482: Xi Van Fleet— Don't Be a Shiny Little Screw

Mike sits down with author and Cultural Revolution survivor Xi Van Fleet https://sovereignnations.com/2023/09/13/the-chinese-cultural-revolution-xi-van-fleet/ for a conversation that's equal parts personal history and cautionary tale. Xi recounts her childhood under Mao Zedong's China, where conformity wasn't encouraged—it was enforced. As a schoolgirl, she watched teachers publicly humiliated, neighbors turn on each other, and young people mobilized as ideological foot soldiers. Education gave way to indoctrination, and individuality was crushed in favor of collective obedience—the kind that produces "shiny little screws." Drawing from her first book, Mao's America https://www.amazon.com/Maos-America-Survivors-Van-Fleet/dp/1546006303/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.-B2etMUz8i4XZuppBXPxqcPIl_76wam3fbakjZSkjK0UWUUIQPqo6OK86DUeh6VFLjsZgcr9mH9MopdezkvLfyvEhuXf3QmtpuKvwi0AY44mSHzaTPL8fkwcV4lpyLk-eg5A0iQBz-SSMaYywiQvdd8BW8OdunRhQ_Log517HDQLGTEcUDlwG_ZUFaiQ5V3Xi22cCE3U7mPcGGqxh-hbYLFbqltRoj691F41CoZ6_hQ. JEsUjIfQw9IpwsxWtzbBRpQ8jUlUBy_sB6maA-_QZIo&qid=1777937613&sr=8-2, Xi lays out how mass movements rooted in ideology often rely on dividing people into opposing groups—"good" versus "bad"—to consolidate power. She also comments on how youth are frequently weaponized to accelerate cultural upheaval and dismantle traditional institutions, often by encouraging them to reject established norms and embrace radical ideologies. These patterns, she argues, aren't relics of history—they're recurring tactics. And they are showing up in America today! The conversation then turns to her latest work, Made in America https://www.amazon.com/Made-America-History-Communist-Greatest/dp/1546009345/ref=sr_1_1?crid=WE1U6CNOYJ3Z&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.-B2etMUz8i4XZuppBXPxqcPIl_76wam3fbakjZSkjK0UWUUIQPqo6OK86DUeh6VFa7K7kRYcFkdb3goP_hCtc7FBiLhoFUmwwHUi5oV54kEtezJKKczkCIdX4Jy3BzDBeg5A0iQBz-SSMaYywiQvdd8BW8OdunRhQ_Log517HDQLGTEcUDlwG_ZUFaiQ5V3Xi22cCE3U7mPcGGqxh-hbYIUSa1LCC4YGstkBFKRR32A. CinzKb2G3fnIcuwRUylqNCZ6EB67G0XzUCtfzCkiPnE&dib_tag=se&keywords=xi+van+fleet+books&qid=1777937651&sprefix=%2Caps%2C251&sr=8-1, where the focus shifts from warning signs to origin stories. The central theme: the rise of Communist China wasn't inevitable—it was, in part, enabled by decisions made in the United States. Xi explores how decades of policy, economic cooperation, and ideological blind spots helped transform China into a global superpower, creating what she sees as one of America's greatest modern challenges. It's a conversation less about politics and more about people, choices, and consequences where Xi ends with a warning to America and why resisting the urge to become a "shiny little screw" might be more important than ever. Big thanks to our awesome sponsors ZipRecruiter.com/Rowe http://www.ziprecruiter.com/rowe to post a job for FREE. GoodRanchers.com https://www.goodranchers.com/ Use code MIKE to get $40 off your first order and free meat for life. Pestie.com/Mike https://pestie.com/mike to get an extra 10% off your order. AuraFrames.com/Mike http://auraframes.com/mike Use code MIKE to get $25 off their best-selling Carver Mat frame.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's the way I heard it, and I'm Mike Bro. And my friend Xi Van Fleet has done it again, Chuck. She's written another book. Tell the folks about it.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Well, it is called Made in America. And basically, it's a warning to Americans not to be like those terrible Chinese. Not to be like the terrible Chinese. The Chinese are great.

• 0:25Mike Rowe?

  Wonderful people.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  It's the Chinese government.

• 0:27Mike Rowe?

  Awful people.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  That is horrible. Yes.

• 0:31Mike Rowe?

  She got kind of famous. She did about five years ago when she mouthed off at a school board meeting in Loudoun, Virginia. And basically, offered a cautionary tale to those in attendance, specifically, the alarming parallels between the Cultural Revolution that she survived.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:52Mike Rowe?

  And lived through in the 60s and 70s in Communist China, under Mao. And what she believed was happening in our school systems and in our society at large. The parallels in her first book are incredible. It's called Mao's America. I recommend that, and I recommend Made in America as well, because this, to your point, is a deeper dive at the symbiotic, albeit sometimes enabling, way that we here in the U.S.A. have made China China.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  China, which she said, which just drove me. That was amazing, when she said it that way. But, yes, we're all guilty, I think, is what she said.

• 1:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Well, you know what? We had Yanya Kelik on a couple of times now, and the feedback from that is always kind of voluminous. And people are alarmed to hear about things like organ harvesting. And, look, it's a very uncomfortable reality, a relationship with these communists. And, and, look, I wanted to have Xi on, because it sure feels to me, and we'll get into this in some detail, but it just, I don't know, man. It's like, the older I get, the more I realize Reagan was right about a couple of things. But the big one being, we're a generation away.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It could all go away. Our freedoms, our liberties, and that's what Xi is ringing the bell, saying, hey, don't lose sight of this.

• 2:18Mike Rowe?

  And when you say Xi, you mean her.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  I mean she, Xi.

• 2:21Mike Rowe?

  You mean, yeah, her.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Her.

• 2:23Mike Rowe?

  The lady I'm about to interview.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Her name is Xi. Not crawl, crawl. Anyway, but listen, I want to say this, you know, the Nazis got off, the Nazis, you can't say you're a Nazi. You can't run for mayor of New York City and claim to be a Nazi. But the communists got off easy.

• 2:41Mike Rowe?

  Amazing.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  And they killed way more people.

• 2:44Mike Rowe?

  I didn't know where you were going with that.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sounded pretty weird.

• 2:46Mike Rowe?

  But now I get it. Yes, you can't, the stink is still on Nazism, deservedly so.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:56Mike Rowe?

  Why in the world isn't it on Mao?

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:01Mike Rowe?

  In the same way. Why isn't it on the CCP? Why? Why? And the answer is, we are not really in any way, shape, or form as a country or a culture in business with the Nazi Party. But we are absolutely in business. We are absolutely in business with the Chinese Communist Party.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:23Mike Rowe?

  And you don't have to look far to see that a lot of otherwise reasonable people walking around this country right now are open, open to the possibility, let's give this communism thing a look, let's give the socialism.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  They just got it wrong before. We're gonna get it right.

• 3:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, it was an execution problem, not an ideological problem.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  And, yeah, execution in more ways than one. Because, how many people, 50 million people died in China?

• 3:48Mike Rowe?

  50 million died in the famine, 20 million died in the Cultural Revolution. We'll learn all about that. In fact, Chuck wanted to call this episode "The Horrors of Communism", which is both a literal and accurate description of the conversation we're about to have. But she's such a delight.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  She really is.

• 4:05Mike Rowe?

  This woman. I didn't want to festoon the episode with such a heavy title because there's a lot of laughter in this conversation. Well, not a lot, but more than I thought there was gonna be.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:16Mike Rowe?

  And look, the truth is, the message and the messenger are both really important in all communiques. But in this case, the messenger is really important because she's been there. She did that. She lived through the Cultural Revolution. She was an eyewitness to a lot of things that are happening in our country right now.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  She's charming, passionate, and persuasive.

• 4:41Mike Rowe?

  And she does, at one point in the conversation, say, We were all seen as shiny little screws doing our mechanical part to hold together this giant edifice, you know, and the death of individuality and the warm embrace of collectivism and your role in that, what does it really mean? And I'd never heard that expression before. So when she refers to herself and to so many others who worked on the communes in the 60s and 70s as shiny little screws, I just think the appropriate advice to pass on to

• 5:20Mike Rowe?

  you, our loyal and gentle listeners, is don't be a shiny little screw. And by all means, pick up Made in America and Mouse America by G. Van Fleet, who you're gonna love right after this.

• 5:43Mike Rowe?

  So as some of you may have heard, I went to Congress 16 years ago to testify before a House Subcommittee. And then again, a year later, to testify before a Senate Subcommittee about the need to reinvigorate the skilled trades with some kind of national effort that would make a more persuasive case for a lot of good jobs out there that didn't require a four-year degree. Well, 15 years later, I finally heard back from the government and I am delighted to tell you about a program called BuildFreedom.us. This is the national PR campaign that MicroWorks has been talking about for a decade and

• 6:25Mike Rowe?

  a half now, and it's focused on 300,000 or 400,000 excellent jobs in the defense industrial base. These are the electricians and the plumbers and the steam finners and the pipe fitters and the CNC operators and the shipbuilders and so forth. But in this case, all of those trades are focused on building out our national infrastructure through the defense industrial base. So people who are building our autonomous weapons, our planes, our ships.

• 6:55Mike Rowe?

  Only a matter of national security. And it's a very big deal. And on a personal level, it's really been very gratifying. Build Freedom donated $10 million to MicroWorks. The money's available right now for you. If you want to pursue a skill that's in demand and work in the defense industrial base. I think it's an opportunity of a lifetime. Go to buildfreedom.us, see what's available and then apply for a scholarship from MicroWorks. The money's there. Burning a hole in my pocket. Go get some. BuildFreedom.us.

• 7:31Mike Rowe?

  So was that scarf made for you? Or did you actually buy that somewhere?

• 7:35Speaker 02

  I think my friend bought it for me in the, I think St. John's Church in Richmond. That's where Patrick Henry.

• 7:43Mike Rowe?

  Gave his famous speech.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  I think that's the store.

• 7:46Mike Rowe?

  That was the "Give me liberty or give me death" speech?

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:49Mike Rowe?

  So just for people who are listening and not watching, on the right side of your scarf, we have the Declaration of Independence. And on the left side, we have, was that the Constitution? What is that?

• 8:00Speaker 02

  I think it's, is that?

• 8:01Mike Rowe?

  No, that's, okay, it's the other way around. Look at that.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, on our right shoulder is the Declaration and on our left shoulder is the Constitution.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  But the Constitution can't be this short. Maybe it's the same, maybe it's a...

• 8:14Mike Rowe?

  Maybe you got two Declaration of Independences.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  We can't do that. I think it's Declaration of Independence. I think it's both sides.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  All both sides is Declaration of Independence?

• 8:22Mike Rowe?

  I think so.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  I think it's just, yeah, otherwise the Constitution is too long.

• 8:25Mike Rowe?

  It's too long. You know what? You would need a whole, you need a whole pantsuit for that. Now, your shirt is somewhat easier to decipher. That just simply says, "America is good."

• 8:35Speaker 02

  I know. This is a message that we have to push out. I love America and people absolutely have to love it. Fall in love with it before we can save it.

• 8:47Mike Rowe?

  Well, let me tell you why I wanted to meet you. I loved your first book.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Thank you, thank you.

• 8:52Mike Rowe?

