I probably could have guessed the reaction to the next film in the series, World Trade Center. I was certainly familiar with the polls that showed attitudes around the world about Americans in the wake of 9/11. But it is one thing to be aware of something in a theoretical fashion, and quite another to experience first hand.
This was the only film for which I provided no formal introduction. I simply said, “This is a film, based on a true story, about the events that happened in America on September 11th, 2001.”
After the lights came back on, rather than following the tradition and having them ask me questions, I passed out a short survey. It read:

Circle the one that best represents your view:
a. The U.S. bears no responsibility for the terrorist attacks on September 11th
b. The U.S. is partly responsible for the terrorist attacks on September 11th
c. The U.S. is mostly responsible for the terrorist attacks on September 11th

 Roughly eighty percent of those who turned in the survey believed the U.S. to be at least partly responsible for the terrorist attacks on September 11th. Twenty percent marked ‘c’, while no one circled ‘a’. When I tried to codify the majority response in a number, that is, how much responsibility the U.S. bore, that number was a disturbing 50%. Most people in this room thought the U.S. bore equal responsibility with the terrorists for the events of 9/11.
 To write something down on a sheet of paper is one thing. Surely, the students would be less confrontational in their questions and comments, not wanting to risk insulting a visiting American teacher. Or not.
“Why do Americans think they are so superior?”
“What do you mean?” I responded.
“They just go into any country they like and take what they want.”
Like going into Iraq to get oil?” I replied
“Yes.”
 “How many people,” I asked, agree that America thinks it is superior to the rest of the world?” A majority of hands in the room shot up.
At this point, I made a strategic decision not to respond. My sense was that Americans have been doing enough defending of their country against international criticism. It might be time simply to listen. When someone is really angry at you, sometimes it’s best just to let them vent without trying to defend yourself. Since they feel justified in their anger, your response is not going to be persuasive anyway. And they might respect the fact that you just let them have their say.
“What,” I followed up, “would America have to do to make you feel differently about it?”
The ensuing silence can be explained, I think, not by the fact that the task for America was hopeless and that nothing we could do would change world opinion. Rather, I think a more plausible reading of their inability to respond to this question is that no one had ever asked them this before.
“Think about it,” I said, “and maybe write down some suggestions for me afterwards.”
It seemed they were just getting started. “Did America feel chastened and humbled after 9/11? Did it realize it might not be the “city on the hill” (their words) favored and protected by God?”
This was not the place to give a long discourse on the problem of evil and how believers reconcile their faith with the terrible events that happen in the world. I simply stated that no, no one’s view of their country had been changed by the events of 9/11. In fact, some may think America even more special after that day. They seemed to understand this line of reasoning even if I did not.
After clearing up some of the historical misperceptions, both for the justification of the first Iraq war and the rationale of the 9/11 bombers, someone asked what I thought about this. What would I have circled on the survey I passed out?
A fair question, I thought, but not one I was willing to answer. “I am here to listen to your views,” I said, “not to give my own.”
 “But it is not fair to have us give our opinions and not to give yours”
I had to admit the questioner had a point. O.K. I said, here goes. I said that in my view it was a moral issue. Since it is never justified to kill an innocent person and the people in the Twin Towers were innocent, the terrorists alone were responsible for the events of 9/11.
When I think back, I can see why this response pretty much killed the discussion. The students were used to me—and many other Americans—criticizing President Bush. They themselves made no distinction between the leader and the country. President Hu Jintao is China. So if Americans criticize President Bush, they must also be very critical of America. When it turned out I would defend my country against the claim of being morally blameworthy, then it became clear that to continue criticizing America would be to risk insulting a visitor, and they were not going to do that.
As I was going through their written comments afterwards I was getting pretty depressed. Not angry at the students for feeling the way they do, but hopeless that attitudes would ever change. Finally there came on comment that provided at least a ray of hope: “We need peace and we can make it peaceful”

