Change is in the air! Last Friday, we visited Mal for New Year’s Day. For fun, we each took a little quiz and from a list of ten items, identified what our most important priorities were in life. It’ll be neat when we revisit this topic this time next year! 😄
My top three: 1) Physical Health; 2) Wealth; 3) Interesting Hobbies.
Bagel’s top three: 1) Spiritual Enlightenment; 2) Career Success; 3) Traveling the World, Physical Health, and Interesting Hobbies. (She cheated and picked three for her third priority!)
Mal’s top three: 1) Soulmate Romance; 2) Contributing to Society; 3) Spiritual Enlightenment.
Last but not least: As I do every January, here are my goals for the new year, 2021:
My Goals for 2021
Better use the environment and my “flow-states” to my advantage. Know when I’m useless and need to just veg-out. Know when I need to exercise. Know when I need to visit the café or an external environment to get stuff done. When I need to call someone or just talk to another human-being for the sake of my own sanity to share an idea that’s about to burst, tease something out, or just ward off loneliness. Don’t “force it.” As Matthew McConaughey says: “Catch the greenlights.” Go with the flow! Everything should feel easy. If it feels hard, I’m doing something wrong. .
Be more focused. Set a schedule. When working, work. When playing, play. Don’t constantly be in a “middle-state” where I’m doing something half-ass. Middles are bad! Extremes are good! Either be “on” or “off.” Be rigid and inflexible. .
Keep a physical calendar and stick it on the fridge where Bagel and I can IRL see it and have it be top-of-mind every day. Take periodic small day-trips with Bagel (and friends, hopefully!) in order to “recharge.” A change of physical scenery is important and refreshes the mind! .
Money is (almost) everything. You attract the energies you put out in the world. In the past, I’ve always condescended money and thought it lowly and material. But after losing so much money in 2020 (thanks, stock market! And my own weak nerves!), I’ve now come around to a totally new position. Yes, health and love/relationships are important. But I’ve got those now! (Knock on wood.) So now we need to set the crosshairs on the next obstacle that’s really keeping me up at night: Financial security. Not just for myself but for Bagel too, who’s now really relying on me to figure things out. In 2021, I need to find a way to make tons and tons of money. Need that Tesla Cybertruck!! 🚘🚘🚘!!
Bagel’s Goals for 2021
Introspect to heal internal wounds and traumas.
Be honest with herself.
Focus more on establishing a solid base of friends and family; create a feeling of “home”!
Beauty and the Beast is my favorite Disney cartoon of the cannon. Of all of the Disney princesses, Belle has always been my favorite. It bears mentioning, by the way, that when Bagel and I first met, the first movie we ever saw together in theaters was the live-action remake in Bageltopia. Ah, what a faraway land… it honestly feels like a lifetime ago. April 1, 2017 was that fateful day. Good times; good memories. 😊
Watching Mad Men recently, specifically– S05E13: “The Phantom”— B&B appears as a strong motif in the episode. On Reddit, that episode is one of the most discussed in the series (at least so far) and I thought I’d just take a minute this morning to dash off some quick thoughts.
** SPOILERS AHEAD **
There are many different ways to read Megan and Don’s relationship in E13, but everyone largely agrees that this is where Don “falls out of love” with Megan and reverts to his “Old Don” ways. I largely agree with this; but people differ on the exact timing and interpretation of how/why. And while we’ll obviously never know for certain (likely only Weiner knows, if he even knows) but the key moments: 1) Megan betrays her acting friend and asks for Don for the Butler shoes TV ad spot part for herself. 2) Don watching Megan’s screen test.3) Don walking away from Megan once she’s landed the TV advertisement spot.
In addition to this, Don obviously brings his own baggage to the table– namely, his abandonment issues. In E13, Don also meets Peggy at the movie theater (during the workday! Haha 😄) and it’s a nice moment; but they have an exchange about Don “helping people” and then “those people always eventually moving on.”
So to me, here’s how I (choose to) read E13: Full disclosure, I’m a Megan-fan so I read her generously and charitably (Bagel is notably not). While some Redditors feel like Megan’s a manipulative conniving witch from the beginning, that’s not how (I’ve chosen) to interpret her actions. I feel, if anything, she’s just immature, innocent, and growing– which means losing that innocence (compromising principles and values in the pursuit of a desired outcome). All her life, she’s dreamed about being an actress and making it big. Off-Broadway, Broadway, TV shows, the movies. Being famous. Like all of the other characters in Mad Men, she’s chasing an image. It’s just unclear if that image is a phantom or not.
(As a quick aside, by the way, the people I really hate/blame are Megan’s toxic parents. But that’s a separate discussion.)
Megan is chasing a childhood ambition, the dream that never dies. And while she’d tried and failed before (and resigned herself to being just a secretary), only after being with Don does she obtain the full arsenal to try again (money, power, connections, etc). This in itself is a huge, fascinating conversation about chasing one’s dreams (Bagel and I had a huge argument about this yesterday!) but in summary: I’m a firm believer that the most ardent among us– the people who try hardest– are those who never quit. The Hufflepuffs of the world are the ones who never say die. And this perseverance to never give up can, in a way, can be poisonous. It anchors us to a perpetual past and Hufflepuffs will exhaust every last outlet, including their principles, if it means getting what they want. Scene 1 where Megan throws away her independence (and innocence) is the place where Don “falls out of love.”
But. We pick our truths. And while Don may have lost all respect (and love) for Megan in that first scene, in the next scene, Scene 2– when he’s watching the reel– I think he chooses to believe another truth. The idea of Megan being “like the rest of them” hurts him deeply (consciously or unconsciously) so he wants to find/choose another narrative (one that’s more self-serving). So he adopts the B&B narrative: He, the great Don Draper, sees talent in his wife. And he’s going to be the one to “let her go” (before she has a chance to leave him). Valiantly, he’s going to choose to fall on his sword and “set Megan free.” He’s been around the block a few times and has likely seen a good number of beautiful women and aspiring models/actresses. (Eg. Betty.) So seeing Megan’s tape he probably realizes that Megan has some talent and is definitely gorgeous/has acting potential. During that scene when Don watches the reel is when he decides he’s going to let Megan go. Don knows (I believe) that if he gives Megan this break (like he’d done with Peggy back in S1), that she will make it. And since Megan’s no longer the pure and innocent woman that he fell in love with (she’s ambitious, like everyone else!) and while Don could crush her dreams (like he’d done with Betty; which to be fair, didn’t ultimately work out), this time around, Don’s going to set Megan free, just like the Beast had done. Hence the final, “walking-away-from-the-fairy-tale-into-the-dimly-lit-bar” sequence. And doing so, Don’s going to throw himself back into the pits of hell and his “Old Don” ways (Scene 3). Bye, bye, blissful domesticated life.
After five seasons, I’m a big fan of the theory that Man Men is largely about Don –an instinctually bad man (read: a survivor/fighter; one without honor/principles who’s willing to do whatever it takes to survive)– trying to be a good man in the only ways he knows how. But perpetually failing. Because at his core, it’s just not who he is. Man Men is honestly so great though– Can people ever trulyvoluntarilychange? Or are we simply forced to change (because of environmental circumstances/resource constraints/etc)? And does that then even count? If it’s only the external environment shaping us? (Cue free-will discussion here.) Also: What is love? What is love if setting Belle free means ensuring your own destruction? If Belle is willing to let you remain a beast the rest of your days, does she really love you? All of the Big Questions, etc. Anyway, thanks for reading! Just my two cents for the day! 😀
Anyone who’s ever been in the trenches will agree: A healthy relationship is one in which both partners really get to know each other. And to this end, watching television shows and discussing them is the ultimate cheat code, especially if they are fictional (ie. not documentaries) as they’re vehicles of communication to facilitate this interaction. When you are in school, especially in a liberal arts class, it’s easy: The professor can pose some open-ended topic (eg. “What is Justice?”) and then you and your classmates can really go to down having those 2am bull-sessions that run ’til dawn, with everyone pontificating away on their pedestals.
This mode of interaction isn’t only training critical thinking, receive-and-respond, debate skills, gauging-of-social-currency, but is also allowing you a window into the lives of others. To really know the other is to know what and how they think. Their beliefs and value systems. But there needs to be a medium for this discussion.
So why TV shows? It’s easy and something people in a relationship can jointly do together. The joint experience is important– a communal and collective feeling of togetherness. Reading is great but it’s a solitary endeavor. Watching a television show can be done snuggled together on sofas and in front of laptops. You don’t even need televisions or cable nowadays.
For example, recently Bagel and I have been watching Mad Men and that show has really brought us so much closer. When I was younger, other than the Sorkin shows, I never really watched television shows because I was always haughty and felt them lowly. Yes, sometimes I’d indulge in a Spartacus or a Strike Back, but it was always when I was eating and wanted to burn through 10 or 15 minutes (and not watch YouTube).
But back when I was younger, I was single.
To be clear, Mad Men is definitely not a show I would ever watch on my own. It’s often uncomfortable and hard-to-watch. And definitely not a solo leisure activity.
But as a couple-activity, at least for us, it’s perfect. It’s characters are richly developed and Bagel and I both find the subject matter endlessly entertaining and educational. Neither of us were there for the 1960s. But all of the period details– the mores, music, fashion, gender/race dynamics, is fascinating. Matthew Weiner really deserves a Nobel for putting that work in the world! What a genius!
By virtue of being a fictional show, we’re also able to discuss its subject matter with fellow friends as well. And what I’ve found, anecdotally at least, is that the advantage here is that, broadly speaking, the temperature of conversation is much lower when you’re discussing something fictional and imaginary as opposed to a real-life event (say, Black Lives Matter). I’ve mostly found people more generally willing to engage with different perspectives and more empathic when it’s not real people’s lives on the line. We’re talking about Don, Peter, Peggy, Joan, Roger, etc. Figments of the imagination! And that distance gives everyone some remove and breathing space to entertain and debate ideas that they normally may not in a real-world setting.
Bagel and I are currently nearing the end of Season Five where a gruesome turn in the storyline has just occurred. Obviously, I won’t ruin anything here, but that incident has sparked so much discussion for us. Cultural differences and the pernicious effects (and pressure! Omg, the unimaginable pressure) of having to constantly maintain an image as opposed to just being authentic and genuine. How something small can slowly snowball into something catastrophic. The price of deception and how it slowly chips away at the soul.
For us, Mad Men is a springboard into discussion. It raises moral conundrums and presents a properly complex world with complicated characters. Even when we disagree with specific decisions that Peggy or Joan may have made, it’s easy to see “their sides” and empathize. More largely, this is honestly, I guess, a piece today about the merits of fiction as a vehicle for building empathy and understanding. The truth is we often don’t know our values, what we truly stand for, until we’re tested. And Real Talk for a moment: In real life, we (thankfully) aren’t often tested. In quotidian life, you’re virtually never dropped into these impossible situations of monumental consequence.
And to be fair– while talk is just talk, and we don’t really know how we’ll act until we’re actually in it— watching and discussing these subjects ahead of time at least sparks the conversation so it’s somewhere on your radar. How helpful, I guess, is up to you and how honest you are with yourself. My humble suggestion is simply to not think yourself so great, smart, noble, or moral. The higher the horse, the greater distance the tumble.
Again though, even if you are uninterested in “knowing thyself,” just being able to discuss these questions and topics with your SO is so worth it. We know and understand each other when we talk with each other. And with couples, after you’ve known each other for a good chunk of time, the constant fear is that both individuals eventually drift into their own isolated orbits. Especially if both of you are professionals in different career spaces. Taking trips together certainly helps. But on those long car drives and plane flights, you still need to talk about something material and substantive. It’s easy for relationships to calcify and lose that spark. Before long, you might feel like you’re a mechanic or a logistics officer simply negotiating supply chain details (“pick up the kids at X; dinner ready by Y; what are we getting the Millers for Christmas this year?”), etc. But your SO is not your fellow mechanic! She’s your SO!