  And don't take this the wrong way, but I think, I think the message is really, really important. But I think the messenger sometimes is even more important. And normally, I don't get very political on this show, but...

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Really? You don't?

• 9:09Mike Rowe?

  Not much. But when Mamdammy was elected in New York and when I see a pretty big chunk of this generation really not understanding...

• 9:22Mike Rowe?

  Communism or socialism.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Oh, America, both, either.

• 9:25Mike Rowe?

  Or America.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Either, yeah.

• 9:27Mike Rowe?

  Or Mao.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:28Mike Rowe?

  Right? I just thought, I've seen you interviewed in a couple other venues. And I just really, I appreciate your message, but I appreciate your story. So, this is now what, Made in America is your second book?

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, but this is not, I put myself in it as much as I can, but this is not my story. Because this is a hundred years' story. But the first one was more personal, but I am just so surprised. I'm the only one that lived through the communist China that get to somehow picked by the media. There's others talking, but they don't get the publicity.

• 10:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  And I believe that's God's work. I really feel like I have to do more.

• 10:13Mike Rowe?

  I was first introduced to you with a very short video. I guess it was in Loudoun County?

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:20Mike Rowe?

  And you went to some school board meeting and mouthed off. You know, you're wearing a mask, you made all sorts, people burst into applause.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:27Mike Rowe?

  What happened on that day? What was that all about?

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Well, that is when I went to the school board, because at that time, it was, everything was so divided, and they were pushing all sorts of Marxist ideologies. And the republic committee, local committee urged people to go there and speak. And by then, actually, my son was out of school. I feel like, you know, you have to be a parent. They said, no, everyone can go.

• 10:53Mike Rowe?

  So you had 60 seconds to address?

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:56Mike Rowe?

  The school board?

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Yes. And I did that, and I, I thought I did my job, and I thought everyone knew what I was talking about. Oh, Cultural Revolution, of course, we all know it.

• 11:06Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 11:07Mike Rowe?

  I'm Bobby. No.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:08Mike Rowe?

  So, you went there, you all right, Chuck?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was just trying to find it.

• 11:12Mike Rowe?

  Oh, you should play it. Yeah, it's only 60 seconds. This was in 2020?

• 11:17Speaker 02

  One.

• 11:18Mike Rowe?

  2021?

• 11:19Speaker 02

  2021, that's right after the election.

• 11:23Mike Rowe?

  So this is the school board in Loudoun County. It's only a minute long, folks, I'm gonna play the whole thing, because this is, this is how I met Xi. And I think this is how a lot of other people met you as well. And let's just give it a listen.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  What's going on in our school? You are now teaching, training our children to be social justice warriors and to lose our country and our history. Going up in Mao's China, what is said here from here? The communist regime used the same critical theory to divide people. The only difference is they use class instead of race. During the Cultural Revolution, our students and teachers were against each other. We changed school names to be politically correct. And we were taught to denounce our heritage. The Red Guards destroyed anything that is not communist. Old statues, books, and anything else. We are also encouraged to report on each other, just like the Student Equity Ambassador Program and the Bias Reporting System.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  This is indeed the American version of the Chinese Communist, the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The critical race theory has its roots in cultural Marxism. It should have no place in our school.

• 12:38Mike Rowe?

  So, your point is, you wanted to say what you said, but you assumed that everyone listening would understand what the Chinese Cultural Revolution was and the Red Guard.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  I was shocked. I was even more shocked later and see how little that people knew about Communist China, our Cultural Revolution, and communism in general.

• 13:03Mike Rowe?

  If you had written a book called Communism for Dummies, and you were just gonna really simplify this, right? What do you wish every American understood about your lived experience back? Because that was in the 60s and 70s, right?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:21Mike Rowe?

  That you grew up there. What do we need to know?

• 13:23Speaker 02

  I have to go back a little bit further because I did not choose communism. My parents did, or their generation did. Because by the time I was born, I knew nothing. And I swam in the water of communism. I did not know anything different. But my parents' generation, they chose communism. Communism. Why they choose communism? Exact the reason that the people choose communism here. They just did not know it's communism. Okay, for the poor, they want free land. Those are the peasants that made up up to ninety percent of the China's population back then. Free land, that sounds just wonderful.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  And for the others, like my parents, they were from a where-to-do family. Actually, both my father's side, they own land. My mother's side, they are professional professors. They are where-to-do. Why do they want to join the revolution? They want to save China. They want to help the poor. Does this sounds like the white liberals? That's why communism is so attractive to so many people. Because the prom- a promise also, they promise heaven and earth.

• 14:37Mike Rowe?

  And I've never met anyone, really, who looks at themselves in the mirror and thinks about the ideology that they support and sees themselves as a bad guy.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Oh, they all.

• 14:50Mike Rowe?

  No one sees themselves as a bad guy. And, you know, I mean, it's a very charitable way to look at the species. But I think, you know, both sides need to assume that the other side thinks they're correct and they're doing this for the greater good.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  For the greater good, always for the greater good. Just like Professor or Dr. Jordan Peterson always say. Those people could not make their bed, live in the basement of their parents, yet they want to go to the street and change the world. That's the communists. That's really, that's why. Well, it's not the whole story, but that's why it can attract so many people and cross the ages in different countries, in different cultural environment.

• 15:34Mike Rowe?

  Did your parents come to the conclusion eventually that they had chosen?

• 15:39Speaker 02

  That they are not to come to any conclusion. Because to come to a conclusion of your own. Is anti the party and you're going to be taken care of. Like my father, especially my father, because his uh uh mother, uh his father died uh earlier, uh own land. And so the land was taken away, of course, confiscated. That's not it. And she was uh lucky enough not be killed or murdered and tortured because she already left the countryside and live in the city. Uh many people died. Two million landlord were killed for the crime of owning land and have more than their neighbors. That's not it.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  They're taking everything, they kill you, and your offspring inherit that sin. Sounds familiar?

• 16:27Mike Rowe?

  Inherit the what?

• 16:28Speaker 02

  The sin.

• 16:29Mike Rowe?

  Oh, the sin.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  The sin of the parents, of the grandparents. So my father become, you know, everyone have to uh fill out forms, you know, like whatever forms. Your class background. Either you're a proletarian that's considered red or your landlord and is black. So he was black, belong to the black class, and I did too.

• 16:55Mike Rowe?

  So the biggest separation in Communist China in those days was not between race, it was between class.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Class. That's Mao's identity politics. But that did not work. It would not work in the United States. That's why they went to a race, gender, sexuality, and that goes on and on.

• 17:16Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:18Mike Rowe?

  We'll get to the similarities between the Cultural Revolution and whatever happened here over the last ten years. But just so people really understand, what was it like to grow up, even though you didn't

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:31Mike Rowe?

  choose it? It it did, did you ever feel comfortable with it? Or did you always look around and go, no, no, this, this is not for me?

• 17:41Speaker 02

  I know this, I'm glad you bring it back because I took, I sidetracked. I was born um in nineteen twenty, uh nineteen.

• 17:49Mike Rowe?

  Twenty, come on, she.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Fifty.

• 17:51Mike Rowe?

  Fifty nine?

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Nineteen fifty nine. It's the beginning of the great famine. But of course, I don't remember. But I was in first grader when the Cultural Revolution started. That I remember. And it lasted for ten years. By the time it's over, when Mao died, I was seventeen. I remember every bit of it because I lived through it. So people always ask me, did you notice something wrong? Did you question? Of course, I noticed something wrong, but I never questioned it. And you say, why you can't question? To question, you have to have a critical mind. To have a critical mind, you have to have information. And I did not have any of this.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  So anything that no matter how bad, it must be it. It must be because the party Mao said, that's the way it is. So it must be it. So I never questioned the whole system. I always found enemies.

• 18:48Mike Rowe?

  Was it love or fear?

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Fear, fear, fear. Fear is more motivational than than love. And if there's something goes wrong, those people. There's plenty of those people to blame. And that is how I grew up. I never had an original thought in my mind, never, ever growing up China. And I never questioned anything. And people say, how about home? How about your parents? My parents, they're doing the same thing. And they also fear children. Because children were indoctrinated in school to watch out. Watch out for everyone. Watch out for the enemies. Watch out for your parents.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  And there's just plenty of stories of parents being sold out by the school, by the kids.

• 19:39Mike Rowe?

  Because the kids are being taught that their number one loyalty is to

• 19:44Speaker 02

  It's the party.

• 19:44Mike Rowe?

  the state.

• 19:50Mike Rowe?

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• 21:20Mike Rowe?

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• 21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, the party and state in China is the same thing, and it is always the same thing. And that's why now we say government, but it is really the party. When they took power, when they take power, permanent power, it merged into one.

• 21:41Mike Rowe?

  I'm so curious about, how did your parents think? I mean, I'm imagining, maybe not in the first grade, but by the time you get to the seventh, eighth, ninth grade, you're a young woman. And did they like the fact that you were more loyal to the state than to them?

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, they make sure I do that.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  I make sure because because that's good. In school, we have end of every semester, we have like a competition. Who can be the loyalist student? And who can be the one that read Mouse Little Red Book and applied it the most? I got that award several times.

• 22:19Mike Rowe?

  Tell me about the Little Red Book. What exactly was in it?

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Well, the Little Red Book is a is a bunch of BS. It's quotations from from Mouse's works without context. Just here and there, here and there, just everywhere. So it's all quotations. That's really that's what it is. It makes no sense because the context was taken out. But it doesn't matter. You just read it. And in my book, first book, I did say this. One of the the quotation is whatever, you will love it. Whatever our enemy against, we are for and vice versa. And I, you know, in my young mind, I was like, hey, I really like candy. And what if our enemies like candy too?

• 23:06Speaker 02

  That means I have to against it. That's very dangerous, critical thinking. But I had a little one. That's just because that quotation make no sense. And today, look today, and Trump said, don't drink your own urine. And the others said, we will drink it.

• 23:26Mike Rowe?

  OK. We'll get to America. Help me understand even as much as you can, what it was like to be in the middle of a revolution as it was happening? And when, if you remember, did you realize that something truly terrible?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, yes, I know something is just I had one semester of normal schooling. And from a first grade. And then the second, as soon as the second one started. Yeah, it's a revolution. All of sudden that that.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  The the uh the older kids started to go after uh the uh uh the teachers. I did not, I was too young, hardly seven. And all the principals were were denounced. All the big character posters were everywhere. Do you know that what that is? It's just a big uh papers and wrote in big letters.

• 24:24Mike Rowe?

  It's like Soviet art.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  It's not art, it's article. It's kind of like today's social media. You put it on the wall so everyone can read it. So it's really the the old fashioned social media. The goal is to denounce someone. So it denounced teachers, principals, everyone, all the adults were enemies. And no schools. The school, like in in the beginning, it's like today you have school tomorrow, no. But eventually I saw a note on the blackboard. The teacher said, no school for the next four days. It turned to be two years. No school. That you know something is chaos, you know something. And I went home, my parents were not home most of the time because they're doing the same

• 25:08Speaker 02

  in their workplace to find out the enemies, to write the big character posters, to show that you are in for the revolution and you are against whoever the enemies.

• 25:20Mike Rowe?

