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Last June I was asked by a Canadian television crew to get hold of some students for a special on modern China. For the last four years, I have been teaching political theory at Tsinghua University. I sent an e-mail message to a few of my students, and they kindly agreed to be interviewed. We met at the All Sages Cafe -- also perhaps the best Chinese-language bookstore for academic material, where I usually bring my visiting academic friends to show them that their books have been translated into Chinese, before noting how few Chinese works are translated into English.
The producer asked for some shots of our typical seminar discussion, and we sat in a circle. We were encouraged to talk among ourselves in Chinese, as we would normally do. I was asked to hold the menu to make it look like I was consulting lecture notes, which generated a few laughs. The setting was somewhat artificial -- we had to stop midway so the crew could change the tape, and they could film only half the group at a time. But we still had a lively discussion.
I came up with an Olympic theme that, I hoped, would generate some controversy. Just outside Tsinghua's northeast gate, there is a dog-meat restaurant, with the character for "dog" prominently displayed. Many East Asian people enjoy eating dog meat, which is supposed to be both tasty and invigorating, especially during the winter months. But the Korean government had banned dog meat during the 1988 Olympics to not offend Western visitors, and I asked if the Chinese government should do the same during the Beijing Olympics.
To my surprise -- and part of what makes it a pleasure to be here is that I'm constantly surprised -- most of the students said no. Why should the government pander to Western sensibilities? As my master's student Zeng Xueling put it,...