They say that the cuisines of different Chinese provinces arose originally to serve different kinds of constituencies. Beijing was the cuisine of officials. In Shanghai, that was the cuisine of wealthy merchants and industrialists. In Szechwan, the food of the common people. Many great Szechwan dishes originated in street stalls.

Food is the main engine that drives connectedness, relationship in Chinese society.

You know how someone - something - surprises you. You wake up a little bit. That's done through Chinese cuisine - for example, through dishes of artifice. That's a whole sub-tradition in Chinese cuisine. To create a dish that comes to the table looking like one thing but actually is something else.

You can't portray wartime Shanghai without writing about the Holocaust - about 25,000 Jews survived the Nazi death machine by taking refuge there.

I know what it feels like to struggle to get the education that you need.

I went to Catholic school for the cheapest private education.

It worries me that undergrads and high school students are forced into books they aren't ready for, like Faulkner's, and then they are afraid of putting their toes in the water again.

But I would much prefer students going to college to learn and be prepared for the rigors of the new economic order, rather than dumping fees on them to subsidize football programs that, far from enhancing the academic mission instead make a mockery of it.