From Jerusalem to Brown and from Philadelphia to Shenzhen via Colombia. The long and winding road… of my life story.

I thought it was about time, I will put the cards, or some of them, on the table.

I believe that the best writing is born out of desperation. One writes when one is compelled to put one’s thoughts on a paper on on the WordPress. When one cannot contain the silence any longer.

Imagine my dismay when I discovered via the news that Itamar Ben Gvir, the former youth organizer and spokesperson of a former Kach movement, the incarnation of a former organization that was outlawed by the Israeli government following the Goldstein massacre in Hebron-al Khalil in 1994, was given the post of a minister of national security in Israel. This for a person who himself, by his own account, had at least 120 criminal files against him in the Israeli police due to his alleged illegal activities.

I write alleged, because Ben Gvir goes on a legal manhunt against anyone who dares to accuse him of carrying out any illegal action. He cunningly plays within the border of what the law permits or ensures that he will never get caught, allegedly.

Between the ages of 12-14, I was arrested 3 times, due to participation in Ben Gvir’s movement and in other far-right-wing fanatical groups.

At age 12, I joined Ben Gvir’s Kahanist group. I joined it because I was under the influence of the far-right at home. Following the Goldstein massacre, my mother and step-father hosted Baruch Marzel and Noam Federman in their home. The two were wanted by the Israeli police for leading the illegal Kach movement. (Marzel was the director (or secretary-general) and Federman was the spokesperson). Federman was arrested in my home, in Old Katamon in Jerusalem by a squad of Israeli police.

Marzel was a highly charismatic figure. He played chess with me as a child and won, with him leading three pawns and me leading an entire team. Marzel taught me that with every move one makes, one always has to move protected.

My mother and step-father used to take me to far-right demonstrations from the age of six. I recall being in a demonstration at such a young age, protesting in favor of releasing Jewish terrorists who were known as the Jewish underground movement, from Israeli prisons.

After school, or even instead of school, my mother used to take me to settle hill-tops, struggle with the police, or attend demonstrations. I was heavily indoctrinated into the far-right. I was a Jewish fascist. I thought that all Palestinians should be expelled from the West Bank via transfer, as Rechavam Zeevi (Gandhi) a far-right minister assassinated by the illegal PFLP preached.

I joined Ben Gvir who was also former Kach member at the age of 12. He organized an illegal camp in which we were to be provided semi-military training. He boasted to a journalist- I was there- a day before that he is organizing the camp and that many people will attend. Ben Gvir always worked with the media, to gain extra publicity. He believed- perhaps correctly- that any publicity is good publicity, even bad one.

When I went to the central bus station of Jerusalem which was our meeting point, we were immediately approached by ordinary looking civilians who flashed police ID’s and told us we must follow them.

We were taken to a police station. A detective hugged me and made me talk. I spilled all my beans on Ben Gvir. I was scared shitless. When I refused to talk, they put me in isolation. After 10 minutes I broke down and talked.

Ben Gvir  once showed me how he had a tiny metal tool that could break windows. The kind of activities we had at the time was spraying pro-Kach grafitti, giving people the impression that the movement was far bigger than it was, breaking windows of Palestinian cars, throwing stones at Palestinian homes.

I was 12 at the time, but highly indoctrinated. Marzel at the time was a semi-father figure. To his credit, he told my mother, when she came to pick me up from a Kahane memorial, that I should not be involved in political activities but should study instead. He told me and her that Meir Kahane lost many activists, because he told many yeshiva boys that they would be better off studying rather than engaging in political activism even though they wanted to. I don’t know if it’s true but it’s an interesting story. The arrest with the police scared me off a bit. I stayed off activism for a while. My step father warned me that every time I called Ben Gvir, who had a highly charismatic voice, the police were listening in and I was getting into deeper trouble (my step-father who himself was a former JDL activist, and whom I tried to impress by joining the Kach movement- its Israeli incarnation, told me Chabad had a deeper philosophy than Kach. I used to believe in Chabad, but then after the rabbi died, we were told in (the Chabad) school that he will rise from the dead at the funeral, or within 3 days, or within 40 days, none of which happened. And I stopped to believe in Chabad forever).

