I did have a fun conversation the other day about racism in the US with a student, but such topics really only come up in one-on-one discussions. And they don’t have time for many of those throughout the year.

True, true. I shouldn’t worry about most of them. Perhaps the students are genuinely inoculated against such stupidity.

Sure. A little background first, my students are relatively well-off and mostly did not succeed during their time in compulsory education. So, they decided to study outside the PRC, mostly because they had a small chance of making it into the better domestic universities.

Most students, at least at this school, go to either the UK or Australia. Though a few occasionally do go to Canada or the US. Of course, I don’t feel comfortable actively dissuading the students from going (they get enough pressure from parents and other staff at the school), but sometimes I wonder if I should.

Anyway, looking at comments that infantalises an entire group of people just because they were born on a different piece of dirt, not to mention downright genocidal rhetoric, makes me think that students from the PRC isolating themselves from that sort of brain rot is a successful self-preservation technique.

Which, while answering the question of “why do Chinese students seem to only stick together.” It feels like people who would comment in such a provocative way are just minutes from doing actual bodily harm to others.

But maybe I’m over thinking it and these folks have little or no chance of coming into contact with PRC citizens.

People like those in the comments are why I worry about my students from the PRC who want to study in the imperial core.

That’s true, I guess I’ve just played enough similar games where I could say “oh, this feels like an important choice, I better do it.” And then my character became a lich.

But I can definitely see where you’re coming from for a certain other path where there are quite a lot of hoops to go through.

And I think the game is supposed to have replayability though those paths… but then they put all the content with the paths they think players will be drawn to. Not necessarily the most fun to play. Like, I picked Lich to resurrect certain dead characters, but there’s no interaction with them beyond “go home” and “come with me”.

Talking about the second game makes me want to replay Kingmaker. I actually liked the party members in that game.

Is it that odd to like the first one and not the second? I played the entirety of the second one waiting for some interesting choices, the few interactions I enjoyed were with the evil-aligned companions (which is not really enough to warrant a full playthrough). The whole premise of the adventure path is underwhelming, really. Instead of doing something interesting like dethroning the monarchy, you get to fight demons for a feckless leader.

Some of the mechanics were improved, and I did like the mythic paths, but it felt like there was only one interesting chapter (the one where you travel to the demon city), even if it was annoying to navigate.

Just as an example there are 32 Graduate level programs taught in English at Tsinghua, and as far as I am aware most universities of a certain stature have programs taught in English (of varying quality) and will also have classes to teach the Chinese language to international students.

There are also USA and UK universities that have partnered with Chinese universities that offer many programs taught in English, like Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University and New York University: Shanghai.

It’s surprisingly easy to get a teaching job in the PRC and stay for an extended period of time. And I’ve seen several job postings for CS teachers that are waiting to be filled (WeChat is extremely handy for a job search). From what I understand the pay and work hours are much better for teachers than they would be at a tech company.

Permanent residence is another matter. The good news is that it is becoming easier to get in some municipalities (basically Shanghai). We’ll see how long it takes to expand to the rest of the country.