NO POLITICS!!!!

i have this underlined three times in the notes from my meeting with my headmaster before classes started. i have done my best. i figure that american domestic politics is fair game, so when they ask about george dubya, i let loose. they seem to really enjoy me ripping on bush jr. as they call him. they ask about the iraq war, and i figure that we'll come down on the same side as well, and we do.
it gets a bit more shaky when they ask about japan. they try to slip it in, like i might answer it if i'm not paying enough attention. "How many girlfriends do you have?" "None." "Do you like Japan?" on cctv 9 (the chinese run english news channel) they keep running stories on chinese comfort women suing for reperations from the japanese government. they were denied earlier last week, and they are appealling now.
meanwhile, my foreign collegue hiro, the japanese teacher, is treated like chinese wherever he goes. we'll be having dinner, the five foreign teachers together, and a chinese person will come up to hiro and speak quickly to him in chinese. he smiles and nods, but says nothing. hiro speaks as much chinese as i do, but luckily for me, no one assumes that i speak it. he tells me he uses the mute routine often when he is shopping. but it says something that my school is offering japanese language classes, and that students are taking them. that is a step in the right direction.
taiwan is something they ask about often as well. i have debated telling them that my students last year were taiwanese, and that i've spent five weeks of my life in taiwan, as well. i decided i would not keep that from them, and it has been okay. i make sure not to talk about it too much, and change the subject quickly.
tibet has not come up, and i wonder if it is on their political radar. perhaps it's a non-issue inside the country. i haven't met anyone i've felt comfortable enough to ask.
the administration seems understanding about our issues, and it seems that our warning to stay away from politics is for us almost more than the classes. i've been told stories of american teachers getting into shouting matches with whole classes. that is something i can definitely do without.