Merry Christmas! What ever you believe the true meaning of Christmas to be, you can be pretty sure that Chongqing is yet to discover it. Above is the Christmas Eve celebration in downtown Chongqing. Hoards of people toting plastic clubs descend into the various city centers and thump each other until the early morning. It is utter madness, and nobody knows where the tradition started. It is unique to Chongqing.

I almost guiltily want to admit that I had a wonderful Christmas. Would I have rather been at home in the US? Yes. But I had a great amount of fun (before and after the riot police took my bang bang stick) and I must have the best students of any teacher anywhere. My students just poured affection on me over the last few days, and in the end I didn't feel any loneliness this holiday. I am very lucky.

Nobody every promised I was living in the most tolerant society. Last night I presented information on a group called AIESEC to Chongqing college students. The presentation was taken from Northwestern's branch of AIESEC, a group that helps students go abroad. One of the opportunities for NU was to teach English, I was presenting in English, and brilliantly made the following comment, "Well, maybe you couldn't teach English..." I thought about it for a moment, giggled to myself, and then amended, "Well, you could probably teach written English."

It was too late. I was the main subject on the comment forms.

"That crazy man from Northwestern has insulted the entire Chinese people! His sins cannot be forgiven!"

"Get that crazy person from Northwestern out of here!"

And so on, and so on.

On one hand, I know I simply need a thicker skin. People unfortunately bad mouth their teachers all the time. But on the other, the whole situation seemed very unfair to me. I immediately caught myself and corrected myself. During my presentation and after I never even considered that I had offended people. And here were people that were furious, which on a certain level can be understood. They've been learning English for a long time. But good lord, are they crazy?

Really, it just embodies the biggest problem (in my opinion) in Chinese society: they have a nation wide inferiority complex. Which causes little comments to be inflamed and responses to border on the ridiculous. My sins cannot be forgiven? Really?

Mostly I need to remember that non native speakers cannot detect any meaning except the literal spoken one.