ABSTRACT
I learned quickly that the Chinese had an excellent sense of humor. It was just that in Freshman Class 2, it remained in its embryo stage—at least when it came to communications between cultures. This culture was 5000 years old. But for much of that time there were Mongols or Japanese busy burning villages and raping women, British and Portuguese sailors looting treasures, and Red Guards shooting people’s grandparents for smiling the wrong way. This, in fact, happened to my wife’s family when she was five, for the double offense of not only being the wrong class—landlords—but also educated: in other words, “elite” in an era the Chinese still can’t work up much laughter about.
