In April, when I was still in college, I received news that I would indeed be heading to China to study comedy and I took the chance to tell my professors of my plans, hoping we might have the chance to keep in touch if they needed a set of eyes in China for any story that they were working on.
One of my best teachers at Brandeis was Paul Solman, whose course “Economic Grand Strategies” was a fabulous walk through the economic structures of human societies across time and space—from ancient Greece to the middle ages to modern globalized capitalism. It didn’t hurt attendance that each day had a snack prepared along with the theme of the course—nuts and berries for discussing pastorial economics of the iron age, and an assortment of cheeses for the cathedral-centric economies of the high middle ages.
Mr. Solman is the economics correspondent for PBS’s “Making Sen$e” and has a fabulous ability to explain difficult economic issues in a way that everyone can understand. Before I left, he said if I ever came across any junctures between humor, China, and economics, he would love to see my writing.
As it happened, Laowai Style gave me a chance to look into some of these issues, and earlier this week, my piece “My Viral Video in China: Rich is The New Poor” appeared on PBS Newshour’s front page. While I ought to thank Paul for the conciseness of the article—originally I wrote twice what appeared on the finished piece—I hope I was able to talk about some topics that most Americans might not get a chance to read about, and all in a way that was, hopefully, entertaining (the video) and enlightening (the article). Hope you enjoy!
PS: As per the comments at the bottom of the article, I am sorely tempted to change the description on my resume of my fellowship year to “Fulbright Welfare Queen.” It’s perhaps the only sort of royalties I’m going to be getting out of this whole process!