yesterdays lunch was at waipo's although she was not there this time. i believe she had gone out to play majong. however qingweis uncle was there and as normal this lead to some interesting discussions. firstly i should say that not many people of his generation seem to be very open about talking politics. im not sure if this is a correct observation but its the opinion im led to have by my experiences here. we began, as we had a number of times, by talking about tibet and the stories in the media at the moment surrounding the issue. this time it was chinese prime minister wen jiabao's european tour which deliberately excluded france due to sarkozys meeting with the dalai in december. see [here].a lot of chinese people are still angry at the french due to their rather extravagant protests during the olympic torch run during which one over zealous protester tried to wrench the torch out of a wheelchair bound chinese who struggled desperately to hold on. video footage of this was shown on thousands of websites here and led to other chinese living in france to recall their own experiences of 'racism'. there is a joke going around at the moment that suggests that as mr sarkozy is such good friends with the dalai lama, he should ask him to pray for the french economy instead of asking for chinas help - which is what wen's european trip is seen as being - a plea from western countries for more business from china.
we talked a little more on the tibetan situation and the announcement from the chinese central government that the 28th march will now be celebrated in tibet as serfs emancipation day. i try to remain quite neutral on this topic as i dont believe, unlike others, that i should go rushing to a conclusion on something i know very little about. especially as its very hard to know what i know as every source of information is incredibly biased. on the issue of serfs, ive had several stories recounted to me from people who know people who used to be/have family that used to be serfs. all of them are unpleasant and some quite disturbing. i wont recount them here.
something i do want to mention is the chinese version of events regarding the 'liberation' of tibet by maos communist party in the 50's. its important to know that the government before mao, led by chiang kai-shek for the kuomintang party (the same party thats now in power in taiwan) was incredibly corrupt. we all know that land grabs happen now in china and they happened then too - and thats one reason that the communist party was very popular in some places - they took the land back and made sure a lot of people had somewhere to live - qingweis own grandmother as a child had her home and land taken by officials and not until the communist party arrived did they have somewhere to live.
the communist party at least in some cases, distributed the land amongst the people. the chinese believe that this is exactly what happened in tibet. just as mao took land away from the wealthy in china, so he did in tibet from the lama's (and others), many of whom had large amounts of land and wealth including serfs (slaves). the chinese version is that those tibetans living in exile are those who used to be wealthy and who maos army fought against. in this way, those tibetans are not very different from those wealthy chinese who also had to give up what they once had so that there could be equality. in fact, qingweis other grandmother is one of those people - her family used to own a lot of farmland which got taken and divided up by the communist army.now the issue, i know, is not only this, but spiritual freedom and that the chinese government controls this with an 'iron fist', as well as the government response to protesters. however, its worth knowing or trying to find out something about the 'old tibet' and the control that the wealthy are reported to have had over the poor, which never really gets discussed. earlier today i came across several interesting sites. ive posted this one as its not written by a chinese whos posts are usually completely over the top and just silly. this is only to bring attention to more information if you are interested or have an opinion on this matter. if you are/do, read [this].
having learnt more about the chinese point of view on things has made it more difficult to know where to stand on this issue so i will continue to stand no-where. my default position is one of skepticism towards china/communism/china's tibet - as most of the information ive been exposed to is that from the media in the uk which has negative undertones in many news reports on china, especially those concerning tibet. however, i do also have a growing skepticism towards the 'free tibet' movement, many of whom i dont think have a clue about what they are campaigning for or even what that means. there has also been some very disappointing behaviour from protesters and woefully misinformed advocates of this movement voice their opinion in recent history, perhaps worst of all by sharon stone. and im going to quote her because.... my goodness...
"i've been concerned about how should we deal with the olympics, because they are not being nice to the dalai lama, who is a good friend of mine," she said.
"and then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and i thought, is that karma - when you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?"
quote taken from the guardian website (caps removed - dont know if youve noticed - i dont like to use them) anyway, im aware that this is not representative of the majority of those involved with the free tibet movement, but it does show how misinformed some people are on this topic.[update: just also want to point out that the quake hit an area of sichuan largely populated by tibetans, so the tibetan communities living in this part of china are some of the worst effected.]
anyway, it was an enjoyable discussion. in other news: ive had two hotpots in the last two days which is fantastic. the one today was with qingweis friends from pengzhou. i almost didnt go as, last time... well, i wrote about it. but it was nice. i have been working on a new cv/portfolio and looking/applying for jobs as im going to be returning to england soon when my financial situation is likely to hit me hard. applied for one in beijing as well as, whilst china is an incredibly frustrating place to be at times, its also amazing.hoping to do some more filming before we go to beijing so i can make something out of the footage i shot at the shelters. i also need to get my act together and start using up some more of the medium format films i brought with me.
its funny, i forgot what it was like to walk alone in china. i must have waved and replied hello to 5 or 6 people in the few minutes it took me to walk back from hotpot. i can feel so many peoples eyes on me as i walk past- not just feel - watch their heads turn to follow me. its not very comfortable. but i am comfortable right now in this awesome rocking chair.
click [here] for more images
No comments:
Post a Comment