To me, Judaism didn’t make much sense, overtime. I was told that, and read in the Jewish texts book that, the Jews were chosen by God and had a special soul which non-Jews did not even possess, (if you think this is radical or outrageous, read Tanya Chapter 1, carefully especially the latter part), that any sexual desire a person had for a woman had to be repressed -try telling that to a teenager-  that it was acceptable that the Israelites annihilated Amalek -including men, children, women, and animals- that fighting the Palestinians was a commandment given by God, since it was a defensive war and they attacked Jews first- that it was forbidden to look at women- I had no female friends until age 22- that God is a jealous and angry God who demanded one’s total attention and obedience, a dark father figure, that the Jews had the best culture in the world and everyone else had no culture.

When I ran away from my mother and step-father at age 14 (the two other times I was arrested were when I was 14 and attempted with other activists to carry out the Jewish commandment of praying in the Temple Mount, we were arrested at the Mughrabi gate after taking part in political-religious activism by the order of Yehuda Etzion- a former underground Jewish group member who spent years in Israeli prison after planning to blow up the Dome of Rock – the Al-Sakhra Mosque- so that the Jewish third temple could be rebuilt in its place. As part of the religious-Zionist movement Etzion believed that the Third Temple, like the Jewish state, had to be created through the human effort of pioneering individuals rather than by the decision of a majority or by a miracle (many religious Jews believe that the Third Temple will land from the sky after it is built metaphysically through Jewish good deeds), to live with my father in Kyiv, Ukraine, I was finally exposed to the wider world -although later I would meet Christian tourists in Jerusalem. I was exposed to an education, learned to read and write well in English (I was given English classes privately prior, but not taught English in school though we spoke English at home), and saw that gentiles were human beings like me and that there were many diverse cultures around the world with the Jews being only a small part of them, a small fragment. But, my father was abusive emotionally. He was a refusnik during the Soviet Era, a Zionist who went to commemorate the massacre of Jews in Babi Yar, Ukraine and was involved in political activities favoring Zionism and for this was arrested by the KGB and finally expelled to Israel. After living in Israel, being offered a political post by Meir Kahane- whose movement, the JDL- was active in support of Soviet Jewry in the United States- but after serving as an Israeli occupying soldier in Ramallah, he told me it all felt very stupid, running after Palestinian children who were throwing stones at him- he changed his colors, relocated to the US- stopped believing in any ideology and focused on making money. He got a Wharton MBA and admires rich people, especially people as George Soros. My father couldn’t handle the gap- I was taken away from him by my mother at age four from the United States and she remarried and relocated to Israel, choosing to live in the Kfar Adumim settlement in the West Bank- and adopting an ultra-right-wing and ultra-religious lifestyle, without telling my father my whereabouts. After a three year legal battle which included tapping my grandparents’ phones and obtaining their phone records, he could prove that they knew about my whereabouts and that I was taken to Israel- and he got to see me once a year for 10 days. It was difficult to meet him, I wasn’t sure he was my father, I wasn’t told anything about who my father was- in fact- I was told my step-father is my real father, but he offered me lenses into the beauties of the secular world, vacations in Eilat, sailing, foreign women, James Bond films and Tom Clancy novels. Perhaps the gap of separation from me was too difficult for him. He did not know how to treat a teenager. His girlfriend, whom he later married, didn’t like me and badmouthed me to him. But he never took me to a psychologist and I certainly needed one. In any case, although he put me in the prestigious Kyiv International School- a private American high-school in Kyiv-where I met the elite of Ukraine and Europe- (many of the kids were sons of diplomats or businessmen) he was emotionally abusive, constantly condemning me, to the point where I felt I had no value. I called my grandparents to whom I was close secretly and told them I wanted to move to the US. They agreed. Little did I know that I will be betrayed. When I was in Turkiye on vacation with him at a Club Med my mother arrived with a bearded religious Jew named Jacob, who told me they came to take me back to Israel and promised me that I would later go to the US. That never happened. It turns out that meanwhile, my mother was running through the entire epoch of the three months that went by, a massive public relations campaign contacting every public persona she could including chief rabbis and leftist politicians. She told them I was kidnapped by my father, brainwashed by him, and she felt she had a duty to bring me back to her bosom and to Jewish religious life. So, I stole 700 USD from my father while he was gone on boat ride, and disappeared. My mother took me back to Jerusalem. That same day, my father called her furious. I was 14 at the time, but on that day I just turned 15. He told me I have psychological problems and need to see a psychiatrist. That I am unhappy everywhere I go and always feel the need to travel (perhaps he was right about that one, I have since traveled widely. Perhaps I suffered from a psychological trauma due to being forcefully relocated from the US to Israel at age 4). And that he doesn’t want anything to do with me again. I contacted him later several times, even visiting his building in the Upper East Side of New York, contacted him after I served in the military and after I graduated from Brown and after I was kidnapped in Lebanon, but he was always insistent that he wanted nothing to do with me. He remarried his secretary- the same girlfriend who hated my guts- her name was Nadia, his Yuli- had a baby girl who since went to the University of Pennsylvania, and who was taught the piano- a practice I left since I was too involved in politics, after all I was busy spreading leaflets at age 14 as the political fire was burning too much in me for me to have patience for a piano, moreover, my teacher himself was a Kahanist who preferred to talk politics and praise Baruch Goldstein rather than teach me how to play, and he has been absent from my life since.