Finally, on a parting note– watching and discussing fiction shows, especially one as good as Mad Men, possesses the additional benefit of giving us a barometer to track change over time. It’s interesting to both Bagel and me how both of our opinions about Don has evolved over the five seasons so far. And it’s enormously fascinating to me to track how Bagel’s opinions of certain situations has evolved. Ideally, we’ll revisit Mad Men again in a few years to have these same discussions, but just even in the month of watching so far, I’ve found her opinions rapidly change as she’s increasingly connected the events of the show–especially the office politics element– with her own work experience. One great example: Honest to God, for four seasons, we both could not understand for the life of us what Roger actually did at Sterling Cooper. But after Lee Jr. comes to visit for that Christmas party in S4, and then in S5, we’ve both turned into the most ardent Roger fans. In Bagel’s own work experience, she’s known as least one “Roger” whom she’d constantly complained about and despised. But being able to see “the story” from Roger’s perspective has really shed new light on a whole new POV that she’d never even considered. As I’d often told her– if her “Roger” had managed to stick around at the company for so long, there must have at least some value –in some way, shape, or form– that he was delivering, even if it was invisible to her (and the rest of rank-and-file storm troopers).
Anyway, those are my two cents for the day. In other news: 2021 is here! Hooray! 🎉🎆 Very excited about the New Year– blessings and good tidings to everyone! Let’s make this next year the best one yet! 😀
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
“You’ve already done so much. You’ve been with us since the beginning. Every step of the way, everything we’ve done, we couldn’t have done without you help.”
Shu smiles. “Not just another pretty face?”
“Not at all.”
Shu kisses me on the cheek.
“That’s very sweet of you to say. I should get going. Or I’ll be late.”
“Right.”
Shu makes her way down the hallway and I head back into the hotel room where the others are waiting. They’re all gathered around Alan’s laptop and I see that Shu’s been fully wired up– the jade pendant she’s wearing around her neck is a small camera with a small microphone. We’ve got eyes and ears.
Coleman’s grinning widely when I walk in and… well, whatever. I don’t care.
“You’re a real lady killer, you know?”
More than I know.
Maan Café is where Alan’s contact is supposed to meet Shu. It’s a small but hip and stylish establishment that’s among the first to reopen after the COVID-59 outbreak. The vaccine is finished and released now but given that it was rushed through clinical trials, the CCP has adopted a phased rollout plan. The thinking is that while it’s supposedly safe given everything we know about it, we don’t exactly know everything about it. But the reasoning is solid, at least to a laymen like me.
“The metric being used,” the head scientist had explained during the Chinese CDC presentation VOD, “is whether or not releasing the vaccine now will do help more than it harms. And while we admit we don’t know everything at this present moment, the answer to that question is simple– a resounding yes.”
And so the CCP had begun rolling out the vaccine widely to the population. As part of that effort, businesses were going to be reopened in a staggered fashion. That way if something did go grotesquely sideways, at least you didn’t have the entirety of your population in one basket. Redundancy in all things, after all.
“Who’s your person on the inside?” I ask Alan as we both huddle around his computer to see what Shu’s pendant is seeing.
“Someone mid-level in Governor Hu’s office.”
“Someone you can trust?”
“I guess we’re about to find out.”
On the screen, we see that Shu’s taken a seat. The café is by appointment only but even so, it’s significantly busy and crowded. With millions of fellow human beings dying off every day, you might think that people would be a little cavalier about moseying about. But all available evidence I’ve gathered so far proves the contrary. After nine months of quarantine and isolation, the young people at least, are ready to risk it all if it means they can go about their lives. From what we see from Shu’s vantage point, everyone who is out and about are young. Thirty at most it appears. Shu fits right into the crowd.
Shu’s gotten there a little early and several minutes later, at one o’clock, a young man is led to her table by the maître d’ and joins her.
“Ms. Mei?”
“Yes?”
The man smiles. “Really a lovely time of year for violet hydrangeas, wouldn’t you say?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Shu replies, repeating the passphrase that we’d rehearsed before, “I’m a much bigger fan of blues one. Prettier, I think.”
The man looks around casually and then takes a seat. He places an order on the touchpad that’s at each table and a coffee shortly arrives on a conveyor belt that runs by each table. It’s like one of those sushi boat places, but for everything.
We then learn the full story.
There was an assassination attempt. It failed. Xi was injured but is still in charge. Supposedly. No one’s entirely sure. During his convalescence though, party secretaries Hu and Ji and have taken the helm, consolidating princeling control. There is a very tight rein on the information in the politburo so aside from these details, the governor’s office doesn’t currently know much else. For the past nine months, apparently behind the scenes in Beijing, the situation had descended into chaos.
“And the virus?”
“Chinse CDC is rolling out vaccinations across the entire country. It appears like the incident in Urumqi was not authorized by the Standing Committee at all.”
Back in the hotel room, Alan and I look at each other. A rogue element inside the CCP?
“Good lord, this must have been what the Soviet Union was like when it fell.” I mutter. “No one seems to know what’s entirely going on. Is Xi dead? Is he alive? Is he on the mend? Does anyone even know?”
Alan grimaces. “They managed to end that without total nuclear annihilation. Let’s hope we’re so lucky.”
Coleman and Deepak are sitting on the bed and they’ve been watching everything play out as well. Deepak strokes his chin thoughtfully.
“It’s impressive, actually,” Deepak muses. “While you’d think that China is entirely under the control of Beijing, the thirty-four individual provinces have actually been able to manage on their own with little direction from Zhongnanhai.”
“It makes sense, right?” Coleman replies. “Just because it’s a communist regime doesn’t mean there’s no bureaucracy. After all, it’s communism, not anarchy. There’s a huge state apparatus. Just because the figurehead or great leader at the top is incapacitated, it doesn’t been the entire system just falls apart. That’s why there’s a politburo and standing committee. There’s an entire hierarchy in place to ensure continuity of government in case of events like these.”
For day-to-day operations, it makes sense the each province possessed a fair amount of autonomy. Not to pass laws or for self-rule, but simply for logistical reasons. Each province is managed by two governmental figures; both (of course) appointed: The province governor who manages the ins-and-outs of the province. And a committee secretary who serves as the CCP liaison between the governor and the politburo. Together, the two are expected to work in harmony to keep the great machinery of government and municipality running smoothly.
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
Xenophobia is the key to the hearts and minds of the fearful everywhere. It’s been that old reliable standby that’ll never let you down. When you’re in dire straits, appeal to people’s sense of uncertainty and doubt. There’ll always be a reliable subset of the population that’ll act from a desire to avoid a worst-case scenario. This is your go-to workhorse.
Following the analysis that Alan had done with the anosmia outbreak data, we relocate to Guangzhou, several provinces away from Shingatse. As the gateway city to Hong Kong by rail, Guangzhou has long been a fixture of southern China. With a history dating back over 2,200 years, it was once the maritime terminus of China’s Silk Road; people who crossed the continent would put their wares on the barges on the port of the Pearl River and from there, Hong Kong was a mere 120 kilometers away. Founded in 1842, Hong Kong was the single most important colony the British Empire would ever establish on the mainland. But in 1997, all of that came to a crashing end. As the British Empire continued the last legs of its decline, China gained a new foothold upon the world stage.
The end result after the handover was calamitous as you might imagine.
The Honk Kongese resisted it every step of the way. Over a century of western influence had made its mark. Modern with western manners, the people who Hong Kong despised many of the more rural, ruder, and cruder Chinese citizens who poured into their city after the handover. In the western world, we obey traffic signals like red lights. But in Guangzhou, where the first Chinse wave first originated, stopping at red lights is optional.
When I first set foot in Guangzhou, I also noticed the rural population there had a habit of spitting everywhere.
“That is positively disgusting,” Kristen says, making a face. “How can they just spit everywhere?”
“It’s a habit you’ll see here in the country,” Shu says, “the Chinese people, especially here in the rural areas, have long believed that expelling saliva– especially when you’re ill– is critical to good health. All of those toxins, is the thinking, you must eject from your body at the first opportunity.”
Kristen crinkles her nose and just grimaces.
While I’ve never set foot in Hong Kong, I’ve seen plenty of VODs of the city when I was researching China’s other autonomous regions. And while the city is significantly smaller– only 7.5 million residents compared to Xinjiang’s 22 million, I can totally understand why rampant anti-Chinese and xenophobic sentiment rages in full force. For the Hong Kongese, China’s communist and conformist ways is 100% diametrically opposed to Hong Kong’s capitalist ways– one of the world’s financial supercenters. The norms, traditions, cultures, and entire value systems are just violently different.
One report, around traffic fatalities that I found, was particularly illuminating. A decade later, over 87% of the traffic accidents and fatalities caused in Hong Kong were from mainlanders who’d streamed in to the city. It wasn’t racism; it was just pattern-recognition. Unfettered Chinese pouring into the already densely-packed city– was proving to have disastrous results with fatal consequences.
“Everyone always says they want diversity,” Coleman had said, when I’d shown him the report. “But they only want good diversity or harmless diversity. Once the rubber meets the road, it’s really a heavy lift.”
Alan’s data leads us to a hospital in the Guangzhou province where the cases of anosmia first spiked and after spending a night on the phones and making a series of calls, Alan’s managed to get a meeting with one of midlevel people in the governor’s office. It’s a simple meeting in a café.
Of course we can’t just have a bunch of foreigners walking into the cafe. And Alan’s been apparently flagged so he can’t go either. Because of its close proximity to Hong Kong, Guangzhou was one of the first regions set up to be entirely electronically surveilled with CCTV and facial recognition cameras everywhere.
So Shu volunteers to go while the rest of us camp out in a hotel room that’s half-a-block away from the café.
In the hotel we’ve booked two rooms and when Shu emerges from the other, after having cleaned up, she’s back to looking like her normal lustrous self. CRISPR was really a thing. And it worked. On her way out, she catches me in the hallway just as I’m returning from the vending machines. It’s just the two of us in the dimly lit hall.
“How do I look?”
She looks dazzling but that’s actually not what I have on my mind.
“Shu, are you sure you want to do this?” I ask her, one final time. “We don’t know what’s out there. And we don’t even know if we have anything. We just have a lead. Some wild hunch. Is it worth the risk just wanting to find out more?”
Shu smiles and pats me on the cheek.
“It’s sweet of you, Dexter, to be concerned. But wouldn’t you want to know if everyone back in your home was murdered?”
“That’s a strong word. And I honestly don’t know if I would,” I say. “I mean, even if we find out, so what? You’re going to just march into the National Assembly and throw it into Xi’s face? Or whoever’s now in charge?”
“I don’t know,” Shu admits, “but if Alan thinks this is a possible lead, then I trust him. We can’t just this be a mystery until the end of time.”
“Are unsolved mysteries really so bad?”
She pauses a moment to collect her thoughts and I wait, standing. Candy bar in hand, on the ragged stained carpet while a lightbulb flickers at the end of the hall.
“Unresolved mysteries aren’t bad,” Shu finally says, “and I’ll admit I don’t know all the fancy stuff that you and the others do. But all I do know is if I don’t this now, it’ll hang over me until the end of my days. I can’t just walk away from this.” She looks at me.
“Sometimes we do something not because we want to. But because we know we’ll regret it forever if we don’t. Does that make sense?”
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
When I find Deepak, he’s smoking a cigarette and is gazing out over the balcony railing with that familiar thousand-yard stare. Alan and Shu’s apartment overlooks one of the quieter side streets in Shingatse and it’s midafternoon. There’s just a lone dried-pork-on-a-stick vendor who’s pedaling his greasy food on the street corner next to the locked bicycle racks. Alan and Shu live next to a giant karaoke place that looks like it once used to be the life of the town on Friday nights. But all that’s over now, remnants of a long-ago, fading world.
I light up a cigarette of my own and set my elbows on the rusted railing, leaning up against it. Together, Deepak and I puff away for a moment in mutual silence. It’s a golden, unwritten ritual among smokers everywhere. Sometimes, smokers just need to smoke. Helps clear the mind.
“You know what your problems all are?” he finally says, after taking a long drag, still looking out over the street. “No one wants to pull the lever. Everyone wants the trolley to go that way, but no one wants to actually be the one to do it.”
A single man, divorced with no wife or kids. I know the broad strokes of Deepak’s story. He’s a man with no family so he took on a new mission. Someway to leave a legacy, to make a dent on the world that’s quickly leaving him behind with each passing day.
“We are dying a slow death by a thousand cuts every month, every year. And the global community’s completely paralyzed, crippled by too many voices, to decide on a single course of action,” Deepak is saying, all while gesticulating pointedly.
It’s all a spiel I’ve heard before but I patiently listen and nod my head at all the right times. Deepak’s receding hairline on his balding dome glints in the afternoon sun.
“…and now we have a chance! We could be that change, Dexter! Us!“
I nod. Of course we could.