  So that's my question. Who are the enemies? You're revolting against landowners, teachers, academics. How do you get on the bad list?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  And when I when I talk about the landlord, that was phase one. That was an enemy that had land. And then the land was taken, right? All the people were labeled, their their children, grandchildren were labeled. So you can't continue to do the landlord. So you took the property, private property, and then you're done with it. So I want to say so they went after people's mind. The private property in your mind. We cannot allow that. There's no private property allowed in in your mind. Everyone has to have the same thinking, the correct thinking. And then they had what they called thought reform movement. Everyone, especially intellectuals, have to clean your thought

• 26:15Speaker 02

  so that now you get rid of the old thinking and now you adapt party thinking. So if you don't. Then you are the new enemy.

• 26:24Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, well, it just sounds like in general terms, I get it. The divide is between classes, but it's really Mao's appeal was to a mass of people who had very little to lose, right? I mean, the enemies were people who owned property.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:43Mike Rowe?

  And who who had some standing, maybe.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 26:47Mike Rowe?

  I just.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Can I continue? This is very hard to understand. So the second movement is to get rid of the private property in your mind. And then the Cultural Revolution. And what is Cultural Revolution? After I tell you this, I think it will make more sense. Okay, why there is a Cultural Revolution? So Mao, after he get rid of the landlord and get rid of the people who have wrong thinking, no one dare not to say anything that's honest. Then they know if they do that, they will end up in the black class, the enemy of the revolution. So no one posed him. See, he started all sorts of crazy, crazy policies. One of them is called Great Leap Forward.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  He he's going to bring the China into a modern world by what? By having everyone make steel, everyone, I mean peasant, teachers, kids, cadre, whatever, to make steel. Why steel? He believed that's the that's how you modernize China to make weapons, whatever. So everyone was making steel. This is so crazy. And furnace, backyard furnace rise up everywhere in China. And of course, it failed. Not only failed, the crop failed. So that led to the starvation. The three year famine killed more than fifty million people.

• 28:13Mike Rowe?

  How old were you when this happened?

• 28:15Speaker 02

  I was born.

• 28:16Mike Rowe?

  You were just born. So so the famine really started around sixty, nineteen sixty?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  No, nineteen fifty nine. And I and my mother told me a lot of stories. But anyway, even in a country like China, that was a big deal.

• 28:28Mike Rowe?

  That's a.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  A big deal, right?

• 28:30Mike Rowe?

  So the first three years of your life, fifty million of your countrymen starved to death.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Yes, died. And then so he was forced to admit that he.

• 28:40Mike Rowe?

  Who's in charge then before Mao?

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Mao was in charge.

• 28:44Mike Rowe?

  Mao was then, who was before, was it Chiang Kai-shek?

• 28:47Speaker 02

  No, no, that's another government that overthrow and drive them out to Taiwan. But he was in charge for a long time and in the 30s, in the late 30s, he was already.

• 28:58Mike Rowe?

  When did Mao come to power?

• 29:00Speaker 02

  When?

• 29:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  It's about 19, uh, late, uh, mid 30s.

• 29:05Mike Rowe?

  Mao was around from the mid 30s?

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:09Mike Rowe?

  Good grief, 30, 40, 50, 60, so he would, he'd been in power three decades.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:15Mike Rowe?

  By the time the Cultural Revolution starts.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  But here is the important thing, why he started Cultural Revolution, okay? So with this, many people died in the peacetime, it's a big deal, even under Communist country. So he was a force to, uh, to admit that he made a mistake.

• 29:32Mike Rowe?

  Wow.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  And he was forced to be sidelined a little bit, a little bit, just to give more power to his, um, there are two guys to recover, really recover from the famine. He did not like it, even from outside the party, people still think he was in total control. The Cultural Revolution was to, this is so important, was to take down his party, to take down his government, because he feel like all those people are not loyal to him. Those people are against him. So he want to destroy his party and his part, uh, government by using what?

• 30:14Speaker 02

  The young people, the kids, they know nothing, those are the kids that called Red Guards.

• 30:20Mike Rowe?

  I was just about to ask, who, how did one become a Red Guard?

• 30:25Speaker 02

  It's not even organized, you just, because Mao through, um, there's a lot to unpack, but there's no social media, there's not even television. So he allowed the kids to come to Beijing, free of charge, free of charge. You can take the train and once you get to a place, the government will take care of your lodging and the food to meet Mao in Tiananmen Square. You probably, many people probably saw the picture of Mao in uniform on Tiananmen Square and wave to the, the Red Guards, millions of them, he did it eight times.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  And then mobilized.

• 31:04Mike Rowe?

  When was the famous photo in Tiananmen Square of the guy in front of the tank?

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Oh, that was after he died.

• 31:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  But this is during the Cultural, that's how he mobilized the kids. By allowing them, encouraged them to come to Beijing. Their travel was so scarce back then. Travel is a luxury. Now free, everything's free. The kids came, they had a great time, they went back home. They carry out the revolution. They took their teachers and started with teachers. That's how I saw in my school. And then the principals, and then the governors, and then mayors, everyone. Everyone, eventually Mao took down his number one enemy. The guy in charge of China's economy. And the Red Guards took him out, gave him a struggle session. And then he was imprisoned, died afterwards.

• 31:54Mike Rowe?

  So this was really a big sort of internal coup.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Thank you. And but it's a coup that is not a coup, right? It's a people's will. And here is something that's really, really sinister. That Mao understood this economy. By then, the people are fed up with those people in power. They're fed up with the mayors, the mayor's assistant. They hate the Communist Party members. So they went after them mercilessly. And then the governors in my state, in my province, I witnessed that struggle session of the governor being struggled against. So now they become the landowners.

• 32:39Mike Rowe?

  So people understand.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  They become, do you see what I mean? They've become the landlord. And then the other people become the peasants. This is the vicious cycle that goes around and around and around. And in the end, everyone is a victim. I just want to make sure that.

• 32:54Mike Rowe?

  No, I got, look, that's very Nietzsche, right? We who fight monsters must be careful not to become monsters ourselves.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  It become like everyone, it's just amazing. And after the Cultural Revolution, those people who were denounced back in power, and then they persecuted the former Red Guards.

• 33:17Mike Rowe?

  How many died?

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Twenty million. That's the estimate. But in China, you never get the real number because the controls. In the three-year famine, and there's no one single, well, maybe a few photos survived. They're all burned. They're all absolutely burned, not hide, not, they did not hide it, they burned it.

• 33:42Mike Rowe?

  Do you think that 50 million is a real number?

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 33:49Mike Rowe?

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• 34:34Mike Rowe?

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• 35:15Mike Rowe?

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• 35:31Speaker 02

  Absolutely, and this is by many, many scholars and then they explaining to you how exactly they got to the number, not from the government, but from the census and how many people should, how many should die compare with the year before, the years after. It's so widespread and I think probably 50 is absolutely reasonable, maybe more.

• 35:57Mike Rowe?

  So the 20 million who died during

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Cultural Revolution.

• 36:00Mike Rowe?

  During the Cultural Revolution. How did they die typically?

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Oh my God, that is all sorts of ways. That's really, really people killing people. That is another thing that I think that make Chinese communism so sinister. A lot of the killing were not like at midnight, please knock at your door and drag you out and you will never see again. It's people, it's the neighbor killing the neighbor, students killing the teacher, parents, I mean even children killing the parents, friends, coworkers, most of people died that way.

• 36:42Mike Rowe?

  And what kind of law or justice or anything existed? What's your recourse? I mean, people must have known that this was mass murder

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:54Mike Rowe?

  On a colossal scale, happening in their own neighborhoods.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Well, Mike, don't dwell on the past. Let's just move on. That's what they say, move on.

• 37:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Move on.

• 37:08Mike Rowe?

  It's not the great leap backward.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And then there's a, okay, there is a story and it's a very interesting story. So she was a young girl, she was a leader for her girls' high school. They killed their principal and then nothing happened. Not only nothing happened, she came to America and she got a PhD in MIT and she worked the rest of her life for the Massachusetts state government and she died a few years ago.

• 37:36Mike Rowe?

  And she was part of a group of girls

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:39Mike Rowe?

  Who physically killed the principal.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  And she was the leader of the group of girls. Talking about that in There's no vetting. Americans do not understand China, do not understand communism. They let murderers, they let all sorts of people coming in and now we're talking about no vetting. No vetting went back, way back. And there's no responsible, there's just no consequences.

• 38:04Mike Rowe?

  So if you were just to sum it up in a sentence or two, what was the Cultural Revolution?

• 38:11Speaker 02

  The Cultural Revolution, like it's a coup. It's a Mao, Mao's way to use young people and to take down his political enemies. And in the process, he destroyed China, destroyed our heritage, destroyed, oh my God, destroyed so much. Our art, our artifact, temples, sculptures, everything.

• 38:35Mike Rowe?

  What was the ruling ideology prior to communism?

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Confucianism. Okay, everybody, let's get together and be nice to each other. The only thing is that if you are a father, if you're a male and a father, you should play your role the best. You be a best father, you be best husband and well, kind of. It didn't work, I kind of, you know, people do think that's the best way of living.

• 39:07Mike Rowe?

  How did the Falun Gong evolve?

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Well, Falun Gong is a spiritual movement. I think it becomes so popular in China is because after Cultural Revolution and there was like a vacuum. All the tradition was destroyed, communism, they were disillusioned. There was just nothing, but people are spiritual beings, we are spiritual beings. So someone come up and come with this idea and everyone just jumped in. My mother became a Falun Gong practitioner and she practiced all sorts of things. Her health was so improved, so that's how it started.

• 39:50Mike Rowe?

  People looking for meaning.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  I think it's people looking for me, absolutely.

• 39:55Mike Rowe?

  So how did communism start? I'm so interested because you said your parents chose it.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 40:01Mike Rowe?

  Which means there were other options, there were other things to do, and for whatever reason, how did it get sold in such a?

• 40:09Speaker 02

  In to China?

• 40:10Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  To the Chinese people.

• 40:12Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  I several things. One of them is what I said is a promise, the land to the tillers. You know, yours, everyone should have land, and that's very appealing in a country that ninety percent were peasants, right? The other is nationalism. Nationalism was really weaponized to push communism into China. That we have to, you know, China was a, they called it semi-colonial, semi-colony. Because there's a lot of people and a lot of powers had cut off places around the coast, mostly around the coast.

• 40:49Mike Rowe?

  Britain, Hong Kong?

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, Britain, Hong Kong, and Germany,山东 province. They're not totally, totally colonized, but people don't like it, and you can see why.

• 41:01Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  So that is one major reason that communists push it.

• 41:06Mike Rowe?

  How did the Cultural Revolution end? Mao died, that's it. That was it?

• 41:11Speaker 02

  That's it, that's it. Mao died.

• 41:13Mike Rowe?

  How did he die? He just died in this, what is, died in sleep? Somebody shoot him in it? What happened?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  He died, yeah, in his sleep. It should be something else, but yeah, he died, yeah. It should be much worse than that. That's exactly.

• 41:28Mike Rowe?

  But how soon after his death did the country sort of just shake this off?

• 41:34Speaker 02

  They did not shake it off. They never shook it off, please, they never shook it off. Mao's portrait still hanging there in the Tiananmen Square Tower. Never shook it off, because Mao is CCP and CCP is Mao, never separated. But Mao is just somehow brought China to such ruins that they have to find another way.

