It seems that there are no major differences between your views and mine.

We agree that boasting about the west to our students is not good, and that an FT is entitled to feel proud about the west if that is how he feels about western culture.

As for the students' appetites for knowledge about the west, that depends greatly upon whether they are higher education students. I've found that higher education students can be very eager to know more about the west, but that is not always the case. It will depend upon whether they are English majors, and how good their college/university is. China has many higher education establishments that accept students who are definitely very poor in English, and that will affect the kind of questions they are able to ask you in English in an adverse way. It will also affect the students' ability to understand your responses in English to their questions.

At Chinese senior high schools, pupils are so busy trying to assimilate all kinds of knowledge and doing excessive amounts of homework that they tend to lose interest in knowing more about the west than they have already learned from their English textbooks taught to them by their Chinese teachers of English.

As for religion, I personally avoid discussing it in class in depth as I don't want to run the risk of being controversial, especially by way of the students misunderstanding what I have said regarding religious issues.

I've only ever taught English abroad in China, but I do get to know what's happening in The States and in other western countries by going online and by speaking to other foreigners in China.