“I just don’t understand why everyone wants to hold China responsible,” and the frustration’s clear in his voice, “they’ve found a way to control the population in order to address a greater disaster that’s an existential threat to all of humanity.” He shakes his head. “China’s the only country that’s doing what needs to be done.“
Deepak Chopra grew up in the slums of New Delhi as a child and had spent his childhood nights in the street under starless, smog-infested skies. The fact that he was able to climb from such humble beginnings to the heights that he occupied now, he used as a forever-wedge, ammunition that he deployed frequently and widely in any argument. If he could do it, then anyone could do it. People made their own luck. And that those who lived in abject poverty deserved it and were just too lazy to help themselves. So they were always looking for handouts.
It’s a worldview I know very well. Because, I guess, once upon a time it was my own. But while it’s true we make our own luck, that’s only half the story. Fortune may favor the bold but that doesn’t mean you just launch everyone else into the sun. At least, I’m not there yet.
Deepak finally tires himself out and that’s my cue.
“Man, I agree with everything you’re saying and I hear you loud and clear,” I start, “and I totally agree. You’re right. You’re absolutely right. We are not a global community and we are not one world. You don’t pay taxes to the government of the world. You pay taxes to the government of America. To India. To China.”
“And I agree someone needs to do what it takes,” I say gently, “but do you really want it to be China? You want them at the top when it’s all over and all the dust has settled?”
Deepak frowns.
“You know as well as I do that one country’s benefit is another country’s loss. China’s going to come out of this as the new global superpower with the fortunes of the western world rapidly waning. Is that a future you wish to live in? This new world order?”
“Of course not,” Deepak says disgustedly and he lights up another cigarette. “But do we really have a choice, Dex? They may be red but they’re the only people actually doing anything.”
“And why is immediate action so important?” I counter. “I agree with you about climate change. But why the urgency? I see temperatures slowly rising and sea levels creeping up. But no one’s dying yet.”
“Hundreds of thousands are dying in Africa and the other most impoverished regions in the world every year!” Deepak replies hotly. “Millions probably, because you can’t trust the numbers.”
“And so what?” I rebut. “Are they contributing to global GDP? Producing the great scientists and artists of tomorrow? The great minds that are shaping humanity’s next generation?”
“They’ll be lucky if they even live to the next generation! You think millions of poor people who live in poor countries and have no means of escape should suffer the consequences of rich industrialized nations?”
The opening I’ve been waiting for.
“You, yourself, immigrated from India, did you not? As a child? Poor people from poor countries will find a way to get out, if they really desire it. People make their own luck.”
To this, Deepak is silent and I swoop in for the haymaker.
“Besides, if we kick the can down the road long enough, you know people and humanity always do their best when we have our backs up against the wall. As a species, we’ve never failed. Malthus prophesized imminent doom from overpopulation and famine. But when we were really up against it, we cranked out Norman Borlaug. In the 70s, America did nothing and gave the Soviets a huge head start but we got Neil to the moon first, didn’t we? And reaching even father back, while Europe burned and Hitler and the Nazis marched across the continent, America twiddled its thumbs. But when we finally entered the war, you know what happened? Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We ended it.
“America, and humanity– we’re the comeback kids. In the history of our species, we’ve never faced any threat we didn’t beat, no matter how long we ignored it for. We play best from behind. In fact, it’s the only way we play.”
Deepak’s silent a long time. But I know I’ve got him cornered. Checkmate is always checkmate.
“So what are you proposing?” he finally asks.
“We’ve been asleep at the wheel long enough,” I say. Finishing my cigarette, I flick its stub out into the street and stand up from the railing.
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
“Very well,” Coleman says, “all that is well and good. But out with it.” He looks straight at Alan.
“Why are we here? Why’d you ask for us back?”
Alan shifts around uncomfortably in his seat, it feels to me like he’s wrestling with how to express himself properly in convincing fashion. Our encounter so far hasn’t exactly been inspiring utmost confidence.
“I’ve been looking at the data,” Alan finally says. “And I think we have a chance to change things.”
“Don’t you care?” asks Shu. “Don’t you want to see the people behind the greatest genocide in human history held accountable?”
“Accountable for what? They had a vaccine ready,” says Deepak. “They vaccinated who they wanted to save –people like us– and let the rest die in a Russian Roulette-style extermination. Besides, being vaccinated isn’t some slam dunk either– it’s just helps. There was randomness and an element of chance. Anyone of us could’ve still all died, you know. You’ve seen the movie. Balance in all things.“
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you,” Shu exclaims. “How about the rest of the world? Europe, Africa, the Americas? The virus has killed tens of millions!”
“You’re going to blame the rest of the world for not being ready?”
“China had a cure that it didn’t share!”
“Since when is it China’s responsibility to care about the world?”
“It needs to care when it causes the problem!”
Now it’s Deepak’s turn to look incredulous. He stands up. He’s had a few drinks at this point and I suddenly remember that for the nine months we were holed away in that monastery in the land of the Dali Lama and Tibetan enlightenment that he’d been pouring over research and studies that entire time.
“You know what’s a problem?” Deepak exclaims, swinging his drink around wildly and some rum spills out. “Overpopulation! Environmental degradation! Climate change! Polar ice caps melting!
“In the past nine months, after they shut down all vehicular traffic in Beijing, after just month again, the Chinese saw something they haven’t seen in over a century– a clear blue sky. This winter, for the first time ever, polar bears aren’t going to have their home incinerated–“
“People are dying by the tens of millions and you care about polar bears?“
“It’s not just about polar bears and penguins! If the polar ice caps completely flood, sea levels will rise! All coastal areas will flood! New York, San Francisco, and the entirety of Japan? Gone.“
I’m watching this exchange degenerate in real-time. Shu was tending to Alan but now she’s forgotten all about him and is fuming. In fact, she’s grown so angry that I’m afraid she’s going to punch Deepak instead.
“Alright, guys, hold on. Before someone get another blackeye.” I turn to Alan. “Finish what you were saying.” I glare at both Deepak and Shu. “We’ll leave aside the moment the question of blame. Just tell us.”
Shu and Deepak glare at each but manage to stay silent and Alan takes that as his cue.
“Right,” Alan sighs, “so here’s what I found out. Generally, epidemiology is tough. In the early days, you’ve got people coming in from all over reporting all kinds of symptoms. Much of it is just your run-of-the-mill common cold or flu. Headaches, nausea, etc. The truth is much of the time, we don’t even know we have a pandemic on our hands until it’s arrived.”
Alan taps several keys and a holo-projection pops up. It’s a time-lapse of the past nine months and how COVID-59 had spread. At first brush, it’s exactly what you would expect. There was a red bubble around Urumqi which had slowly metastasized.
“But, what’s interesting about COVID-59 is that it possesses one unique trait far more rarely observed– early infected patients– no matter what background; age, gender, race, or geographic background– always reported one consistent symptom– the sudden disappearance of one’s sense of smell– anosmia.“
“We already tried looking at this,” Kristen says, shaking her head. “Trying to identify the etiology of the disease by narrowing by symptoms. It didn’t yield any additional insight.”
“Ah, but did you run it with internal Chinese state hospitalization data?” Alan says. “Our other set of books?”
He taps another few keys and a new map pops up on the holo-projection over the coffee table. This one is different. Interestingly, it shows that the virus did not originate in Urumqi. But rather, there was another place before that which had red dots.
Kristen stares at the holo-map, dazed. “This… this is extraordinary.”
“Yes, but isolating the cases of anosmia in the country around the start of COVID-59, you see that there were already several growing hotspots in China, namely Guangzhou.”
Guangzhou is the gateway between Hong Kong and China– second to Xinjiang, it was previously the most contested and riotous autonomous region in China.
“This is crazy,” Deepak says, throwing up his hands in a huff. “I’m not gallivanting off to some other far-off corner of China to pursue something that I honestly don’t believe is a problem. Honestly, the whole lot of you are delusional! If anything, you should be thanking the CCP! They’ve averted global famine, or at least postponed the End of Days for several decades!”
With that Deepak storms out of Alan’s apartment, slamming the door behind him.
I’ve been around the block enough times to have seen this act before. Someone always needs to be talked off the ledge at some point.
Kristen starts to rise off the sofa to go after Deepak but I wave her off and get up instead.
“I’ve got this, I’ll go talk to him,” I say.
“You know he’s not entirely wrong,” she says quietly. “He’s just saying what we’re all thinking.”
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
Undoing centuries of culture and community was not a challenge for the faint of heart. And it took every tool in the toolbox for the CCP to achieve its aim. But like everything the CCP did, there was neither subtlety nor patience in the endeavor. Change was a blunt instrument brought to bear, all at once, in a single stroke.
When you are occupying a foreign land, there are generally two approaches. And it’s entirely a numbers game. The first approach is if you’re the minority population numbers-wise.
“For example,” Deepak had once explained to us. “The British in India. No matter what the British did, they would never outnumber the number of Indians on the subcontinent which was at the time 500 million and counting. While there were only a few thousand British. Thus, the English were destined to forever only be a minority in the country.”
This is why the grand British experiment had ultimately failed in India. (At least, according to Deepak.) And had also failed in the Americas. And in North Africa, the Caribbean, and China (then, Manchuria). They simply never had the numbers on their side. So they tried to win hearts and minds instead. Hence, to this day, the English that is spoken in India still carries a heavy British influence and intonation. “Trousers” instead of “pants”; “rubbish bin” instead of “trash can.” Etc, etc.
When you are the numerical minority, you need to try to win mindshare and you need to convince and persuade. This is the first approach of colonialism and foreign occupation.
“This,” Alan explains patiently, “is obviously not what China did.”
He’s sitting upright in the armchair holding a bag of frozen peas to his cheek, which is now rapidly swelling. Alan grimaces as Shu rubs some ointment on his face– a nasty cut has opened right beneath his right eye.
And then, Alan goes on to explain, the second approach.
Pioneered by the thirteen colonies in the new world, the second approach is when you possess –or will possess– overwhelming numerical superiority. In this case, you can swoop in, bulldoze the native lands, and steamroll all of the aborigines to get your way.
“There’s no need to win hearts and minds if you simply assimilate all of the willing and annihilate anyone who resists,” as Deepak had once told us. “The Christopher Columbus and John Smith model of occupation. People forget this sometimes, but before the British colonists, back in 1619, North America actually already had people on it.”
So what happened to the existing indigenous population?
“Oh, it’s simple,” Deepak explained, shrugging. “You simply shunt them off into reservations– a tiny fraction of their previous homeland while you– the American majority– subsume everything else. Then in several generations, they’ll either all have been assimilated –via money, wealth, fame, promises of a better life, etc– or have died off.”
We call this approach The American Model: Success and achievement via brute, unrelenting, numerical force.
“The Chinese are a proud people but they’re not above picking and borrowing from the best ideas,” Alan says. “As Deepak had wrote up in his report– in 1619 with Jamestown, the US pioneered a new model of occupation that was a wild and smashing success. So being the keen students of history that they are, the CCP simply used that exact same playbook in Xinjiang.”
Alan taps a few keys on his laptop and I see several charts flash onto the screen. It’s an illustrated comparison of the Uyghur birthrate in Xinjiang compared to the Chinese birthrate. Suffice it to say, the Chinese population is significantly outstripping the Uyghur birthrate by at least threefold.
In my head, another piece suddenly falls into place.
Even before we had joined the project, I remember now that the previous team who had worked in Xinjiang ahead of us had focused their energies on encouraging feminism, equal rights, and a higher standard of living in Xinjiang. They’d hoped to tap into some of the repression of the Muslim community but at the time, I hadn’t understood the reasoning. But now I understood– it was clear as day.
All of the data unequivocally shows, as clear as day, that with industrialization and rising gender equality, birthrates will always sharply plummet. Research has long demonstrated that every society which possessed more educated women also likewise results in declining family sizes and birthrates. As women flourished and were able to pursue their dreams, many chose careers and started families later or not at all.
Masquerading as champions of gender equality and progressivism, China had poured resources into Xinjiang that had encouraged women to become increasingly independent. To begin with, it’s only been the small things– like being able to drive their own cars or not have to wear hajibs. But freedom begets more freedom. And while the Uyghur women were probably never going to be using Kindlr or whatever app of the day for loose, casual hookups, the CCP had done everything in its power to empower women in the region.
It took several decades, but the Chinese plan had slowly over a generation gained traction. The Uyghur women got a taste of freedom and liked it. Within sixty years, liberalization had begun sweeping the land– more women working and fewer tending to families. And families were increasingly smaller and wealthier– better adapted to fit the “knowledge economy” that was increasingly the only way to make a living anymore as living standards had slowly ticked ever upwards over the decades.