• 41:58Mike Rowe?

  Can you think of any other leader of any other country at any other time? I mean Stalin, Attila the Hun, is there anyone who wreaked more havoc and did more damage?

• 42:12Speaker 02

  I really can't think so because Genghis Khan.

• 42:15Mike Rowe?

  Khan, yeah.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Okay, he kill. Hey, I kill. Mao said, I kill for your own good. I kill you today because it's good for you. And that's what make them so, so, so evil. And so, what's your question?

• 42:30Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'm just wondering if, I'm just trying to find the ultimate bad guy in the history of the species.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  I think Mao would be absolutely one of them. That's what I said. He kill you because it's good for you. That's, you know, like Hitler. He kill other, so-called other people, right? They, you know, the Jews and whatever. Mao specialize in killing his own people. And that, to me, is more evil.

• 42:57Mike Rowe?

  Okay. Now we're getting somewhere. Now we can talk about Loudoun County.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:03Mike Rowe?

  Now we can talk about-

• 43:03Speaker 02

  We have to talk about the book, too.

• 43:05Mike Rowe?

  We'll get to your book. You settle down there. Made in America by G. Van Fleet, her second book. It's very good. And your co-author, who's that?

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Yuji, he is, it's very important. I collaborate with a dissident author. He came from China. I lived through the Cultural Revolution. He lived through Tiananmen, he did not live through, he was too young for Tiananmen. But he lived through the current tyranny.

• 43:28Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  So, and our-

• 43:30Mike Rowe?

  And this book basically argues that our country, the United States, helped make China China, current-day China. We enabled a lot of the current problems.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  And if we can, I know you want, we probably will not spend too much time on the book. And then the one thing I really want to emphasize is that Trump is our first president. I mean, the only president who understand the danger of Chinese communism. And he said something that's very important to say. He said, "I don't blame the communist China taking advantage of us. I blame the people, the people here, the political leaders that allow it." And that summarized my book. That is absolutely, we allow, why? Good questions, why? Because we never, we never understand communism. We never even try.

• 44:26Mike Rowe?

  When did you come to this country?

• 44:28Speaker 02

  1986.

• 44:30Mike Rowe?

  Eighty-six.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  Forty years this year.

• 44:32Mike Rowe?

  Okay, and so you had been living in Loudoun County?

• 44:36Speaker 02

  I started in Kentucky and then later moved to in 1990s.

• 44:42Mike Rowe?

  How do you get to Kentucky? Why Kentucky?

• 44:45Speaker 02

  I know, it's a beautiful story. I was in China and then there are some Americans come to teach in my college. And I was a teacher there. And one of the ladies is from Kentucky and we become friends. And she said she want to help me to go to study in America. I say sure, she will forget as long as she leave. Because it's a summer kind of program. She did not, she did not forget. She helped me to get assistantship.

• 45:12Mike Rowe?

  What a good friend.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  What a good friend. And I, now I say, her name is Pat Nave. She brought me here so that I can fight communism in America. Can you believe it?

• 45:25Mike Rowe?

  Is Pat still around?

• 45:26Speaker 02

  No, she's gone. And I just, I wish she knew. And I wish I knew, I did not know. But this is just amazing that I came here, thought thinking I escaped communism.

• 45:42Mike Rowe?

  To what, Louisville?

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Uh, Bowling Green, Kentucky.

• 45:46Mike Rowe?

  In Bowling Green, okay. And what town in China was home?

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Chengdu.

• 45:52Mike Rowe?

  Chengdu.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the people, if they know anything, it's a panda bear.

• 45:57Mike Rowe?

  What do you mean it's a panda bear?

• 45:59Speaker 02

  It's where you see, go see panda bear. A city of panda bears.

• 46:03Mike Rowe?

  You don't live in a panda bear, okay.

• 46:07Mike Rowe?

  Man, I read that there, there are something like ten Chinese cities with over a hundred million people. It's not even on a map. Like, the cities aren't even on a map.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  I know, I know. But not anymore. You go to cities? No. People's, first of all, the economy is so bad, and people no longer have jobs. A lot of them just, just left.

• 46:34Mike Rowe?

  Forgive me, it's kind of a sidebar, because I want to stay on your journey, but what's it do to a country? All right, the first question is the countryside. I want you to talk about what it meant to be sent to the countryside.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  I know.

• 46:47Mike Rowe?

  When you were a girl. But I also want to understand what it means, like, in the last fifteen years, for hundreds of millions of people to come to the cities. Like, what does that do to a country internally?

• 46:59Speaker 02

  We have to remember, don't forget the second part. I tell my first part.

• 47:04Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  So, in living, because, you know, sometimes you talk, talk, and then you...

• 47:09Mike Rowe?

  This is why I have a pen and pencil here. I gotta remind myself, ask her about internal migration.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Why people go to the cities?

• 47:16Mike Rowe?

  Got it. Okay, go ahead.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  But my story, I think it's, it is interesting. And when I grew up, and everyone was told that we are part of the collective. Collective is the goal. Individualism is bourgeois, it has to be eliminated. So, that means you don't have a personal dream. What is a dream?

• 47:43Mike Rowe?

  Explain the bourgeoisie.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, but bourgeoisie, I don't know what bourgeois was. What a word, when I, again, sidetrack is so easy. When I started to learn English, that is my first, first grade, no, not first, my first English textbook, bourgeois. It's so hard to pronounce. Bourgeois, I don't know, it means bad. That's it.

• 48:13Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week, highly immersive pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 48:55Mike Rowe?

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• 49:38Mike Rowe?

  into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  But it really is a word from Karl Marx. Bourgeois means nothing than middle class. But later, in a country that has no middle class, bourgeois just means bad. That's it. And that's how I understood and so where I was. Bourgeois, you should not have anything that's individual, including dream of being something. Our dream is being a shiny little screw that the party will be happy wherever party put us in this giant socialist machine.

• 50:30Mike Rowe?

  Little screw.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  Shining, you should be happy. You can't be unhappy. If the party put you in a shithole, you should be happy. And that's what they did. They sent me to the countryside like all the Chinese young people because there's no jobs.

• 50:44Mike Rowe?

  You've eaten the bugs and you've liked it.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Exactly. So I went into the countryside. And when I say that, I have to tell Americans, it's not the countryside you drive here in the weekend.

• 50:57Mike Rowe?

  It's not town, it's not horseback rides and Walden Pond.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  It's shithole. Why? Because it is really, really filled. It's gulags. That's the best way to to describe.

• 51:09Mike Rowe?

  And communes, I would think, right?

• 51:10Speaker 02

  A commune. I lived in a commune. It was dissolved, I think, in the late, after I came here, so probably late 1980s. I live in a commune. When nobody owns anything, when all we work is for the state, and we get a little points. So you work for a day, you get points. Same. If you work and I work, if you work hard, I don't work, same, same. We all get five points or 10 points and whatever. I think they are a little bit sexist. Men get 10 points, women get eight points.

• 51:44Mike Rowe?

  My favorite poet, Robert Frost, said, "The world is filled with people who are willing to work and the rest who are willing to let them."

• 51:58Speaker 02

  I think I was in the middle. I never worked that hard because it's hard work. It's hard work. It's really filled with no basic, the tool is the most basic. I have to tell the story in my book, in my first book, that one, one day, we have to spread the manure. And what is the manure? It's poops. Yeah. Humans and pigs and chicken or whatever.

• 52:24Mike Rowe?

  All the poop mixed together.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  All together.

• 52:26Mike Rowe?

  That's where we get the word pooperie.

• 52:31Mike Rowe?

  It's not true, but it's possible. Sounded good.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Sounded good.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Possible.

• 52:35Mike Rowe?

  It's plausible.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  And then they mix with ashes, like wood, you know, from the kitchen and whatever. And then we spread without gloves, no gloves. There's no such a thing as gloves.

• 52:47Mike Rowe?

  So that was your job in the countryside, mixing up poo from every species with some ash and then spreading it around?

• 52:52Speaker 02

  One of the jobs. So we spread. By the time I finished, my hands smell like the...

• 53:02Mike Rowe?

  Feces from every species?

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you can't wash it, no matter how hard. And I can't, I was hungry, but I can't, I could not eat. I just couldn't. So I found some towel and just wrap up and I managed to eat my dinner.

• 53:18Mike Rowe?

  How old were you when you were on the country?

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Sixteen.

• 53:20Mike Rowe?

  Sixteen?

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:21Mike Rowe?

  Okay. So all of this, I just, I can't imagine being you, living over here and just hearing, what's his name? Mamdammy, talk about...

• 53:33Speaker 02

  How worms...

• 53:34Mike Rowe?

  Letting go of all that individuality and it...

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Worms of collective.

• 53:39Mike Rowe?

  Embrace the warmth of collectivism. Did you scream? Did you throw your own poo at the TV when you heard it?

• 53:45Speaker 02

  No, actually, I was mad at myself. I said, because we were taught you have to toughen up to be a revolutionary, to be a good communist. You have to toughen up. I said, why I'm so weak? Why I'm so bourgeois, even though I have no idea what bourgeois is? That means bourgeois means you're not tough. You know, you were just too Western, too like...

• 54:07Mike Rowe?

  Too soft.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Too soft, that's what, thank you.

• 54:10Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, you wanted to be the proletariat, right? You wanted to be a part of the proletariat dream.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  I actually blame myself. I just feel like I'm just not cut for the revolution, even though whatever revolution, I have no idea. And that is how bad, you know, you can't think critically. You don't even think, why I'm here? Why should I be doing this shit?

• 54:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, but to see so many Americans today, right here in 2026, to see them open to the warm embrace of collectivism, that surely must make you want to scream.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Of course, they have no idea. They think collective means we take care of each other. No. When you become a collective, you lost yourself and then the whole thing was run by the party. The collective basically is a way of control. Everyone think the same way. They had this slogan, it's not that they are doing it under kind of heightening their agenda. They tell you, we have to unify our thought. We have to unify our action. It's all from mouth instruction. So collective means we all do the same thing. We all think the same way, we act the same way. We do whatever, if you do differently, individualism, it'll be crushed.

• 55:25Mike Rowe?

  You conform.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, conformity is collectivism.

• 55:29Mike Rowe?

  Interesting. Okay, so back to Loudoun County.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 55:33Mike Rowe?

  I know, I'm sorry I'm bouncing around, but since we started there with that video. There you stood in front of the school board, warning people that you had seen a lot of things happening in the school that were reminiscent of...

• 55:48Speaker 02

  The Cultural Revolution.

• 55:50Mike Rowe?

  Right. And then you realized, people don't know what the Cultural Revolution was, so they just kind of heard this nice lady behind a mask yell at them for 60 seconds and are not sure why.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  No, they probably, but they probably clueless, yeah. They knows that, they kind of figured, I'm comparing with something bad in Communist China.

• 56:10Mike Rowe?

  What happened after that speech?

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I thought my job was done. Actually, I left soon after because I took time off from work, working at home.

• 56:19Mike Rowe?

  What were you doing for money then?

• 56:21Speaker 02

  I was trained as an information specialist, like a library type of work, but not working in a library, just work managing the data. So, yeah, so...

• 56:33Mike Rowe?

