postcards from china

My father is on a U.S. State Department-arranged speaking/democracy propaganda tour of universities in China right now. This is what the Q&A was like:
Do your cartoons hurt your personal relationships with the politicians you draw?
No, I don’t have personal relationships with the people I draw.Do you worry that your drawings will hurt the reputation of someone you have drawn?
No, if one of my cartoons hurts the reputation of a politician that I am criticizing, then I am pleased. (Sometimes the crowd murmurs when I say this. It doesn’t seem to be what they expect me to say.)Do you ever draw cartoons that are supportive of China?
No, I don’t draw cartoons that support anything. I just criticize. Supportive cartoons are lousy cartoons.Now that you have visited China, and have learned more about China, will you be drawing cartoons that support China?
Probably not.
He and my mom were supposed to head to Chengdu today but of course, post-quake, they were re-routed. Now they’re spending some extra time in Harbin, “the Moscow of China,” where they still have ample Internet access for IMing while I Google child prodigies — that is, until sight-seeing resumes after breakfast. “We’re going to the tiger sanctuary today, where visitors throw live chickens to the tigers.”
So I guess they’re having fun.
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