菜包子曰

I’ve with worked a number of professors and witnessed more during my short career as a graduate student. I have come gradually to form a set of ideals about the criteria of what a good professor should be like. Of course, just like what a good artist should be like, this is an open question, and different people will have different answers to it. Nonetheless, everybody needs to start from somewhere. In the following, I will use the 3rd-person pronoun “he/his” for brevity, but these set of criteria by no means are restricted to male professors.

1) A good professor should be extremely knowledgeable. He should have achieved an extraordinary accumulation of the knowledge in his area of specialization and a sound background knowledge of the related areas. With this knowledge, he should be able to respond to most background-related consultations from students and colleagues with satisfying answers. This thick base of knowledge should also facilitate his writing of Introduction and Discussion parts of academic papers and grant applications. A large chunk of this knowledge are the memory of past papers. This chunk of knowledge should be not only a long list of names and dates, but more importantly a systematic web of thorough understanding and critical evaluations of them. This type of eruditeness is difficult to achieve. Only those driven by a combination of keen interest and dedication will manage to keep accumulating the knowledge through continuous reading of books and papers throughout his student and post-doc years, and all the way into the professional career. With this knowledge, he should be able to establish an absolute authority knowledge-wise in his lab or group. This authority is not meant to be deterring to the lab members, but rather be a source of psychological assurance (especially when help is needed) and a role model.

2) A good professor should be hard-working. In today’s competitive academic environment, only hardworking people have a chance of survival. A good professor should not sit back and count on his students/post-docs to work hard to churn out works for the lab, because this won’t work. A professor should establish a role model of discipline in the lab. This doesn’t mean that he should do all the bench/field work or programming/data analysis. But at least he should be willing to be actively engaged in these activities with his students/colleagues whenever necessary and do so in an absolutely competent way. Nowadays, most of a professor’s time is spent on things like writing grants and administrative tasks. Only by being diligence can he quickly finish these necessary distractions in order to be able to spend more time on the more academic-related (therefore more central) things such as advising students, absorbing new knowledge and writing papers. To the degree that doesn’t interfere with his normal family life, he should utilize the evenings, nights and weekends to advance his work. Being hard-working alone is not sufficient, the professor should also be able to expose his image of diligence and discipline to the entire lab, such that an atmosphere of hard-working can be established – just as what Chinese call “covert transformation and silent influence （潜移默化）". However, there is an interest borderline here which the professor doesn’t want to cross. He doesn’t want to be perceived as a “workaholic”, because (1) this may result in damaging his colleague’s confidence in his efficiency of working, and (2) this may hurt his social image. This means that he should probably go home by 7 PM on most days, and do the rest of the work at home.

3) A good professor should be a good leader. Being a good academic leader means a few things: (1) the ability to foresee, (2) the ability to encourage, and (3) the ability to decide. Because academic work emphasizes originality, doing research always means devoting a lot of time and energy to an objective that doesn’t necessarily ensure success. This requires a good professor to be almost an prophet, an magical augur who is able to foretell whether a line of research will succeed or not. This ability is probably the most tricky aspect of an academic career, and it only comes with an massive amount of experience (both through personal successes and failures and observing others). Students and post-docs in the lab normally won’t have this kind of ability, therefore the professor should shoulder the responsibility of being the prophet.

However, even an excellent prophet won’t be right 100% on the time. Academic research is constantly filled with frustration and obstacles; the truly exciting moments are the exceptions. Therefore, encouragement is greatly required, especially by the newbie. A good professor should be able to deliver these encouragements in a timely manner. This not only involves cheer-ups when an experiment runs flat, but also words of praise/appreciation when things go really well (positive reinforcement). However, praises should not go unrestricted, because that would curtail the weight of his praises. A good professor should master the art of balancing the withholding and giving of praises. Praises and criticism are two sides of a coin. Criticism is necessary at certain moments. However, I have not had enough chance to observe what effective criticism should be like. This will probably depend on the personality of the receiver of the criticism.

