Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Red Umbrella Day
Posted by: Rachel in History, Mysteries of the Big Jing on June 4th, 2010
So it’s the 35th of May again, which everyone knows is just like any other day in wonderland… Red Umbrellas, metal detectors, and girls getting arrested for carrying flowers. Perfectlly normal beast
Red Umbrella day: Been to the square before noon. There, also, a day like any other: a lot (I mean A LOT, few hundred people at least) of tour groups who, surprisingly, mostly used identical red parasols and didn’t seem to be doing much tourism.
Red Umbrella party, around 10:30 in the morning
Urban public space: You get used to it after a while. You stop thinking how bizaar it is to have metal detectors in an entrance to a public square. Security checks were quite severe today and seem to be focused on elderly ladies, who have had every item in their bags scanned and gone through. They don’t hassle foreigners much as far as I could tell. Maybe they know we are all cowards.
Security checks. old ladies are the new threat
Protest? what protest? Outside of the square, a young man of around 18 wearing red-splatted T-Shirt with the digits 1899 was not allowed in. He asked his photo not be taken. Inside: it’s quite difficult to tell which of the visitors are there to commemorate something. A student from Beida with a big backpack: is he a silent protester? a plainclothes policeman? just a tourist? go figure. Two others were a lot more obvious. When I got to the spot near the memorial for the people’s heroes (or whatever that phallic symbol is called), there was one uniformed policeman there filming a young girl wearing white, carrying white roses, and her friend, a boy in a white shirt. They Were filming him back, which seem to have confused him a lot.
Citizen supervision in action: recording police work
It took few minutes for more police (and red umbrellas) to arrive, after which there were few more minutes of arguing, and the girl was dragged into a police van, the guy was more cooperative and walked to the van all by himself (didn’t get photos of the event. It all happened very quickly , but pretty sure there were others around who did). They were then whisked away, supposedly for tea-drinking in an un-disclosed location.
To be continued:Right after the described events, I got busy having my own little annual ritual with the GonganJu. More on that later today.
The more things change the more they stay the same
Posted by: Rachel in History, Mysteries of the Big Jing on May 25th, 2010
It’s this time of the year again. Spring turns into Summer and in the Jing this season means dryness that makes your eyes itchy and memories that make them wet. Come to think of it, its not such a bad balance is it? Very harmonious, one might think.
Yet again dissidents are lying low for few weeks, police presence is heightened, censorship tightened. The lucky few gather in the relative safety of their homes to watch some footage from back then. This is the meaning of political activism in China now: Watching documentaries. And twittering.
In Hong Kong, they will march, as they do every year. In the US the usual suspects will dutifully attend a protest outside the Chinese embassy, shouting slogans that bear no meaning to anyone anymore. Around the white hole in the center of this fair city, which is also - according to ancient wisdom – the center of the world, plainclothes policemen will pretend to read the papers, that will all state there are no news today. Such are the summer rites in Jing. Soon students will go on vacation. Soon it will start to rain. Hopefully.
Dolphins
Heard on the street
In previous years, it was all about survival. Then (the Chinese government) did well to feed the people just like pigs. But now we might be ready for the next step: having our government treating us like more intelligent animal such as dolphins (did you know a dolphin has the IQ of six year old child?), or maybe monkeys.
Dolphins on the play
Scars
A performance artist was sewing Chinese chracters on cabbage (don’t ask me why)
It made the Lao Taitai’s from the neighbourhood committee worried and angry: “But what will you do with the cabbage later? Would anyone still eat it?” They thought it was shamefully wasteful.
I grew up in a community where many were holocaust survivors (or holocaust victims. I’m no longer sure “survivors” is an apt name for them). It was only during the seventies that holocaust remembrance in Israel was shaping up into something respectful for victims and their families, and it was not until the eighties that the ordeals of the “Second generation” – ie children of survivors - begun to get acknowledged. Those are people who did not experience the war first hand but who have grown up in families and homes haunted by its memories. It was an important lesson for society, something that is essential in order to understand certain patterns in people’s behaviour.
It took me seven years of China experience to fully realise the obvious: That the people of the PRC are either holocaust survivors or second generation. I wonder how long it will take for public opinion here to realise that as well, let alone deal with the consequences.
After every war, someone has to clean up
Some idle pondering about our ever shortening attention span in this glorious age of freedom of the tweet brought to mind these wise, wise words from the great Polish poet Vislava Szymborska (you would not believe how long it took me to realise how to spell her name!)
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
Again we’ll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.
(The complete poem - translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak)
I naturally hear a lot of China bashing and generally I don’t mind much so long as it’s the CCP being bashed. Even if some (or many) of the things said about the good old party aren’t true, both of us know it has justly (or rather, very unjustly) earned it’s reputation
What I can’t stand is the bashing of the Chinese people as apathetic and willing to trade freedom for money. whenever I read something like that, which is everyday in one version or the other, some individuals I know come to mind : The one who makes music, the one who started a small business, the one who volunteers in a hot line for troubled youths, the one who organizes community events around the neighbourhood, the one who is educating young people to appreciate their natural environment, the one who is concerned about her own child’s education, the one who went to Sichuan after the quake, the ones who blog…
None of them is inclined to take to the streets in protest, or even sign a petition. All of them are building a civil society from scratch and deserve much respect for that. Photogenic it’s not, and takes years. All the cameras have left to another war.
