Shanghai Conversation

[Sevastopol]

So I've been in Shanghai.

In the museum a young guy, part of a group, began a conversation with me and identified himself as an electronic engineering student. His English was pretty good

Looked right. He said he opposed the Communist Party, that life in China was to be a slave, that he as an ethnic minority (Manchurian) sufferred a lot of discrimination, that China was ruled by the gun and the military.

All he wanted was to be free and live in a democracy, not necessarily a rich country and that he hoped for justice and a God to bring and ultimate justice to people. He asked also if I was a religious person.

Now these are fine and noble sentiments. I wonder though, could he have been some sort of agent provocateur, seeing if I was there to encourage dissent or religion?

Any ideas?

PS. Thanks to those who gave pre-China advice.

[China Guy]

My wag is that he was trying to find a sympathetic foreigner to sponsor him abroad. Doubt if he was an agent provacateur. Over the past 20 years I've never run into someone from the police trying to entrap a foreigner into making political statements at odds with the government.

There are very few Manchurians left. It's tough to find one even in what used to be manchuria. Han Chinese now make up 97% of the population. The Manchurians have largely been completely assimilated and my understanding is there are few pure blooded Manchurians left, and few that speak anything other than Chinese. It's a good choice to pretend to be a downtrodden minority in China looking for freedom (and other more obvious minorities would be harder to imitate in looks and language). Pure blooded Manchurians look somewhat different from Han Chinese. Can check by looking at the person's ID card, household registration or birth certificate - they list race and would spell out Manchurian.

[Sevastopol]

Thanks, that sounds like a probable explanation. Something didn't come across as quite right. All over now as this is posted from HK.