Exercise and tough talk

It has been interesting the last few days to see the difference in East vs. West. Yesterday, there was the difference in exercise habits when I noticed a few Americans sprinting along on their morning run. Each man was running at his own pace and in his own little world. On the other hand, all along my route there were Chinese exercising in at least a pair - playing tennis or badminton or in a group. I thought that this very nicely illustrated the differences in culture. 

Today, we were in meetings with staff and students and the interesting event was when the director stated that the students weren't good enough to go to Harvard or Stanford and that they needed to set their sights much lower. Now, it's probably true that most would not get into either if those schools but I couldn't believe that at least one didn't have a chance. This kind of blunt, almost negative, talk would not be something that would go over very well in U.S. schools.