Academic work is filled with constant decision making – what experiment paradigm one should use, how should one interpret a mixed result, how should one present the data in an honest yet electrifying way, and how to deal with reviewers, just to name a few. It is far too easy to be bogged down by dilemmas in such kind of decision making, which are often made more difficult by the unknowns intrinsically involved in academic research. A good professor should be a decisive person, who is able to help his students and colleagues resolve those dilemmas. Being decisive doesn’t equal hastiness. He should make have adequate rationale for every decision made, and teach the ability of decision making to his students.

4) A good professor should be student oriented. When ones career goes well, it is far too easy to be absorbed in enjoying the aura of honor. However, one should keep in mind that one’s life is limited whereas the advancement of knowledge knows no end. Therefore a good professor should highly value his students and treat them almost like his own children (in a special sense). He should have the realization that how well his students do academically is the most telling measure of how good an academic he is himself. Indeed, being able to bring up students that will themselves be productive researchers is probably the most demanding and challenging aspect of the job of a professor. It puts high demand on almost every aspect of his scholarship, including the value and sustainability of his research topic, the soundness of his knowledge, his communication skill, his ability of being a role-model and his academic integrity. He should not be stingy with his time. Weekly (or more often) meeting with the students should be mandatory. This both puts some pressure on the students to work hard and give them a feeling that what they do really matter. What kind of personal relationship a professor keeps with his students is a matter of personal taste. Some prefer to maintain a healthy distance with the students; other are good at mixing well with the students. But the commonly important thing is that the personal relationships should establish a trustworthy image of the professor himself.

1. Dr. Young

Eric's style of advising grad students is unique. The relationship between students and him can be described as both close and detached. He maintains a certain distance with the students by being relatively serious all the time, especially during work time. But he is not too serious to the degree of being boring. In fact, he always has a sense of measured sense of humor. Despite this constantly maintained detachment, he always acts like a role model to all the students around him. He gets to his lab early and leaves late every day. He even works on in his office on Saturdays. When he is in the lab, he always keeps the door open and sit to his desk with his back to the door. When he is alone in his office, he is always seen working in a focused and attentive way, which creates an atmosphere of hardworking in the lab. However attentive he seems to work at his desk, he is always ready to turn around and talk to you when you comes to his office. You don't have to make any appointment with him unless your discussion with him will be a long one. He is an excellent person to consult when you have literature or research related problems. He seems to have a record of all the published works in the field of auditory neurophysiology in his mind. When you leaves his office, you feel not only satisfied, but also awed.

Eric is not a pushy supervisor. But he won't allow his postdocs and students to be idlers. Periodic, individual meetings held with postdocs and students is a gentle yet powerful spur of their works. Eric is not the kind of advisor who only "thinks" and leaves field and bench work to postdocs and students. He often do work (surgery, experiments) with students and postdocs. He is happy to work like colleagues even with master's students. I once met him on a Saturday when he was fixing some broken equipment in the recording chamber. He is the final line of defense against bizarre equipment and surgical problems in the lab, and this line is seldomly broken. Even at the age of 65+, Eric is still and avid learner and curious explorer. He likes to introduce new ways of thinking and new methods of experimentation into his lab, with his students or alone.

Devotion, expertise, erudition, experience, reliability - these are the words which I can think of to describe Dr. Young. When I was reading the acknowledgment section a former grad student's thesis, I was kind of skeptical of her compliment of Eric, which at that time seemed exaggerated and even flattery to me. In retrospect, what she wrote was the truth.

2. Dr. May's humor

Dr. May is the person who teaches me what real sense of humor is. Witty comments and impish sarcasms about news is uttered in a semi-serious way. This kind of personality establishes an easy and energetic atmosphere around him. Everyone enjoys being in his company. Despite being a soft-spoken person, his words are often cogent and sometimes deep.

