After reading yet another letter full of cold war cliches, this time by Mr. John Brillhart, I feel the absolute need for Iowa State to establish a strong, well-stuffed Asian Studies program, or better still, a Chinese Studies program. As a professor teaching Chinese and East Asian cultures, I would also like to suggest that the international perspective requirement be changed into non-European culture requirement in our curricula.

I strongly feel that it is the duty of this higher education institute to help our students understand another culture, another country in terms of its history, religions, political systems, people’s values and lives so as to get rid of the stupid stereotypes that the mass media has manufactured.

I believe that both Borre and Brillhart are caring students about China. Pitifully, they obviously lack the cultural sensitivity to talk to Chinese as equals, both letters sound extremely condescending.

And their grandstanding amounts to epistemological absurdity: they, whom I believe have never been to China, feel obliged to tell Chinese students what is happening in China, oblivious of the fact that they mostly parrot American media’s anti-China parlance.

And when a Chinese student presented his valid opinions and provided his life experiences in China to the central Iowa public, Mr. Brillhart turned angry and irrationally attack Wang Bing Bing as a “fool” and a tool for Chinese government. Vicious labeling does not contribute to any meaningful discussion. It only helps to quiet the different voices.

Bai Di

Instructor

Foreign languages and literatures