Feb 02 2008
Business School Politics
Recently, something happened in business school that made my head spinning…
As the Chinese New Year draws near, students in B School planned to organize a China-themed Friday party. One student from Taiwan was quite insistent about displaying ROC’s flag. That motion caused quite a disturbance among students from Mainland. As part of that gang, I witnessed outbursts of pretty strong feelings.
I thought about preaching my brand of tolerance but thought the better of it. What made me wonder (not the in-disbelief kind, but the courious one) is, even people from Mainland having been living closely with those from Taiwan, this experience did not really change their attitude much, if at all. I mean we studied, worked, lunched, teamed, and partied together. If anything, I believe most of us feel the two sides are closer–however involuntary–than each with the non-Chinese crowd. Yet that is still not enough to cause some of them to rethink how ridiculous it is to go back to a relationship that we didn’t initiate nor appreciate. In other words, the hatred and distrust between the two side was started by our grandparents. They may have geniune reasons to do so, but we can never truly appreciate this geniuneness since we never lived through that period.
(A related point is that how Chinese government handles Taiwan’s status is rather short-sighted. I always wanted to write an essay that is titled “Defeating a State, Losing a Nation”)
It is just another example of impossibility of “truth”. If one is blind to her own experience but rather fall for something others planted in her mind and internalize it, what does that experience matter? Ironically, someone organized a panel and having a group of students who spent three month in China, in an exchange program tailored for foreigners, to discuss the future of the country. I thought she put way too much weight on that three-month.
Of course, there are always exceptions. Like John Walker Lindh, whose short stint with another culture suddenly made him a complete convert. But that is why there are mental institutions. For most of us, we are likely to carry our little world around us–wherever we go.
Watched “There Will Be Blood” tonight. After the movie was over, Song and I stayed in our seats, didn’t know what to make of it. Finally, I said, “Boy, I never saw so much anger in one movie.” 
I remembered once I went with a church group to hike Mt. Adams. On our way back, the leader, Paster Bob, decided to go spelunking in a cave nearby. When we got to the cave entrance, I knew it was a mistake: it wasn’t so much an entrance as a rat hole on the ground. Following a thread-thin ray of daylight, I could see the hole expanding into profound darkness. We squeezed, crawled, climbed and pulled each other along half a mile. Turning on flashlight didn’t help much, since all I could see was the light beam being sucked into endless darkness.