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Two days ago my son returned from a vacation; he, his mom and her husband had gone to China. He has a frame of reference similar to those of many American teenagers. What stood out for him could well differ from what a typical tourist might take in. According to his reports, while there may have been centuries of history on display, including a dang impressive wall, the truly impressive take-aways from China were: 1) Real Chinese cuisine is far too healthy for an American teenager to eat without going crazy. 2) Matching a stereotype of an American teenager from the 1950's, tall, blond, blue-eyes, will get your picture taken a lot. Mostly by Chinese teenagers. 3) Photography will be accompanied by questions; most questions will about the clothes you are wearing that day. Given that half of Spencer's shirts are products of one of his football camps or teams, there was a considerable deal of confusion in the lack of context. The questioner would ask about the shirt, leading to an exchange like the following: "That is a sport shirt?" "Yes, its a football shirt." "What is player doing with the ball?" "Carrying it. Its American Football." "Yes! Yes! Like LA Galaxy?" "Um... no... like Pittburgh Steelers. New England Patriots. Dallas Cowboys?" "Ah. Then what is the player doing with the ball?" "Running with it.' "He should be kicking it?" My guess is that the shock of discovering just how parochial and obscure a sport American football is on the world stage left my son ill-prepared to try to explain it. So one chance to introduce curious Chinese to the king of American sports was lost. Some clothing prompted better dialogue: his Warcraft shirts. World of Warcraft is well known in China; Spencer just had the interesting fortune to be there during the tail-end of a World of Warcraft drought, where 5 million players were cut off from the game they love. This link from the China Daily has the meat of the story. Nutshell version, Blizzard moved from server service NetEase to The9; Chinese government did not approve the move, leaving the Chinese without WOW since early June. An accord has been reached, assuming Blizzard can remove 'excessive violence' from the game, so some fashion of WOW is expected to be available to the Chinese by the end of this month. On this topic, American teenager and Chinese teenagers seemed to be in perfect harmony; you have got to get your game on. Can't update Facebook from China because of government restrictions? Vaguely interesting. Can't play your favorite game because a ministry has not given its approval? Now you are talking legitimate grievance. My son, jonesing for his own computer at home, completely empathized with his Chinese counterparts. Their experiences, literally half-a-world apart, were separate but shared. Before my son left on the trip, I was pretty excited about the prospect of his exposure to Chinese culture and history. The trip would shake him up a little, give him a chance to see the world in a different light. When that light turned out to be the glow of billions of pixels on millions of monitors, my parental hopes and expectations rapidly deflated. I sighed, and folded them up to toss them in the closet to keep the other lost expectations company. If you are a parent, you understand that sometimes that's just part of the gig. Then that piece of me that fires up for every project I work on, the passionate piece that cares about games, often cares more than is reasonable ... that part started having a field day. My son had traveled to China, met perfect strangers, and connected with them. The bond? A game. Totally flipping awesome; a game that bridged cultures, how freaking cool is that? That the game in question descends from RPGs? Beautiful, just absolutely perfect. But if his mom asks what I am giggling about, I will tell her it is something you said. So back me up on that, okay? Thanks.
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