CHAPTER SIX

    THE RED DRAGON

    East China Airways flight 56 from Shanghai to Chicago was packed. Phoenix sat at a window. He preferred a window seat so that he could have a bird’s view of the cities and countryside. Two large men sat right to him. Both appeared to be seasoned travelers, or even frequent flyers. The one at his far right was a Western businessman reading a Chinese newspaper, and the one right next to him was a Chinese businessman who fell into sleep the minute his bottom hit the seat and started snoring the minute after.

   The Western businessman putdown his newspaper, he turned and looked at Phoenix and asked him in Chinese, “Where is your destination?”

   “Chicago. I am going to attend SAM,” replied Phoenix in English.

   “Really? I am an SAM alumnus myself! What a small world!” the man said excitedly. “John Hoffman,” he extended his right hand to Phoenix.

   “Are you really? Phoenix Lee,” Phoenix took his hand and shook it with a tremendous enthusiasm. He could not believe it.

   “Yes, I am really John Hoffman. And I am an alumnus of SAM.” Mr. Hoffman had some sense of humor.

   Mr. Hoffman told Phoenix he was now a business consultant working part-time for a Fortune 500 Chicago company. His China knowledge helped the company expand their business in China, and his business trips to China at the company’s expense allowed him to volunteer some of his service in his spare time to help the missionary work supported by SAM and several large churches in Chicago, LA, and Atlanta area. Mr. Hoffman was a German American, and like Phoenix, he left his homeland to attend SAM when he was seventeen years old.

   It immediately occurred to Phoenix that this must be part of God’s plan. The German connection, of course! He secured Mr. Hoffman’s business card and started to ask him questions about SAM and about Germany. It turned out Mr. Hoffman was also a part-time teacher at SAM. He taught The Fundamentals of Missionary Work and East Asian studies there.

   “I also teach German Language there from time to time,” Mr. Hoffman added.

   “But why do they teach that there? Isn’t Germany already a Christian country?” Phoenix asked, thinking: “Do they use their resources wisely there in SAM?”

   “Don’t forget the former East Germany,” Mr. Hoffman seemed to know what Phoenix was thinking. “Plus, the history of German Christians is a very important part of Christian history in general. I take you do know a little about Martin Luther and his Protestant Reformation?” Mr. Hoffman asked Phoenix, not waiting for the answer.

   “OK, I do see the point now. It won’t hurt now that the new Pope is also from Germany too, right?” Phoenix did not want Mr. Hoffman to think that he knew little about this topic.

   “True,” Mr. Hoffman replied. “But that fact has very little to do with our teaching German in the school,” he added.

   “Do you visit Germany often?” Phoenix asked, picturing God’s plan.

   “Not as often as I wished,” Mr. Hoffman replied, emotionally. “My parents and two sisters are there. But I am married, with kids. And my jobs are very demanding too, you know.”

   “What city of Germany did you come from?” asked Phoenix, did not try to change the topic. He wanted to learn as much about Germany as possible from Mr. Hoffman. He believed that that was why God arranged Mr. Hoffman sitting next to him.

   “I share the same hometown with Mr. Karl Marx, not that I was proud of, just for your information.” Mr. Hoffman replied, humorously.

   “Trier.” Phoenix said, almost sneering. He had learned about the city of Trier so many times in his mandatory Communist History classes all six years from middle school to high school.

   “That’s the one. Well, do you know that Trier is the oldest city in Germany?”

   Phoenix had no idea. It was a shame that the textbook did not mention that.

   “How much do you know about Karl Marx?” Mr. Hoffman asked, did not want the topic to slip away.

   “Officially?” Phoenix asked, still having some trace of sneering.

   “Do you know anything otherwise?” Mr. Hoffman requested.

   “No. Honestly, I don’t. I have only the government version, which tells us that he was a man who was wiser than anybody else in human history, that he discovered the flaw of capitalism and designed communism as its solution. But it was never clear to me exactly what was wrong with the capitalism and what was so great about the system we are having now,” Phoenix replied in a low voice, compassionately nonetheless. “It seems to me that the society we have now in China is much worse than the worst of the capitalism Marx had ever described. What is the point of communist revolution?” Phoenix asked, still in an undertone. He had asked this question many many times to himself. And today, he finally got a rare chance to ask the very same question to Karl Marx’s countryman.

    “Well, Marx was a man of 19th century. His vision did have a lot of limitations. However, he was more a philosopher than a revolutionist. His standpoint changed over time. It was believed that in his later days, he had said that, he, Karl Marx would never be a Marxist himself. Someone had proposed that Marx believed that capitalism was unjust, but did not believe that he believed it was unjust. In other words, Marx, like so many of us, did not have perfect knowledge of his own mind.” Mr. Hoffman talked about Mark almost like Marx was an old friend of his, apparently an expert of the topic and had delved into detailed Marx researches before.

   “Karl Marx, the son of Hirschel and Henrietta Marx, was born in 1818. Hirschel was a lawyer. To escape anti-Semitism he decided to abandon his Jewish faith when Karl was a child. Although the majority of people living in Trier were Catholics, Marx decided to become a Protestant. He also changed his name from Hischel to Heinrich.”

   “Then my dad and mom are not the only ones to take the shortcuts in their lives,” Phoenix injected, appreciating the level of details Mr. Hoffman provided. He had never learned that from the official textbook.

   “I am sure they are not,” nodded Mr. Hoffman, and continued. “After schooling in Trier, Marx entered Bonn University to study law. At the university he spent much of his time socializing and ran up large debts. His father was horrified when he discovered that Karl had been wounded in a duel. Heinrich Marx agreed to pay off his son’s debts but insisted that he moved to the more sedated Berlin University.”

   “Wow,” Phoenix never knew Marx was a sort of troublemaker in college.

   “The move to Berlin resulted in a change in Marx and for the next few years he worked hard at his studies. Marx came under the influence of one of his professors, Bruno Bauer, whose atheism and radical political opinions got him into trouble with the authorities. Bauer introduced Marx to the writings of G. W. F. Hegel, who had been the professor of philosophy at the Berlin until his death in 1831. Marx was especially impressed by G. W. F. Hegel’s theory that a thing or thought could not be separated from its opposite,” Mr. Hoffman took a gulp of his bottle water and continued. “For example, the slaves could not exist without the master, and vice versa. Hegel argued that unity would eventually be achieved by the equalizing of all opposites, by means of the dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This was Hegel’s theory of the evolving process of history. Heinirich Marx died in 1838. Marx now had to earn his own living and he decided to become a professor. After completing his doctoral thesis at the University of Jena, Marx hoped that his mentor Bruno Bauer would help find him a teaching position. However, in 1842 Bauer was dismissed as a result of his outspoken atheism and was unable to help. Marx then tried journalism but his radical political views meant that most editors were unwilling to publish his articles. He moved to Cologne where the city’s liberal opposition movement was fairly strong. The Rhenish Gazette, owned by a liberal group known as Cologne Circle, published an article by Marx where he defended the freedom of the press. The group was impressed by the article and in October, 1842, Marx was appointed editor of the newspaper.”