i watched one shenyun show , a gift from american friends (couldn't reject it cause they didn't know much about china or chinese culture, they thought it would be fun for us), but i didn't regret it. if ignoring its political content, it had lots of artistic elements, plenty of standing ovations from spectators.

i was surprised at so many young performers, many good looking, the two hosts especially with perfect english. i thought they all must be from flg families, no way youngs with free will would do this stuff in mass.

nytimes, mainly thanks to n hong, suoorted my suspicion, indeed most of them were from flg families. another evidence of how crucial family background factors in one's life, even in a free world.

hopefully these reports would exposed more scandals from flg and help those young people leaving flg, but i guess it won't be easy, for many that might mean total breakup from their parents.

another insight, how many recent news about anti-ccp overseas chinese got into legal trouble or controversy, biggest of course was miles guo wengui.

if one follows fang's posts, how many positive things or people he had mentioned on china or chinese? the only 1 i counted was peng, the sitong brdige protester. but i have a strong stereotype that if he got chance to reside in america, fang might not like him anymore, peng could be a strong trump supporter or exhibited so many similarities with other anti-ccp overseas chinese.

maybe fang delibarately focused on negative sides of china or chinese, i remember once he said on something possibly positive about china "your small pink 50 cents already said so much, i don't need to get into it", sth like that.

anyway the point i tried to make is i basically agree with fang's assessment about china and chinese , there are lots of negative stuff there, luxun's words still vivdly fit into china 100 years later.

but unlike most who got angry or despair about china, i am mostly optimistic, despite so many problems, despite xi still there and quite healthy, china's achievement is remarkably huge, just compare to india. so many problems with anti ccp factions tell us once again china's problem is much more complex than the narative "just blame ccp on everthing and remove it everything will be ok".

china needs time and patience, hope is with young, as long as there's no war or big violence, we should wait for xi's demise and peaceful transition