3. Diana

In retrospect, Diana devoted a lot of time and energy to Ben and me, the two master's students in the lab at that timt. Without Diana, neither of us would be so well off. If working with Eric taught me how to be a good professor, working with Diana taught me what a good postdoc should be like. Diana is not as knowledgeable and as smart as Eric, but she works wholeheartedly on her project and on mentoring students in the lab. At that time, I was a slow learner in animal surgery. Diana spent hours and hours with me helping me acquire this skill gradually. But she knew when to withdraw her help hand to push me and Ben to become more independent. The more I looked back, the more I became aware how excellent an teacher and colleague she was. In a way similar to Dr. May, Diana also has a pleasant personality. She does the bulk of talking during th lab's daily lunch meetings. She is the person in charge of writing birthday cards to memers the lab. She also takes the lead in bringing homemade desserts to the lab to share with others. Without her, the lab wouldn't have been such a family-like and happy environment.

4. Neural Encoding Lab's daily lunch meeting

In my experience, Dr. Young's lab (Neural Encoding Lab) is the only lab in which the PIs (Dr. Young and Dr. May) have lunch together with postdocs and students every day. Almost every noon, all people walk from the Traylor Research Building to the East Market, buy food there, and then walk back to the conference room in the building to luncheon together. This is an informal yet precious opportuninty for postdocs and students to develop personal relationships with the professors and with each other, which will eventually benefit the mutual trust and social well-being of every member of the lab. Of course, you can also discuss academic problems with the professors or anyone else along the way, which provides an additional opportuninty of brainstorming, idea sharing and questoin solving, in addition to the formal meetings.

5. The Traylor Research Building

Traylor Research Building is definitely an exciting place. During the years their, I come to realize how great the works being done by people like Dr. Xiaoqin Wang and Dr. Reza Shadmehr are. These are only examples. On every floor, their are cutting edge research going on. The housekeeping staff of the Traylor Building is also great to have around. Everyday, those African American ladies happily say hello and how are you to every lab they cleans. The one I remember the best is Teresa, who developed a relationship with everyone in our lab, which she is in primary charge of houeskeeping. When she leaves for her yearly vacation, people in the lab feel that something was missing.

6. The Hopkins Shuttle

The JHU shuttle connects the main campus (Homewood), the conservatory and the medical campus of the university, which are about 10 miles apart in the city of Baltimore. Every day, these shuttles run punctually from about 6 AM to 11:30 PM. The drivers are also mostly African American, who are reliable and professional drivers. When people gets off the bus in line, everybody says thank you to the driver. The driver says "you are welcome" to everyone in return. They probably do this 10 times a day, 5 days a week. But they never seemed to be tired of this. They enjoy their work, and enjoy seeing others appreciate their work. This kind of mutual trust and love between people is priceless. The scenery along the shuttle's path cannot be described as charming. But over the two years, I developed a unique emotional attachment to it. In other words, I like it. The gothic Church at the Homewood terminal, the small business and the Baltimore-style row houses on the North Charles Street, the Washington monument on Mount Vernon, will all stay in my long-term memory.

Today I interviewed an applicant to our PhD program. It was the first time I have ever been an interviewer, rather than an interviewee (apart from being on the audition committee at the wind ensemble of Tsinghua University). The experience was rather interesting. The interviewee is an undergraduate student from JHU, who had a co-authored paper published as early as his junior year. He also had a conference poster and a book chapter. So it was relatively easy finding questions to ask. The following are what I learned from this process.
1) The interview is your job to figure out as much as possible about the applicant in a given period of time. You must always be in control, not the applicant. So when the applicant goes into great details talking about the things he likes to talk about (e.g., his research project), you want to find a way to politely stop him and channel the conversation into more informative topics. Otherwise time will be wasted.
2) Try to push the applicant to his limit. When he handles all the prior questions well, ask him more difficult ones, until he fails to generate a satisfactory answer. Only in that way you'll be able to fathom his depth and breadth of knowledge.
3) Try from time to time to encourage the applicant. Make positive comments about his achievements listed on the CV. When he makes mistakes in answering your questions, try to ease the atmosphere. After all, the purpose of the interview is not to stress the applicant. In a relaxed environment, the applicant will gain more confidence, and you'll more likely see a true person.
4) Ask more "why" questions. For example, why he chose a specific area of research. The answers to those questions can often tell you more about this person that what he did.
5) Relate to the applicant by telling your own stories from time to time. It's quite tiring and frustrating for the applicant to talk all the way through the 45 minutes. Make it easier for him.
6) Prepare a list of questions beforehand if possible. That way you'll prevent embarrasing silences (although that's not very likely). However, interviewing is a dynamic process. Don't stick to the plan. Steer the direction accoding to what you hear and what you see.
7) Finally, when it comes to report writing, write a balanced report that speaks of both the strenghts and the weakness of the applicant.
Of course, I didn't do all the above perfectly. I made some mistakes, such as not having asked enough "why" questions. But with this experience, I'm confident that I'll be a better interviewer next time.

