Ep 41: China Beyond Ideology w/ Stephen

So yeah, I guess you already did an introduction of yourself.

But why don't we get a little bit more into like your, I guess, how you understood your culture.

And I don't want to sound like a lib, but like your identity and your political development and all that.

You

know, it's...

You know, part of it is I really do have to thank my parents, my father especially.

Because...

Did you go to Chinese language school, like Chinese Sunday school when you were a kid? I tried to

for a bit, but it didn't really work.

Because you have like...

Kids from different families, some of them are like, you know, two American parents who want their kids to learn a second language.

Others, they're like, they speak Cantonese at home and their parents want them to speak, like, to learn Mandarin.

And you got some, like, they speak Mandarin at home, but the parents want them to, like, have a better grasp of the language and learn to read and write.

So very different approaches to teaching all of them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It doesn't work when they're all in the same classroom.

That's true.

Didn't really get anywhere.

I thought it was a waste of time.

How long did you go for? It was, like, on and off.

I, like, tried to go for, like, a year or two.

And then, like, honestly, like, I learned more about Pokemon there than I learned Chinese.

Because, like, it wasn't going far.

So you're Chinese mostly self-taught?

I speak it at home.