Americans, he observed, don't seem to care that their neighbors hold to false versions of the faith.
Chinese youth, he observed, don't save much money, have a hard time finding jobs even after earning a college degree, and, most fundamentally, just want to lead happy, healthy, and interesting lives.
His concerns are made to seem small, his world deliberately circumscribed: "A sane person doesn't stick around in the hopes of making a dent," he observes, doing a bit of reluctant pro bono work in India.
"Fiction," he observes, "doesn't merely replicate the license you have, within your head, to think what you like.
"Fortunately, all the smart lawyering in the world doesn't clean up the fact that what Officer Loehmann is saying he observed and did couldn't possibly have happened in under two seconds, unless he's the Flash".
"We felt the Beijing practitioners needed our support," said Lin Chongli, an American practitioner, also from New York, who said he observed, but did not actively participate in the protests.
And as for the area's tainted history, he observed: "I don't think most people are aware, and when the do become aware of it, they see it as sort of a colorful part of the city's past".
As yet, he observed, "we do not know the ocean well enough.
And, he observed, "we do have the footsteps of Microsoft behind us".
