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force our essays into a straightjacket, until in the end everything we write is fake.
    Naturally, loyalists of the old guard may well say that no matter the quality of the essay, this kind of writing does develop a student’s ability to deploy language and create sentences, just as mathematics, though it has limited application after a certain point, fosters skill in logical analysis. Such people exemplify exactly the kind of blinkered and defective thinking that Chinese education fosters. They are simply underestimating their own intelligence. The ability to write develops hand in hand with skill in logical analysis: After you learn to read and accumulate some experience in reading, you are naturally capable of writing essays—if you can talk, you can write. Of course, some people can write better than others, and there’s not much one can do about that. At the same time, the ability to analyze things logically is not something one can acquire or enhance just through working on a few math problems—that’s just self-deception. Many scam artists capable of meticulous thought and impeccable logic have never had much education, whereas most people taken in by a scam will happily tell you the area of a shape in trigonometry. Our education system likes to give the impression that people have no natural talent and get everything from education. That way, after you leave school, you will naturally accept that human beings have no inherent rights—that rights are something only conferred by the government.
    Education in other countries does not fixate on this same specialized concept of “writing essays,” but I don’t remember hearing that people in those places have trouble putting words together to form a coherent piece of writing. And conversely, in our case, although people here have been learning to write essays for many decades now, fewer and fewer seem to be capable of doing so.
    Reading a lot is much more beneficial than writing a lot ofessays—which, in reality, just means studying a lot of model essays so that you can imitate the topic assigned. Essay assignments not only weaken your ability to write, but they subconsciously tell you that saying things you don’t mean is normal and necessary, that it’s the very secret of survival. That is the sole value to students of writing essays—writing essays alerts them early on to the reality that speaking the truth will only lead to trouble. But essays also have the effect of destroying their interest in literature.
    Someone is bound to say that I am simply being contradictory, that I’m not capable of constructive suggestions—if everyone stops writing essays, then what on earth will they write? That’s a typical example of the impoverished analytical ability you’re left with after our education is through with you. It’s simple—just don’t write! Writing essays essentially is a hobby, a love, like gardening or fishing—it’s not something you can force people to do. Naturally, there will be some who like it and some who don’t. So let the ones who like to write essays write real essays, and let the ones who don’t like to write essays write love letters, and let the ones whose love letters go unanswered write a journal, and let the ones who like to write fake, pretentious, empty-headed essays serve as our leaders—that way everyone will be happy.

Insults to China

    August 11, 2007
    It doesn’t take much, it seems, to insult our nation. Often on our news broadcasts we see reports that in some country or other a shop sign or T-shirt or literary or art work is suspected of insulting China. There was a story the other day about a pet shop somewhere that incorporated a parody of Tiananmen Square in its signage and was forced to take the sign down after protests by our foreign ministry.
    That certainly counts as high-level attention. If I were to poke fun at the White House or