The second leg of the plan, then, was to somehow “deal” with the conservative, religious right– bastions of Uyghur culture and identity. Under no circumstance would women from those households ever be working or empowered, despite the CCP’s best efforts. The deeply religious stuck dogmatically to their doctrine, praying at the mosques five times a day, holding steadfast to their beliefs.
And so Beijing developed COVID-59– the ace in their back pocket. A biological agent to break the religious right by using their most cherished strength against them: Their belief.
“Logical people are the least dangerous and the most easily tricked,” Deepak had concluded. “Rational people who listen to science and follow the data are the most easily convinced. You simply show them ‘data’ and ‘new facts’ and you’ve changed their ‘enlightened minds’. It’s the people who believe against all reality who are the most dangerous. Convincing or destroying this set of people in Xinjiang will be what the effort hinges upon– the difference between overwhelming success and outright failure.”
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
Turning a bustling metropolis into a barren, disease-ridden wasteland isn’t exactly something that I can put on my CV so on the car trip over to Alan’s undisclosed, mysterious location, I’m mostly contemplating my future in silence. Or what might be left of it at this point. With COVID-59 having killed off 12% of the global population and climbing, it’s unclear to me if after this ordeal concludes, that there’ll be much of a world to return to.
I should mention, by the way, if it seems that we’re relatively nonchalant about a global pandemic that’s killing off tens of millions, it’s because we were vaccinated. We’d gotten our shots about nine months ago right at the very start before we’d gotten shipped down here to Shingatse (near Bhutan). Of course, I hadn’t known this then– they’d fed us some line at the time about the immunization being a standard, run-of-the-mill flu shot. It was only later that Alan had told us the entire story. And that’s when the pieces had really settled in– the enormity of what was in the process of happening.
The truck pulls up at an unremarkable, nondescript building in what must be downtown Shingatse and we climb out of the back. Alas, no more plush, black Lincoln town cars for this motely crew– we ride in the back of Libyan demolition trucks now. This is what the world has come to.
“What do you think he wants?” Kristen asks. It’s only midmorning but I can already smell the booze on her breath. While I probably should’ve seen it coming, of all of us, Kristen was the one who became raging drunk these past nine months while everything had unfolded. Coleman had taken up weights and Deepak and retreated deep into his studies. I’d thrown myself into work– we weren’t officially on assignment from the CCP any longer but we’d still had our laptops and they’d left our data access credentials intact. The night we’d departed Urumqi had been harried and frantic.
I’d been asleep in my room in bed when I’d heard the slight rustling of sheets and felt someone gently shake me awake. When I finally came to, in my groggy and hazy state, it was Shu beside my bed, fully dressed in a white winter parka and duffel in hand, ready to go.
“Wait– what?”
“Shhhhh,” she’d said softly. “Get your things, Dexter, it’s time to go.”
By the time I’d properly dressed and gathered my few things, the others were already all waiting downstairs at the landing.
“What’s going on?” I’d asked Alan.
“Never mind,” he’d said. “It’s time to go. There’s a car awaiting you guys outside. Stay in Shingatse. Accommodations have been set up. Under no circumstances go to the airport or try to leave the country. They’ll get you.”
“Who’ll get us?”
My head was spinning. It was the middle of the night. What on earth was going on?
Alan sighed and looked at all of us. Coleman’s the only one who appears as confused as I am while Deepak looked still half-asleep. Only Kristen, I remember, had a hard look on her face. Outside, it was pitch black and rain had started coming down, hard. There was a black town car awaiting us in the oval and it slowly dawned in me: We were four foreigners at the far end of the world in the middle of the night.
“Guys,” Alan finally said, “there’s been a coup. Xi Wiping’s out. It’s unclear who’s at the top now but whoever it is, you guys are better off away from this whole mess. It’s time to go. We’ll be in touch. Remember, no matter what, no airports. Don’t try to leave the country. No matter what.”
With that, we’d all gotten into the car and had left. That was nine months ago.
And now we were getting into another car and going back. Going back to where it all began.
When Shu opens the door, I see inside they’re in a small apartment. It’s old but Shu has noticeably kept it clean and tidy. I see Alan in a faded white shirt wearing striped suspenders in the back working at a desk. For some reason, his left arm is in a makeshift sling.
“Dexter! Kristen! So good to see all of you!” Shu gives me a hug and I think, ah—she must’ve been vaccinated too.
Even here, in the middle of po-dunk China, away from all the glitz and glamour, Shu is looking magnificent. Her face is maybe a little tired and there’s some lines and crinkles around her eyes that I don’t remember before. And her hair may not have the same bright luster that I last remembered. But raging global pandemic considered, she looks great.
“Hold this,” Kristen says and she pushed a brown paper bag concealing a bottle into Shu’s chest. Brusquely pushing past Shu, Kristen stomps over to Alan, who’s still sitting at his desk. Alan looks up.
“Kristen! Good to–“
POW! Kristen socks Alan straight across the face. His glasses go flying off and he reels back in his chair, actually falling out of it onto the barren clay floor. I’ve never seen a megaton nuclear warhead detonate but this surely comes close, I’m fairly confident.
“You lying sack of shit!”
Kristen winds up and looks like she’s about to kick Alan in the ribs while he’s down but Coleman dashes over and restrains her, barely in the nick of time, knocking over stacks of books on the coffee table. Sheafs of paper go flying.
“Oh my God, you crazy woman!” Alan shouts from his fetal position on the ground, his arms covering his head as is expecting another attack. “I had nothing to do with it, nothing! I didn’t know!”
“Like hell you didn’t know!” yells Kristen; Coleman’s arms are still wrapped around her waist, holding her back. But even with all of that Bowflex muscle master training, I can see he’s straining to keep Kristen restrained. Hell hath no fury like a woman’s wrath.
“He didn’t know!” Shu says, running over and is kneeling at Alan’s side. “None of us did!”
“If I was part of this, do you I think I would’ve sent you all away?!” Alan exclaims, massaging his jaw in disbelief with his good hand. “We’ve been tapped here for the past year just like you guys!”
I look around and finally have a moment to absorb our dingy surroundings. It’s a small one-bedroom apartment and from appearances, it looks like Shu’s been living in the bedroom while Alan’s been camped out here in the common area. There’s a small kitchenette, a small desk that Alan had been working out, and two crummy looking sofas and a coffee table; all three look like they’d been extracted from a dumpster at some point in time.
It was not exactly a shining image of luxury. And Kristen seems to have finally taken a moment to absorb everything too– she looks like she’s finally calmed down a bit. Deepak spies a crystal decanter half-full of something amber in the corner. He saunters over to pour several glasses and hands us each a tumbler.
“Alright, alright, I think we need to start at the beginning.” He takes a seat on the fraying sofa and takes a long sip. “What do you guys know?”
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
Simply put, COVID-59 had been a great filter –a biological one– that the CCP unleashed on the unsuspecting Uyghur population. Those who listened to Beijing were most likely to make it through the ordeal. Obedience was tested in a way like never before, with very real-world and lethal consequences for non-adherents. Additionally, even long after the vaccine was “discovered”– the effects of the virus in the aftermath was profound– its effects lingered. People were afraid to congregate in large groups. An air of suspicion descended upon the land and hung over every physical human interaction like a dark cloud. Anyone could be a lethal carrier. You could never be too careful since every interaction was now suddenly a mechanism of possible contagion. Sure, maybe you wanted to catch the latest movie at theaters with friends. But was it worth possibly dying to go? More than any other measure in human history, COVID-59 attacked the core of civilized society– community. It isolated and divided us. And in our isolation, our worst imagined fears controlled us because we could no longer interact with others. So we listened to the state because it became not just the mainline, but the only line of information that we had.
COVID-59 was a state-created instrument of fear– it drove and kept people apart. And it made them obedient. Since its founding, the CCCP had always disallowed the freedom of assembly. (When you gathered in groups, you got Tiananmen Square.) But realistically, you couldn’t just deploy a phalanx of tanks to steamroll your citizens every time a protest sprung up. Though the CCP would’ve loved to do that and possessed no moral or ethical qualms about such a suppression technique, the logistics were just impossible. How were you supposed to deploy a tank squadron into the Himalayan mountains of Tibet with half-a-day’s notice if the Dalai lama started getting spicy and having ideas? And if you did somehow to miraculously fly a C-130 over to para-drop protestor-squashing tank battalions in some remote range of Nepal, chances were that the flash mobs would’ve long disbanded and dissipated back into the ether long before you got there.
China was a big country. And it was difficult to stomp our suppression in all its corners and pockets.
But a virus. A biological agent that could literally be everywhere, all at once. This was ingenious— precisely the big brother and (lethal) consequence-dispensing mechanism that the Chinese Communist Party had always dreamed about. COVID-59 answered all the CCP’s prayers in one fell swoop– it was the complete package.
Let’s not mince words here: This was biological genocide on a sweeping scale– one unlike any the world had ever seen.
Oh, the world.
The world was an unfortunate casualty, several tens-of-millions dead, an unpleasant side-effect of the CCP’s grand scheme. Of course, at one point, COVID-59 had escaped China. How could it not? It wasn’t like the CCP exactly took measures to prevent its worldwide spread. In fact, for weeks after the initial outbreak, the Chinese had publicly in truly reality-distortion-bubble fashion, steadfastly maintained that there was no virus. Even as hundreds, and then thousands, and then tens of thousands of Uyghurs began growing deathly ill and perished. For those critical first few weeks, international flights continued flying. Conferences, concerts, and mass sporting events were all continued to be held. And for fourteen-days, it was total open season for COVID-59 as it spread itself silently to all over the world as the CCP gave it plausibility and cover and deniability to spread.
As for me? I’m okay. Sure, I have my low moments. And the knowledge that a plan I helped devise has somehow come to life and killed tens of millions does weigh on me. But honestly, the human mind is incapable of processing horror of such scale. Our evolution is strong and we possess plenty of defensive mechanisms to rationalize and console. Sure, we’d developed a plan. But it was a fictional plan. Yes, we’d crunched all the numbers to present a realistic cover story– how many hospitalizations, how many deaths, the rate of spread, etc. All of the metrics to make the story believable. But again, it had been a fictional exercise. I was more like a screenwriter or a fan-fiction creator, just fantasizing imaginary scenarios. Just because I wrote a gender-bent Harry didn’t mean I actually wanted one.
Also, from that fateful meeting with Governor Wu, it’d taken a short six weeks before, we now know, patient zero had started the spread in the Urumqi fish market. Three weeks! So, certainly– somewhere in some frozen biohazard storage locker somewhere in the bowels of some deep-underground Chinese dungeon, the CCP had clearly already been working on COVID-59. Maybe already for years even. So the building blocks had all been there. It’s not like they’d created the virus because of us.
Besides, the official line from Beijing was that this was freak of nature incident. An unholy unfortunate consequence of contamination at the fish market by bat feces or someone eating a rodent or something. I can’t remember now, but there’d been some sort of story that was of course entirely speculated, completely unverifiable, and yet simply presumed the truth by everyone somehow.
Surely, you couldn’t put this crisis at our feet, right?
That day that Coleman and Deepak had somehow commandeered pizza was the day that we’d gotten the call though. It’d been simple and had arrived by secure message on our smartphones.
RETURN. CAR WILL BE BY AT 2P. -ASV
Alan, Shu, and Van. We were being summoned back, somewhere.
“Hmm,” Kristen says, looking at her phone, still eating her pizza slice. “Do we go back?” A crease has formed between here eyebrows.
“Do we have a choice?” asks Deepak.
“Just when I was starting to get used to this place,” Coleman says while lifting a dumbbell with one hand. He taken up weight training for the nine-month duration that we’d been holed up and his once scrawny frame and had grown impressively lean and muscular. The kid was 23, good lord. Did I possess such drive back when I was his age? Of course, the monastery hadn’t had a weight room so Coleman had eminent domain’ed one of the empty rooms in on the ground floor that’d formerly, in some previous life somewhere, been a meditation space; and had had mats, dumbbells, medicine balls, rope, and a Bowflex Muscle Master 3000 flown in by drone. This was in the early days before everything had exploded into a full-scale global pandemic. Back when if you had enough money, you could still get the drones to deliver whatever you wanted or needed to anywhere you were willing to pay for. Even a far-flung monastery in the hinterlands of the Tibetan outskirts.
Coleman’s biceps were now the size of my head. Like I’d said, we’d had a lot of downtime.
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
“Record number of hospitalizations continue for a second week as the novel coronavirus sweeps around the world.”