Years later, after going through mandatory military service for which I was indoctrinated in Israel, having felt guilty about not serving due to generations of Israelis soldiers who sacrificed their lives so I can live- or so I believed- I joined the circles of Rabbi Marc (Mordechai) Gafni, a New Age Jewish rabbi who sought to integrate the best of Judaism with psychology and Buddhism- and there I met Eitan, a young University of Pennsylvania graduate, an American-Jew in Israel. At the time I applied to study at the University of Pennsylvania. In my essay, I wrote about the horrors of my Jewish upbringing and how the Talmud is racist, but he wouldn’t let me express myself, he cautioned me against writing what truly happened because that would turn people against Judaism and will increase antisemitism. Gafni himself, whom I talked to personally- and who wrote several books about how one should follow one’s intuition and heart’s calling instead of the dry confines of Judaism (his book was named Soulprint, where he argued that each person has a unique soulprint, which, like a finger print, is wholly unique and must be followed), was later exposed for having multiple affairs with women in Israel and telling each one that he would marry her, and was forced to leave Israel and resettle in the US. His community was shell shocked. And for me, that was the final straw in trying to make sense of Judaism and in trying to find my home in it, though the Jewish indoctrination was so strong, that I kept trying (what else to expect when you tell a young child in his best and most fragile and vulnerable years that he must follow God’s law, and you use his best brainpower to memorize anarchic verses from Jewish religious books as the Mishna, or from the Jewish Psalms).

All this said, there are some positive aspects in Judaism such as the Jewish day of rest, the Sabbath. But even then many Jews prefer to talk about business, which is, strictly speaking, somewhat forbidden, as it runs against the spirit of the Sabbath. Also, I am grateful for everything I learned from my mother and step-father and father, and forgive them all, we all are humans and we all make mistakes, but nevertheless I wish I had more science  classes at home (although an Australian friend I met in Ecuador said that it’s not big issue that I didn’t get science). The ability to delve into aspects of the Bible or the Talmud, to use one’s mind in a legalistic and rational undertaking, is one I used later on when entering academia.

In any case, after I returned to Israel, on the day I turned 15, I refused to go to any religious institution, as I wanted a broad secular education. My mother staunchly refused. Finally, after spending a month at home, I was enrolled in a religious high-school in Jerusalem where most of the kids used drugs. I avoided the drugs, and avoided the kids, instead focusing on my studies and on obtaining the Israeli matriculate while working six hours a day in a bagels store in Jerusalem so I can earn enough money to visit the United States on my own, which I did eventually. I toured New York widely. For me, coming to the US was a dream come true. If my father would have been more open-minded I possibly would have moved on to live with him, I realize this now thinking back, but he blocked me out of his life when I left him. Soviet Jews are tough, and kind of foolishly stubborn.

Meanwhile, my mother introduced me to the son of the late Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Meni Even Israel.  He told me I have potential, and if I study hard can become a doctor or lawyer within 10 years. But he also told me that Matt and Brenda Paxton, my teacher at Kyiv International School who offered to receive me in their home in Idaho and place in me in a local American high-school, were not sincere and didn’t really want to help me. Of course, I was barred from going to them, even if I wanted to. But, according to Judaism, non-Jews never do good actions because of their own good will but to gain a benefit, unlike Jews. He also studied with me a tough text written by Nahmanides, a medieval Jewish scholar, in which a Jew debates non-Jews and disproves the Gospel and the Catholic Church. This was due to the fact that during my high-school years I was drawn to evangelical Christians I met at a cafe and read the New Testament with much zeal and very carefully, and was drawn to the Christian message.

