| | | | | COVID, guns, anti-Asian violence, and diplomatic relations have complicated the ambitions of the some three hundred thousand college students who come to the U.S. each year.  Within eighty-two days of arriving in Pittsburgh to continue his education in the summer of 2021, Vincent, a student from Sichuan University, in Chengdu, acquires a used Lexus, a twelve-gauge Winchester shotgun, a Savage Axis XP 6.5 Creedmoor bolt-action rifle, and a Glock 19 handgun. As the months pass, he samples the sermons at an evangelical congregation, briefly falls in with Mormonism, and eventually is baptized as an Anglican. His opinions about his home country, meanwhile, begin to turn negative. Anxiety over anti-Asian violence in America and uncomfortable feelings of displacement are overshadowed by the sense of liberty and individuality he discovers. “I need to be in a place where I have freedom,” he explains to our staff writer Peter Hessler. And he’s not alone. In this week’s issue, Hessler tells the story of several Chinese students among the hundreds of thousands who study abroad in America. He is uniquely positioned to observe generational changes in attitude toward the U.S., having taught at a small teachers’ college in the city of Fuling, in 1996, and again, more than twenty years later, at Sichuan University. Hessler writes about increasing reports of young Chinese people engaged in what is known as runxue, or “run philosophy,” and taking flight from their home country. Those who do return from abroad often exhibit “a new degree of unease,” an awareness of being surveilled and a pessimism about their lack of agency. For Hessler, Vincent represents a new cultural landscape, one in which Chinese expats take up the endless options Americans take for granted. Plus: Hessler reflects on his first time teaching in China, and the ways in which the country has become unrecognizable to his former students. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | | | | From the News Desk |  Daily Comment Can Chicago Manage Its Migrant Crisis?More than thirty-eight thousand migrants have arrived in Chicago since the summer of 2022; most of them were sent there by Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas. For the residents of predominantly Black neighborhoods, the arrival of migrants hasn’t created a new crisis so much as it has aggravated long-standing ones, such as the lack of resources and a bitter sense of neglect. By Geraldo Cadava | | | | | Annals of Education The Meltdown at a Middle School in a Liberal TownA post-pandemic fight about racism, the respectful treatment of trans kids, and the role of teachers’ unions has divided Amherst, Massachusetts. By Jessica Winter | | | | | Dept. of Totality | | Like so many others, New Yorker writers and staff members are making their viewing plans for the total solar eclipse, on April 8th. The senior editor Catherine Winter shares this report: We’re keeping an eye on the weather and, if it looks like somewhere won’t have clouds, we’re going to drive there. We live in Duluth, so anywhere we go will be at least ten hours from here. We’ve got eclipse glasses, but we’ve made no reservations. We plan to sleep in the car. For the eclipse in 2017, we had arranged to drive to a little town in Nebraska. We had a hotel room booked not far away. At the last minute, as the hype became a frenzy and various news entities predicted huge crowds and traffic jams, we decided not to go. At the hour of the eclipse, my spouse pulled up the stream from a Webcam in the town where we had been planning to go. There were no clouds and no crowds; you could have lain down in the street. Friends posted online about what a transcendent experience their eclipse viewing was. I still can’t think about it without pain. It’s one of my biggest regrets in life. In fact, it changed my life. Now, whenever I’m on the fence about something, the decision is to do it. | | | | | | Kyle Chayka | |  Photograph by Yuki Iwamura / Bloomberg / Getty Truth Social is an online “Republican-themed carnival, of the kind that alights in a town field and attempts to hide its shoddiness for long enough to make money without entirely falling apart,” Kyle Chayka writes in his latest column. Under the username @freedomnmyveins, he navigates the glitches and gripes on the underpopulated, briefly overvalued site, and watches along as its stock price plummets. Read more » | | | | Culture Dept. | The Front Row Woody Allen Reëmerges with a Movie About Getting Away with MurderThe director’s films have often specialized in denunciation and retribution, and the comedic thriller “Coup de Chance,” set in Paris, fits this pattern all too plainly. By Richard Brody | | | | | From the Archive |  The Current Cinema Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather”Marlon Brando, who would have turned a hundred today, barely got his most famous role, because studio executives considered him too unreliable to hire. But, with the help of the film’s writer and director, Brando was eventually cast as Don Corleone in “The Godfather.” Read the review from 1972. By Pauline Kael | | | | | Fun & Games Dept. | Crossword A Beginner-Friendly PuzzleEastern, Central, Mountain, or Pacific: eight letters. By Robyn Weintraub | | Shouts & Murmurs Beyond Country: Forthcoming Beyoncé Albums in Surprising GenresA German-synth-pop record: Notable tracks include “If I Were Ein Boy,” “All the Single Fräulein,” and “Hälo.” By Skyler Higley and Mads Horwath | | Daily Cartoon Wednesday, April 3rd By Liam Francis Walsh | | | | |  | Name Drop: Can you guess the identity of a notable person—contemporary or historical—in six clues? Play a quiz from our archive » | | | | | P.S. In New York, April is already delivering on showers. When you’re struggling to romanticize wet socks, revisit this missive on spring rain from John Updike, from 1962. Of water, he writes, “Puddles, gutters, sewers are incidental disguises: the casual avatars of perpetually reincarnated cloud droplets; momentary embarrassments, having nothing to do with the ineluctable poise of H2O. Throw her on the street, mix her with candy wrappers, splash her with taxi wheels, she remains a virgin and a lady.” | | | | Today’s newsletter was written by Hannah Jocelyn. | | | | | | | |
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