“With no end in sight, the global death count continues to mount day over day from this horrifying new virus.”
“World leaders are powerless…”
“Turn it off,” Kristen says from the bed. “I don’t need to hear any more. I really don’t.”
I click the remote but nothing happens. I click it again but still no avail.
“Sorry, I think the remote’s dead.” I’m lying on the sofa opposite the small television in the room. It’s where I’ve been the past two days.
“Get up and turn it off.”
“I would if I could. But I can’t.”
“Oh my God, you are the laziest sad sack of human being ever.” Kristen gropes around the bedside and find her left heel which she hurls at the display. She misses by a solid meter to the right.
The front door knob starts turning and my body involuntarily tenses. A moment later, Deepak and Coleman just push in from the outside though and I relax again. Deepak shoves aside the empty beer cans on the round table in the room to clear space and Coleman’s carrying a carboard box what smells, miraculously, like pizza.
“Breakfast is here!” Coleman says, rubbing his hands together. “Oh my God, it’s cold out there.”
By “out there,” Coleman of course is referring to the Tibetan Himalayas. That’s right, we’re still in China. At this rate, we might never leave. But instead of the Four Seasons in downtown Shanghai, the powers that be have saw fit to hole us away in a secluded monastery nestled in a small hamlet a few meters from China’s border with Bhutan. There’s a stone tower with a gong in it that sounds every hour and the walls of the monastery are built with query stone that I suspect likely predate all of China.
“How on earth did you guys find pizza?” Kristen asks, as she leans over to grab a slice, still underneath the warm covers.
“State secret,” Coleman says and he takes another bite.
“Uh huh, right.”
Still, no one’s complaining. It’s been a long nine months. To me, it seems like just last week we were in Governor Wu’s office in Urumqi explaining our plan. Little did we know how literally it would be taken. For weeks after the meeting, we’d been housed under Chinese state security in Urumqi. It hadn’t been so bad. We’d continued to work on our models and crunch the numbers. When escorted by Alan or Shu and a few plainclothes guardsmen, we’d even been allowed to wander around Urumqi for a bit. We’d visited and worshipped at the mosque which required that we all dressed in shapeless clothing that covered all skin. Kristen had also needed to wear a hijab that covered her face, neck, and all hair. All in all, for those first few weeks at least, it had felt somewhat like an extended vacation.
And then just six short weeks later, we started hearing reports of a viral illness which had supposedly originated at the local Tuesday morning fish market. And from there, everything, in rapid order, spiraled as all hell broke loose.
I don’t often think about the past because I don’t consider it a useful exercise. Generally, I don’t feel like we make mistakes. Because if we’re doing the best we can with what we have at any given point in time, can you really call it a mistake? Is not having enough information a crime?
But looking back at the path we’ve traveled so far, I think it’s fair game to say that we probably could have done things differently. It is conceivable, or at least within the realm of possibility, that we possible hadn’t acted with the utmost wisdom in the matter.
What the Xi government ended up doing really makes perfect sense if you think about it. The most daunting roadblock to usurping any region of people is religion. For Islam, praying five times a day in a mosque towards the qibla (formerly the direction of Jerusalem; now the direction of Mecca, after 624 CE), is a paramount, core part of their faith. In this way, COVID-59 was genuinely a bonafide, devout Muslim-killing virus. It selectively targeted, by the very way it was explicitly designed and engineered in Chinese labs, the people who were most faithful and dogmatic about their religion. To be clear, many Muslims adjusted and followed the advice and direction of the CCP after the virus started spreading: To not gather in large public places (like mosques) and continued to pray at home, safely and isolated.
But many more gathered en masse at Salar, Shanxi, Tata Er, and Han Teng Gi Li– the four major and largest mosques in Urumqi. Obviously, one can only venture as to guess as to their reasons and motivations for ignoring the quarantine orders, even in the face of such deadly pandemic, but they congregated and prayed five times a day, every single day. Did they believe that their faith would save them? Did they disbelieve the Chinese authorities? Only they could tell you.
But they’re all dead now. So we’ll never know. The most devout were the first to die– horrifically and en masse.
COVID-59 was frightening in its contagiousness. Most viruses carry an infection rate of 1.5-2x. Meaning for every person who caught it, it was likely any close contact between infected carriers with healthy people would likely spread every 1.5-2 people you met. But COVID-59 possessed an unfathomable 7x infection rate, putting it even more lethal that the Bubonic Plague which in the 14th century killed off over fifty million Europeans, roughly 25% to 60% of the continent at the time.
The other characteristic of COVID-59 was that it possessed a ridiculously lengthy 14-day incubation period. Unlike the Ebola virus which often killed its host in 2-3 days, COVID-59 would actually lie in wait and fester for two weeks before any symptoms began to show in its carrier host. This meant people who thought they were perfectly healthy unknowingly, if they violated state quarantine orders, were super-spreaders. Those who visited mosques not only to pray, but also to birthday parties, family dinners, and holiday events. They’re the ones who carried the virus wide and far to all they contacted and touched.
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
“Quran followers believe that the most heinous sin in all of Islam is shirk (شرك)– that is, polytheism; idolatry. Worshiping or deification of anyone of anything other than Allah.” Governor Wu looks up at us from the holy text and his expression turns wistful for a moment. “You know, it really is a shame that the Chinese and the Uyghurs were several centuries apart. In so many ways, we are one in the same.”
“China is an atheist state though, correct?” Coleman says. You can practically hear the restraint that he’s using every single muscle in his body to employ as he says this.
“Oh, sure, sure,” Governor Wu says waving his hand dismissively. “All of the details might be different–“
“–that’s a pretty freaking huge detail–“ Shu elbows Coleman in the ribs and he luckily quiets down.
“But the superstructure,” Governor Wu says grandly sweeping his arms, is the same. “Whether it be aesthetic thought or Islam, both the Chinese and the Muslim people worship a very particular narrowness in one’s way of thinking– very strict sense of judgement. In both of our countries and cultures, there is only one God. There is only one way that things are done. There is only one result that every good Muslim or Chinese citizen aspires to be. Or at least, the band of acceptable outcomes is much narrower.”
“And that’s a good thing?” I ask. “You do realize this narrowness of acceptability is exactly the source of your problem, right?”
Governor Wu shakes his head. “You Americans and your diversity. Homogeneity makes us strong. In every culture and every religion the world over through all of the ages of history, purity has always been the staple of our strength. In Judaism, it’s wool and linen or milk and meat.”
“A single field of all the same crop perishes with but a single disease.” Shu says quietly.
“Ah! A scholar, we have, do we?” Governor Wu says, amused. “Well, while it’s true that diversity may give you some resilience, it’s not a free lunch, is it? After all, whatever strength you gain from that mixing of variance, you give back many multiples over in lost efficiency, progress, consensus, and harmony. Nothing is ever for free.”
“So what are you saying?” I ask. I’m growing exasperated but am trying to not let it show in my voice. This guy here is the politburo person in charge of running all of Xinjiang, after all.
“I’m saying I like your plan,” Governor Wu says, smiling. “It’s actually more perfect than I think even you realize. As you yourselves have described in your analysis, Urumqi –and Xinjiang as a whole– is not a monolith. Like any large population, people have grown divided– the Muslim people are no exception. There is a Muslim hardliner group who think any cooperation with Beijing leads straight to hell. There are moderate Muslims who are more willing to give it a shot. And then there’s everyone else who doesn’t care one way or the other but just want to be able to put food on the table. And everything in between.”
In my head, I can see it all playing out. Once the fictional virus hit, you just knew that some groups would use it as pretext for God’s wrath. I could totally see it now: Ten of thousands being killed because and the Mullahs citing their deaths as the inevitable outcome of a vengeful God who’s gone on rampage to cleanse the land of all sinners and nonbelievers. The Virus would become anything and everything to anyone and everyone.
In fact, the more I think this out with this new information that Governor Wu has provided us, the more the picture begins to crystalize. The creation of our fictional virus would merely be a catalyst.
Xinjiang was already a powder keg waiting to explode. If a suddenly deadly, natural disaster swept the region, it really would be a golden opportunity for the CCP to declare martial law, enforce curfews, and restrict freedoms. On the Islam-side, the hardliners would feel that the wrath of God had finally descended.
There’d be chaos.
And amidst the chaos, undoubtedly, certain dissidents who’d long been thorns in Beijing’s side I’m sure would be resolved.
“For years already,” Governor Wu says, “the Uyghur populations have already been modernizing. The old ways are disappearing. Little by little. Every year, fewer young people return from Urumqi back to the rural lands. If we had the luxury to just wait fifty years or so, the outcome would be the same.”
“But you don’t want to wait, do you?” Kristen says, “Beijing wants results now.”
“Why the hurry?” Deepak asks.
“Xi Wiping knows that his days at the top are numbered,” says Governor Wu, “which is why he wants to expedite Xinjiang’s submission. Having this notch on his belt would go great lengths to helping him keep his powers consolidated.”
I take a moment to take off my glasses and wipe them down. Good lord, this thing is a total swampland. It’s even worse than in America. And I’d thought all of the backroom knife-fighting back in DC has been bad.
“You do understand,” Governor Wu says, sighing, “that Xi has never fully recovered from the Shangri-La disaster two years ago. That was a major public failing and a huge blackeye for him at the time. All of the global attention and bad press all at once. Ever since, he’s been increasingly desperate in wanting to show himself as the capable and rightful leader of the party.”
And so there it was. Once more, the lives of millions of innocent citizens would be toyed with simply for one man’s insatiable ego. Collateral damage in an interminable political war. A forever war. Succession was always a problem that authoritarian regimes had never quite ironed out. In America, Presidents did their time, and then good or bad, afterwards when four or eight years were up, everyone simply packed up and sailed off into the sunset. In China though, there were always vicious political opponents waiting to strike at even the slightest hint of weakness. This is what happens when you have no term limits. You do the job until you die or until you fail.
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
Party loyalty, it’s true, has no place in the real world. When push comes to shove, pragmatism and survival always win over all else. After all, history’s only written by the winners.
Urumqi is literally the end of the line for The Silver Dragon. It’s the very last stop for the train on the northwest route and all towns and cities north or west of Urumqi could only be further reached by car or bus. With 3.5 million people, Urumqi is the largest city in all of Central Asia and when we get off of the train, the first thing I immediately notice is that all of the people look markedly different.
“This is still China?” Coleman asks, looking around curiously. “Are you sure?”
“Oh yeah, you know Chinese communist governments,” says Deepak. “Just randomly building giant, mega-structure train terminals in other countries not their own by accident.”
Coleman’s remark is obviously inane but also makes sense. Even I am taken aback momentarily. Up until now, whether it be Shanghai, Jinshui, or Xi’an, everywhere I’ve looked, the Chinese citizens all around have appeared largely similar, at least to me. While I’m sure there are differences, whatever those were, they were subtle. Let’s just say, on my trip so far, China hasn’t exactly been the most racially diverse place that I’ve ever been to. (And this is from someone who’d grown up in Kentucky back in the United States, not exactly the most diverse place in America.)
But here in Urumqi, even to my untrained American eye, it really does feel like we’ve set foot in an entirely different country. Thicker eyebrows, rounder eyes, more elongated facial structures, longer hair, and beards. Not to mention: Probably at least every other man is wearing a–
“Why’s everyone wearing a Yamaka?” Coleman again, of course.
“Those are Taqiyyas,” Shu explains patiently, “same Abrahamic God, but different prophet. That’s why they’re so similar.”
I keep my mouth shut but I’m similarly as uninformed as Coleman. Back home in America, Islam and the Muslims weren’t exactly a demographic powerhouse in the Bluegrass State.
There is a black Lincoln town car awaiting us outside the terminal station entrance and we sweep across the lobby and descend the entrance steps dressed like royalty. I’m wearing a suit, which I haven’t worn in ages, and Coleman and Deepak have likewise cleaned up nicely. Shu’s wearing a traditional Uyghur dress which means it’s very conservative and shapeless. Not a hint of bare skin anywhere. Normally when you think about China, you don’t think about it being cold. But it’s cold. Shu’s also wearing a thick fur cap that makes me think of Russian Bolsheviks, for some reason. One’s mind makes strange connections like that.
In short order, the Lincoln town car whisks us across the city. I’d love to describe all of the interesting environs that I’d observed on the way to Urumqi’s city hall, but my mind’s too preoccupied to take in any of the surroundings. Before I know it, we’ve arrived at our appointed destination, have alighted the car, and are escorted inside and up a flight of marble stairs by a pair of armed guards wearing army fatigues to the waiting chambers outside of the governor’s office.
