Simon Elegant

Well, I've been punched in the face more than once, Michael, both literally and metaphorically.

Well, the thing about the Chinese, I'm sure you do understand, is that they will be learning an enormous, I mean, never underestimate them.

They will definitely be learning from this.

I think it'd be a huge mistake.

I used to teach for a while, so all the Catholic colleges in the U.S.,

Well, Jesuit colleges specifically, like Loyola and whatever, Georgetown, that kind of thing.

They had a center in China, and I taught history there for a while, and it was fantastic.

I mean, there were some kids who clearly had hangovers every time they came in on the year off.

Imagine that.

Imagine that in college.

Somebody had a hangover.

There were enough that were interested, and actually the course that I taught was called, because everything in Chinese history is only really interpreted through the arrival of the West.

So from whatever it was when the Dutch first turned up, everything in China is about that, because they're still trying to figure out a way to deal with the fact that they're not basically the only power in the world, and they're still working out how do they do that.

But the problem I was going to say is that

These undergraduates, that course, when I was teaching it, the entire number of kids was maybe 150.

I don't think the program exists anymore.

There were so few.

And same with like Yale or Penn or whatever.

They all had programs and they're pretty much all gone, which means no people studying Chinese, no people hanging out with their Chinese roommates.

You know, it's just really bad for the U.S.