Power is nothing without control.

To prevent too much Force turning me into a superman, a gift of which I am not worthy, I took a nice dysentery followed by cold, resulting in one week of rest during which I trained only two or three hours a day. During this time I have spent a bit to talk with the Chinese and about the Chinese.

Let’s say that China is a big country, and as a result I've seen just a bit of it, the province of Hennan, but I found something significant. I'll try to describe it. I am sure you have in mind at least one story or movie where the main character from the past is thrown into the modern era ... Here is China. An entire country, as big as a continent, and with an incredible population, stolen to ‘700 and slammed in 2013!

In rural areas this clash is even more striking because, in contrast to our rural areas who are usually happy to be such, here is racing to be modern (modern = better), but then you find people who sows the wheat in the middle of the road or the basketball court. Small children running around with their pants cut in the middle of the legs ... So if nature calls it is a moment to do it in the middle of the street. Electric motors, adopted massively by the government to reduce pollution, are sided by the custom of peasants to burn the waste in the backyard ... Including plastic waste!

China is also a country that desperately tries to understand that foreign policy has changed from ‘700 ... Today, if you make war to a nation you find the whole world looking at you. And then how do you say to all those Chinese to which has been repeated for decades that the Japanese were the bad guys (having a common enemy is good for national unity!) that one cannot simply go to war, because it could not be a good move? How do you hold together a nation as large as a continent in a variety of different ethnic groups (who often hate each other) without having a common enemy that holds them all together (more or less)?

Tibet and Xinjiang (country of origin of the Turks) want to get away from China (and half the land is gone). China does not want it, but Chinese do not want to live there and they don t spend a penny to make the area more livable. As a result, ethnic minorities are living in half of the country, but in that area they are the majority and then they want indipendence. Hong Kong is heavily influenced by the Chinese government and in 30 years or so it should once again become China ... These were the agreements ... You can imagine the desire of the people of Hong Kong to do so. Taiwan has a similar situation.

In this scenario, you can understand that democracy is not even mentioned ... and in some ways I feel like saying, thankfully. I don’t think Chinese are ready for democracy (in truth this is sometimes true for us tpp) and probably they do not even want to have it. Turning China into a democracy today would mean condemning it to death! Everything would become monstrously slow, while this country has to fly if it wants to stay afloat. So what? So, as power is nothing without control, they controls everything here!

My beautiful face with my fingerprints were taken at the airport and then when I arrived at the school, a booklet about me was handed over to local police. To avoid all contact with the outside world, China has made a copy of everything. Chinese movies (they don’t watch movies from other countries) music, internet. Everything, in fact. The result? Everything that comes from outside is unknown to the average Chinese. Including people. When I go around the countryside with my colleagues of the school people look at us as aliens and many approach asking if they can take photos. The photo with the westerns seems a valuable object. Especially if you are blond or hairy ... when I came here I had beard ... there were people who wanted me to caress it from time to time!

 What to say... may the Force be with them!