I've lectured at [the China Foreign Affairs University] and know some of its teachers. One of my Chinese PhD students taught there....

Enjoyed [reading your letters]. You write well with valuable insights.

--BF, political science professor, Toronto, July 03, 2003

That is strong stuff. The cultural divide is much too large. It seems that your attitude was orthogonal to this strange and oblique world of China. Without your recognizing anything the resentment was smouldering until it ignited.

--MR, math professor, Germany, February 06, 2003

You are the most nasty and shameless man I have ever seen on earth!!!
You have damaged the image of the American people!!
Every person who has seen you including westerns said you are son of a beach!
So go to hell!!

--Li Ming, one of Uriel's students at diplomacy school, China, November 24, 2004

As a Chinese student in UK, I feel ashamed by what happened to you. One thing you might have known is that most of those would-be diplomats have special backgrounds. They enter the Chinese Deplomacy System via nepotism and people like them are called "TaiZiDang" or Crown Princes in China. They domineer over Chinese who need help abroad. They think themselves the owners of Chinese embassies and consulates rather than civil servants. They are ugly scars of China.

Thank you for your work in China.

--Bing, student from China studying in UK, April 19, 2005
(commenting at blogcritics.org)

Reading this series is a bit like watching a car wreck in slow motion.

You're highly readable. I'm enjoying the ride.

--BD, newspaper reporter, Toronto, January 12, 2003

I find I often have a reaction I recognize from watching horror movies - you know, when the hero hears a noise in the basement at night and you shout in your head "Don't go down there!" but they do it anyway?

You may have created a new entertainment genre - reality e-mails.

--BD, newspaper reporter, Toronto, February 19, 2003

basically a rant

--Anonymous Cambridge University student, explaining his excision of reference to this story from Wikipedia article on the China Foreign Affairs University, in Wikipedia discussion on CFAU article (if necessary, check history tab to retrieve discussion as of November 13, 2005).

Highly readable and fascinating. Also very amusing. Perhaps the most useful thing I've gained is an evaluation of my own teaching style.... After a recent discussion about stereotypes that produced "aggressive, rude, hard-working, and nationalistic" as adjectives fit for all Japanese, I followed up with these questions:

Has anyone here ever met a Japanese person? (unanimous "no") Then why do you think they are aggressive etc.? (it's very quiet at this point, but someone volunteers "books, television") Does that mean it's true? (unanimous "yes") So Japanese history books are also true? (vociferous and unanimous "NO")

--SM, teacher in Henan Province, November 9, 2005

Bring it on -- I love your stuff.

You are teaching me so much. I think that you come from a place of true honesty. You deal in facts and the truth and I have noticed that it wins at the end.

--MH, social worker, Toronto, February 20, 2003

I taught Media & Foreign Policy this past year [2003-4] at the China Foreign Affairs University. Indeed, I am writing this in the apartment in the Foreign Exchange Center building ... on the lovely campus that this infamous and exceedingly unstable individual defames in whole.

I taught each of the students he names or alludes to in his "shocking" tale of woe ... and I can assert with authority, and direct sources, that his story is flat-out lunacy and paranoid fabrications stemming from his inability to teach or communicate with "normal" human beings....

As to his portrayal of the school's administration, FAO personnel and Chinese faculty members, suffice it to say that our experience with the people he names was completely the opposite. Their professionalism, warmth and kindness rivaled or surpassed even some American universities I have taught at....

Please, all who read this, do not accept this slandering of a fine university and a fine group of dedicated Chinese educators--it simply is not true.

--Joseph Bosco
Visiting Professor, Media & Foreign Policy
China Foreign Affairs University
Beijing, China

August 10, 2004

I've just finished reading both series of your China-letters. They are extremely well-written. As a Chinese who was born in Hong Kong, lived in the mainland, and grew up in Vancouver, I find your observations sharp, incisive, and to the point. I'm also reminded of a trip I took to Beijing last year. Many of the events completely parallel your description of the subtle dynamics between foreigners and natives. I think it's not possible for a foreigner who's never been to China or a Chinese who's never been to the West to grasp the full subtlety of your letters.

In any case, I just felt obliged to write a letter acknowledging your work. It was truly fascinating.

--ZN, high school student, January 26, 2005

I have been reading your recent missives with great delight.... Keep me on the receiving end of the stories of teaching in China.

--DR, high school teacher, Toronto, January 18, 2003

I am writing to express my profound pleasure in having discovered your ruminations and tales, and my accolades for your excellent insight on the way the Chinese live and work in relations to foreigners.

I wonder why your entries are not required reading for prospective candidates who wish to teach in China. I majored in Asian Studies at university with a core focus on China, but university does not prepare you for what is encountered.

I currently teach Chinese children in Shenyang (and have been in China eight months). Much of what you wrote about is prevalent ... enormous peer pressure and anger if one individual makes some sort of transgression. It is especially true when we play games! It begins early as youths.... Even at the age of seven the "groupthink" is part of their inculcation.

--JS, school teacher, China, April 26, 2004

[T]he classic of the AEIOU genre.... Who needs Cervantes or Dostoevsky?

--Hemlock, diarist, Hong Kong, February 20, 2005
(as quoted in Cultural Incommensurability)

I follow your saga with bated breath and DO urge you to think seriously about writing-you are good at it.

I appreciate being on your list and like the serial form; I would like to suggest a happier ending to the story, but I guess it's too late for that.

--KD, former journalist and nurse (retired), Toronto, January 19, 2003

Hello fellow sufferer:

I have done 5+years in China, now at [...] University, so I enjoyed your nightmares.

--DH, university instructor, China, February 29, 2004

Your writing is very good.

--LF, computer technology trainer, Toronto, February 10, 2003

I'm following your story with great interest.

--ES, computer technology trainer, Toronto, February 10, 2003