>From a great article…a part about foreign teachers who brag about their “connections”:
The intent, obviously, is to aggressively or competitively show how they are more valued by the dominant group than any other member of their own group is. Every time I am in earshot of such pronouncements, I am reminded of scenes from Alex Haley’s book Roots in which he described how the slaves used to compete with each other over whose master had the more successful farm or biggest crops. Common sense dictates that no high-level government official in China is going to squander his guanxi, which is more valuable than money here, helping out some foreigner who is thought of (quite accurately in most cases) as just a transient worker.
