My “interview” started with a four-hour tour at the Panda Base in Chengdu, Sichuan, to location of China’s largest panda breeding program.  My tour guide, Sherry*, picked me up at my hotel and surprised me with her nearly perfect American accent.  I could not help but ask where she had studied.  Sherry reveals that, in fact, she is self-taught and learned English by watching and re-watching Gossip Girl and The Big Bang Theory episodes.  I was incredibly lucky that tourists were rare this week in Chengdu – normally we would have been accompanied by at least four other tourists.  On this tour Sherry and I are alone, free to punctuate talk about the panda breeding program with tactful personal questions.  I am incredibly lucky to have been paired with my Chinese counterpart: mid-thirties, five years youthful, and university educated.  As we spoke for hours, the conversation progresses into a heart-to-heart on the car ride home, as we are accompanied only by a non-English speaking driver.  Sherry opened up about her private troubles: her mother’s nagging …