The man who meets me at his gated estate in the Portuguese countryside is 68 now, but seems calmer and healthier and has shed his Buddha-like bulk. “You know when a tree is in autumn, when the leaves come down,” he says, “it looks slimmer.” Ai moved here during lockdown, buying the holiday home of a wealthy lawyer, complete with a tennis court and pool he never uses. “I am old now,” he says, “I need sunshine.” Portugal provides it 300 days a year, unlike Berlin, where he lived for five years after leaving China and still has a studio, or Cambridge, where his 16-year-old son Ai Lao is at school.
Does he think westerners are softer? “Much, much! And getting weaker and weaker. We say in China it’s hard for three generations of a family to be wealthy. Because the third, they don’t even know what money means. It’s automatically in their accounts. So people become … a designer.” He laughs. “China became strong because people work hard with no holidays. Not just eight hours, but ten, twelve hours. That’s how they bring their children to your British schools, Cambridge and Oxford.” The West, he says, cannot take tuition fees from China and then moan when it tries to restrict academic freedom or complain about Chinese spying “because you’ve become the underdog. You cannot compete with China, so you blame it.”
“The media in the West also has strong, strong censorship. CNN or the BBC, it doesn’t matter. In China, the power is state power. But here it can be huge companies, business, even cultural institutions.”
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A.B.T.: “Ain’t been taught.”
8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.
Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results.
Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability
The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?