It was as if the birds and the smiles had both taken wing to a happier place. There is an external discipline and control that permeates the culture that makes everything mechanistic and not very human. When I asked different people there to tell me their dreams, they had a hard time answering. I finally got it. The dreams have gone with the birds and smiles.
Dreams require freedom to soar.
As we learned more about the country, we found that about 95 percent of the people consider themselves atheists. Even though China has a rich religious history, spirituality is mostly a relic of the past. And gone with it are their hopes for the future. Dreams also require hope to thrive. We had an interesting contrast to that when we visited Thailand, a place where 95 percent of the population is Buddhist.