“Governor Wu is expecting you,” says the plump secretary who is in Wu’s outer office. “Please enter when you’re ready.”
Alan turns to look at us.
“Everyone, good?”
“Hold up a sec,” says Shu and she takes a moment to adjust mine and Deepak’s ties. It takes a minute of fidgeting before she’s satisfied.
“Alright, ready.”
“Remember, guys,” says Kristen. “Rome may not have been built in a day. But it was built one stone at a time.”
And with that, we enter Governor Wu’s office.
It’s an ornately appointed affair with dark-paneled wood, a mahogany executive desk, and large bay windows overlooking the city square. The office is sprawling with bookshelves replete with thick, leather-bound texts and journals, fancy framed awards on the opposite wall, and two sofas with a coffee table in between to entertain company. In the corner there’s even a giant grandfather clock that looks at least two centuries old.
“Welcome!” Governor Wu rises from behind his desk and walks over to greet us. Wu is a tall, wiry man with white hair and looks like he’s well into his sixties. He gestures towards the sofa couches. “Please, sit.”
Once we’re all properly situated, Coleman unloads the holo-projector, and we start our presentation.
While Alan gives his opening remarks, I turn my attention to the Governor. We’d all been given preliminary briefing material on the train on our way in and I know basic details about Wu. A longtime member of the CCP, he’d possessed a long and distinguished record as one of the politburo’s fastest rising stars in his early years. Also a descendant of princeling lineage, at some point Wu had hit a ceiling though. For whatever reason, he’d never climbed his way out of the National Assembly and into higher standing. And then three years ago, the CCP had assigned him here, to Urumqi, to be the Governor of Xinjiang.
It was unclear to me, and we even had a small pool going among the group, whether being assigned to Xinjiang had been a punishment or reward for Wu. On one hand, being flung to the most remote outpost of the sprawling Chinese empire was a little like being sent to Fargo. Conversely, Xinjiang was by far the most restive of all Chinese provinces. So maybe only the truly capable and promising were sent here. It was honestly fifty-fifty.
Half-an-hour later, we wrap up. Everyone does their bits beautifully. After Alan’s remarks, Deepak provides some historical context and then Kristen and I had present last, our proposal for the region. Once we’ve finished, Governor Wu leans back in his chair, looking thoughtful.
“That’s quite an idea,” he finally says, steepling his fingers. “It’s certainly a novel approach.” He rises from his armchair and deliberately walks over to the bookshelf to get something. When he turns, I see that he has a copy of the Quran in his hands and has put on his reading spectacles, which were hanging from around his neck.
“You know,” Wu starts, “in the Quran, there are huge swathes about eschatology— you know, what happens at the End of Times, man’s final judgment before God, and the destiny of one’s soul and of all humankind. It’s actually outlined, with impressive detail, what happens in hell, or what they call: Jahannam— that is, different levels of hell depending on your sin: al-Nar النار (‘The Fire’), Hutamah حطمة (‘That which Breaks to Pieces’), and Haawiyah هاوية (‘The Abyss’), among others.”
Wu turns to look at us.
“Do you know what is the worst possible sin that you can commit in all of Islam?”
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
Occasionally, I smoke. It’s not a typical habit but sometimes I’ll light up a cigarette when I’m feeling particularly tense or stressed out. Over the horizon, dawn’s about to break and in another hour The Silver Dragon will arrive at Urumqi. Our first appointment of the day is a nine o’clock meeting with Governor Wu at his offices in the city town hall. He’ll be expecting a status report and an outline of next steps and how we plan to proceed. Every time you walk into a client meeting, the hope is that you’ll be able to deliver wonderfully good news. That you’ve met every objective for the quarter and really knocked it out of the park. But then, sometimes, you’ll be in the situation like we’re in now. Where the news is less than stellar.
In our defense, we’ve been consistently sending periodic status updates to the governor’s office: Daily and weekly dashboard snapshots of the situation on the ground in Urumqi. So at least we’re not surprising anyone with bad news. (That’s always the first lesson in the business: Surprises are bad. Clients can (well, relatively) ingest bad news when they’re warned (repeatedly) ahead of time and made well aware of the risks along the way. But if things suddenly go pear-shaped and once-theoretical risks suddenly reify with very severe, very real-world consequences, this is when you’ve got a problem.)
But things had been steadily going downhill for the past six weeks. While our initial efforts had at first appeared promising, after the second week, incidents of petty crimes such as theft and vandalism had rebounded and climbed even higher than their previous levels. And ever since, all of our charts had been going in the wrong direction.
I hear the garden car door open behind me and turn. It’s Kristen.
“Up early, are we?” she asks. The garden car is one of the more quixotic in The Silver Dragon. Normally, China’s pretty warm and doesn’t get the deep autumn seasons. So a clever engineer somewhere along the way decided to install a “greenhouse” car on the train to emulate foliage and fauna that the Chinese don’t normally see. For urban folk –namely, the wealthy who could afford passage on The Silver Dragon— the garden car was a wonderous marvel. Most of the urban wealthy in China spent their days in soaring, airconditioned office towers all of their waking hours. To be able to enjoy nature for, even for a few hours, on a long train trip was a welcome reprieve from the pedestrian daily grind of one’s mundane Chinese life.
I’m in the garden car just because it had the proper ventilation systems to vacuum away all of my cigarette smoke though. Gotta find some way to get rid of all of the evidence, after all.
Kristen walks over and sits next to me on the garden bench. She’s wearing a dark blue suit pants; a beige, cashmere turtleneck; and golden hoop earrings. I’m pretty sure she’s also wearing heels because she seems taller. It reminds me that we’re all going to need to get dolled up when we see the governor. (And I’m suddenly reminded that I’ve spent the past two months in sweatpants in the basement of the JFL.)
“Big day, today,” I say, taking another drag on my cigarette. “We’re not exactly going in to deliver the best of news.”
Kristen shrugs. “Good news is easy. Anyone can deliver good news. It’s needing to deliver bad news and convince them to keep us around– that’s where we really earn it, right?”
I chuckle. “True, true. So very true.”
“Besides,” Kristen says brightly. “We’ve got a full-proof plan! It’s bold! It’s daring! They’re going to love it!”
“Our plan involves fabricating and maintaining a wild lie to feed to millions,” I say, sighing. “In order to strike fear and worry into the lives of millions of Chinese citizens, many of whom poor farmers and common folk who are already struggling enough as it is to make ends meet and just get by.”
Kristen clasps me on the back. “C’mon! Don’t be like that. It’s for the greater good. Isn’t that what we always tell ourselves? Follow the data? Trust the numbers? Instead of dwelling on all of the negative side effects, think about the good parts! The decrease in sectarian violence! All of the suicide bombings in the Sunday morning markets that’ll be averted!”
“Yeah, they’ll be averted because there won’t be a Sunday morning market. We’ll be asking tens of thousands to go into voluntary quarantine when this whole thing begins. Maybe even hundreds of thousands if we expand beyond Phase I.”
“You know what your problem is?” Kristen suddenly says, turning to look at me. “You, Dexter Fletcher, worry way too much.”
“Jesus Christ, woman.” I stand and flick away my cigarette, lighting another. “How can you not worry about what we’re about to propose? To the CCP, of all people?!“
“Relax,” she says. “We’re just giving a run-of-the-mill update and gently suggesting an idea. No one’s pulling the trigger on anything yet. We’re just introducing an idea into the ether.”
“An idea built on lies!”
“So what? Geez, grow up, Dexter. Look around you. I may be Australian but I’ve slaved away my fair share of man-months deep in the salt-mines of America. Where has all that free-flow of information gotten you, exactly?”
Kristen’s retort brings me short. I want to protest, but there’s a part of me that knows she’s right. America’s holiness around first amendment, free speech rights hadn’t exactly done the country any favors in the online age either. Our indices for civil unrest, crime rates, and unhappiness stood, after all, among the highest in the developed world.
“I sleep fine at night,” says Kristen, “because ultimately you need to look at the ends that we’re trying to achieve. So a few tens of thousands of people get stuck at home for a few months. Is anyone hurt or dying? No. Will some people get cabin fever? Sure, they’ll get restless and bored, probably. But you know what? Bored is better than dead.
“Additionally,” she continues. “Mom and pop businesses won’t shutter. We’re proposing that the CCP step in with one-time loans and grants after ‘the virus’ strikes. This will build gratitude in the Uyghur populations, at least among the merchant class. That in their time of need, when an Act of God unfortunately struck, that Xi’s government was there! That the Chinese Communist Party saved the day! That the Chinese National Guard built hospitals at record speed! Only in a time of emergency and desperation does everyone suddenly become fans of big government. In times of great need, everyone’s suddenly a Democrat.”
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
Notwithstanding my own massive reservations with this new proposed direction for our project, we decide to dive down this rabbit hole to see how far it goes. In life, it’s generally a net plus to maintain an open mind. It’s a truism that sometimes the best ideas originate from the least likely places and in all of my years consulting as a data scientist, I’ve definitely witnessed my fair share of harebrained ideas.
But this one, I’m fairly confident, takes home the gold: Fabricate the existence and wild spread of a fictional virus to scare the good people Xinjiang to stay at home, give Chinese authorities the cover to withdraw, let the region degenerate into complete chaos, and then have the Chinese move back in to save the day.
What on earth could go wrong?
“It’s not without precedent,” Deepak muses. “Back in 1947, the British partitioned India, picked up their toys and simply left. Sometimes if nothing’s working, it’s worth just shaking up the snow globe and trying something totally new.”
“Right,” Coleman says dryly. “And remind us all again, please, how that turned out?”
“Well, over half-a-century of bloody territorial dispute ensued between the newly formed Pakistan and India resulting in thousands of casualties and fatalities,” Deepak admits. “Not to mention, because of all of the bombings and extrajudicial bloodshed, to this day bitter religious blood-feuds among the 10-12 million displaced along the Line of Control endure still to this day.”
Kristen works the holo-table and 3D projection of Xinjiang materializes in the air. She taps several of the floating options and different parts of the region light up.
“This would be a classic ‘divide and conquer’ move,” she says, looking at Alan. “Didn’t you say earlier that’s how Mao stole all China from Chiang Kai-shek way back when?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Alan says, looking surprised that she remembered. “Chiang at one was running the show on the mainland but then depleted all of his men and forces fighting off the Japanese. By the time Chiang was finished, he’d beaten off the Empire of the Rising Sun but had nothing left to fend off Mao when the PRC swept the country. It was actually quite ingenious on Mao’s part.”
“Right, so we now essentially can use the same playbook on the Uyghurs. What we need, now, is a way to break their fighting spirit,” Kristen says aloud. I think she’s still half working out the plan for herself as she’s explaining to us. “In the beginning, everyone’s always super gung-ho about defending the homeland. Lots of patriotism and nationalism abound. But eventually, a decade in, it just becomes Vietnam all over again. The new generation won’t even understand why, what, or whom we’re fighting. And everyone then just wants to just go home.”
I begin to see what Kristen is driving at. Resistance to a regime can never entirely be eliminated. No matter what you do, and how good of a job you do, there will always be some vocal minority immensely unhappy with your effort. Like that damn air bubble you can never totally get rid of when you’re newly laying down fresh carpet. In fact, if my past few months in China had taught me anything, it was that there was actually immense value in publicly recognizing a minority opposition party– people who disagree with you but are not in control. If you don’t, then you get a setup like the CCP’s politburo: Where everyone appears to be on the same page but really all secretly harbor their own agendas. Then that’s just a slime-infested swamp of palace intrigue, backstabbing, double-and-triple-crosses, etc. It’s a complete desert wasteland where you don’t even know who’s on your side, who or where your enemies are, and anyone can be actually murdered or jailed at any moment.
In other words, modern day China.
Just because you declare some land “one harmonious kingdom singularly united under the banner of heaven” or whatever, it doesn’t mean all of the differences in political ideologies, philosophies, lineages of family rivalries, and petty interpersonal conflict just suddenly disappear overnight. You can say the words, but that doesn’t change reality– all of it just goes underground.
In America and the other modern democracies, at least you knew who your enemies were at all times. Like, the teams are very clearly delineated. At least compared to this Kabuki theater situation that existed in China. No matter the fancy system or label that you apply to a regime or group of people, at the day’s end, after all the dust’s settled, humans are going to human.
Kristen points at the two regions of the holo-map that she’s highlighted.
“This is Urumqi and roughly 315 kilometers away to the northwest is Karamay, the fourth largest city in Xinjiang at a population of about 400,00 people.”