Luckily, after all the wars, the Chinese still preserve sense of patience. Not as much can be said for many of the critics.
Down and Out in Shanghai
The buildings are, apparently.
aren’t these images a great metaphor to china itself? uprooted, toppled on it’s side due to shaky, unreliable foundations, yet strangely intact.
Memories of the day
Zhang, 24, Beijing
I remember vaguely sound of shootings, and fires in the street. My parents won’t go out. I don’t know what happened exactly, but I don’t think it’s so important now, so many years later. A lot of progress had been made
*
Zhang, 30, Beijing
I remember in my hometown people were shocked that students would do something like that to our soldiers, burn them alive. My parents say, however, that have I been old enough, I would have probably joined the protesters.
*
Zhang, 32, Beijing
Yes, I remember the event but not very clearly. Yes, I think it should be discussed but it can’t be discussed publicly at present. What angers me the most is how people were treated after June 4th. Participants in the events were denied jobs, even persecuted. I think it’s unfair. As for blocking information 20 years later, well, they are control freaks. This is what China has always been. Probably always will be.
*
Zhang, 27, Beijing
I think it’s not being discussed because it’s not yet history. Not enough time has passed. I think the government was right in what it did: they were afraid of the cultural revolution coming back, and chaos taking control.
*
Zhang, 74, Beijing
What is there to talk about? it’s not interesting.
*
Zhang, 35, Beijing
My students now, they hardly know anything about it. I myself have heard stories from older cousins who were students at the time. One of them spent a month in jail simply because his name was identical to that of Liu Xiaobo. Funny, isn’t it?
I think we, the Chinese, don’t want to ponder over painful memories. We don’t do it in our private lives, nor in our national memory.
*
Zhang, 42, former Beida student
I remember. I hope one day I will be able to write all about it
**************************************
These are all bits from real conversations with real people, brought here in their somewhat less than real names, that took place in the last week.
Of all the many, many articles published in the last weeks over the subject, This one by Donald Morrison really nailed it:
Sometimes I want to take the entire State Council by the lapels of their increasingly stylish suits and shake some sense into them. Gentlemen, this is not the way a great power behaves. Afraid of its own shadow. Frightened of its own people. Haunted by an event that took place 20 years ago, one you can’t even blog about without risking your Internet access or your day job.
Also of interest (if only because it’s another Chinese person’s view): Ai WeiWei 让我们忘记 “let us forget”. Here in English translation by the indispensable China Geeks.
In memory of He Fengshan
Dr. He Fengshan. Photo from the Yad-vashem archive
All that is needed for evil to succeed is that decent human beings do nothing – Edmund Burke
Today is Holocaust remembrance Day in Israel. Last night I had the privilege to hear the story of Dr. He Fengshan (何凤山）as told by his daughter He Mengli at a remembrance ceremony at the Israeli embassy in Beijing.
Dr. He was the general counselor of China in Vienna in 1938. He witnessed the anschluss (the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany) and the marching of Adulf Hitler into Vienna. He later told his daughter how appalled he felt by many Austrians enthusiastic welcome of the Nazis.
Almost 200,000 Jews were living in Austria at the time, and most of them started to look for ways to leave the country. Unfortunately, many countries, including Britain and the US found that exact time fit to enforce severe quotas for immigration, and refused visas for most applicants.
Dr. He at the Chinese consulate was one of few diplomats who acted differently. He immidiately started issuing visas to Shanghai for anyone who applied; sometimes 300 visas a day. He continued doing this despite a direct order from his boss, the Chinese ambassador in Berlin, who hoped to maintain good relations with the Nazi Regime, at a time when China itself was attacked and suffered.
Some of the refugees who got visas to Shanghai actually made it there, but others used the visas issued by He to leave Austria and find refuge elsewhere (Some kind of visa was required for a jew to be allowed to leave Austria).
Dr. He continued his heroic operation despite being ordered by his superiors to stop, and despite the Nazis confiscation of his consulate building. He was ordered back to China in May 1940, and later moved to Taiwan with the Guomindang government. He continued his diplomatic service under the ROC until 1973, when he retired and moved to the US.
According the Ms. He, her father rarely ever talked about his time in Vienna and has never made any attempt to contact any of the people he saved. His disobedience remained as a black mark on his service and his promotion was halted (though he did serve as ambassador to several countries). His deeds were never acknowledged during his lifetime but his daughter researched and brought his story to light after his death in 1997. The number of Jewish families saved by his actions is unknown but probably measured by the thousands. Ms. He managed to fulfill her fathers dying wish in 2007 when she brought his remains back to China. He and his wife are buried in his native village of Yiyang （益阳), Hunnan province.
My mother was born in Vienna in 1935. Her family was among the fortunate who got a visa to the then British ruled Palestina. They left Austria in November 12th 1938, two days after the kristallnacht, made it safely to Tel-Aviv and settled there. Other members of the family managed to escape to the US, Argentina and Australia. Of those who stayed in Europe, none survived.