Smarmy, Presumptuous and Pugnacious

Got home late, of course.  I Di Di guy had to walk up to where I was to escort me down to his car, as he wouldn’t drive to wu qu where I was and I wouldn’t walk down to him.  On the phone you’re angry.  “Are you not from Beijing?”  In person you feel silly and try to laugh about what just happened with this man, who now has a kind face. 

At four thirty in the morning I was up and flipped through the emails and chats on my phone.  The meeting for seven thirty in three hours is cancelled.  That’s one less thing to prepare for.  Now I can return from the gym as I please.  I send out an email later when I’m in front of my computer saying “No worries.  We’ll pick it up next week.”  I dutifully write the team to bring the cancellation to everyone’s attention.  One and then another buzz vibrates my phone not long after.  “Sorry for any confusion.  We were cancelling the call for next week.  Not this week.”   Clouds obscure the sun.

A few hours later I’m in a cab heading down to Guo Mao to meet someone introduced through the university I teach at.  My wife had wanted me to watch an exchange she’d seen on the web, between a Fox News correspondent and one from China concerning the trade war.  Apparently, everyone in wechat land is talking about it.  She tries to show me once and twice but can’t get the link to load.  Later, I have it open on my phone in the back seat and decide to listen.

Trish Regan is smarmy, presumptuous and pugnacious, which must all be basic job requirements for a job on Fox News.  Liu Xin, the Chinese reporter has excellent if affected, somewhat British accented English and I unwittingly begin to route for her, because she is working twice as hard to make her point in a foreign language, and because she is not being particularly smarmy, presumptuous nor pugnacious.  And, because I have of course, been absorbed more than I know, by Chinese civilization. 

Trish breaks wind in the opening comments, suggesting that her counterpart is a member of the Chinese Communist Party.  Liu Xin could, but doesn’t indicate that Trish is most certainly a member of the Republican party but rather she points out that she is simply not a CCP party member and is speaking as a journalist.  Rather than acknowledging her error, Trish elbows in the comment that Ms. Liu’s news organization is however run by the Party unlike hers which is run by Rupert Murdoch.  Ms. Regan tries unsuccessfully to bait Ms. Liu once and then twice and though Ms. Liu’s responses where not without some gymnastic artifice, I’d say she did a fine job of making the case for negotiations rather than tariffs.  Her humility and diplomacy was the better of the two positions and she almost seemed to win her host over with kindness in the end.  As international theatre it was an interesting exchange to see how either side casts what’s “normal” though there wasn’t much of substance to learn from what they shared and it was over, before much of anything was really said.  I much prefer to read the news.

Friday, 5/31/19