Thanks, but I don't think I would want to have something which is so intimate to the two of you. We call it love and luck perhaps for lack of better names of what we do not really understand. Anyway, glad to hear she does not share your disgust for Americans and you are enjoying yourself. Cheers!
Where did you get the idea that I think the West is in most everything supreme, and the Chinese were right in disregarding 4000 years of culture? I believe China's modern history is good for its stance against the West. And the Chinese haven't disregarded their culture, they have adapted to circumstances - it is nothing new, cultures have been mixing for longer than I can remember.
Generally, culture gave them a strong identity, but culture has many aspects. One aspect is political culture. Loyalty flowed from children and wives to the father, and from the father upward within the clan structure, and from the clan to the emperor as long as he held the mandate of heaven. But the concept of the citizen did not exist in China. In western political theory citizens owe obligations to each other which are not familial, but are based on the existence of a class, national polity or a social contract. The absence of an obligation to non-clan members had an exception. If a non-clan member acquired the status of Lao Peng he was forever thereafter considered to be an "Old Friend." One is obligated to an Old Friend just as much as to a Little Brother or Older Sister.