“So about ninth the size of Urumqi,” Coleman says. “It’s also a paltry 200km from the Kazakhstani border.”
“Yes– so what we can set up,” Kristen says, “is some kind of intercity competition in Xinjiang. Right now all of the hatred and resentment in Urumqi is directed towards a single common enemy: The CCP. But what if we could frame improvement differently? Instead of seeing non-vandalism and criminal and anti-corruption measures as highhanded mandates coming down from Beijing, what if we could sway the Uyghurs into believing that they were locally creating these measures organically?”
The key to a good negotiation between two hostile sides which want nothing more than to destroy each other is always to first find common ground. No matter how much two groups of people may despise each other, no matter whatever eons of bad history may exist between them, there is always something that both parties want. That’s step one.
Then step two is to frame the proposal in a way that’s acceptable to both sides. Who came up with the idea, who gets to take the credit, who’s dictating what, etc. Sensitive egos, bouts of pride, nationalism, all that.
“Right now what we’re lacking in Urumqi is an aspirational model of what they desire to be,” I say aloud. In my head, I can’t help but think of the Puritan, John Winthrop, in 1630 having just arrived in the Massachusetts Bay. America was to “A City Upon a Hill“— a beacon of hope and light to the rest of the world of what was possible.
Without a City Upon a Hill to admire, Urumqi had no sense of direction. It was just all chaos and messiness.
We needed to give them direction. And Karamay could be that model vessel. We all need greenlights at the end of the dock, even entire cities.
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
Manufacturing pretext for a Chinese withdrawal from Xinjiang is now top-of-mind for everyone involved. We’re due to arrive in Urumqi in just under six hours and at that time, the Premier of the Western Provinces will be expecting a full report of our analysis and recommendations of further action. We had two months to put together a plan. And of course we’re going to do it all in six hours. It always, without fail, happens this way. But of course.
Luckily, we’re on a state-of-the-art train with highspeed wireless internet. And everyone’s also brought their laptops, of course. We have six hours to bang out a killer report for the Premier. It’s do-or-die time.
On consulting projects, the way it works is that the client –in this case, the Chinese Communist Party– often approaches us with some kind of general question. It always starts because the client is unhappy with something. On most traditional projects I’d done previously , it was about how to incentivize more people to sign up for health insurance or how to persuade more customers to buy Widget X this Christmas season. Projects can come in all kinds of flavors, but the two most popular are “one-time reports and recommendations” and “long-run projects.” With “one-time reports,” those simply require analysis of a previous event. For example, the giant American airport, LAX, had contacted us one summer to request that we help them analyze the catastrophic Christmas season that they’d had the previous year. Due to weather snarls, TSA security lines had taken hours, hundreds of passengers had missed flights, and it’s been a complete debacle from beginning to end, making national headlines. It was such a bad look that LAX had engaged us to perform a one-time analysis of why that particular Christmas had been so calamitous– they were keen to learn lessons and insights to prevent such disaster from ever happening again in future Christmas seasons. We engaged, worked on the project for a month, delivered a report and final presentation, and that was that.
And then there are “long-run campaigns.” These are projects that possess long, multi-month time horizons and are demarcated along some specific start-date, like the start of the World Cup or the Olympics. We prepare ideas and materials to help a clients gather ideas on how to acquire purchases or impressions (general brand awareness). Timewise, these projects are demarcated into two distinct phases: “Before Go-Live” and “After Go-Live.” As the name suggests, the client keeps us engaged (and keeps paying us!) after the “Go-Live” of the event and we stick around to continue monitoring traffic, incoming revenue, page click-throughs, etc. All is done in real-time and then we continue to give the client recommendations on places the campaign may be falling short, places we are doing well, and places where we think we might be able to do even better.
Meeting Premier Wu in Urumqi was the first in-person meeting with the top-brass that we’d be having with the CCP. So far, my entire time in China had been abstract, hidden away in the JFL in Jinshui. But things were about to get much more real. If we didn’t impress Premier Wu, I suspected our trip in China would become far less comfortable than the luxury that’d we been treated to so far.
“Right now, the problem is that the people perceive the benefits of public dissent more favorable than they fear the consequences of being caught,” I say, thinking aloud. “So we’re hoping that by elevating the costs, we can deter the undesirable behavior.”
“Instilling fear only works though if it’s not a hollow threat,” Deepak says. “If you threaten that some virus has suddenly swept the land, people may barricade themselves at home for maybe a week or two. But eventually, you know that someone will most definitely wander outside.”
I reflect on my own experience. Deepak is definitely right on the mark. There’s always that guy. The one who simply must know with his own two hands and his own two eyes. Normally, I’m rooting for him; but this one time, he’s a sore thorn in our sides.
“No matter the situation, there will always be the risk-takers; people who climb free solo,” Kristen says. “The key to making this work will be to identify these people and make examples out of them.”
Coleman stares. “Guys, we’re not wantonly killing hundreds of people just to set an example.”
“No, of course not,” I agree. The beginning of an inchoate idea is beginning to congeal in my head. Like a ship far off in the fog slowly drifting closer, I begin to make out its faint outline. Ideas are born in our minds by millions of neurons and synapses firing away, like electric impulses in a thunderstorm. I have no idea what cross-pollination of lived experience, fantastical thinking, and Hollywood movies happens, but I’m struck by a sudden thought.
“I wonder if it might be possible to set up a Potemkin kind of situation?” I muse aloud. “People growing ill and being hospitalized. No one actually dying but the fatality rates soaring?”
Kristen furrows her brow. She’s been pacing this entire time, towards one end of the train car and back, up and down the aisle. She’s definitely a pacer.
She stops pacing.
“I really want to dismiss your idea as absurd. But it’s actually not as dumb as it first sounds,” she finally says.
Coming from Kristen, this is pretty much qualifies a bonafide compliment.
Alan picks up the thread. “With state-controlled media, it’d be easy to fabricate fatality numbers.”
“But if the truth ever got out,” says Coleman, “no one would ever trust the media again, right? Isn’t legitimacy a concern here?”
Alan shrugs. “On the Chinese internet, even behind the Great Firewall, there are already dozens of popular conspiracy theories. We live in an age where people just believe whatever they wish to believe anyway. If the truth got out, it’d –ironically– just be considered another conspiracy just like all of the others.”
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
Launching a targeted super-virus into a major metropolitan area is easier said than done. Logistically, there were a thousand different things that could go wrong. First, like any good data science project, we needed to define our parameters. At the top of that list, obviously, were human fatalities.
“Whatever solution you devise,” Jack had told us on the platform as we were about to depart Xi’an, “it simply must do no worse than the current situation on the ground. As long as Beijing sees that you’re moving in the right direction, you’ll be fine. The Chinese are a patient people. We don’t expect overnight successes; in fact, we highly suspect any achievement not borne of years and decades of pain and suffering. But we do expect improvement. Always.”
Jack’s words ring in my head as I watch the scenery blow past outside our speeding train window. We’re back in modern civilization again and it’s nice to be back in the land of chrome-plated expresso machines, laptops, and gigabit wireless internet. Though I’d enjoyed the quaint retro-steampunk world of Xi’an the two days that we were there, I was ready to return to the twenty-first century. It was time.
Before, we’d been thinking too small. Trying to use conventional means to reduce civil unrest and turmoil in Xinjiang. What I’d realized after our two-day jaunt in Xi’an was that people’s behavior in Urumqi was far more complex than just simple toggles and switches on a dashboard. We’d tried the carrot and we’d tried the stick. Both had totally failed miserably. It was time to bring out the Tomahawk missiles.
Besides, we were nearing the end of the second month of our engagement and so far we’d delivered no results. No, even worse than no results. We’d spent tons of time, energy, and money. But some policies had actually further deteriorated the situation on the ground in Urumqi. Negative results. I must admit– though I had not contemplated it before, I sure as hell was now thinking about it: What was the price of failure?
In America, even if you’re on a total debacle of a project, if it sends in total failure and catastrophe, while the project’s very public head –say, like the Secretary of Health and Human Services– may be sacked in a show of public accountability, most consultants like myself simply slink away unscathed. We’ve already collected our tens or hundreds of thousand dollars in fees; our job is done! And then we simply conveniently leave off the dumpster fire of a project from our CVs when we gallivant off onto our next engagement. All is well.
But here, in China, I begin to wonder if the consequences of abject failure are similarly so nonchalant?
Similar concerns seem to be weighing on Kristen’s mind too because she’s been surprisingly open to this new direction. That is to say– she’s been very quiet; I would’ve expected more loud protests of outrage, disbelief, and umbrage at the thought of making tens of thousands of people severely ill, if not worse, but she’s taken this recent turn of events in stride.
“So the bare minimum,” Kristen says to me over the train dining table, “is that whatever solution we propose, there simply cannot be more fatalities than are currently happening. But on what time horizon?”
“Let’s say– a year,” I suggest. I also have my laptop in front of my and am punching in numbers as we speak, to just explore this scenario a bit, to see what kind of outcomes we might be looking at. Or as they say: See the possibility space.
“So we know the Xinjiang and Kazakhstani border is currently among the most disputed in the world. Maybe only second to the Gaza Strip. If we loop in those casualty numbers, it’ll give us much more to work with than just using the Urumqi crime statistics.”
I nod knowingly. This shifty little maneuver, an underhanded technique that data scientists often use when they’re trying to argue for a particular case in their favor, we call: Moving the goalposts.
I examine the map to see the contested hot zone– it’s a region along the border by the small Kazakhstani town of Horogos. Is this to become our new West Bank?
Of all of us, Coleman is the one with the most trepidation towards this new direction, however. The prospect of killing thousands of innocent people hangs over him like a dark spectre.
“Guys– you are not seriously considering Jack’s idea, are you?” he says, clearly dumbfounded. “These… these are war crimes we’re talking about.”
“War crimes,” Deepak replies, “is having hundreds and thousands of your own citizens dying every year from poverty, random missile attacks, and suicide bombings in the public market. That should be a war crime. How many of innocent citizens have died from the terrorist violence that’s currently going on down there today?”
“But that is not state-sanctioned violence!” Coleman protests. “What you’re proposing here is knowingly committing atrocities.“
“Wait, hold up,” Kristen says holding up her hands. “No one is talking about killing tens of thousands of people. In fact, if everything goes right, no one will die at all.”
“Oh, really?” Coleman says dubiously.
“We’re talking about a moderate biological agent. Something that people might get ill from; but they’ll make full recoveries! With these kind of programs, the fear, especially in the beginning, is what prompts action. We’re not setting out to kill anyone year– just make them a little sick.”
Ah, I see. This is clearly how we sleep at night. Clearly.
“We just need to manufacture pretext for Chinese withdraw from the region,” Alan chimes in. “A bunch of people will get the flu but everyone will ultimately be fine.”
As we’re discussing this ludicrous idea, I do notice how everyone is conveniently omitting talking about the second part of Jack’s plan, which for some reason everyone’s suddenly become very fond of. Assuming some biological agent we create doesn’t mutate into a super-virus and turn into the next Bubonic Plague that slaughters everyone, Jack’s entire proposal hinges on the idea that after Chinese withdrawal, the Uyghurs will turn on themselves; that in the absence of Chinese infrastructure and support, the entire region will degenerate into a chaotic morass of death and destruction. No one mentions this part.
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
KPIs –or Key Performance Indicators– are the critical benchmarks that any data science project is based upon. For example, back in the US on the other projects that I’d slaved away on in the past, KPIs were often mundane metrics that you’d pretty much expect from any pedestrian, vanilla project: The number of new people who enrolled for healthcare during November, the amount of advertising revenue that a marketing campaign was currently generating, etc.
In our case, since project was a bit more exotic, the KPIs of our assignment were likewise more exotic as well. We measured our success in Xinjiang among two primary metrics:
The first was a scorecard gauge of the number of crimes committed in Urumqi on a given particular day. Crimes obvious comes in all flavors of the rainbow –from petty theft to arson to murder– but for our overhead reporting purposes, we had a single summary statistic that aggregated all crime numbers.
By the way, I should take a slight detour to mention here: In data science, the devil is entirely in the details. There’s a famous saying in our profession: “All models are wrong. But some are useful.”
At the score of data science is the desire to make sense of reality around us with numbers– to somehow quantify the ineffable. In a case like looking at the crime statistics in Urumqi, we needed a single number to summarize how are policies were performing in the capital. But if we instituted a policy that decreased petty theft but increased murders in the city, was that a win? All crimes are not so obviously we then need to weight these metrics somehow. But how, and who, determines that? Does every murder equal five incidents of petty theft? Ten incidents? Etc.
