How much you know about China?

China has become such a hot topic. Almost everyone I met would ask intelligent questions or comment about China. Particularly in Africa, where China has poured a lot of money to help build infrastructure, people are always friendly towards Chinese and they all seem to know one thing or another about China.

Today we went into a long conversation with Nick, co-founder of KickStart, who just came back from a business trip to China – his first visit to China covering three coastal cities, Dalian, Ningbo and Shanghai. Nick likes talking, perhaps no less talkative than TG. He has some interesting observations – the booming second-tier cities, overwhelmingly populated towns between major cities in the Yangtze River Delta, etc. He also realized that his previous impression about China could be all biased by the Western media.

Afterwards, Ziad asked "So what're the things Nick was right about China and what're wrong?" I found it a hard question, as I find most of questions from Ziad. "Well, I didn't think anything from Nick's account was particularly wrong, but perhaps he could have seen another side of China if he had gone to places like Beijing, Xi'an, Yunnan, or Tibet, where he could have had more cultural glimpse." I gave a diplomatic and perhaps meaningless answer.

China is such a mass place that it's hard to say "now I know about China" after a week-long travel to some major cities. Perhaps that's why I often found foreigners' questions about China hard to answer. Not that I know less than the questioners. But I feel that almost everything in China is multi-facet and anything I could come up with (often off the top of my head) could be single-sided or only touching the peripheral. Of course, on some topics like politics, Mao, etc, I tend to have some determined answers, but not without the awareness that I could sound very much blindly opinionated or brained-washed by the Communist regime.

I don't like people with very limited knowledge of China commenting on China as if they are experts. But at the same time, I realized that my opinion-less-ness about China or everything else is not good either. So that evening, I decided to take Ziad and TG to a Chinese restaurant near the hotel – I may not say much about China but at least I can let people experience "China" by themselves.

Oh, we had a big feast there – I ordered way too much and would have to eat the left-over for the rest of my days in Nairobi!