The Maple Dragon Podcast

Experience China Like Never Before. Join the Maple Dragon on an intimate, soul-stirring journey through the heart of China.

[The Maple Dragon Podcast @TheMapleDragon]

Confucius, the roots of China's Deep Humanity https://t.co/29C1xzZLKY via @YouTube

[The Maple Dragon Podcast @TheMapleDragon]

I've just published the blog, "The Hidden Dimension of China's Authoritarianism"
https://t.co/GDxTcNCGg6

[The Maple Dragon Podcast @TheMapleDragon]

Democracy in China's Political Meritocracy

[Imran Khan @ImranKhanPTI]

قوم کی جانب سے انتخابات میں تاریخی مقابلے، جس کے نتیجے میں تحریک انصاف کو عام انتخابات 2024 میں بے مثال کامیابی میسرآئی،کے بعد چیئرمین عمران خان کا(مصنوعی ذہانت سے تیار کردہ) فاتحانہ خطاب

[The Maple Dragon Podcast @TheMapleDragon]

Discover the authentic heart of China through the eyes of a Western professor and his interactions with his domestic and international Chinese students.
https://t.co/qsO1F1zeG1

[Mark Robson @MapleDragonMark]

@TheMapleDragon Incredible newly carved kitchen in massive Tibetan home in Shangrila in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province! Follow https://t.co/CJSHGEW3QR for a recent podcast on China’s Minorities

[The Maple Dragon Podcast @TheMapleDragon]

#Nanjing is one of the emerging cities of China but friends in Canada often don't know anything about it.

China, to many in the West, is #Beijing & #Shanghai. But as @MapleDragonMark describes, #Nanjing is a rising city where tradition meets modernity.

https://t.co/PRHsqL44ph

[Zhang Heqing @zhang_heqing]

Let's come to #Nanjing see the exquisite art of #Jiangning #weaving!
Video Credit @videochinatv

[The Maple Dragon Podcast @TheMapleDragon]

A new episode drops every Monday!

Subscribe on the website https://t.co/PRHsqL4CeP, give us a follow here and on your favourite podcast platforms

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Spotify: https://t.co/B0parrbWK9

Google: https://t.co/cJbYDBZ5Fe

[The Maple Dragon Podcast @TheMapleDragon]

I often wonder if Western society will ever be able to show the same kind of grace and kindness I found in China.

And by ordinary Chinese, just like you and me.

This is a question that I am exploring this week on https://t.co/PRHsqL4CeP. I'd love for you to join us!

[Ines Laimins 李美思 @ineslaimins]

Home Is Where 老家 Lao Jia Is

Do most Americans have a sense of an ancestral home?

We know to be true that a country built on hope and a better life, ➡️most everyone ancestrally is from somewhere else, from the early settlers to the current border control crisis.

But what happens when families have several generations on the land, do they remember an ancestral home, or has the idea of place just been entirely wiped out?

I’ve been reflecting on this for a few weeks after returning from my 10 day road trip through the midwest.

We drove endless miles across fields with corn and soybean crops, dotted with gleaming silos and scattered with large chicken or milk farms.

Each small town is the same. One to four blocks of a town center that includes a post office, a bank, a bar, a liquor store, some sort of old general store, perhaps a movie theater, a few small businesses, possibly an abandoned rail road station. On the town edge invariably a Dollar General with a car park full of cars.

Also on the town edge or half a mile out, there is a cemetery.

That’s what got me thinking of ancestral home and sense of place.

➡️In China, one’s ancestral home is key in forging ones identity.

After asking someone's name, the most common as well as most pertinent question you hear people ask one another when first introduced, "where in your laojia?" .

➡️老家 (láo jià) = ‘old home’ = ancestral home

Chinese ask because nothing else is meant to be as telling, as shorthand, in determining interests, personal habits, even taste in food of a person you've just met.

I’ve talked to hundreds of people in China, from big cities to the smaller province towns. Sometimes with dialects so strong that we could only communicate the basics.

One of the basics is laojia.

The conversation always turns to ‘where are you from’ and ‘lao jia’. It is a doorway to discussing and sharing our origins and also differences.

There is a two-way curiosity and conversation becomes easy.

➡️On a deeper cultural level, I think laojia provides a middle layer of identity for all Chinese, between family and country.

Deeply ingrained in Chinese culture are Confucian concepts of defending the family and defending the country (保家卫国) and territory that is historically theirs.

It is a cultural inheritance that runs through thousands of years of Chinese history and is deeply rooted in the national bone marrow. It has never changed and will not change.

With that contrast, my questions revolved around trying the understand the American psyche, the basics of what makes people tick in the current climate.

I can say that for the whole 10 days, through small towns with disappearing train tracks and preserved train stations, offered a distant memory of what America perhaps was.

Boarded up small stores, empty streets, and abandoned cars, perhaps a sign that small town America was disappearing. Or was it merely moving to the strip mall areas just 45-60 minutes away?

➡️Are most Americans desperately seeking an identity?

And because of the very short history, are the offerings of cultural identity sparse and difficult to find a common cultural ground?

From observation, grasping for identity seems to be grounded in the polarized world of politics, the popularity race that you can get behind. Sports is just the same. The amount of blaring televisions I saw in diners or motel lobbies broadcasting sport, CNN, Fox News was consistent.

It was everywhere.

➡️I felt I entered an alternate world of loud blaring fake news that was distinct and far away from what the rest of the world was really like.

And in this alternate world, I first learned of a very insignificant player on the US political scene. On a blaring TV in a small town Indiana diner, there was the extreme fear-mongering, wide-eyed Nikki Haley spewing forth her presidential campaign opinions.

Blaming China for all of the shortcomings in America, from education, homelessness, drug addiction, failing infrastructure, lagging tech innovation, economic failings.

➡️I sat in semi-disbelief. Is this what is peddled as truth?

It felt Orwellian.

➡️There is no common narrative in America. The only narrative is to tear apart.

Is it because the middle layer no longer exists? Is the glue between self, family and country so diluted that sense of place and ancestral home don’t exist?

[Discover Nanjing @DiscoverNanjing]

Nanjing launched its 21st Summer of Culture & Museums series activities! 103 themed exhibitions and social education activities such as "Museum Detectives in Nanjing", providing a rich and diverse cultural feast for youngsters and students during their summer vacation.

[Mark Robson @MapleDragonMark]

Ten years ago, I traded the familiar streets of Toronto for the unseen splendors of China.

Today, I’m unveiling @TheMapleDragon Podcast, where I share my personal journey filled with resilience, wisdom and profound humanity of a China concealed from Western imagination.

[The Maple Dragon Podcast @TheMapleDragon]

Going to #China was a culture shock to @MapleDragonMark - but for all the right reasons.

The warmth of Chinese society and the #kindness of ordinary Chinese people allowed Mark to glow in feeling safe and loved again.

Listen to this week's episode on https://t.co/PRHsqL44ph!

[The Maple Dragon Podcast @TheMapleDragon]

WE ARE LIVE!!!