As you can see, the entire project quickly turns into a scenario modeling and analysis exercise. For example, we’d devised two models to measure crime differently. Crime, in China, is broadly categorized under three classes: Trivial (Class 1), Moderate (Class 2), and Severe (Class 3). For example: Trivial would be your petty theft or drunken pub brawl (where no one was injured); Moderate would be the vandalization or destruction of property; Severe would be murder or inciting subversion of state power. (Notably, in China, assembling in groups larger than fifty people required a local municipal permit. For instance, a wedding with over fifty guests? You’d need a permit for that. And violation of this mandate would result in a Class 3 violation of Chinese law which carried a hefty fine and, depending on the kind of meeting, imprisonment or even death by execution.)
Our first model had a 3x multiplier for Class 2 crimes and a 10x multiplier for Class 3 crimes.
Our second model featured a 6x multiplier for Class 2 and 15x for Class 3.
But our models were consistently failing to manifest real-world results that we expected. Week after week, the scorecards on our dashboards remained unchanged (or went the wrong direction!); despite the fact that our analyses and models had predicted certain outcomes. But for some reason, in the real world, we were not achieving our KPIs.
After Alan explained the way that we’d set up our models to Jack, Jack had just thrown back his head and laughed.
“Making Urumqi a totalitarian police state, despite whatever you may have been told, is never going to work. Occupation simply breeds hate and resentment which’ll fester. Maybe quietly at first, but make no mistake. It will most certainly boil over.”
“So what do you suggest?” Kristen asks, irritated. I also felt my own collar growing hot. Who was this lazy bum to lecture us on our efforts? What did he know about suppressing minority populations in communist regimes?
“My thought,” Jack says, “is you loosen all of the restrictions. Withdraw. Give it a year or two. Hell, give it maybe six months.
Alan stares. “What?”
“All of the electricity and civil services in the region are entirely reliant on Beijing,” Shu says, “without a Chinese presence, the entire area will degenerate into complete anarchy in a matter of weeks. Supply chains, crops, clean running water…”
Jack waves his hand. “So what? The Uyghurs want freedom? I say, give it to them.” He turns to me, “you westerners have a saying, do you not? The grass is always greener on the other side?” Jack laughs. “There is no grass on the other side! Or if there is, it’s all yellow, dying, and dead!”
I turn to Alan, “Just out of curiosity, what would have happened if Beijing withdrew from the region? This is nothing we’ve never modeled, right?”
Alan frowns. Of all of the hundreds of scenarios that we’d entertained and tried over the weeks, simply giving up and going home had definitely not been anything that anyone had thought of. His forehead creases in that way which always happens when he’s consternated.
“Well,” Alan says slowly, Kazakhstan would most definitely see a withdrawal of that magnitude. They’d most definitely be shocked. It’s been over a century of contesting that geographic region. To suddenly pick up and just go home…”
Coleman interrupts.
“Guys, wait up. You’ve all just spent weeks telling me how Xi and China is the most honor-bound society on the planet. Even if this plan somehow yielded results, which is still dubious to me, what on earth makes you think that Beijing will go along with this? Wouldn’t this be an ultimate sign of great shame and surrender?”
“I’ve got it.” Deepak says suddenly and we all turn to him. “Coleman’s right, of course. Beijing will never just withdraw from the region voluntarily. But if we manufactured pretext… if we somehow, someway provided a reason to withdraw…”
“…you mean something like a natural disaster?” says Shu. She taps her fingers against her lips. “Something like–“
“–something like a man-made disaster,” Kristen finishes the thought. I realized what Deepak was getting at a split second before Kristen did but it makes sense. In the most awful, frightening way possible, it makes sense.
“You want to manufacture a kind of biological crisis,” I say aloud. “In one fell swoop, it would solve all of the problems. Some of the old guard, which has been the most resistant to Chinese control, would be the most vulnerable. And the new generation, the most politically active, have the softest hands the world has ever seen. China’s weened them for years now to use smartphones and computers– this a is a generation that couldn’t milk a cow or farm agriculture if their lives depended on it.”
“By withdrawing Chinese support for maybe a year after they were to accidentally receive some kind of plague would send the entire region into chaos,” says Alan, “hundreds of thousands would likely die. Maybe more depending on the potency of the biological agent.”
Jack nabs the final shrimp dumpling from the dim sum bowl. The old man honestly looks the most alive I’ve seen him since we’d arrived on our trip yesterday. He chews slowly and thoughtfully, and then swallows.
“Maybe,” Jack says. “But you’ve gotta admit– it really could be the answer to all of your problems. It really could.”
NOTE: This is an ongoing original fiction story that I’m currently writing. I started writing this fictional story back on October 2, 2020 and contribute ~1,000 words to it every day on this blog. I didn’t outline the story at all going into it but it’s slowly evolved into a tale about a data scientist in his mid-thirties from America who finds himself summoned to China where’s he’s been offered a job to work for the Chinese Communist Party on a project monitoring the Uyghurs in the Chinese “autonomous region” of Xinjiang. In China, the story’s protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, meets other professionals who’ve also been brought in from abroad to help consult on the project. My story takes place several decades in the future and explores human rights, privacy in an age of ever-increasing state-surveillance, and differences between competing dichotomies: democracy vs communism, eastern vs western political philosophies, and individual liberties vs collective security. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to read more, my fiction story starts here.
Jack feels like someone who might be able to give some insight on our predicament in Xinjiang so during lunch, I ask him about his opinion on the region. You might think that Jack, someone who the CCP has taken so much from, would be incredibly hostile towards the communist party and it’s treated the Uyghurs in the region. But Jack’s response surprises me.
We’re sitting in a noodle shop and just about the only ones there. It’s hot and there’s a fan blowing. Jack swirls his tumbler of gin around pauses a moment; a crease appears between his eyebrows and then disappears.
“So what this reminds me of,” he says slowly, “is the story of my first two marriages.”
Kristen cups her chin with hers hands and leans forward. “Oh, this sounds like it’s going to be good.”
Even Li’s appeared to have perked up a bit.
“So honestly, one of the many mistakes that I made at least in my first marriage was that eventually –and if you’ve ever been married long enough, you’ll totally understand this– but eventually, you’ll get into fights that actually have nothing whatsoever to do with what you’re fighting about. Every fight is simply a proxy for a deeper issue. In my first marriage that went off the rails, it was all about control. She resented that I expected her to maintain a certain image and pretense. And I resented that she didn’t understand how business worked.”
“Where was Wife #1 falling short?” Deepak asks delicately. For whatever reason, Deepak’s apparently taken a sudden interest in the subject.
Jack waves his hand dismissively, “Ah, the details don’t really matter. I don’t even remember them much now anyways. But it eventually became a battle for territory. Every bickering and conflict stemmed from a fundamental difference in values. I was a high-ranking executive at Weibook then and we’d attend ceremonies and such. I expected her to be there. And so she was always deliberately absent. I expected her to stay at home to raise our children. And so she was always gallivanting around to pursue her own career or interests.”
I manage to keep my face neutral but I do feel like that there’s more to the story that we’re not getting. But I don’t press.
“Being married,” Jack says contemplatively, “is not like running a company. When you run a company, especially one your family has founded, you possess the authority to simply fire people. Terminated, executed, goodbye. And then you can always hire someone new for the role. But in a marriage, you really can’t do that. Well, not without getting divorced–“
“–which you did,” Li contributes.
“Yeah. But that took forfeiting a third of my net worth at the time,” Jack says. “Among other things. Look, it’s different. The dynamics and stakes are wholly different. You’re talking about family– the threat and incentive model needs to be entirely different. You can’t bully or threaten your spouse into a position. This isn’t corporate warfare. It’s a million times harder played on a different field altogether.”
“So you’re saying no amount of hard or soft power that the Xi regime uses will persuade Urumqi?” I ask. Inside, I feel like a deflating balloon.
Jack scoffs. “I’m saying the greater the force that Beijing exerts, the harder that Urumqi will resist. At this point, no one cares about additional crops, new schools and libraries, renovated infrastructure, or any of the carrots that you guys have been trying to dangle in from of the Uyghurs so far. At this point, it’s solely about pride. The Uyghurs will die, to every last man, woman, and child, before they submit to Chinese rule. You’re wanting to destroy their culture, after all. Their entire history as an autonomous people.”
“We’re trying to help them,” Shu says, annoyed. I don’t often see her worked up but it’s clear that she’s grown angry. Her normally soft features have hardened in frustration. “They’re starving in poverty and entirely deficient in education. Is that the world that they wish for their children? Destitute? Ignorant?“
Jack looks at Alan and speaks something in rapid fire Chinese. I’m clearly lost but Alan replies. This goes on for a bit. Throughout the entire exchange, Li’s face hardens and Shu also looks increasingly distraught. This is one of the parts about working in a foreign country that no one ever bothers to tell you about. That as an outsider, there are just going to be giant swathes of critical conversation you simply miss wholesale. But you’re still expected, somehow, to deliver results.
Finally, Alan deigns to fill the rest of us in.
“Jack’s wondering if we have current fatality and mortality rates in Xinjiang– from disease, starvation, crime, accidents, etc.”
“Of course we do,” Coleman says. “That’s all part of the standard corpus.”
“So here’s Jack’s thinking on the matter,” Alan says. “What are the current KPIs of this project?”
Ironically, we have never been more alone, disconnected, and isolated than we currently are in today’s technologically-sophisticated world. We’ve never had more fancy toys and modern miracles at our fingertips than we have today. But all of those wonders have increasingly led to an existence that is empty and devoid of meaning and purpose.
For eons, man has wandered the ends of earth wondering about his purpose. About the meaning of life. For whatever reason, we’ve overcomplicated and over-intellectualized. Today, on this grey Tuesday, let me —The Great Wobble— put an end to all your questions. I’ve got all the answers and today’s your lucky day. I’m going to answer the most profound question in all the cosmos today to you for the very low, bottom-basement price of: Free.
Man was made –maybe by the FSM, maybe not– to be happy. This is not exactly next-level insight. If we’re not doing it for happiness, then what else is it all for? You seriously want to live a life of drudgery every day so you can be miserable tomorrow? Really?
Ah, but what exactly is happiness? Gretchen Rubin and a legion of others have attempted to answer this question. But you don’t need some fancy book, university course, or YouTube video to tell you what you already know in your bones. Hell, you don’t even need to read this article! You know what happiness is. It’s an emotion. It’s the oxytocin and dopamine firing in your brain. It’s neurochemistry; it’s endorphins! This is why runners get that so-called “runner’s high.”
Now, to be sure, you don’t need physical exercise to be happy. (Though that’s certainly a way to get it!) You could take drugs (not advised) or drink alcohol (sometimes advised, depending on the context). But specifically, you need to hit your “happy button.”
This isn’t exactly rocket surgery– everyone’s got a different happy-button. Maybe it’s playing videogames or learning something new like Elixir or functional programming. Or maybe it’s restoring classical cars or making stop-motion Claymation videos.
The meaning and purpose of life is to feel good. Emotion is at the root of everything. If you feel you’re living a life of never-ending drudgery, stuck in some loveless marriage from hell, or trapped at the workplace from hell, or burdened by a thousand obligations that you resent and despise, tied down by a million expectations set upon you by some vengeful god, ask yourself: Who exactly is putting these expectations upon you?
Maybe you’re in Sing Sing and you need to mop those grimy restroom tiles against your will, resentfully. Okay, in that case, those expectations are set upon you by some prison guard (hopefully not of the Clancy Brown variety though). Other than that though, for the rest of everyone else, chances are more that you have trapped yourself in some unimaginable prison of a thousand hells.
Should such be the case, I sincerely hope you’ll wake up one day. Really wake up. My personal take, and this’ll vary from person-to-person of course, is that you don’t want to be too free. (I consider myself mostly libertarian so that’s a weird sentiment to utter aloud, I know.) But from past experience, too much “lightness” is honestly a curse of its own.
Instead, the best setup is a Goldilocks kinda of burden-carrying. Not too light where you’ll simply float away. But not too much where you feel the soul-crushing weight of a thousand suns. Just enough “heaviness” to give you a sense of responsibility and meaning. For me, I totally encourage obtaining a Bagel. For me, she’s been just the kick in the pants that I personally needed to get my act together. But maybe that’s just me. Please lemme know in the comments though any thoughts you may have. Am curious! 😀