During this time, between the ages of 16-18, I met Messianic Jews who accept Jesus as the Messiah and befriended Ariel Blumenthal a leading Jewish messianic figure who at the time was relatively unknown and lived in an Nachlaot mansion, having lived earlier in Japan where he had a spiritual experience when visiting an evangelical church where he prayed to God to show him the truth. He later, on a bus ride in Japan, saw a vision of Jesus smiling at him. I also met André Villeneuve, a talented young Canadian Christian who showed me the world of music and worship. Andre later moved to Catholicism and is now a leading academic in California.  I visited evangelical churches, as it was the only place where I could meet foreign women. I also was drawn by the New Testament. When joining a Sabbath dinner organized by Messianic Jews in Talpiot, Jerusalem, Asher Intrater, a leading Messianic Jewish figure and a head of the College, there was a time for prayer during which Asher put his arm on my shoulder. All of a sudden I felt a mesmerizing presence and felt my eyes twinkling, as if a spirit was going through my eyes. I had a wonderful knowing that Jesus was the Messiah, a knowing which I could not explain but it was absolute certainty. Perhaps I was wishing for such a mystical experience, possibly I was interested in a spiritual experience that would take away from me the need to think and reason on my own whether, based on various evidence and Biblical prophecies, Jesus was the prophesied messiah. But that was my experience at the time.

In any case, I could not accept the possibility that all the Jews were going to Hell due to not believing in Jesus. I did not wish to be separated from them. Also, I didn’t want to share with my mother and step-father my new faith since I thought I would be ostracised and I knew it would help them deeply. So I buried it somewhere in my heart and moved on.

Later on, I volunteered a single son to serve in the Israeli army, even though I wasn’t obligated to be in combat. The training was tough and taught me will-power and also put me in shape. But we ended up occupying Palestinian villages and harassing ordinary people. I realized to my dismay that much of what I did illegally when part of Kahanist circles was now being done openly and legally with the approval by the state. To my shock, what the Israeli army did was far worse than anything we did as youth activists. However, I didn’t have the courage to stand up against injustices. Although I personally didn’t kill anyone (though I was once involved in responding to a shootout), I went along with the orders we were given, trying to do the minimum. Eventually I gave testimony over what happened to Breaking the Silence, an organization dedicated to exposing Israeli actions in the West Bank using testimonies of soldiers. (I served as a combat medic for 2 years, with the final year dedicated to study).

After the completion of my army service, I went on to travel to India, and explored Tibetan Buddhism in Dharamsala, while encountering the 17th Karmapa. He had a strong presence which I could feel when passing by him. I met a friendly and lovely German female nun who told me she once considered converting to Judaism and converted to Tibetan Buddhism instead. She gave me a book on training of the mind. There was something that attracted me about Tibetan Buddhism. I believed at the time many of the disinformation spread about the Chinese takeover of Tibet, only to learn later, when living in Beijing between 2018-2020 that the Dalai Lama was in fact a cruel monarch who lived off the livelihood of poor Tibetans, that China has improved the life-style of Tibetans significantly and has made them richer than ever before, and that Tibet was in fact liberated by the People’s Liberation Army from the oppressive regime of the Dalai Lama, who was made a saint by the West. Needless to say, many people do not know much about Chinese Buddhism, and only Tibetan Buddhism and Japanese Zen Buddhism is promoted in the West, conveniently, as the two practices are used as weapons against the economic growth of China.

After going to India, and after discovering to my dismay and freight that I am a hairy person with hair being grown on my cheeks and these hairs were plucked forcefully by an Indian barber, I went to Brown University. I was accepted partially because my mother went there (Celia Glick MD), and partly because I told them the story of how I strove to get an education and escaped to Ukraine and this has possibly made an impression on the admissions.

Brown was simply an amazing environment, though my mother and step-father did not wish me to go there- explaining why when they came to visit me in my graduation after four years of lacking encouragement – I turned them the could shoulder, where many young American and international students of incredibly talented stature attended. I had to work very hard, spending many hours adjusting and refining my -hitherto nonexistent- academic English. Unfortunately, due to the active stress, I took on the incredibly unhealthy habit of smoking on occasion – though I ditched it later (and now back to it, owing to the incredibly cheap prices of Chinese cigarettes but I need to quit again). But I was a bit dizzy by the opportunities. There were so many things, music classes, swimming, socializing, parties, computer science courses, lectures, environmental clubs-to do, that I did not know where to start from. Eventually, an adviser helped me chose a theater class, which was a lot of fun. He understood I came from an environment that emphasised the mind over the body, and where the body was under a system of repression and not given room to express itself, and thought – correctly- that I should pursue something that enables me to give expression to the body. The theater class was a lot of fun, as was the West African Dance course and attending a concert by the amazing Malian singer Habib Koite, but eventually I settled for International Relations as a concentration (at Brown one has to take, for instance, 11 courses in a given concentration and 19 courses or more can be done in any subject one may like). I took excellent courses like in medical anthropology with Daniel Jordan Smith, public policy with Ross Cheit, and education with Jin Li, but the one who had possibly one of the most lasting influences on me was also one who served as a father figure- Sergei Khrushchev, son of the late Nikita Khrushchev, secretary general of the Soviet Union after Stalin.

