The American community that I, a Chinese national, discovered on Perrin Avenue in Lafayette, Indiana, offers its members a supportive and loving world in which religious and cultural traditions are preserved and shared beliefs venerated. It embodies many meaningful elements indicative of the original form of the community, which are absent in the ersatz ones [...]
The boy I saw fishing was enjoying a moment of solitude—a state of being alone that seems a luxury in a churning world agitated with digital waves. It made me realize that in leisure, we open ourselves to receive God and take confidence in trusting the mysterious and fragmentary. Be at leisure – and know [...]
Decades of the practice of Maoism in China have shown that when government opponents are branded as "insurrectionists," and when the powerless masses act only out of fear, civil society won’t survive. This is a trajectory with which we Chinese are all too familiar. From "deplorables" to "enemies of the people"—this is a trajectory with [...]
American democracy has proven to be a success in its representation of interests but a failure in cultivating citizenship; it has protected some civil liberties while allowing others to erode away. One lesson we can draw from its history of successes and failures is this: For a republic to succeed, institutions are not enough; civic [...]
This year, against the backdrop of pandemic, the level of obedience manifested in many Americans stunned me: Why do Americans, the rugged individualists, obey edicts issued at the whim of “King” Newsom or “His Majesty” Cuomo, without a questioning of the legitimacy of those mandates? They remind me of my fellow Chinese who have been [...]