There’s No Way This Swimmer Can Stay Champ for Long

In last night’s WSJ, Warren Kozak wrote about a story that tells much about how things work in China. Beginning with a topic of Google’s defiance of the government over censorship of results, he tells a story from his days in the mid ’80s when he lived there with a group of expats, in an apartment bloc where the foreigners lived among the Chinese but all in one section.

Posters went up in the neighborhood for a ‘friendly swimming competition.’ It sounded like fun, so Kozak joined his fellow Americans and Brits and they walked down on a sunny July day to the local pool. Having spent time on the school swim team, Kozak felt he had a shot…and surprised himself when he won all three events he had signed up for.

Later on as he was walking in another part of town, he noticed Chinese pointing at him, whispering a word he didn’t understand–yo yung. It means ‘The Swimmer,’ and it was his new nickname, word having spread about the American who won all of those races.

Then he got invited a few months later to another swimming competition. It was a very hot day, and there was a long wait to get into the pool. Kozak tried his best but came in dead last, and could barely even get out of the pool.  But the Chinese had made their point, even if to the American it wasn’t a big deal.  Just as the government will come up with a way to chastise Google, there was no way this yo yung would be allowed to triumph for too long.

Kozak talks about a distinctly American trait…we walk with confidence, not arrogance, down foreign streets. This comes from our history of success and power. But this can causes people in other countries to resent us, and want to put us in our place.