I watched a special edition of Al-Jazeera's Hiwar Maftuh from China. They brought together students and teachers specializing in the Arab world at Chinese Universities. I was so impressed with their fluency in Arabic. One student apologized for his weak command of Arabic because he was a two-year student, while his Arabic was better than 7-year students of Arabic here in US. This only proves my theory about Middle East studies: we need to bring back some elements of Orientalist training, without reviving the underpinning ideology of course.