Khrushchev made me realize that communists were humans who had good intentions, alas ones who made mistakes, as humans do. A liberal in his perspective, Khrushchev taught me early on that Crimea was historically part of Russia until his father gave it away to Ukraine (he wrote about this for al Jazeera), that Iran was run by rational people with legitimate national security interests, and that the Israel would eventually be forced to negotiate with its enemies and that the earlier it does so, the better. Khrushchev eventually shot himself in the head after he started dying from cancer. He encouraged me to write a lot and to explore independent journalism, which I did. He also encouraged me to marry earlier and find a life partner soon (which sadly I didn’t). He was a sharp mind, a crystal clear one, with sharping piercing blue eyes. A cunning man, he once told me he would write me a letter of recommendation and was later dismayed that I didn’t understand that I were to write the letter of recommendation and he were to sign it. He made me realize, as the crisis in Ukraine unfolded later in 2014, and as I communicated with him via e-mail and visited him several times in his home, that the US in fact carried out a violent illegal coup in Kyiv which is why the people of the east (in Donbass) rebelled and declared independence. He shed light on much of US-Russia relations. A Ukrainian by birth, unfortunately he wasn’t taken seriously by the US establishment at the time, though only now, with Trump in power, is the US moving away from its disastrous policies in Ukraine.

During my time at Brown, I underwent various internships such as with the Jerusalem Center for Public affairs under Dr. Gerald Steinberg, who was a very decent man personally, though I could not accept needing to write about how Israel was justified in murdering a child in Gaza, and I left after a month, at the OSCE in Sarjevo, Bosnia, which gave me a more positive view of Islam and a more rational view of  the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and at the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, which left me with a more favorable view of the German people, fascination and love for Berlin as a city I found truly magical, and much admiration for Thorsten Benner, its director, although we had a falling out, after he took issues with articles I wrote on Ukraine, accusing me of being paid by Russia to write those articles (which I was not).

During my undergraduate years, I went on to pursue Modern History and Politics at Mansfield College, Oxford. There is no place in the world quite like Oxford. You write an academic paper every week and two every two weeks, based on about 10 books on each subject, and sit with a professor, a tutor, expert in his or her field, to discuss all aspects touched or not touched upon by your paper for a full hour. It’s an opportunity to get someone’s mind fully at your service for one hour, an expert in his field. Unfortunately this tutoring system is not longer available in Oxford due to the high cost of a proper teacher-to-student ratio. During my time there, I got to visit Paris and Prague, studied Michel Foucault in depth, and had such fun and energetic teachers as Tudor Jones, who taught me modern political theory.

After graduating from Brown, I went on to study German at Humboldt University, and went on to visit Brazil, where I studied Portuguese and taught English. In the course of my time there I encountered the charismatic and top speaker, James Green PhD, an authority on Brazilian history during the dictatorship. Brazilians gave me a joy of life I lacked before, and taught me how to dance and be happy. Unfortunately after five years of studying – including a master at the London School of Economics- I failed to show up for an internship I was given at the German Bundestag, preferring to stay in Berlin instead, and also being pushed against going by Sari Steinberg, my mother’s friend, a wealthy woman in New York, who could not understand why the Germans would give me a scholarship, as if they had some kind of ulterior motive.

