So there I was, standing in front of an enormous statue of the Qi emperor, with a municipal government translator holding an umbrella over me to shade my head from the sun, while also holding my purse for me so I wouldn't get tired, while 12 other people representing the television station and the local government looked on encouragingly, as the television director patiently but urgently repeated the nine Chinese words that I was supposed to learn on the spot to repeat enthusiastically while smiling at the camera.

How did this happen? I thought to myself. Why am I here with all these people looking at me and a director pleading with me like I'm a particularly dim-witted starlet?

Sometimes you can get a taste of what it feels like to be a celebrity just by being a foreigner in China. People stop and stare, some call out "hello," some want to take their picture with you, and some young people are frankly awestruck when you speak to them.  But for a few days in early June, we Zibo foreign teachers got to live the lives of TV celebrities...

Zibo City includes five districts. Zhangdian district, where I live, has all the modern conveniences. But for picturesque beauty, give me Boshan District. Boshan has more hills, or rather low mountains; it's greener, the air is cleaner and the temperatures are a little cooler. The streets are narrower, the traffic is even crazier, and you can see Old China on every street corner, from the old man selling birds from large wicker birdcages to the little boy in the alley pulling down his pants to take a -- okay, it's all incredibly quaint. 

I didn't come to China for glittering shopping malls and designer brands, real or faked. I came for tiled roofs, mosaic murals lining the canal, street markets, leafy neighborhood parks where old men exercise while waving swords or whips, tiny shops selling glimmering lengths of silk in rich jewel colors hanging from bamboo poles, pieces of white and green jade carved into amazing sculptures, wizened old peasant ladies with flowered blouses and gold teeth who seem to regard Life (and foreigners) as a cosmic joke. Boshan has all this, check, check, check and check...

Lonsdale Avenue, the main shopping street in North Vancouver, looks completely different from when I was a kid. Back then, It had a hardware store, a shoe store, a book store, a stationery store. All long gone. Of course there were several Chinese restaurants, but nothing more exotic than that. Other stores came and went -- remember the muffin craze, followed by the big cookie craze? Now, Lonsdale is coffee houses, sushi places and restaurants and stores operated by people from the four corners of the earth. I'm sometimes mystified by the appeal of some cultural imports. Could you persuade North Vancouver teenagers to eat tapioca? You can if you're selling them bubble tea. 

Point is, North Vancouver is no longer a British-WASP enclave. Cultures and cuisines mix and mingle up and down the street. And this has come about because of globalization and shopping malls and big box stores and changing immigration policies. It's not all good, it's not all bad, it just is. 

Now try a thought experiment. Imagine if your kids listened to -- to take an example -- Persian music. And they admired Persian movie stars and singers. Imagine if they wore only Persian styles of clothing, or t-shirts with jumbled Persian phrases on them, or designs that included the Persian flag. And they wished they had eyes like the Persians and some even had plastic surgery to achieve that Persian look.  Imagine if they abandoned playing street hockey in favor of Persian sports and hobbies. And they thought Persian movies were better than North American movies.  And they planned to major in Persian at college. And wished they could go to Persia. And of course the kids regarded Persian food as a special treat.  And private and public schools couldn't hire enough native-speaking Persians to fill the demand for Persian lessons.