While Driving I listened to NPR stories today

There were two news stories I heard today on NPR that I found interesting. The first one was regarding Ex-patriots who live in China.

What I found fascinating was how most people in China perceive themselves. 1st of all remember 1/3 of the people in China live on less than $1 a day. But, since there are 1.4 billion people in China they still have a middle Class there comparable to ours here in the U.S. at around 300 plus million people.

However, the average person in China does not see the country as a strong country on the cutting edge. In fact quite the opposite is true of the average person.

Also, something happened in the late 1990s when the U.S. accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia accidentally during the Balkan war. China used that as a propaganda issue to turn Chinese people against the U.S. and it is still this way. It is now generally believed that we bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia on purpose and so you can imagine the propaganda the Chinese government got out of twisting the minds of their people against the U.S. in this way.

The other thing said was that the Government sort of makes rules up as it goes along. So, if they want ANYONE dead or incarcerated in China it happens and often you cannot get a lawyer, you are just in jail for life or dead (one or the other).

Also, it is pretty normal for the milk to poison hundreds of people from some chemical that found it's way into the milk either through bad feed or bad water or just the animals being exposed to bad air or bad grass or bad ground or whatever.

So, you might wonder why people from the U.S., Europe and Around the world would choose to live in China?

They give many reasons mostly that China interests them for one reason or another.

I kind of understand this after spending December 1985 to April 1986 in Thailand, India, Nepal and Japan. These places are amazingly fascinating if you aren't presently undergoing culture shock so bad you can't get out of bed that day! So, on a good day these kinds of places are really amazing and you meet yourself coming and going because of all the amazing experiences you have which you wouldn't have anywhere else on earth.

But then, you can never go home again!

This is sort of a true statement because once you spend enough time in other places than the U.S. your experience of the U.S. has completely changed.

Like, for example, my experience returning to the U.S. was of a very cold people who hide in their cars and apartments, who don't walk around like people do in other countries and talk to each other.

So, coming home was the worst culture shock for me of all. So, travel the world but be careful when you return to the U.S.  because it can be awful.

The 2nd story was about Delta Company in Viet Nam. Most of them died in one incident where their entire company was overrun by Viet Cong. So, unless they pretended to be dead (those that weren't already dead) they didn't survive at all. Then when the survivors were shipped home to the U.S. they lost track of each other. But now, years later some of them have found each other and they have reunions.

The man who wrote about all this had been in the Iraq War and also was a volunteer at Ground zero recovering dead bodies there. He had been very wounded internally by this experience in a way he hadn't expected as a young man and sought answers from these Delta Company survivors to try to make sense of what had happened to him over 13 years ago now.

The Delta company survivors speak of having to let Viet Cong sit on their legs or chests who thought they were dead and one of them flinching from pain and having to stab one or more of the Viet Cong before they were killed by them. So, this is some really crazy stuff these guys survived from about 1968 in the Viet Nam War.

And then, even worse to come home to no war buddies because you don't know where they all are and facing PTSD and worse from it all. Like one of them said, "What had already been done to them was worse than anything they could imagine already." So, life in the U.S.  was strange but not as bad as what they had already been through in Viet Nam.

Or the Viet Cong shooting at them to make sure they were dead and having to be quiet while bullets entered parts of their bodies so they weren't shot some more. What a nightmare! And even then  some survived.