After visiting Pakistan twice for weddings, I developed a more positive image of Islam, and after teaching English in the favela of Rocinha, the largest favela in Latin America, I came to understand how a majority could be maligned because of individual actions of a tiny minority- the drug gangs. This, while the children I taught and most people I met were amazing people.  This made me realize I had a responsibility to do something about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. I traveled back to the West Bank- to encounter my old demons- and because I felt I had an obligation to correct my own misdeeds- made a friend with Younes Arar, a popular mobilization committee member in Beit Ommar, a city by Hebron-Al Khalil- and took an active part of peaceful demonstrations against the occupation which were cracked down upon by force by Israeli soldiers (who due to group and social psychology naturally follow orders and groupthink much as the Wehrmacht did in World War II- by the way Brown historian Omer Bartov also had a lasting impression on me while studying German history at Brown- only that he fell himself into the groupthink regarding the Ukraine conflict while it was taking place while Vladimir Golstein with whom I studied Slavic Studies was more open minded and outspoken on the issue). I helped Younes actively with photography, taking many pictures with a Canon 60D, only that he recommended, rightfully or wrongfully, that I abstain from publishing these pictures so as not to be followed by the Israeli intelligence services- and I heeded his advice, correctly or incorrectly.

During my time in Latin America, I also visited Cuba. I found an African-Cuba-Filipino-Chinese woman named Deiry Fernandez, who accepted me in her home as her child, and became friends with her alcoholic son Gerardo. She opened tarot cards for me and told me I need to be baptized. I was baptized in an Orthodox church in Cuba. And went on to practice santeria – an Afro-Cuban syncretic religion. But, during one of the sessions, a woman blew very strongly into my ears- causing me permanent tinnitus and loss of high tones of hearing, though I have adapted to it- and over time I have lost faith in santeria. I was told by Deiry that this was the way orishas were communicating and I must accept. I naively followed. Only that later I found that poor people in Cuba due to desperation follow santeria fanatically while closing their minds to rational thinking. Deiry went on to live in the United States.

While visiting Israel, I trusted a childhood friend, Avinoam Kutscher, with 35,000 euros, and he promised me a return of 10% each month. I saw an economic crisis coming, and I thought it best to create a business negotiation in something practical, as kosher meat production in Poland, and in the Jewish community, for I saw how the world was fragmenting into tribalism. I naively assumed that as an assistant to the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, he would have to keep his word, for it would be a scandal if he would steal the inheritance money I got from my late grandfather, George Manstein MD. But, his words were in vain and he stole my money. I took him to court, first using a Palestinian Arab Israeli from Jaffa, and then an Israeli settler lawyer since I thought an Arab wouldn’t have much chance in the Israeli court system. But my Israeli lawyer instead befriended Kutscher, and refused to bring to the court Żaklina Wojnowska, a Polish woman whom he has also deceived. Meanwhile, much as I predicted, Avinoam Kutscher brought to court a Chabad guy named Shimon, whom I personally gave a gift of 150 euros for his family event, who betrayed me and lied to the court. The point is that I worked in Poland with Kutscher believing that he would pay me back and ran his team of kosher meat slaughterers in Brynek, but he refused to pay me back for my work and expenses and in fact operated and perhaps still operates an illegal scheme of a black market in Poland. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, the Israeli judge accepted Kutscher’s version, and not only was my money not refunded, but I had to pay 13,000 NIS for the expenses of the court. Kutscher’s lawyer was a Chabadnik, whose wife’s brother is the chief rabbi of the Western Wall, if I remember correctly, and whose wife herself, a practicing lawyer, was accused by her clients of stealing their pension money, if I recall correctly. My 5,000 euro expenditure was never returned. I suppose I got justice the Israeli way, and the Halachic (Jewish legal) way, as non-practicing Jews have less right than practicing Jews.

After and during this ordeal, I went on to study Chinese at Beijing Language and Culture University and immersed myself heavily, discovering the wonders of Chinese civilization. In China, the government works for the people and tells the companies what to do, but in the West, and also in the US, the government works for the companies telling people what to do. That is, in short, the main difference. In the past 40 years, Chinese people of all walks of life have become richer than ever before, though inequality persists in the country. Simply put, China is using market socialism or state capitalism to advance the country so that it will reach a high state of development. Anyone who visits mainland China for real will encounter an ever accelerating economy that is using technology to a degree unseen in the most advanced western economies.

However, the breakout of Covid put an end to my plan to study Chinese and Chinese medicine, though I was accepted to the Beijing School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and I embarked on a journey trying to avoid the virus (and not knowing, at first, full well what it actually was). I went to Iraq, Turkeiye, Greece, western European countries, African countries and Latin America. In the course of my travels, I had a long-term relationship with a Colombian woman, however, these plans did not materialize as we had cultural differences that prevented understanding from taking place, and since my Spanish was not as perfect as hers nor did she speak English. I now find myself back in China, looking for employment, and ready to settle down.