(2004)
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Next he started to express his opinions on war. He said war is no good, Saddam is no good. When he was shooting those black and white statements in a rush, I didn't find it easy to understand. Sometimes I wasn't sure if he said something was "good" or "no good" because I thought I might have missed the word "no." And I hesitated to make a guess. For example, it took me a while to figure out that he was saying that American government is bad because the US goes to war with other countries all the time--the next may be North Korea or Iran, according to him.
But when he emphasized that Saddam was evil, I was amused. I teased him: "You don't have to say that. You know, I'm not an American. I'm Chinese. We may not hate Saddam." I was pretty sure he said that all the time to Americans because almost nobody likes Saddam in this country no matter whether they like Bush or not. So I was trying to find out if he really hates Saddam or just said that to avoid being in trouble.
He said most Iraqi don't like Saddam. He explained that Saddam killed a lot of people. Later he added that if Iraqis had supported Saddam's government, the American army wouldn't have taken over Iraq so easily. "Less than five percent," he emphasized, defended their country because they didn't care about their government any more. He tried to prove that Iraqis are not easy to defeat by the fact that American soldiers are being killed almost everyday by Saddam's people. (As I'm writing this, I understand those Iraqis who are still fighting with American or UN soldiers are not necessarily Saddam's supporters.)
He asked me if the Chinese government likes war or not. I said Chinese are focusing on developing our country. I just want to avoid talking about the tension between mainland China and Taiwan, which I always do. In fact, I can feel the tension is quite serious after Taiwan's Presidential Election earlier this year.
He then asked me how many people there are in China. "Two to three million?" he realized the mistake right away and corrected himself, "two hundred million?" I said, "No! One billion."
"What? One billion?" He was amazed, "One billion." It seemed one billion Chinese was quite beyond his imagination.
"You didn't know that the number one fact about China is that China is the most populated country in the world? The largest population..."
"Ah? More than India?"
"Yes, India is the number two."
"Actually there are more than one billion. There are 1.3 billion." I added.
"1.3 billion? That's one billion and three million?"
"No, one billion and three hundred million..."
"One billion and... three hundred million? America has three hundred million."