I experience a kind of debate when I write about China on this blog.  Writing in English partially or completely deprives myself of getting message to my Chinese friends and relatives. And my expressiveness in English is not good as in Chinese, my mother tongue. However, to write in English, it is easier to bypass the Great Fire Wall and touch on certain relatively sensitive issues. I also know of some American friends who occasionally read this blog. So I have to apologize to those of my readers who wants to read Chinese. Maybe I'll translate some of the articles with good responses into Chinese in the future.

This late spring (late May to early June) I was in China visiting my parents. This is the first time I went back to China after three years since I came to the U.S. to study. Before I went back, I was as much excited about meeting my parents after a long absence as about seeing how China and Shanghai, my hometown, have or have not changed in the three years, from a renewed standpoint, influenced by Western values and views.

The first thing I experienced could be summarized in a word, "change". The place across the street from our neighborhood was a bare ground surrounded by construction fences three years ago, but now it's a simmering shopping center. This large building complex contains countless firms ranging from supermarkets to electrical appliance retailers, from restaurants to hair salons, and from book stores to florists. It even had a gym. I felt that it was on the same scale as the Prudential center in Boston. But remember that the city of Boston has only one Prudential tower as its major tourist attraction, but this shopping mall near our neighborhood was located at a very off-center spot of Shanghai, which was just beginning to be developed in the recent decade. Near the outer beltway of Shanghai, there are many such kind of shopping centers, built from sketch in a matter of a couple of years, to meet the demand of a sprawling mega city.

Another aspect of change I observed was how ephemeral the small local businesses on the same block as my neighborhood has changed. There are about two dozen small shop spaces near the entrance to our neighborhood. These are small restaurants, food shops, construction material retailers, copy and print stations, media retailers and hair salons. Only about half of the ones I saw this spring were there three years ago. In other words, half of them had somehow gone of of business and closed down. In other parts near our neighborhood, I observed similar things. This can be a little bit frustrating to a person who hasn't been home for a while, like me. For example, my parents and I used to buy ice creams and popsicles from a small shop near our home three years ago. But now that shop was no where to be found. I used to like to by some pirated DVDs from a small media shop, that shop was gone too (maybe this is a good thing?). The same kind of thing doesn't happen often in the U.S. It can be easily seen how active small businesses are in China, and in the meantime, how ephemeral many of them tend to be. Maybe this characterizes the economic sector of today's China, full of opportunities and risk. It is very easy to open a small business, and equally easy to lose it.

It is hard to appreciate how much Chinese people like food without going abroad for a while. The Chinese saying that "food is heaven to the commoners" definitely is right on. Among the small businesses I mentioned, many of them are restaurants.We went to about six different restaurants, five of which were newly opened. These included several Chinese restaurants, an pizzahut-like Italian restaurant, and a Japanese barbecue restaurant. The good restaurants were always full of customers, day or night. When people meet with friends, they go to restaurants. When one do business, it is unavoidable to go to restaurants. When people marry, they hold extravagent banquets at resturants. When someone wants something from a government official, he treats him an expensive dinner at a restaurant. It is as if restaurants are homes to Chinese peoples, and they just occasionally go back to their apartments to take a break from eating. This is defintely a feature of the Chinese culture. It is hard to miss on comparison with western culture.