  So you thought your job was in trouble, but did the media reach out?

• 56:36Speaker 02

  No, no, no, what I'm saying is that I still working. So I rushed back and thinking, I did my job, you know? I volunteered, I went there, and that's it. And so the following day, Fox News called. That was really scary. It's scary because, first of all, so... What a big deal. I just said whatever, but actually the following day I heard myself on all sorts of podcasts like Charlie Kirk I listen to every day. I heard myself. I said, oh my God, this is, but I, everyone knew, you know, what Cultural Revolution was, but when Fox News called, that was really the decision time that I have to say yes. If

• 57:20Speaker 02

  I say yes, I know that I no longer, I become a public figure, you know, go on, on, on, share, Hannity. Yeah. And I'm worried about everything. I worry about people at home. All my family is still in China and people here, my job, everything.

• 57:38Mike Rowe?

  Had you written a book yet?

• 57:40Speaker 02

  Oh, book. I have think about, never in my mind, and never even entering in my mind that I would write a book. I'm just a librarian and just someone who is shining out typical Chinese immigrant, right? I never participated in anything political and I just want, looking forward to retirement. I'm looking for what I do when I'm retired and you know, those kind of thing. No, no.

• 58:07Mike Rowe?

  You were just minding your own business, doing your job. Now suddenly, suddenly we're locked down, right? The BLM had happened, the George Floyd thing had happened and you're essentially warning people that the things you saw in the sixties and seventies in China were happening right here in our country, right under our nose. What specifically were some of those things that alarmed you the most?

• 58:36Speaker 02

  Actually, it's not true that I paid no attention to politics. I think in the, before 2020, I have already paid attention to what's going on, racism, you know, racism, everyone is racist, racist. And it kind of remind me of China and 2020. 2020 is absolutely the turning point. Not only the BMM, but the lockdown, everything. I just said, this is not the America that I remember coming here, you know, in the eighties. And yeah, 2020 is the point.

• 59:10Mike Rowe?

  What scared you the most?

• 59:13Speaker 02

  What scared me at first is seeing visually, seeing what's going on on the street in Minneapolis, you know, Los Angeles and Washington DC. It's remind me of the Cultural Revolution. And I would say it's not as bad as a Cultural Revolution was not as bad because there's no car to burn. At least they have no cars, there's no cars, period. So at least it's a smokeless destruction.

• 59:41Mike Rowe?

  Mostly peaceful, mostly smokeless.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Smokeless. And then I saw they locked down and I have to tell you, I was like, really? Americans, this are you, the free, you know, the freedom fighter, you complied? And you just gave in, just like this? And that really, really bothered me. I am one of the two people that refused to get vaccinated at work.

• 1:00:11Mike Rowe?

  Why?

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  I don't want to vaccine and I don't want someone to force me to take vaccine. And I have have I've come up with all sorts of ideas, excuses, and then they say, you know, I said, religious reason, what religion? My own religion. But I have, I know I have a little bit protection of the of the DEI, right? They cannot go too hard.

• 1:00:38Mike Rowe?

  Oh, right. Look at you playing the DEI card.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I said, well, I said, no, I'm not going to take it. I'm just not going to. And but if, seriously, if I were, I have to say, you know, you probably agree. If I were white and if I were a white male, I don't think they were back there. Then you resign today and leave.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Okay, did I disappoint you that I did play the card?

• 1:01:08Mike Rowe?

  It is important in a way because

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  No, she said, did she disappoint you that she played the card? And I think the answer is no, right?

• 1:01:16Mike Rowe?

  No, no, good, great. Look, well, first of all, I don't know what the rules were then.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:01:22Mike Rowe?

  Everywhere I looked, I saw acronyms. I saw CRT, I saw DEI, I saw ESG, I saw BLM. I saw a lot of posters. You talked about the posters. All these things seemed, it felt like they were happening at once.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  No, it came out all together. That's why they were everywhere, but now they came together in 2020. That's why it's like a tsunami. It's really like the tsunami.

• 1:01:51Mike Rowe?

  Well, that is the collective, the pressure to conform and fall in line. And I don't, look, reasonable people might disagree about this specific vaccine, but I think a lot of other people get uncomfortable when you talk about a mandate. And that's what it sounds, you know, it's, it's, it's one thing to have a choice. It's another thing not to have a choice.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  And I said to, I'm working at home, at home. Why should I take that vaccine? I'm not going to work and endanger any other people. It's just, there's no reason, reason is out of the window. And they demand that you comply, and that's communist. That's just, oh my God, that remind me of communist China so much. And I said, no, I'm not going to do it.

• 1:02:39Mike Rowe?

  Is part of where you're coming from, I mean, I would be, if I had lived your life, very suspicious of authority. I'd be very suspicious of people in uniforms, whether it's a white coat or an army uniform, telling me what to do.

• 1:03:00Mike Rowe?

  And I think maybe a lot of people in this country who didn't share anything close to your experience don't have that suspicion yet. Every new generation kinda has to figure it out for themselves.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  I guess so, I guess so. And it's all for your own good. That's the same. And that's why they can push it so, so bad. That's why communism is so deceptive. And that's why I feel like that's my, I have this obligation to tell American people, yeah, Chinese people bought the same deception. They thought it was good for them, this is they can get something and then nothing. And not only that, many of them perished. But the story is not told because we don't have control of our educational system.

• 1:03:46Mike Rowe?

  Where does it start? I mean, you can't just flip the switch and have a whole people immediately singing out of the same hymn book. Like, does it start with language? Does it start, like, where does the manipulation, where does the pressure?

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Where, here in China?

• 1:04:04Mike Rowe?

  Both places, because that was your point, right? I remember one day, I was traveling and so I didn't quite understand what was happening on social media. But within forty-eight hours prior, everybody was putting this black box next to their name.

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:26Mike Rowe?

  It was, it was for Black Lives Matter and it was, you know, on Facebook. And I, you know, I've got six or seven million people who are on that page. And many of them wanted to know why I hadn't blacked out my face. I said, oh, I, I don't understand, why would I? And suddenly, for me, it was a moment where I felt like, oh, you know what? This is a lot of pressure

• 1:04:49Mike Rowe?

  to send a signal that you're with us. And I remember thinking, oh, you know what? That isn't good. That kind of manipulation, that kind of pressure to fall in line, to comply, to conform, right? That's a step closer to the collective.

• 1:05:11Mike Rowe?

  What if, say, five years ago, some big oil company offered a promotion that gave you a chance to lock in the price of gasoline at $2.50 a gallon for the rest of your life? Would you have taken that deal? Or what if a nationwide grocery store had given you an opportunity to lock in the price of ground beef at, say, $2 a pound for as long as you live? Would you have taken that deal? Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, those deals were never on the table, but this one is. Today, as in right now, for a very, very limited time, Pure Talk is offering every American the opportunity to purchase unlimited talk, text, and data, along with a 30 gig hotspot,

• 1:05:55Mike Rowe?

  for just $29.95 a month for life. Not your phone's life, your life. No contracts, no commitments, just a very rare opportunity to lock into a ridiculously low rate for unlimited talk, text, and data for the rest of your life. It's the Unlimited Data Plan from Pure Talk, and it will not be around for long. $29.95 a month for as long as you live. Taxes and fees not included. Some restrictions do apply. See puretalk.com for details. Offer ends 11/15/26. So chop, chop. Pure Talk. Anyway, that bugged me.

• 1:06:40Mike Rowe?

  What bugged you?

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  Well, by saying, it's obvious. That's, you probably, the first time you experienced that, right? That kind of a pressure.

• 1:06:50Mike Rowe?

  Well, I've felt, I know when I feel manipulated. I like to think I'm immune to it because I work in advertising. I understand how.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 1:06:58Mike Rowe?

  I understand how persuasion works. But this wasn't advertising.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 1:07:02Mike Rowe?

  This was the real world. And this was like a lot of people putting a lot of pressure on millions of others to check a box.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  Okay, in China it's different because the Chinese Communist Party took over power by violence, by armed struggle. They use weapons, they use military force to take over. But that would not work in America. I don't think it will ever work in America that we have a coup from the military.

• 1:07:32Mike Rowe?

  We got three hundred and eighty million guns in this country.

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  I know, I know. But here they have to go through this deception. And this is little by little. Just thinking back, just the way I experienced it. I came here in nineteen eighties. And that was the tail end of the America's first cultural revolution, which is the counterculture that ended when the Vietnam War ended. But that was the beginning. So this is the continuation. This is BMM and the woke. This is American cultural revolution two point O. But I can remember going to school, university in nineteen eighty-nine.

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I went to a Kentucky, a Western Kentucky university to study English. I did not experience anything that is remind me something China or... But then I went to Florida. And so one of the class I remember so vividly. And it's a class about special education. And that was the time when the act, I can't remember the whole bill or disability. No, no, no. Yeah.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Americans with Disabilities Act.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Yes. That was it. And then they have all this, you know, special ed or whatever. So we had that class. And then the teacher said, so we now we have, we have to do this in school, you know, we have all this fund, but we have to be careful that we have to watch what we say. We cannot say blind. We have to say people with a...

• 1:09:11Mike Rowe?

  Vision impaired.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  Vision impaired, whatever. I was so impressed. I'm serious. I said, "American people are really nice people. They want to be nice, right? Comply. That's the first step. Blind is blind. It's been used for centuries. No, we can't."

• 1:09:29Mike Rowe?

  Can't do it anymore.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then, and then, and then we have to do this and then change. Do you know what is the, this is my favorite story. Do you know what is the correct term for people have eye trouble? Okay, vision trouble. Blind, according to Stanford University. This is now the correct way, the correct terminology.

• 1:09:53Mike Rowe?

  Did you ever watch George Carlin when you came over here? Do you know that name?

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:09:57Mike Rowe?

  He was a very famous comedian and he talks a lot about language. He talks about what today we would call post-traumatic stress disorder. And then they took the disorder off. But prior to that, I think it was, what was it in the, in the Second World War? Combat fatigue. Combat fatigue. Combat fatigue syndrome, but.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  Oh, comeback.

• 1:10:21Mike Rowe?

  In World War One, when it really became a phenomenon, they called it what it was. Shell shock.

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:27Mike Rowe?

  You were shell shocked.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:10:29Mike Rowe?

  It, it just seems like on the journey to the warm embrace of collectivism, we have to go through some rituals. We must comply in many different ways.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  Oh, vision impaired or whatever. Okay, I do it, harmless.

• 1:10:45Mike Rowe?

  No, no, not homeless anymore. Unhoused.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  I know, I said harmless, but unhoused. Home is some, you know, that's the thing.

• 1:10:54Mike Rowe?

  You talk funny.

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  You listen funny.

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  What I'm saying is that you comply, right? I'll say, I'm okay, that's okay, I don't say blind. I just say vision impaired. And you comply, step one. And then you comply, and then you comply until that's what you're leading to what you're talking about. And homeless, I know, it's unhoused.

• 1:11:20Mike Rowe?

  It's unhoused. But look, all of that, you know, I think a lot of people just kind of go, listen, it's, it's well-intended people.

• 1:11:28Speaker 02

  I know, good intention.

• 1:11:29Mike Rowe?

