tired? What got me tired was, you know, Perry Link has a great book called Evening Chats in Beijing.

And in it, he talks a great deal about the sort of burden of the Chinese intellectual and how the Chinese intellectual can never stop trying to figure out how to, I mean, you love the motherland, but does the motherland love you, right? In the words of that play. So, Bitter Love, Ku Lian, was the name of that play. You love the, ni ai guo, kuzhe ai guo, kuzhe guo jia, ai bo ai ni, right? And so,

I mean, I know that in my marriage to Liang Hang, it wasn't about being tired of Liang Hang. It was being tired of constantly trying to figure out what can we do about China? What can we do about China? You know, like that burden. And, you know, ultimately feeling like this is not ultimately my burden. This is your burden, right? So I think that was a big factor in our deciding to split up. So being tired of China, it's just that

I don't have to work on China. Like right now, I'm really interested in working on Norway. Nobody says I have to work on China. I mean, I like working on China, but a lot of the courses I teach right now have nothing to do with China. I'm talking to you because you're asking me to, but I don't like having, you know, I wouldn't have this conversation every day of the week. You know, it's exhausting in a way, right? To think about these things. So...

Yeah, no, I had a big detour in the 90s into the 2000s of doing, you know, first other parts of Asia and then retraining myself to do environmental work, you know? Yeah. So even though I talk now about China and the environment, that's a kind of a...

you know, having made a great big detour into other things and then coming back and finding the old expertise and bringing them together, right? So that's very refreshing for me. And so in the 90s, we worked on Soviet Union for a bit and it took your attention away from China for a bit.

How did you start working for the National Endowment for Democracy? So I began to realize that Philadelphia was not a good fit for me and I wanted to go somewhere. And I think that maybe Liang Hang knew people at the National Endowment for Democracy, something. I think I had met them. I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, I had met them already back in the 80s. And I think they were looking for a new senior program officer for Asia. I think they actually may have approached me.

for that job. And so I took it and I moved to Washington in order to take that job. But what appealed to me about the job, even though they were attracted to my China background, what appealed to me about the job was that it was a broader Asia focus. So it was promoting civil society and democracy, broadly understood by me anyway, in

other parts of Asia, right? So I had a chance to work on Indonesia, particularly spent a lot of time working on Burma. Actually traveled to the Burmese border with Thailand. Cambodia took a lot of my time. We were able to support some communities overseas from Tibet, and I've always been very interested in Tibet.

But anyway, it was a great chance to explore. And that's been very helpful to me now in my teaching because I continue to teach about all of Asia and not just China. And China has so much influence in the region in general. So it's really important to know that.

and to have been there, right? So when you're teaching, it's very important to be able to say to students that, yeah, I went to Indonesia. You know, I was in Cambodia. I visited these places. I understand them. So...

Did you support any Chinese groups and what were your interactions like with the Chinese? Yeah, so who did we support? I mean, we did support the Tibetan group. And see, that was where we had to support because a congressman, what this Lao guy saw, you know, that Lao guy. Oh, Harry Wu story? Harry Wu, you know, like I was not a fan of Harry Wu. But, you know, there was a congressperson that loved Harry Wu. And so we had to keep supporting Harry Wu.

Well, boy, I have to think about that. He had a Lao Gai Foundation. Yeah, the Lao Gai Foundation. They have a Lao Gai Museum here, so I've never even been in it. Yeah, because there are some people that are so angry at China that they're not objective, right? They've been hurt by China in some way. And I think Harry Wu... So the trouble with Harry Wu was that, like, my assistant actually traveled with Harry Wu at some point to Russia. Yeah.

Harry Wu had the effrontery to tell people who had survived Russian prison camps that they were lucky because the Chinese camps were so much worse. We don't need that. You know, that's not

First of all, how could he know and how could he say that? And so there are some people that have been so wounded by China that their only goal is to hurt China back. And nothing China can do could ever be good. And, you know, I think even, well, yeah. So that's why I was not a fan of Harry Wu. I don't know if we supported human rights in China. We might have.

Xiao Qiang is your friend. Yeah, Xiao Qiang was a friend. I knew him in New York. But I don't know, maybe, see some people even wouldn't want to take money from the NED, right, because of that reputation. So... Humorize Watch Asia? No, they wouldn't take money from NED. I'm sure they wouldn't. Yeah. But I know we did support some other Chinese groups.

I just don't remember what they were. The good is that you do get to support some civil society groups that are really good. The bad is that certain Congress people have a big, they'll come in and interfere and say, well, you have to support this or that. And it does have that very strong anti-communist tone to it. And I think the understanding of what democracy is is very formulaic.

Really, it's a very westernized idea about what democracy is, meaning that it should have many parties and elections, and there's a lot of focus on elections, and much less of a human rights and intellectual freedom orientation, which is more what I feel comfortable with. But that's not to say that some of that isn't there as well.

So, you know, I was there for just two years and I learned a lot. And then I really felt that it was time for me to do something completely different. And that's when I decided to work on the environment. With that, this is the end of our episode today. I hope you liked it. And we also have a Substack page under the same name, Peking Hotel. We'll put the link in the description below. And so that's it. I'll talk to you next time.