Sometimes I think Chinese are overly obsessed with food. The fondness of food actually is a hotbed for corruption. I heard a lot stories of government officials drank to death. Those are really sad stories. Maybe those unfortunate government officials were not really gluttons, but they were forced to eat on countless occasions, very frequently. It would cause misunderstanding if they refuse to eat. What's worse, when they eat, they often have to drink a lot in order to show that they are indeed wholeheartedly into the business, and that they are really serious about the people treating them or being treated by them. It really is in fact a part of their work. Many important business and administrative agreements are reached on the dinner table. This is a reason why there are so many restaurants in China. What makes the situation sadder is that the money they spend on the dinners are from taxpayers' pockets. This is a widely known fact in China. Yet few people questions it - or what use it is to question it, this fondness of food is rooted deep in the culture. I am sad about this - the more blood you have your gastrointestinal system, the less blood you have in your brain.

The traffic in China was a shock to me, who learned how to drive in the U.S. On the first day I went back there, I was almost ran over by a car on a road crossing because that car refuse to yield to me. In fact, drivers in China don't have the habbit of yielding to pedestrians, which is a norm in the U.S. But that's not the most crazy part of driving in China. The most shocking thing is definitely how many cars there are in Shanghai. Countless cars are packed day and night on big and small streets. Traffic jam is quiet often, and it can be seen that the situation is getting even wose. A road near my home used to have little jams three years ago, but now it is congested very often, especially during morning and afternoon rush hours. The average speed of cars in a Chinese city is much lower than those in an American one, simply because one can't drive too fast because there are so many other cars, plus bicycles and pedestrians. Chinese drivers generally like to use the horns a lot. They honk at every one, including pedestrians and bicycles. They change lanes a lot, often for the necessity of getting forward quicker. Many of the lane change manuvers would be seen as dangerous in the U.S. Drivers cut in at a very short distance from the car behind, and the car behind often has to hit the brake very hard in order to avoid collision. But drivers don't complain of this kind of behavior, because they are used to it. I was thinking, what's responsible for the kind of reckless driving behaviors in Chinese cities like Shanghai. Is that people tend to be less polite in general? Or is it that when a city has so many cars on the street, sharing roads with even more bicycles and pedestrians, drivers have to behave that way? I can give no answer to this question.

Two very important things on people's mind while I was in China were the Olympic Games and the Sichuan earthquake. Olympic decorations were everywhere, from lamp posts on Nanjing Road to bus-stop advertisements boards. Even foreign firms like McDonald's like to include the Beijing 2008 symbols in there new products and marketing strategies. TV news broadcast news about the counting down to the Olympics and the torch relay in China every hour. In those torch relays, you can see people bowing down their heads in silence to mourn the victims of the disastrous earthquake, after which they donate their money. People in general are for the Olympics. They regard this as a chance to show the world the economic achievements China has made so far and win some respect from the world. When someone spokes out against the Olympics and China, they get widespread mass snubbing and attacks. Sharon Stone was the latest in the bouffant spotlight. With regard to earthquake relieve, people seem to impose an obligation on companies to donate money. This is especially true for foreign companies doing business in China. People talk about how much money a foreign company has donated and compare among them. If a foreign company donates less money than other companies of the same scale does, people will spread the word and call for massive boycott of its goods. I think this is not a correct thing to do. Philanthropy should be based on voluntariness, not on social pressure. But what's really scary is that Chinese people as a whole, seemed to have developed a habit of forming massive movements in unison recently. These include denouncing western media's allegedly biased covrage of Tibet, denouncing the Tibetan freedom and independence movements, pointing fingers and demanding apologies from Jack Cafferty and Sharon Stone, and imposing social pressure on foreign companies to donate a lot of money. Seeing these things, I felt easier to understand why Cultural Revolution occured. Indeed toda there are more people thinking independently and against such massive movements. They express their views on their blogs. However, such people are still hopelessly outnumbered by bandwagon jumpers, and they are often labeled "Han Jian" by the mass.