  Trying to be mannerly. But then you take it into the next level. Like, the homeless thing is another level because there's many billions of dollars being spent to correct the problem and it's failing. So now everybody's got money in this and the language is shifting under our feet. Then, of course, you get to the real sensitive thing, which was the whole transgender movement and pronouns. And now we have these giant struggle sessions in this country over, you know, Jordan Peterson mouthed off a couple of years ago. Right, so that's what I'm getting at. When you look at those linguistic gymnastics

• 1:12:13Mike Rowe?

  that we're putting ourselves through, really quickly, like just in the period of a couple of years, words don't mean what they used to mean anymore. That is there a lesson from your youth in that? Was there something similar in the cultural revolution?

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  And the cultural revolution, it's not quite, you have to understand. When the American communists, they're not in total control yet. They don't have total power yet. They're in the process of seizing power. In China, they have power. So they don't have to be so subtle. They don't have to be, you know, working so hard to manipulate that term. They do, but not as much because they can tell you. You just have to believe. And most people just, most people, majority of them comply because if you don't, you're arrested, or you're in prison, or sent to the labor camp. That's one major difference.

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  That I think the Marxists, the communists here in the West, they are 10 times sophisticated. They have to.

• 1:13:20Mike Rowe?

  Well, and there's a difference between a cancel culture where you lose your status, or maybe privileges. You were in the ultimate cancel culture.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:31Mike Rowe?

  Where they just walk you behind the barn and put one in your ear.

• 1:13:34Speaker 02

  Exactly. You don't have to argue. You can't argue. So that is a big difference. I think that because they are not in total control yet, they are still in the process of getting power. They have to be so manipulating, manipulative. They have to.

• 1:13:51Mike Rowe?

  Manipulative.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:52Mike Rowe?

  What, by the way, when did you learn English?

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  Oh, I, I, okay. When I was in the countryside, I have no hope. I don't know one day I will get. I never knew what one day I would go back to the city and, and, and live a city life comparison.

• 1:14:08Mike Rowe?

  When you were mixing the poop with the ashes? That's when you learned English?

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  You have, no, no, no, you have. I never gave up one dream, even though I know I have no dream, you know? I was dreaming that one day, I thought so funny. One day I will become an interpreter and, and go to Albania. Do you know why?

• 1:14:28Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  No, because in our international news back then, there are three countries. Uh, North Korea, North Vietnam, and Albania. And to me, the most exotic country.

• 1:14:40Mike Rowe?

  Was Albania.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  Albania. But I never gave up that, uh, uh, dream of going somewhere. And then after the Cultural Revolution, I could go to college. It's the hell with Albania. You know, I want to go to America.

• 1:14:53Mike Rowe?

  That's that title. The hell with Albania. I have a dream to translate English to Chinese in Albania.

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  So I.

• 1:15:01Mike Rowe?

  But you wound up in Bowling Green.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I studied English in college. And then I, I taught English in a teacher's training college. That's why I met my friend who brought me here.

• 1:15:12Mike Rowe?

  What's her name? Pat?

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  Pat Nave, yeah. She's a great lady.

• 1:15:16Mike Rowe?

  We'll dedicate this episode to her. Because really, you know what? We're talking about the biggest ideas in the world, she, right? We're talking about fifty million dead, twenty million dead over here. We're talking about the wealth of nations and the fate of countries. But in the end, what is this life but a friend putting her hand on your shoulder and saying, come?

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  Change the destiny.

• 1:15:40Mike Rowe?

  Come over here. Try it over here. It's not Albania, but it's nice.

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  That's why I can sit here and talk to you because of her. But she left too early.

• 1:15:51Mike Rowe?

  Where's gratitude on your list of virtues?

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  I think this is something that is so lacking here in this culture now. I'm so grateful that I'm here. I can't, I, I, I don't know. Just don't bring me to tears. I'm so grateful I'm here.

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  And I'm just like, because of this, I will do everything I can to save this country. And when I say people say save this country, save what? To restore it. That's what it is. To restore it. To really, not like my shirt, America is good. I want to, I want to make that dream alive for future generations. It has been so good to me. And I want that dream to live on.

• 1:16:40Mike Rowe?

  Can China be good? Can China be saved?

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  China can be without CCP. Without CCP. I don't even know my own culture. Because I grew up in a CCP's culture. I learned the Chinese character simplified by the damn Chinese Communist Party. I could not even write the original script, which is still in practice in China, in Taiwan or Hong Kong. I don't know anything about Chinese culture. I did not read Chinese classics. I read Mao's Little Book, back and forth and back and forth in every line. And that is, they robbed me of being Chinese. That is how bad it is.

• 1:17:25Speaker 02

  And today, they, a lot of people go there and then they think they're experiencing Chinese culture. No, you go to Taiwan if you want to experience Chinese culture. You go to Japan if you want to experience the culture that originated from China. When I went to Japan, I was like, oh my god, they really took care of the heritage. And even though it's modified, but it's, the root is in China.

• 1:17:54Mike Rowe?

  What is your favorite place in the world?

• 1:17:57Speaker 02

  Oh, my favorite place?

• 1:17:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, your favorite place to be?

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  America.

• 1:18:02Mike Rowe?

  Well, more specific.

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  Um, oh. I don't know, I love Virginia. Virginia has been my home for so long. It is a state of founding fathers, land of founding fathers, now we are under communist rule.

• 1:18:19Mike Rowe?

  Do you really think it's that bad, or are you just trying to say stuff to agitate me?

• 1:18:24Speaker 02

  It's so bad that as soon as the she, the new governor, Spender, in power, within the 24 hours, she want to wipe out everything, and she want to restart everything.

• 1:18:37Mike Rowe?

  Be specific, what's your gripe with her?

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, she, her attack on first, the Second Amendment especially. And then the, there's a lot of bills that they try to enact, I don't get everything. But the one thing is now, if you complain about Islam, you are, it's criminal. That's communism, that's absolutely communism, and they really want to destroy the Second Amendment. And they, I think they go after Second Amendment even before the first is because they know, you can't have first without the second.

• 1:19:15Mike Rowe?

  What do you think the most important amendment is?

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  Um, I think, I think second. How many? They killed so many Chinese, okay, this is what I have to say. The Chinese starved to death in front of the, what you call that, warehouse of grains. And back in the 50s and 60s. Why? Why, you say, why, why can't they just go there and storm the warehouse?

• 1:19:45Mike Rowe?

  Take the food.

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  Take the food, but they didn't.

• 1:19:49Mike Rowe?

  No guns.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  No guns, no guns.

• 1:19:51Mike Rowe?

  Okay, so you're a Second Amendment kind of gal, you're a First Amendment kind of gal? You've got the Declaration?

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:59Mike Rowe?

  On your?

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:00Mike Rowe?

  On your shawl?

• 1:20:01Speaker 02

  And if you can ask me, yes, please, say this. And there are something else I have to tell you. And I think the one of the, the thing that I did not even think much until, I have to say in the past, maybe past 10 years. I did not understand what makes America so great, where our liberty is from. I did not dwell on it because I was busy getting a job, you know, buying a house, a bigger house and bigger house, whatever. Why we have the liberty? It's because it's said in our Declaration of Independence that our liberty is from our Creator, is from God. Our rights are from there. And that is why I think that I never even thought about it. That's why we're free.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  If we can, of course, we can keep it. In China, it's all government. Government tell you whatever, you just do it. You don't argue, you just do it. And so we all become like we talk about one of the collective. That's why here is individual because each of us were made in the God's image.

• 1:21:06Mike Rowe?

  What did you think these last couple of days? I assume you flip around the TV, you watch the news channels.

• 1:21:12Speaker 02

  No, I don't watch TV anymore, just X.

• 1:21:15Mike Rowe?

  Just, oh, you're just on X?

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  Just X.

• 1:21:17Mike Rowe?

  Formerly known as Twitter?

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:19Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:21:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:20Mike Rowe?

  Did you see the Kings? The King, No Kings Rally? Did you see that? Eight million people all over the world. What do you make of that?

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  It's discouraging when you think about there are so many people being indoctrinated. I think the real problem, I think the real problem is the church. I think if I blame on anything, the first thing I blame is on the church. Yeah, because they lost their way a long time ago. And because of them, and then the second, I think we lost our, well, our roots get pulled out and it's educational system. That educational system has been under control by Marxist as early as 1920s. It's a century, 1920s. And if you go back to the person, you know, Jiang Duoyi might be probably before him

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  or others, that is how they got, they got public education and the now private, now Christian educational system, Catholic Church.

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  Schools, they all become the tools for Marxism. They indoctrinate generations, generations of Americans. And through this, you heard that, long march through institutions. And where are those people go? Where did they go? They're now in charge of all our institutions.

• 1:22:45Mike Rowe?

  You know, that's worth just explaining a little more so people understand. The long march wasn't a long walk. It was, it was an attempt to essentially infiltrate.

• 1:22:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Actually, there's more story. The long march was a long march by the communist CCP to escape the encirclement by the nationalist. They were driven out of their base in southern China and they have to go west. They have like a five thousand miles march in order to escape.

• 1:23:20Mike Rowe?

  So is that?

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  It's from China, it's from CCP.

• 1:23:23Mike Rowe?

  But that's what they're referring to is a long physical march?

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  But this was because the Western communists love it so much. A German Marxist used this in this now famous phrase. Long march through this little by little infiltration.

• 1:23:39Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  Infiltration, little by.

• 1:23:41Mike Rowe?

  That's how I always.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  I know, but they use that term that originate from CCP. That's very telling. They're all the same, they're all Marxists, they're all communists.

• 1:23:52Mike Rowe?

  If you were queen of the world, aside from, aside from flicking your fingers and, and, and filling everyone's brain with what you've filled both your books with, what would you want everyone to take from your lived experience, your life? What's the big, big lesson to this country right now in 2026?

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're talking about people here, right? This, my book is not for the Chinese.

• 1:24:21Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:23Mike Rowe?

  Heck with them, but it's us right now.

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  We're saving America.

• 1:24:25Mike Rowe?

  Save us, yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  Exactly. I think, okay, that's a big question. How can I formulate so that, okay? I really want people to know. There's no utopia, there's no heaven on earth. No, zero. If you want heaven, that's the God's kingdom. That's over there, it's not here. If you give up that idea, because that's the idea that the communists push on people. We're gonna make this a fair world. We're gonna make this world that's good for everyone. That everyone sits at the table. You heard that all the time. There's no such thing.

• 1:25:07Speaker 02

  That is the way to lure you into this idea of collectivism. So you give up your individual rights, you give up your thoughts, you become part of it because you thought you're gonna be in that world. And that is kind of hard to tell everyone, but I want them to tell, read my book, to learn the real history. The real history that the Chinese thought the same way and what they end up with.

• 1:25:38Speaker 04

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• 1:26:21Speaker 04

  fifty for our buy one, get one fifty percent off deal. That's the number three D A Y blinds dot com slash Chicago fifty.

• 1:26:30Mike Rowe?

  See, somewhere between blindness and vision impaired.

• 1:26:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:26:35Mike Rowe?

  We have this other thing called willful blindness.

• 1:26:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:39Mike Rowe?

  That's the decision. You know, when I think about your mom and dad deciding, choosing.

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:47Mike Rowe?

  Communism.

• 1:26:50Mike Rowe?

  You know, it's.

