Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

I have three friends I went to college with who are now living in a southern coastal city in China. When I went back to China and visited the city for the first time recently, we had dinner together a few times. Our table conversation normally started with some simple updates on each other's lives but these courtesies were very quickly overtaken by a vehement debate between two of the friends.

I hadn't met either since college days. And clearly they have both changed a lot. In almost 20 years since our graduation, the two boys who shared the same dorm and many similar opinions back then have turned into two middle-aged men holding totally opposite views about China.

One of them works for a real estate company. He focused on all the negative things happening in China. That ranges from the case of Lei Yang, a college graduate who mysteriously died at the hands of the police in Beijing when they tried to arrest him for allegedly patronizing prostitutes, to the recent protests in Wukan village, Guangdong Province in which the villagers called on the government to release their leader whom, they said, was arrested on trumped-up corruption charges when he was trying to protect their land rights.

He believes all of these events mean that China is in big trouble.

The other friend works for the city government. He clearly works very hard. He had to be absent for one dinner party of ours and was late for another because he had to work late. A 10-hour long weekday is normal for him. He'd like to highlight all the positive things happening in China, from the ban on officials using government cars for private errands to the new and strict regulations on food safety that were just implemented.

He believes everything in China is going in the right direction.

The third friend was amused by the debates. She told me the three of them get together every now and then but the two men had rarely been as enthusiastic about political subjects before.

"This is so funny. When you aren't here, we mainly talk about our families and children," she said, sounding a little confused.

I know why. The men were putting on a show particularly for me. They wanted to convince a friend who has been absent from China for more than a decade that their own version of China is the correct one.

But to me, it is clear that neither of their versions is "correct." During the few weeks I spent in China on a recent trip, I felt the impact of both the negative events and the positive ones. In addition, the views of the two friends on China both have their limitations and even absurdities.

For example, the negative friend is a big fan of the US. He points out that the mayor of New York goes to work by subway every day without being accompanied by a security detail, and says China is at risk of deteriorating into a bigger version of North Korea.

The positive friend believes China's petition system, in which people who feel they are mistreated by powerful entities make complaints directly to the government's Bureau of Letters and Calls is a better one than the court system because it is more efficient. And he said most websites of foreign media are accessible in China, which is not what I experienced. 

But the differing views they hold are both important to China. No country can be represented by one single version of affairs. This is even more of the case for a country as big as China.  People who can provide their own perspective are equally valuable because each of them is a piece in a puzzle, and putting them together can bring you as close as possible to the truth.

Extreme views may often seem unreasonable. But they are strong reminders that there is another side of the story that most of us may have overlooked. That's the precious takeaway I got from the dinners with my friends.

But what's more important is that the two friends of mine can talk to and listen to each other. After all, in another era, the differences between them could have made them enemies who would only try to put each other in jail.

The author is a New York-based journalist. rong_xiaoqing@hotmail.com