The New Yorker Magazine (№ 17th August 2020) by David Remnick (Editor In Chief)

Author:David Remnick (Editor In Chief) [Remnick, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: culture, politics, art, jounalism, magazine, non-fiction
Publisher: Conde Nast
Published: 2020-08-16T14:00:00+00:00

space the previous weekend. At the end crowded. Fenton needed to get some tional experiences had diverged. By the of the story, she said, “Every country has dental work done at a university hos-time I handed in final grades, in early

its strong points and its weak points.”

pital. And Sisyphos, as a senior, was July, the U.S. was recording more cases required to return for exams.

every two days than the Chinese had

During week sixteen, I finally en- He arrived wearing a mask, but he reported during the entire pandemic.

tered the classroom. For more than took it off when he saw that the others And the lessons that a young Chia month, there had been rumors that were uncovered. He was tall, with slightly nese drew from the crisis were likely undergraduates would return, as they wavy hair, and he said that in the fall very different from those of a young had in some other provinces. But the he would enter a graduate program in American. In my students’ last essays, final decision was always left to local economics, in Shanghai. It seemed that many expressed a renewed faith in their officials, because, in the Chinese system, most seniors were going to grad school; government. Jiang Xilin, the Rhodes they are the ones who would be pun-the government had expanded academic scholar who had fled Oxford for Shang-ished in the event of an outbreak. At Si-

programs in order to reduce pressure hai, told me that he had also noticed a chuan University, administrators seemed on the job market.

change in his peers from the élite Fudan

to decide that it wasn’t worth the risk.

Even online, I had sensed that Sisy-

University. “Even my most anti-govern-

Senior students were called back to take phos was shy, and I never put him on ment friends began to have trust in the their final exams, along with others who the spot by asking about his name. But government,” he said. For my last sur-had made special requests, but most now I did, and he reddened slightly. He vey, I asked the students to rate their younger undergraduates were encour-explained that he had chosen it in high feelings about the future on a scale of aged to stay home. I was disappoint-school, because he liked the Greek myth.

one to ten, with one being the most pes-

ed—I had hoped to finally meet every-

“So where’s the rock right now?” I simistic. After everything that had hap-body. None of my first-year students asked. “Is it high or low?”

pened—the collapse of U.S.-China re-

made it back to campus.

Sisyphos brought his hand level with lations, the explosion of the pandemic, In the end, it became another type his chest. “It’s in the middle,” he said.

the death of half a million people world-

of theatre: a dress rehearsal. The uni-

wide—the average rating was 7.1.

versity introduced the fever tents, the

Only three students came to the final

delivery robots, and the facial-recogni-

I often wondered what the spring’s ex-

perience would mean to this younger nonfiction session, in week seventeen.

tion scanners, but I sensed that admin-

generation: the Children of the Corona.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.