I went to Beijing to visit my future parents in law. We had a very good time there. We went to visit the Bird's Nest, the main stadium for the Games, and the Water Cube, where most swimming and diving events of the Games will occur. Those buildings were indeed very unique in their architectural appeals. One can't help being impressed by them. Many visitors were taking photos near the two buildings. Unfortunately those buildings were not open to public visit, perhaps for the fear of various kinds of sabotages. We also went to visit the newly completely National Theater near the Tiananmen squares. Viewed from outside, the building is shaped like a gigantic floating on a lake. It was very interesting to observe the main entrance, which was under the water. The interior of the building was also very impressive. It housed at least two concert halls and an opera house. My mom and mother-in-law liked the building very much. But my mother-in-law also mentioned the many critiques of this building, that its architectural style is completely inharmonious with the buildings surrounding it, and that it took such a huge sum of money to build. She said, the second critique was especially nagging in such a country still poor.

Beijing's air quality seemed to be okay during the two days I was there. Maybe the government's partial car banning has taken some effect. In comparison, I had to admit that Shanghai's air quality was miserable. I think it was worse than I used to be three years ago. I could always see a grayish smog when I stare to the far. There was not a single blue-sky day during the three weeks I was there. Sometimes I regard it as a wonder that people can breath such air without getting sick. They reason behind the bad air quality, as many say, is that there are too much automobiles in the city. I tend to agree with this opinion. Chimneys were rare in the city. In fact, most of the factories had been moved faraway from the city. But when you are on the road, you can see a lot of cars and trucks ejecting blackish waste gas from their rear ends. I feel that the emission standard is not as strictly enforced as in the U.S. If it had been, the air quality might have been better. But I won't bet on this, simply because there are so many cars in the city. Big American cities as Los Angeles also have smog problems. Shanghai is already imposing strict license control on new cars. License are auctioned , and often cost even more than the car itself. This is perhaps what the city government has to do. Many Shanghai residents can afford cars these days. But with only a small fraction of the people having cars, the city is already a mess. It's hard to imagine what will happen if all that can afford cars drive cars on the street. They whole city may come to a lock down.

Media in China was quite boring. Newspapers like to report negative news about the U.S. and the west in general. For example you can find news about New Yorkers turning to restaurant left-overs for dinner because the economy is getting into a recession in the International News Section. Mention of Tibet and other sensitive issues is very rare. When there is coverage, it tends to be single-sidely positive. For example, you can find news of some Tibetan students taking colleage entrance exams in Shanghai in the front page of a newspaper. The Internet was still censored. A lot of websites were completely blocked. These include most news outlets in Taiwan, the Chinese version of wikipedia, and many blog space providers like WordPress, etc. But English wikipeida, which used to be blocked, is now open. So are many foreign news websites such as BBC, the Economist and CNN. In general, I found that the Great Fire Wall had been cut down a little bit, perhaps for the purpose of holding the Olympics. However, we don't know what will happen after the Olympics. As long as the Great Fire Wall is still there, it shows that the Chinese government is still not confident enough to face the engage the world, which will inevitably and justifiably offer you criticisms.

In sum, Shanghai, and China in general are changing quickly. The red hot economy can be felt on an everyday basis. People are in general optimistic about the future and very enthusiastic about the coming Olympic Games. However, there are many serious problems facng the Chinese society, including environmental pollution, corruption, media censorship and a general lack of independent thinkers, just to name a few. In my view, if these problems don't get solved, China will not hold the potential to become the next superpower. China is now singlemindedly headed toward economic development. Will economic development alone lead to solutions to those problems? We have to wait and see.

Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race. - Albert Einstein

I chose to write this article in English in order to shun the Golden Shield.

