Professor Andrew Mertha came to talk about Cambodia and China on behalf of the original speaker who couldn’t make it. Mertha was hilarious. He mixed corny jokes with politics and  history. He poked fun at how disorderly the Chinese government and bureaucracy are throughout the talk. One doesn’t necessarily think of China’s policies as being unstructured and chaotic as they were able to enforce their strict childbearing laws, but I guess when China does succeed at issuing a policy, it is a miracle. Another part I enjoyed hearing about was how he was so easily able to obtain classified Chinese documents from an archive in Cambodia. He got a hold of classified Chinese files that explained “missile plans, no, no missiles, but outlines for rubber factories.” He had no inhibition for overused jokes, but they were funny in the context of the all-important Becker-Rose cafe. At some points it was difficult to concentrate on the material because I was laughing at the jokes, but that’s okay. Afterward, an old man stood up and said that he had come to the lecture under the wrong impression, expecting something else, but then he said that he liked it more than he thought he would have if it were just a normal talk. It’s nice to have a break from the countless, interminable, lectures we attend.