K: Smart and Funny?

On our very well balanced team last year, we had a running joke. (Actually, we had many, but it's only one I'm focusing on right now or I'll just sit here at my computer and laugh for the next hour instead of writing which is what I'm supposed to be doing.) At the beginning of the 2006 academic year as we were working through our team building materials, I had to answer a question: What do you wish more people knew about you? I said that I wished more people knew that I can be funny. The other two members on the team, who are funny, looked at me and smiled pityingly... apparently, a person cannot be smart and funny and I'm already pegged. I said that I didn't think that was fair because I consider both A and N incredibly intelligent as well as funny, and they explained that one characteristic must outweigh the other and it is the heavier characteristic by which people are known. In the end, because my wish involved the opinions of others and I had two others with unalterable opinions, I begrudgingly acknowledged my intelligence and they conceded that I have funny moments.

It's probably because of this alleged gap between intelligence and humor that I admire so much people who can simultaneously write intelligently and humorously about China. It's a delicate matter to write about China at all from the outside in - being in and among the culture but undeniably and irrevocably separated from it by the state of being foreign. Delicate because it's undesirable to trivialize or misrepresent the issues and experiences that happen here, especially to an audience of other foreigners whose input about this place already comes from the skewed or at least incomplete viewpoint of other outsiders in forms of media, movies, impressions of Chinese abroad, etc. Ironically then, it takes a certain amount of courage to write because it takes a willingness to be wrong, inappropriate, and/or misleading. That's not to blast the information we have, it's just to say that I am reluctant to contribute to a misrepresentation of this intriguing and complex country, and that seems almost unavoidable if anything is going to be written at all. At the same time it is compelling to write because there's just so much fodder. So, while I try to develop the courage and delicacy to write about what I see, hear, experience and perceive, I'll refer you to a couple of articles I read this morning that meet my criteria for admirable writing about China because it's intelligent and humorous. The first from That's Shanghai is an accurate parallel between playing golf and being a foreigner in China, China Handicap. The second is an observation of the effect the approaching 2008 Olympic Games are having on the foreign population especially in Beijing, Mean Streets. If you have time and interest to follow these links, I guarantee you will be entertained, and you'll probably learn something too because like I said, they're smart and funny.