Sometimes current events would dictate my choice of a movie. That was the case with the next film in the series, Elephant, Gus van Sant’s fictionalized retelling of the massacre at Columbine High School, which was selected as a way to generate discussion about the shootings at Virgnia Tech.
I was surprised that the shootings received the publicity they did over here.
True, it was a spectacularly violent incident. But there are many violent incidents daily around the globe. The fact that this one received the press it did over her can best be explained by the fact that events that played into negative stereotypes of Americans tend to get a lot of press here.
Soon after arriving in China I noticed that stories concerning that favorite American foible, obesity, appeared on the pages of the English language China daily with amazing frequency. In the same way, the shootings at Virginia Tech, because they confirmed another common negative stereotypes about America—that  America is a vey violent and disturbed country—became a source of fascination. (As long as were listing stereotypes, a third very popular one is that Americans don’t love their children). Before April 16th, 2007, none of my students could have pointed to Virginia (or almost anyplace in America) on a map. Now, not only my English majors, who would have a predisposition to follow American current events, but students from all disciplines, seemed unnaturally versed in the details of the crime.
In fact, I first learned of the shootings at Virginia Tech not from the media but when a student approached me as I was walking to class one morning. I thought at first she was asking me for some information about the killings at Columbine High School. No, she explained. This had just happened at a university in America. There was, not gleefulness, but a certain satisfaction as she broke this news to me. It wasn’t quite, “you people are violent barbarians who kill your own.” But it wasn’t far from that either.
. Admittedly showing Elephant did not seem the best way to fight that stereotype. As my Peace Corps site mate, Spencer, succinctly put it: “Why do you want to open up that can of worms?” His point was well taken. When opinions are as settled and set in concrete, logic and reason seem impotent. Witness any political debate in America. To the Chinese, living in a land that that outlawed private gun ownership, America was a hopelessly violent nation. Nothing I could say in an evening was going to change their opinion. To a large extent, I shared their concerns about the level of violence in my country, though invariably in discussions with students on this topic, I wound up sounding like a member of the NRA.
Just a few days after the shooting, I had a conversation with a freshman at the East campus where I had gone to give a talk. Afterwards I wanted to stroll the campus grounds, which are quite pleasant, but she persisted in accompanying me so she could practice her English. Along the way, she ended up grilling me about American gun violence.
“Why do you need guns in America?”
“Some people have them to protect themselves,” I replied.
“That is what we have the police for in China.”
“But who is going to protect you from the police?” said my inner Charlton Heston.
She seemed simply not to understand that one. “Suppose you are going to get raped. You could not fight off the rapist with yourself. But if you had a gun, you might be able to stop him.”
“This situation does not happen with China.”
 When pressed, she informed me that women who are raped more or less ask for it.
This is about the level of the discussion I brace myself for as the movie ends with the horrific slow motion scene of the students mercilessly gunning down their classmates.
What, I wonder, will the first question hit on? Will they begin with a direct assault on America? Or will they limit their questions to the details of the movie? It’s a compelling enough film that perhaps we will just discuss it. Will they ask me for my views on the issue? What will I say?
All these are floating in my head so that I barely look at the woman who poses the first question so concerned am I to set the proper tone for the discussion.
Can you start your question again, I request, thinking I must have heard it wrong.
“Yes,” she says. “In the school cafeteria, the students get their lunch, but they do not pay for it. Is this common in America?”

I showed the last movie of my first year, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” months before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But if I had been expecting the sort of powerful emotional reaction that followed most American screenings of this film, I would have been greatly disappointed. Fortunately, I had gradually been giving up my expectations for the discussion and was getting better at letting them go in their own direction.
Gone tonight was both the outrage at the destruction of the environment impressingly detailed in the film’s power point presentation as well as the scepticism regarding its more controversial claims expressed in some corners. The two propositions that are the cause of such debate in America (a) that the planet’s temperature is increasing (b) that humans are the cause of it were accepted by a unanimous show of hands afterwards.
After two minutes, it seemed we had run out of things to talk about. Fortunately, they did disagree on whether this was a good thing or a bad thing, and someone related, not for the first time in my experience in China, the story about the runaway horse. The story comes from the second century BCE Huainanzi, but is familiar to many around the world who have never heard of this work. A man loses his horse. His neighbors want to commiserate with him on his loss, but the man responds that this may be good fortune. Sure enough, the horse soon returns bringing along with him many other horses, causing the neighbors to congratulate the man, who warily responds that this may in fact be bad luck. When his son breaks his leg riding one of the new horses, his neighbors agree with him on this verdict. But the man is too quick for them. Who knows, he says, this may be good fortune, and seems to be proven right when an army comes through looking for to conscript volunteers and do not take his son because of the injury.
Instead of being inspired to fight the menace of global warming, the students seemed resigned to accepting its inevitability. At first, I thought this showed some lack of character on their part. The  film ends with a list of things that the viewer can do to combat global warming, and I recall on first seeing this film on being inspired to do my part in the campaign against this environmental evil and to be a good eco-warrior. But tonight, perhaps because of the setting, I began viewing my initial optimism with a more Eastern eye. The film had been pretty stark. Massive changes were under way with respect to the warming of the planet that probably could not be altered, or at least without a massive global effort that simply was not likely to occur.
Changing light bulbs and writing my congressmen would only accomplish so much. These students had no congressperson to write and could not possibly consume less anyway. What was there to do except wait for the horse to return