A Touching Letter From a Chinese Student

Hey Laowinners,

It feels good to be truthful to yourself and to believe in your message. Sometimes it's hard to open up about how things are going in China, but I wanted to share this letter from an ex-student I just received. It will be included in a video soon. 

Teacher, 

First Im sorry my English is poor.

I wish you are well. I am your student in your computer science class in 2016. I been using a VPN to join programming forums like Github and other ones that are blocked in English because the informations that I find are more useful than the ones in China. When you were our teacher, I always thought your lessons were really fun and I learned so many resources to help me actually learn about computer science, not only from books. Some of my classmates said the same thing, but many of them just want to pass to get a job after university is over.

I been looking Youtube for now 2 years, and when I search China I see your face. It was so funny to see how foreigners think about China, but sometimes I am curious and want to watch some news about the world. I look BBC, and many others, and I found out some of the things I read in my local news are not matched. Also, I watch some videos from you and your friends and I see some things that I notice in my life, but people don’t talk about. These things are like the pollution, the empty houses, the block internet, the news always say that China problems are all usa and west fault. I start to get annoy because some of my friends also talk the things like the CCP is great, the west is bully us, how China is so good. I think china is good, it’s my country, but when I look your video “Why I Change my mind about China”, I realize that I have the exact same idea as you. I show the video to some friends, and two of them say “hey that is the guy smears china, what a bad guy.” Then I show them some other videos and they said “oh its funny and not that bad”. It open a new talk with us, and we start to talk about how Chinas news and media is so many lies. We are used to the lies though but we became annoy because we are block from seeing anything by the great firewall and we have to do illegal vpns to see anything. We are most annoy because the government media makes all Chinese people look the same. Same idea. Same thinking. Same everything. I do more and more research these days and I realize that in the past 4 years I think my country is closing down and becomeing like when my mom and dad were children. I ignore the news and the posters about how good the government is, but I see so many now, and I feel young people are getting very hatred about everything and even if they know the government is doing bad things they defend it because we are china and we need to fight the world ideas.
 

I notice the Hong Kong protest in the news change so many times. First the hk ppl are just a few who don’t like china so they protest. Then its more people but they are brainwash about western news. Now they show most people are against the government and the west change the elections. Me and two close friends are too curious and we go to HK. We can speak Cantonese and we talk to some students, because our friend is study there. We learn so much about what really happen and now we realize what we learn is so many lies. many people in china now are not happy. Salary doesn’t go up, and fewer and fewer people have an opinion about anything except china is good and we must sufferer because the world hates us. I know this is not true.
 

The reason I send you this is because I see the videos about you and your friends say you are lies and paid to make messages that are not truth, but I know you speak what you know, and your ideas are same as mine. Actually many of us agree with you and don’t want china to become a jail like in Mao time. I surprise to see other foreigners making videos say china is good and should block us to protect us from outside countries. The foreigners say our voice not Chinese people and say the CCP is good and say you are wrong. I say **** you I’m so angry! You don’t talk for our ideas! Me and my friends use so much time to make our ideas for ourself and you say the same rubbish lies the news says! We cannot talk or we get punished but the foreigners can say the same lies our government says!? I think they must have some reward for this because they know the truth. I want to say most people will be scared and sad to make truth videos like you if you always get hurt and smear by these people but please don’t stop. We must use so much tools like vpn to see other ideas and these foreigners and wumaos want us to see more bullshit instead. They say people anti-china is racist but many people only say they don’t agree the Chinese government. That is not racist. It is racist to be a foreigner who says Chinese people need to be control and use foreigner to say CCP is good and lie to people. We Chinese have our own ideas and its not all the same.

I don’t hate china. I don’t hate my government but I am scared the future is more control and more lies. Foreigners can use YouTube and other stuffs to say anything but we can’t. It’s not fair and its not morally. 

If Chinese say china is good and western is bad ok, they don’t know enough informations but if foreigners say Chinese government is good and everything outside is bad that is a lie because they know the truth.
 

I don’t know if you would use this letter in a video, but I allow you to, and I hope you do it. We love you and we hope china can get better. We believe we can meet you again and you tell us you want china to be better too.