1. He’s black.
2. His half-brother lives in Shenzhen. (This was major news in the national press here)
3. He just won the presidential election in America.
4. He beat Hillary Clinton.
Almost no one at the school has heard of John McCain, but there are quite a few students here who are still bummed out about Hillary losing in the primaries.
5. This means Bush isn’t the president of America anymore.
Most people are too polite to say it directly, but the students I’ve talked to seem pretty excited about this.
The students here seem pretty pleased that Obama was elected. One student, who knew I had planned to vote for Obama, came up to me the day after the election with a big smile and yelled, “Obama won the game!”
But there was some confusion about the historical significance of the Obama victory. There is general agreement among the students that Obama is black, and that it’s pretty rare for a black man to be elected president of the United States. But they aren’t quite sure if this is the first time it has happened.
One student asked me if Obama was, in fact, the first black man to be elected president in America. I told him he was, but the student wasn’t quite convinced.
“What about Lincoln?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Lincoln was white.”
“Oh.”
