A different view

[Andy]

Picnic?s were the order of the day over the weekend. We went to one which included several college professors. One of the guys there was a Chinese fellow named Yanle (Yohn?-le). The guy had a degree in agriculture in China, came to the US for his PHD in Aggie and sort of defected. Now he is a professor.
Someone of the liberal persuasion pointed me out and said, ?He (me) killed people in Vietnam?. Yanle immediately walked over, shook my hand, smiled that Asian smile and said you killed Vietnamese? Told him that was very probable. He thanked me?
I told him his government didn?t want the US to take over Vietnam. He said his government wanted the war to last forever, US controlling all of south east Asia would be bad, Vietnam controlling that area would be and is just as bad. He thought that was very sad and wished we had keep Hanoi in the box called North Vietnam.
The guy is very prejudice. The Japanese are the worst people in the world, a flawed race. But the Vietnamese are just a half step below the Japanese on the bad guy list. I asked if this was an opinion he developed in the US. He said no, that all Chinese students are taught much more history than Americans and his people know all about the terrible behavior of other countries. They also are taught about how the US helped China in WWII but that we hated Chairman Mao so we had bad relations for many years.
We had fun talking about the Rape of Nanking (WWII). Also talked about the Opium Wars. But he kept going back to Vietnam and smiling about the 2 million that we killed. Some of the other professor?s had never seen this side of Yanle and there freaking out. Damn I enjoyed that!
Sometimes I really believe we are already forgotten, in our school systems, the Vietnam war is either talked about in a negative way or not at all. It?s nice to know we are remembered somewhere. There are a billion Chinese who think we?re cool but arrogant. He may have been confused when I agreed, ?Hell yes we?re arrogant!?

Stay healthy,
Andy