First Attempt

I am young and naive. I profess to truly know very little. I have my convictions; yet, even of those I am unsure.

I am most unsure of what I will experience over the next four months. Kunming, a city located in Southwest China, has a population of 6.6 million people.

Depending on what one accounts for, Richmond City has a residence population of approximately 200,000. If one were to extend the boundaries beyond that of the city, to what is collectively known as Richmond, one could quote a population of 1,194,008. The Commonwealth of Virginia has a population of 7.8 million people.

Any assumptions one might have seem to drift away with such a comparison.

I don't know how I feel about China. I am not sure such a question could even be answered. One could call upon the atrocities, committed only recently by the Chinese government, to form an opinion. One could call upon the oppressive Chinese constitution, one which denies the practice of superstition. Superstition, here, defined simply by the state. If one so desired they could consider the rampant poverty existant within several of China's provinces.

Yet one might consider a population of 1.4 billion people. A nation struggling to exist as a nation. One could consider them all heathens, needing Christianization, mission, and God. One might struggle himself with the impoverished minority cultures, knowing modernization ultimately means erradication. The fear of modernization seems still, despite my teachers confidence of the contrary, to represent loss.

One might consider its beauty, something to which I have yet to be accustomed. We see existant within our media a sad story of oppression and death, for it is exactly this which sells. We are quick to point out the indecency of a government which enforces a national dress code prior to the dawn of its first stance on the national stage as a civilization, as a people, a unified country. I will never know how I feel about china. Yet, I do know we need to stop denying their existance.

My friend recently cautioned me to watch out for what I ate, "They put cardboard in their food."

They cheat. They steal. They are unclean, filthy.

I don't know how I feel about China. I profess to know truly little. I invite you to do the same, to learn how to be ignorant, and to acknowledge it.

When you ask me, "Why China?" I will not know how to answer.