Perhaps the most enriching part of living in China is being able to interact with the generation who grew up during the Cultural Revolution. Most who I can “touch” are established business people, say the owner of a small factory, real estate developer or construction contractor. None of them received a college education and many never graduated from High School. Self-made, they are newly wealthy but maintain the roughness that got them where they are today. A map of China’s modern history is written on their faces, hidden beneath their fingernails, stuffed in their pop bellies, and exposed in those charmingly imperfect grins. They are concerned with money, but not so pre-occupied by it that they neglect other issues like politics and “culture”. When they tell their rags to riches stories, they speak in terms of decades. You listen as hard as you can to catch their words before they are washed by any interpreter. They are funny and direct. Warm and open. Pure, but definitely not innocent. They are startling different from the generation that followed them.

Smoking while eating is like refilling a glass of water. Over the course of a 2-2.5 hour meal, it can easily happen 10 times.

Liu Zong and I