I think I am pretty adaptable. I lived in Japan many years ago and felt that, when I moved to China to work as a teacher, I was prepared to find a vastly different world than the Hawaiian island home I'd left behind. But I seriously missed one ritual I had maintained all my life; reading the newspaper with my morning cup of coffee. Real coffee, not those horrible instant packets. A newspaper in English, not in Chinese. Neither was available and I felt both losses keenly.

After a few years of having access to only an occasional paper from Hong Kong, the local China Post kiosk began to carry the China Daily. I immediately made an arrangement to have one saved for me every day. I now had a local source for real coffee and was delighted to reinstate my beloved morning cuppa and paper.

I began to clip items that would inform my students and began to be on the lookout for those which would instigate discussion. Most articles I clip are used for classroom reading. We cover new vocabulary and then we discuss the topic.

Students in China, in general, do not like to have opposing opinions and so it often was slow going, but I've pressed on because I believe that China needs people who can think "out of the box" and bring fresh ideas to the table.

I'm backed up by none other than President Hu Jintao. Several years ago I began reading in the China Daily of his calls for China to be an "innovation nation". On a speech about rebuilding the Party he stated, "Emancipating the mind is a magic instrument" I couldn't agree more. Dialogue and discourse and the ability to see many sides of a question are crucial to arrive at good, and more creative, decisions. It also is a requisite if China is to stop copying and embark more fully on innovative projects and businesses.