• 1:26:51Speaker 02

  You can't blame them.

• 1:26:52Mike Rowe?

  You can't.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  They really, really want to.

• 1:26:54Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  Do something good for people. They do. They did. Yeah.

• 1:26:57Mike Rowe?

  They did. Then later, and then the question becomes, what do you do when you find out? Once the scales fall from your eyes.

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:27:06Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:27:06Speaker 02

  This, thank you.

• 1:27:07Mike Rowe?

  You're the ostrich. You got your head out of the sand.

• 1:27:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:10Mike Rowe?

  Now what?

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  Okay, they, now we have this option. And that's why I bothered to even write two books. I may, may get another one because I want people to understand so that we do something now. Or you find out yourself. By then, it will be too late. Like my parents, when they found out, this revolution is not what they're thinking. What they had, I, what they understood. Too late. Too late.

• 1:27:38Mike Rowe?

  Okay, that to me, that's the big lesson. It's, it's like, you ever leaned back on your chair a little too far, like, and then you feel like you're gonna go back?

• 1:27:50Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:50Mike Rowe?

  And you can't, you know, like, you pass the tipping point.

• 1:27:53Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:54Mike Rowe?

  Your gravity is now in charge. You're, you're going to fall. I think the most poignant, poetic, and horrifying time to be alive is in that moment.

• 1:28:05Speaker 02

  We are there.

• 1:28:06Mike Rowe?

  When you start to fall, but you haven't hit the floor yet. But it might be too late.

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:10Mike Rowe?

  It might be too late. That, that's scary. Is it? Okay, and that's my last question to you.

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  I think we're there.

• 1:28:17Mike Rowe?

  You think we're there.

• 1:28:18Speaker 02

  We are there at the tipping point.

• 1:28:19Mike Rowe?

  But is it too late?

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  Um, nothing can be too late. Okay, so this is how I understood it. Yeah, I may be wrong. I think we fell off the cliff already. We are looking for a soft landing. No matter what we do, even if today we switch, make the switch, and then we come back into normal, into the, uh, the nineteen eighties, that, uh, that when I came here, when everything, my memory seems to be just kind of normal. It's no longer there. We cannot be. So many things has fundamentally been changed, altered in this country. And so, soft landing is what we're hopeful.

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  If we want to restore America completely, that will take decades. But now, we're just hoping for a soft landing. But that save America, it is. Because we have been, I mean, conservative, sorry. We've been asleep for so long. I have been asleep for so long. I did not speak up until, until it's so late, right? Because I was just taking like autopilot, just doing things because nothing can go wrong in this country. So I take responsibility. I did not take my, tell my son the horrors of communism because I want to forget about it, because it's over there.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  And I did not tell my friends. I did not take my coworkers about the horror of communism.

• 1:29:55Mike Rowe?

  Maybe you should have.

• 1:29:56Speaker 02

  I should have. Because I did not think that this, this is America. Nothing can go wrong.

• 1:30:03Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, as humans, in the interest of self-preservation, we need to forget the times that brought us the most pain. We can't wallow in the past. But if we forget, then somebody else gets to write our history. This show you're on right now is called The Way I Heard It. It should be called The Way I Remember It. Because so much of what I wind up talking to people about is how they, how do you remember your girlhood? Right? How, and then how do you talk about it today? And, and how do your memories, you know, conflict maybe from time to time? Maybe your neighbor remembered it differently. And lived through the same thing. It just seems to me right now that in this country, so many people,

• 1:30:49Mike Rowe?

  everybody's armed with the same cellphone, the same social platforms. You know, we all have the way we heard it, the way we remember it. And we're all pretty sure we're right. And we're all really loud. And we're all marching around and talking about kings and collectivism and everything else. And here you are in all of it. I mean, is it that your real honest hope? The best-case scenario is a soft landing.

• 1:31:16Speaker 02

  For now, yes, for now. I think it would take so long for us to go back almost the same time. It took them almost a century to get us here. And it worked decades to go back to the, to where this country is supposed to be, where the founding father designed it to be. And I know it's not that simple, you know, it's not like the founding father say one, two, three, we go to one, two, three, but closer to the original founding, I think would take a long time.

• 1:31:51Mike Rowe?

  Last question, maybe.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  I hope it's not, and I'm hopeful. I fight this fight because I believe in it. But I know for sure, it's not something we can turn around overnight.

• 1:32:03Mike Rowe?

  But you've seen what happens to a culture that tears down its statues, that changes the names on its schools, and that crosses out big chunks of its history. That's what Mao did.

• 1:32:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:21Mike Rowe?

  Right?

• 1:32:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:32:23Mike Rowe?

  And you're watching that happen here, too.

• 1:32:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:25Mike Rowe?

  So I can understand why you're not totally hopeful all the time. I mean, it's got to be, it must be very, very chilling.

• 1:32:35Speaker 02

  Yes. And this book, my second book, is really want people to focus, I think more and more because of Trump. I think more and more people realize that CCP is our, really our no longer competitor, it's our adversary. I say enemy, just get it out, enemy. It's our enemy because that's how they teach the American, the Chinese people. And so it's a good thing that we consider that a threat. But this book is not about that. It's how we get here. How we get here is the story of Americans never understood communism. And because we never understood communism, now we create a monster overseas, and we create

• 1:33:20Speaker 02

  a monster here, which is the woke ideology.

• 1:33:22Mike Rowe?

  So how are we? What are we doing wrong right now in terms of emboldening or enabling China to be the worst version of itself?

• 1:33:36Speaker 02

  Or the worst version of an evil empire, much more so worse than the Soviet Union. What's your question? How did we get here?

• 1:33:45Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'm just thinking, did you see my interview with Jan Yekelik? Okay. So, you know, the word seems to be getting out that there's a $9 billion trade going on with human organs.

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:33:59Mike Rowe?

  And that the CCP is essentially organizing it. Now, back to my earlier point, it's one thing to think it, it's another thing to see it and then know it. So now, like, once you know that's happening, whether it's the Uighurs, or whether it's the Falun Gong, or whether, now you know.

• 1:34:18Speaker 02

  A lot of people don't know. That's the thing. And why they don't know, I think it's both the communists here try to just, just either water down or just hide it, and the CCP. So, they, most people don't know. Most people do not know. It's not like they all know, they don't care. They don't know. And a lot of them don't even want to understand because it's just too much.

• 1:34:44Mike Rowe?

  That's the difference. It's one thing to be ignorant because you don't know, it's another thing to be willfully blind.

• 1:34:51Speaker 02

  Because it's just, they'd rather, it's just too much for them to even to dwell on it. But here's something else I want to say, that they don't understand. We don't understand communism. When I say we, because I'm American now, yeah. Otherwise, I say they, you. But there's something I think it's very important. I don't want to name names, but I want to name this name because I was like, what? Okay.

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  Bill O'Reilly?

• 1:35:20Mike Rowe?

  Uh huh.

• 1:35:20Speaker 02

  No, he's a conservative and I watch his show. And I like a lot of his political uh analysis. He wrote a book, I don't know, you you you you are aware. He has a new book called Confronting uh Evil. And it's uh in the cover is basically Hitler uh.

• 1:35:38Mike Rowe?

  Stalin.

• 1:35:39Speaker 02

  Stalin Mao and uh uh uh uh little uh Ho Homemi. Confronting Evil, yeah. So the other thing I want to say is that most Americans don't understand there is a evil out there. They just somehow has trouble understand. Okay, so in his conclusion of his book, he said, we need allies to fight against evils. And we need to ally with CCP.

• 1:36:09Mike Rowe?

  And you think he's wrong?

• 1:36:11Speaker 02

  I think it's just, this is just, this actually showed why I should have this book. And people should read this book. Even today, we're talking, not talking about uh Democrats. We're not talking about leftists. We're talking about conservatives still don't understand.

• 1:36:30Mike Rowe?

  You know that.

• 1:36:31Speaker 02

  But we have Trump. We have Trump.

• 1:36:35Mike Rowe?

  You're a fan.

• 1:36:36Speaker 02

  He absolutely understands. He understands and he understand how to take it down. Not have a war with China. But he understand how to undermine it and take down indirectly. And I think we have a much better chance today than ever that uh we might just be able, if not take it down, weaken it so that it's no longer a threat, direct threat to the free world.

• 1:37:06Mike Rowe?

  What do you say then to the argument? And I know, I know we're out of time. It's all good. I'm just so, I mean, she's so.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  I I get it.

• 1:37:13Mike Rowe?

  She's so sassy.

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:37:14Mike Rowe?

  She's so interesting. And she's got such great.

• 1:37:17Speaker 02

  Shirt.

• 1:37:18Mike Rowe?

  Sartorial splendor.

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  You gotta listen better.

• 1:37:21Mike Rowe?

  She's great fashion choice.

• 1:37:25Mike Rowe?

  What do you say, never mind O'Reilly? I mean, he's sold millions and millions of books, you know, and he does have an audience. And good for you for speaking candidly about it. But I know there's an argument in this country that says, look, we don't want to have a war with China. And, you know, yes, they're an adversary. And yes, we're not aligned. But, you know, Nixon opened it up, and they're a huge trading partner. And the NBA is exporting their, right?

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hollywood too.

• 1:37:58Mike Rowe?

  Hollywood? So the argument is we keep the glass nose, we keep a perestroika, and we do it through these social channels. We make them more like us by exporting America.

• 1:38:12Speaker 02

  That's what Clinton tried to convince us.

• 1:38:14Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:38:15Speaker 02

  You know, I have to say, I thought for a short while, I believed it too. I went to China, you know, in the late 90s and early 2000s. It was amazing. People were able to talk openly, you know, about Cultural Revolution, about the problem with the government. It only lasted just shortly, and it's all gone. Now I talk to my friends in China in code. You can't just, yeah, you have to. So we use words so that we kind of get there, so we kind of understand, because surveillance, yeah.

• 1:38:53Mike Rowe?

  So the government is surveilling all the?

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  All of them, yeah. Especially WeChat. That's the, they provide this great tool that you can talk to your family and friends in China free. Everything is.

• 1:39:07Mike Rowe?

  Everything's listened to.

• 1:39:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:09Mike Rowe?

  What about TikTok? You got that?

• 1:39:11Speaker 02

  I don't know about now. I think I did not follow it. I just don't trust it because it's a Chinese product. I don't trust it.

• 1:39:19Mike Rowe?

  What do you trust?

• 1:39:22Speaker 02

  That's the problem.

• 1:39:23Mike Rowe?

  There it is.

• 1:39:24Speaker 02

  Who do we trust? Trust God. That's the only thing, I think.

• 1:39:28Mike Rowe?

  There you go. Anything you wish I would ask you that I didn't?

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  We never talk about that, but we it's too late to talk about.

• 1:39:34Mike Rowe?

  With this, but we've been looking at this all the time.

• 1:39:36Speaker 02

  No, no, no, we talk about the peasants.

• 1:39:37Mike Rowe?

  What did I write down?

• 1:39:38Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:39:39Mike Rowe?

  I wrote soft landing.

• 1:39:40Speaker 01

  Why, why people are migrating to the cities?

• 1:39:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's too late.

• 1:39:45Mike Rowe?

  No, it's not too late.

• 1:39:46Speaker 02

  Okay, okay.

