I met with my language exchange partner Rong Rong today. I've kind of forgotten about who's speaking what language and for how long, which makes it much more enjoyable as you can just have a normal conversation. Yes, it ended up being all English. ;-) But I didn't care. I grilled her about China today. Later I messaged her saying I hope it wasn't rude of me to ask all those pointing questions like "So, do you consider yourself a communist?" etc. And "have you read 1984?" I just find it fascinating. Anyway we went to the MCA which was kind of boring. The usual pointless videos of people sitting in a boat or a woman under water followed by crashing waves. Profound. No wonder it's free. She hasn't been on a ferry yet, so next time I'll take her on a ferry trip somewhere. Actually there was a good one. There was an old lady reading out a sermon and talking about praying and they had four screens showing people listening looking bored and unimpressed. I liked it.

One point Rong Rong made about democracy was that even though China's government doesn't have an opposition party to keep them in check, they are in fact scrutinised by the West and that's what makes them behave. But I think as long as they have all that cheap labour for sale do they really have to try to please anyone?  ¶ 16:53