My wife and I were visiting her family, at their village in southern China, when I would slip away for walks. I’d find women cleaning laundry in the river, merchants preparing chickens for sale and farmers tending to their fields of rice and peanuts. One day I came across a soccer game: men in their twenties; a somewhat organized game with lots of shouting; and on a field with more gravel than grass surrounded by scooters rather than spectators. At one point a young man approached me and said: ‘ Why you here ?’ I often consider this question to be profound but, in this case, it was quite practical as I was the only spectator and likely the only ‘white dude’ for a hundred miles. I replied in mandarin who my wife was and he stared back and shrugged before returning to his game. Years later I was appointed to lead a public agency and the employees were gathered on short notice to meet me. I said a few words about myself, how I l...
A discussion on political, economic and social issues in British Columbia, and Canada