[Raoul]

Thanks, Kiwi. I like Jilin, too. I'm at abut the same latitude you are and I could stand a blast of that cold about now.

This campaign against Hemingway is indeed a case of a personal axe to grind. I'll try not to go into details unless I just have to. I'm appalled and disgusted at the spew of bile, lies, and ignorance being directed at this good and decent man across various forums. I am NOT wrong about this situation. Hemingway IS my friend (no quotes needed), and the only help he needs is to try and counter this insane effort to discredit him. Hemingway at least has friends willing to leap into the breach for him, a claim I suspect some other posters can't really make. I can't let this garbage stand unchallenged.

So, let's look at some of the assertions that have been made here.

First, no, I was not part of the Laowai Monologues. I was a fan, like many, many others...but only a silent fan. But it's made to sound as if writing the Laowai Monologues blog was in itself some kind of crime or wrongdoing. It wasn't. Yeah, sometimes there were some pretty jaundiced looks at life in a small jerkwater Chinese city, but the blogs were NOT racist or vituperative...they were certainly nicer than the treatment Hemingway's been getting. His writings WERE funny, pithy, thought-provoking, sometimes tender, sometimes pathetic...and they told the truth.

I won't back virulent racism against the Chinese or anyone else. The Monologues had a number of fans in the foreign diplomatic corps in China...and they won't support such things either. This charge is a LIE, completely and totally. The site finally disappeared because some snivelling little rat-faced git (and you know who you are, you snivelling little rat-faced git!) narked him out to the Huaibei uni, who forced him to pull the plug on the site.

OK, let's look at Huaibei. Not the Huaibei photos produced by the local propaganda bureau, but the real town itself. It's in Anhui, a third-rate backwater province. Within that context, Huaibei is a third-rate backwater town. It IS dirty. It IS backwards. It IS boring. It IS going to be a shock to the shammies to most foreigners coming there to live. Don't believe me? Go there, spend some time, and look for yourself. This one is easy.

The bottom line is that this is a terrible, terrible school and terrible things have happened there. They not only can't hold the Westerners that they've lured into this trap, they can't even hold the Cameroonians and Filipinas and others they've turned to more recently...and these teachers are generally pretty desperate for any job they can find. If you go to Huaibei and work for this uni, you're going to find out which side of this is really telling the truth.

And boy, at that point you're going to be SO sorry you didn't recognize the truth when you saw it.

Raoul