• 1:39:46Mike Rowe?

  No, it's my shot. Do whatever I want.

• 1:39:47Speaker 02

  Give me five minutes and let me explain, okay?

• 1:39:50Mike Rowe?

  Five minutes?

• 1:39:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:39:51Mike Rowe?

  In a row? Okay.

• 1:39:54Speaker 02

  Remember I talked about the peasants?

• 1:39:56Mike Rowe?

  I want people to understand the question you're answering, since I asked it an hour ago.

• 1:40:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:00Mike Rowe?

  But this came out, I saw a guy from the Brookings Institute, big think tank. And he was giving a lecture. This is like nine years ago. And the question was, the topic was China rising. And everybody in the audience was very concerned about its military might and what that might portend for us. And this guy said, look, sure, we think about it at the highest levels all of the time. But China's busy. China's got 400 million people moving to the cities. That's 100 million more people than we have living here. So it's very difficult for me to get my head around what that would do to a country

• 1:40:45Mike Rowe?

  to have the whole countryside.

• 1:40:48Speaker 02

  It's just amazing.

• 1:40:49Mike Rowe?

  It's just mind boggling.

• 1:40:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:40:50Mike Rowe?

  All right, go ahead.

• 1:40:51Speaker 02

  Okay, the story, I have to go back to the beginning. That was the land reform, that peasants were happy, they got land.

• 1:40:57Mike Rowe?

  Make it interesting, Sheik. Make it interesting.

• 1:40:58Speaker 02

  They got land and five years later, it's all taken away, okay? And then they all got into the people's commune.

• 1:41:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:06Speaker 02

  Commune means you work for the people. What people? The government, yeah, the government.

• 1:41:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, those people.

• 1:41:13Speaker 02

  Okay, so they were so poor, and many of them died of starvation. But even when I was in the countryside, they have so, so, so poor. They are desperately poor. Those are the people that we're talking about that going to cities. But they are not just going to cities. Mao did something else. That was so sinister. He implemented a system called Huo Ko system. Household registration. You register where you were at the time. If you're peasant, you register as a peasant. You will be peasant forever, ever, meaning ever. And if you're a city, a resident of one city, you cannot move to another. I can't just, uh, uh, when I was in China, I can't just say, I go to Beijing.

• 1:41:57Speaker 02

  I want to live in Beijing. You can't. Okay, that system is still in effect. So when the China market start to open up and when the American business went to China, do you know the hourly, uh, uh, rate?

• 1:42:13Mike Rowe?

  For wages?

• 1:42:14Speaker 02

  For wages.

• 1:42:15Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 1:42:16Speaker 02

  Forty-seven cents an hour. That's what they're paying for the Chinese labor. And that's what the peasants. But for the peasants, that's heaven. Because they could not have anything, they could not keep anything for themselves. So that was heaven. So they all poured in. First is people with a little skill. But a lot of the jobs, first of all, were jobs with low skill. So they could not, they went to the city, but they could not stay. They, they can stay, but they are not part of the city. Their children cannot go to school. They can't enjoy any services the city provides.

• 1:42:59Speaker 02

  If their kids go to school, they have to pay. So that is, uh, one thing that most of them overlook. So what happened to the peasant class is that the family separated. The young people, husband or even parents, went to the city, work in the factory for very little. But for them, that's money that they can keep in the pocket. And their parents, and, um, older parents take care of the kids. That is destruction of Chinese families. And so there is a thing that is, you can even, there is a BBC documentary about this unique phenomenon that's only happened in China

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  that billions of trips were made around the Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is, you know, every year is different, but it's a.

• 1:43:52Mike Rowe?

  Gong he fa chao.

• 1:43:55Speaker 02

  That's right, exactly. But that's when people that worked for a whole year, they went back to home to reunion with the family. And then that is like hundreds of millions of people on the move for about a month. They go there and then they come back. And these people are the cheap labors, the backbone for the Chinese rise. And they get very little today. You know, Tim Cook said, oh, we are still in China. Well, he moved some of the operations out. It's not because of the wage. Sure. Do you know today's wage? Like less than five dollars an hour.

• 1:44:38Speaker 02

  You tell me it's not about the wage? That is what the Chinese government, together with the Western or American capitalism, they got rich because of those peasants. The peasants live in the subhuman environment. They have like a huge place with roll beds. They like, I know someone who made Christmas trees for America. They live in like 10 people per room. They have no bathroom with hot water. It's just like a dorm. They are making like whatever, two dollars back then, she quit. Two dollars an hour.

• 1:45:23Speaker 02

  And this is really, we participated in it. We, you and I, because we bought the cheap stuff.

• 1:45:28Mike Rowe?

  That's my next question, including this table, okay? Right? I mean, and so, look, what's the solution? I mean, Bill O'Reilly is going over there to say, we ought to partner with them to make the world a better place. It seems like on the other side, we got to get the NBA out. We got to raise hell about the Uighurs. We got to stop the organ harvesting. We have to stop, like, we have to back away from. Would you support a movement that just said, we just got to get off the Chinese tit? Pardon me, but.

• 1:45:59Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And not only that, they make awful products. They make shit. When I go to, I love this, I can curse in California.

• 1:46:13Speaker 02

  When I went to a Chinese or Asian grocery store, I make sure the food I buy is not made in China. Why? It's not safe. It's just not safe. They make the worst thing for profit. And but it's not them. The problem again is not them. It's us. Now, today, American people, American citizens, become consumers. Right? They become consumers.

• 1:46:42Mike Rowe?

  Before they become citizens.

• 1:46:43Speaker 02

  Before they come. They only care about their bottom line. I just think that I would pay more if we can get something made here. I will. Absolutely. I understand. That's how we sold America. That we not did not enrich the America, the Chinese people that who really made it all this possible. They were still impoverished. We made the CCP rich. That make me so mad.

• 1:47:13Mike Rowe?

  Before I thank you and say goodbye, just one more question.

• 1:47:17Speaker 02

  I'm glad we covered that.

• 1:47:19Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, well, no, no, we got it.

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  Five minutes.

• 1:47:21Mike Rowe?

  Was I, like, was it racist of me to be pretty sure that the virus came from a lab?

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  Call it China virus. Like Trump. It is from China. It is from the lab.

• 1:47:35Mike Rowe?

  From China.

• 1:47:36Speaker 02

  China. And it's not by accident. I guess. I don't know, but I think that's what it is.

• 1:47:42Mike Rowe?

  You're, that's how we're gonna close this two-hour conversation? You're gonna leave that hanging out there? You know what that's called? That's called book number three. Book number three.

• 1:47:52Speaker 02

  That's what, because nothing is accidental in China. Nothing. Coming is China. And look at the timing. Look at everything. You think it's just accidentally just escaped the lab?

• 1:48:06Mike Rowe?

  No, I don't. I don't. But you know what? It was a good way to lose a lot of friends here five years ago. Start mouthing off. That kinda, that kinda thought.

• 1:48:15Speaker 02

  It's so scary that so many people just shut up because they're scared. I know. We have been fallen so far, so far, yes.

• 1:48:27Mike Rowe?

  I'll close with what I opened with. I've heard this message before, but I haven't heard it so persuasively articulated by somebody who's lived it. Your first book is called Mao's America. Your most recent book is called Made in America, which of course is an explanation of how China continues to be China. With our help, a lot of inconvenient truths in here. You're a jagged little pill, as we say. You've probably upset a lot of people. Gee, but I'm so glad you're doing it.

• 1:48:55Speaker 02

  That's how you wake them up. You don't just pat them.

• 1:48:58Mike Rowe?

  You say, "Come here."

• 1:48:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:00Mike Rowe?

  Give them a smack. Would you autograph this book for me?

• 1:49:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:04Mike Rowe?

  Would you do that?

• 1:49:04Speaker 02

  Absolutely with honor, yes.

• 1:49:06Mike Rowe?

  OK, here, God, sign it right there for me. Chuck, I know this is a topic near and dear to your heart. Do you have any final questions for our guest before I send her on her way?

• 1:49:14Speaker 01

  Well, you asked it about TikTok, and she gave me the answer that I expected. You know, that's the thing that I was really worried about. But I believe this message is very important, and people need to listen to it, read the book, and be aware. I'm being more and more careful myself about where I buy stuff.

• 1:49:34Mike Rowe?

  Your handwriting is terrible. What language is this?

• 1:49:38Speaker 02

  I never sign anything in China because there's nothing to sign. And I have to learn to, to...

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  What does it say? Can you say?

• 1:49:46Mike Rowe?

  No, I can't read it. I think it's her name. I don't know.

• 1:49:48Speaker 02

  It's my name. You said sign.

• 1:49:50Mike Rowe?

  I did say sign. I didn't say put an electrocardiogram in my...

• 1:49:53Speaker 02

  I tried to be fancy, and it took me a long time to get there. I'm telling you, I can only print when I got here.

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  Can you write your name in Chinese?

• 1:50:01Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I was just gonna say, can you write my name in Mandarin? Mike?

• 1:50:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, go ahead. Give me that.

• 1:50:06Speaker 02

  Now?

• 1:50:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, right now.

• 1:50:07Speaker 02

  Just that?

• 1:50:08Mike Rowe?

  Well, I don't know. Whatever you want.

• 1:50:09Speaker 02

  I have to say something. Let me say, think about it afterwards. We're still on the air?

• 1:50:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, we're on the air.

• 1:50:15Speaker 02

  No, let me think.

• 1:50:16Mike Rowe?

  I want this to happen on camera.

• 1:50:18Speaker 02

  Don't put me on the spot. I have to think of a message.

• 1:50:21Mike Rowe?

  How about something like, "For Mike, the most insightful interviewer I've ever had the pleasure to chat with, P.S. You're no Bill O'Reilly." Something like that.

• 1:50:35Speaker 02

  Let me do it later.

• 1:50:36Mike Rowe?

  All right, you do it later. All right, that's a Xi Van Fleet.

• 1:50:40Speaker 02

  But she never finished his story.

• 1:50:42Mike Rowe?

  It wasn't going anywhere. All right, good, Chuck, go ahead, go ahead. Chuck gets the last word on this one.

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, if you can buy American, buy American. And if you can buy from anywhere else other than China, buy from anywhere else other than China. I'm trying to do that in my life.

• 1:50:59Speaker 02

  That's what we all should do, absolutely. Even though it's very difficult.

• 1:51:04Mike Rowe?

  It is difficult. And if you need a human organ, don't go to China.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  Don't do it. That's a bad move.

• 1:51:10Mike Rowe?

  And this shirt, by the way, made by our friends at American Giant.

• 1:51:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:51:14Mike Rowe?

  Proud sponsor of this program. And that is amazing.

• 1:51:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, made in America. America is good.

• 1:51:20Mike Rowe?

  We the people. Be the people.

• 1:51:22Speaker 02

  Be the people. That's right. That's right, that's better.

• 1:51:25Mike Rowe?

  Not bad. All right, G, thank you for coming by.

• 1:51:28Speaker 02

  Well, thank you so much. This is not just a pleasure, this is so much fun. Thank you.

• 1:51:32Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, if you're not laughing, the joke's on you, right?

• 1:51:35Speaker 02

  I know, I know.

• 1:51:35Mike Rowe?

  Amen.

• 1:52:19Speaker 05

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