Latest Op Ed: Burning Your Fingers Passing the Torch to the Next Generation
Musings about our trip to China last week to visit our oldest son, who’s working there this summer. Thanks to Jacob Mardell and his influential UK-based Blog, The China Road, for running my latest Op Ed work entitled: Burning Your Fingers Passing the Torch to the Next Generation. An abstract is below and full text available on this link.
Our 17-year-old son was fortunate enough to find a summer internship in China. He traveled there briefly last summer to expand his high school Chinese language study, but 2018 marks his first official work experience, in the US or otherwise. My wife and I decided to go visit him for a week. After more than two decades, traveling overseas, either alone or with business students, is a non-event. But bringing your spouse for her first-ever visit to the People’s Republic, and also experiencing how the next generation views business, culture and life overseas was in theory going to be pretty exciting. Rather unexpected were their frank critiques.
China is terrific but across the entire spectrum is quite different from the United States. Different doesn’t have to imply a pejorative. Given that my wife and son had both already been to Asia and multiple other international locations before, I figured visiting China would be a slam-dunk. Not so much. Living in a culture half a world away is always just that.