I rarely touch on politics in my blog. I used to pay very little attention to politics while I was in China. However, the recent unrest in the Tibetan Autonomous Region has received such huge amount of media coverage inside and outside China, that it's simply impossible to ignore. This incident occurred a few months ahead of the Olympic Games in Beijing - not by coincidence. Like many of my fellow Chinese students, my first psychological reaction to this incident is a sense of indignity. I cannot help feeling a little bit frustrated or even angered when seeing the Olympic Games "hijacked" by the activists to achieve their political ends. To many overseas Chinese, the riot in Tibet was instigated by the Dalai Lama, and the Western media is taking advantage of the Olympic spotlight to demonize China. In the eyes of those Chinese people, all these fall into a huge orchestrated conspiracy - a conspiracy secretly planned out by some people in the West to fuel separatism in China and to tarnish its international image, with the ultimate goal of undermining the growth of the country.

This conspiracy theory is based on the assumption that some Western people are deeply fearful and/or jealous of the economic and political rise of China and are obnoxious enough to use every chance to put obstacles on the way of China toward a better future. This theory has been the prevalent theme of nationalist rants on many Chinese web forums, such as the "ChinaNews" board of MITBBS. It has also been the undertone of official statements from the Chinese Foreign Ministry regarding the Tibetan incidence. In the eye's of advocates of this theory, Spielberg's resign and Prince Charles's snubbing are both parts of this secret campaign against China. To those conspiracy theorists, the organizations with strong anti-China overtones, such as Students for a Free Tibet, Save Darfur, Reporters without Borders, and  Human Rights Watch, and the Tibetan government in exile, are all "running dogs" of those hostile Western conspirators and somehow funded or supported by them.

Fueled by this theory, many overseas Chinese feel very strong indignation toward the seemingly biased media coverage of the Tibetan unrest. This time, they have taken actions. A website has been created to expose and criticize the "biased" reports of Western media. Some Chinese students in Germany have taken out to the street and protested against the Western media. Some Chinese youtube users have published video clips (Example 1, Example 2) aimed at countering the accusation of China's tramping on human rights in Tibet.

I have to admit that this conspiracy theory is very appealing to the ears of many who are educated in mainland China. Even I myself was an advocate of this theory for a long time. It is debatable whether the conspiracy theory is true. It is probably true that there are some Westerners who do not wish to see a prosperous China, at least not a prosperous non-democratic China. One representative example is Peter Navarro, the author of The Coming China Wars. However, what I want to express in this article is that, whether or not the conspiracy theory is true, it is sad that many overseas Chinese are blinded by the stubborn belief in this theory to a degree that they are unwilling or unable to think rationally about the true causes of the recent Tibetan unrest and other media attacks on China and the Olympics.

I don't want to dip into the Tibetan history in this article. It is far too complicated to even gloss over here. What I want to say here is that, my dear Chinese friends, when you have time, you should read some Tibetan history books not written by or approved by the Chinese government (such as this one). The Chinese government obviously has a natural reason to emphasize the ancient bond between Han and Tibetans, and to ignore the evidence which suggests that connection between the Chinese empire and Tibet has been tenuous from time to time in the history. In this regard, the textbooks we read in high school are biased. I am not supporting Tibetan independence or any separatism within China, but for elite Chinese scholars like us overseas Chinese graduate students, it is almost an intellectual insult to accept one-sided stories and refuse to listen to different voices.

Another factor we shouldn't ignore is the misfortune and agony experience by many Tibetan people during the past fifty-plus years. Many of you must know that most Tibetan temples and monasteries were destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. The Dalai Lama, the supreme religious leader of the Tibetan people, was forced to exile. The Panchen Lama, the second highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, has been kidnapped; the Chinese authority instead established a "fake" Panchen Lama. These are relatively old stories. Recently, the central government has promulgated a policy that all future Dalai and Panchen Lamas need to be approved by it. I am not sure how my fellow Chinese friends feel when learning about these things. But to me, it is sad and laughable. It is sad because the religious freedom of the Tibetan are tramped upon and raped - I can't find better words to describe this. Modern Chinese people are not especially religious people, so perhaps many of us have some difficulties understanding that religious need is a basic human need to many people, just like food and shelter. If we can understand this, we should be able to understand why those Tibetans are burning shops and killing innocent Han Chinese in Lhasa and other parts of Tibet, and why despite the enormous economic improvement in Tibet in recent years, the Tibetans are still unhappy.

