Filed by Herman Wang
WUHAN, China —;The folks at ABC probably already know this, but I’m sure they’ll be very pleased to hear Desperate Housewives is a hit show in China.
My fiancee, Megan, spent a year teaching English at a university in Wuhan two years ago, and this past weekend, we met up with several of her former students.
“We all watch Desperate Housewives,” one student told us with glee. “Have you watched it?”
After Megan and I both said, no, she replied, “Oh, it is very popular here.”
But, she added, “I don’t think it is very realistic.”
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The students also seemed very taken with the fact that I'm a journalist.
“You must be so brave,”one student said. “It is such a dangerous profession.”
Sorry to shatter their illusions, I said I never really felt like I was in any particular danger with my beat covering Chattanooga’s City Hall.
“Have you ever been attacked for something you wrote?” another student asked.
“Physically? No,” I replied, though I explained how sometimes upset or irate readers might write a letter to the editor that gets published.
“That’s usually about as far as it gets,” I said. (I had yet to hear about Mayor Littlefield’s banning of my colleague Michael Weber from City Hall.)
The students then told me stories about how reporters who exposed corruption within China’s government have been beaten in retaliation.
“Ah,” one student said, “but you have freedom of the press.”
E-mail Herman Wang at hwang@timesfreepress.com