Of course, deprivation of religious freedom is not the only reason for the Tibetan anger. There are economic reasons. The economic policy of the central government has in effect benefit mainly the Han Chinese. The formerly peaceful and sacred city of Lhasa has been turned into a Las Vegas by the Han Chinese merchants. The illiteracy rate in Tibet is still very high. On the economic matters, I found this to be a pretty good article. There are also problems with inter-cultural understanding. From my personal observation, I can feel that many Han Chinese tend to view Tibetans as dirty and lazy. Many like to tell the joke that the Tibetan monks never wash their robes, and take shower once a year. Because of this, many Han Chinese view Tibetans with an attitude of condescension. In this regard, they are not too much different from those white supremacists who view black people with condescension. They are indulged in their prejudice against a culture that's vastly different from their own, and won't taken time to even try to explore the unique and beautiful spiritual world of the Tibetan culture. Of course, it is wrong to generalize. I have many Chinese friends who have traveled to Tibet and expressed their deep fascination with the culture.

I deeply believe that only truth and understanding will help to solve the entangled Tibetan problem. But knowing the truth is only the first step. I believe that the government should take affirmative actions to improve the religious freedom of the Tibetan people. It is really ridiculous to ask the monks to denounce their spiritual leader Dalai Lama and to spend most of their time studying "patriotic materials". Economic reform needs to be performed to make sure that more Tibetans are receiving benefits from the material development. Of course, at the current stage, these are perhaps only beautiful dreams. The government is not even accepting the truth. The truth is that the Dalai Lama has given up his separatism stance long ago. His "middle-way" is one that favors the unity of the Chinese nation, he has also publicly expressed his opposition to Taiwan independence. He is also against boycott of the Beijing Olympics. It is hard to confirm whether or not Dalai Lama is consciously or unconsciously acting as an agent of the "conspiracy". But from his consistent words and actions, I believe he is not, and most of the word believe as I do. Nonetheless, the foreign ministry of China has constantly firing hollow accusations on the Dalai Lama (Example 1, Example 2). I don't know how my fellow Chinese friends feel when hearing the cliché statements from the foreign ministry. To me, they often sound preposterous, or even childish. It's a like an ostrich burying his head in the sand. The Dalai Lama may have some demands that are not so acceptable, such as the "Greater Tibet" concept. However, these are negotiable issues, and are not excuses for denying the truth, nor excuses for denying religious rights to the ordinary Tibetan people.

I share the view that the unrest in Tibet should be controlled, by force if absolute necessary. But at the meantime, it is wrong to constantly use the Dalai Lama and "separatism" as scapegoats for all the unfortunate happenings and refuse to accept or even to seek the truth behind the appearance of violence. Unfortunately, this is what the government has been doing.

This time, most overseas Chinese student are standing by the side of the government. This is in stark contrast to what happened 19 years ago, in Beijing. One has to ask, what has changed? First, it is not the Han Chinese that are uprising and suffering this time, it is a minority group. It is human nature to not to feel the pain of others. Second, it happens at a time right before the Olympics, the moment of pride for many Chinese in and out of China, including myself. Third, nationalism is on the rise in China. It is debatable whether the government has been intentionally fueling nationalism. There must be a spontaneous component in the modern Chinese nationalism, owing much to the fast economic, political and military growth of the country. But it is clear that the authoritarian government is glad to see the nationalism rising - it blinds people from seeing the real problems and gives legitimacy to the government.

To cite a common quote, scholars like you and me are the "conscience" of the society. While I am sure some of you may have your own rational stance on this issue, my utmost concern is that when the elite scholars lose the ability to think rationally, there would be no one left to do so for the country.

The prosperity of China is not in conflict with protection of the basic rights and the ethnic minorities. Look at Taiwan. How many of you do not envy of their free and prosperous society? I am sure one day mainland China will be the same, but not until people like you and me are able to abandon the ultra-nationalism and to seek and accept the truth.