Foundinchina.com

China Daily’s Olympic spotlight page brings us news of the latest security measures to be implemented at the Games’ venues. Let’s take a closer look:

Guns, drugs, explosives, and poisonous and radioactive materials will be banned from Beijing’s Olympic venues, a security official said Thursday.

Now really!! How can we be expected to enjoy ourselves without a bit of unstable uranium isotope to elevate the spirit? OK, alright, yes, yes, fine! I can live without an encounter with critical mass, but what’s all this nonsense about banning poison, guns, drugs, and explosives? These security boys are a bunch of real joy killers. Must be a cultural thing.

Animals, drinks, radio equipment, and banners and oversized flags will also be prohibited…

Australians can be totally out of control, and we don’t want any kangaroos putting Liu Xiang to shame in the 100m hurdles, so fair dinkum to that policy. Oversized flags could be more problematic. Given that colour contrasts can produce optical illusions and security personnel will have two decades of anti-Japanese rhetoric behind them, it may be that a red circle on a white background suddenly looks bigger than it really is. We’ll see.

What next? Radio equipment. I’m not sure about this one. Many people attending venues, both foreign and Chinese, will want to keep their own record of events. Some may have some pretty fancy equipment unfamiliar to security staff. It’s possible that a South Korean’s state-of-the-art minidigicam type thingy could be a Chinese police officer’s idea of sabotage electronics. This will be win-win for China, whose top reverse engineers will be on hand to ‘take good care of things while you’re enjoying the synchronized swimming.’ 

That leaves drinks. What’s to say? August in Beijing: a seething cauldron of humidity and trace elements and no water to wash it all down with. Lunacy. Total fucking lunacy. Or greed. There will, no doubt, be drinks available inside venues at ten times the price of the identical items withheld moments earlier by security. If this suspicion is anywhere near the mark, the BOCOG would do well to have a rethink now. That assumes, of course, they’re not in on the scam.

And finally ….

If everything is okay, a person can pass through a standard security check in about five seconds. But that might be longer for media workers if they are carrying a lot of equipment. 

So, to be clear: if you are not in possession of firearms, drugs, toxins, grenades, plutonium, livestock, electrical devices, big flags, or drinks, you’ll be through the turnstile in a jiffy. Unless you’re a reporter, in which case anything more than a notebook and pencil is going to result in a messy confrontation. This will provide entertainment and photo opportunities for the spectators kept waiting by those thoughtless bastards who brought their own water to the stadium on a day when it was only 90 in the shade.

Just a few thoughts.

Jeremiah is once again doing a great job of advancing the understanding of current events in a historical context. I recommend the whole piece, but here’s a taster:

The Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) is a good place to start as the Manchus did maintain garrisons on the ?ibetan plateau while administering the region through local elites. The Qing rulers, great patrons of Lamamism, consolidated their rule by maintaining cultural and religious ties with ?ibet beyond mere military occupation. They also–generally but not always–ruled with a light touch, allowing relative autonomy in religious and cultural matters, which suited the situation quite well. The Qing Dynasty was, after all, a large, multi-ethnic empire, and maintaining order and peace in outlying territories was the utmost concern.

The problem is that the PRC is a nation-state, and the demands a nation-state places on its people are different than those of an empire. It is not enough that Tibetans merely pay taxes and not revolt, they must also identify with the nation-state first and foremost, with other cultural and religious aspects secondary to the demands of modern state building. Empires want to be respected, nation-states want to be loved. That’s a sticky wicket the Qing never had to face.

This is a telling point. The CCP have always demanded allegiance and have often demonstrated brutality when they don’t get it. Intolerance towards the true feelings of Tibetans with regard to their cultural and spiritual leanings is one example. The latest evidence of this has been the petulant demonisation of the Dalai Lama by China’s leaders, and the requirement of Tibetan students in Beijing to denounce His Holiness:

They are required to provide four answers, Tibetan sources told The Times. First, they must write a reply to the question “What position does the Dalai Lama occupy in your heart?” Second, they must provide the address and place of work of their parents. Third, they must give details of their own identity card. Finally, they must guarantee not to take part in any political activities.

The recent violence should be condemned, as should some of the actions and policies in the last 50 years of Tibetan history that lie at the heart of the current problems. But forcing citizens to swear ‘loyalty to the emperor’ can only be seen as a backward step in a progressive society. This move would be embarrassing even if it was a joke. We know that it’s not a joke because the CCP don’t have a sense of humour, much less respect for free thought.

Whatever the geopolitical reality is for the Tibetan region, its marginalised indigenous population regard their land as being occupied by unwanted forces. There are two alternatives open to the Chinese government. One is to enter into a meaningful dialogue that will produce a framework acceptable to both Beijing and the Tibetan people, a dialogue that must include the Dalai Lama. The other is to drive every last vestige of cultural identity from the hearts and minds of the Tibetan people. Indications so far are that Beijing favours the latter approach. 

China’s petty film authorities have done it again. Timesonline today reports that Lust, Caution star Tang Wei has been blacklisted (unofficially, of course) because Ang Lee’s film is considered to “glorify unpatriotic behaviour.”

This action has been taken despite - or possibly because of - the films popularity in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Ang Lee is widely celebrated in China for the many international honours bestowed on his films and their actors: ‘This is our boy’, they cry, ’And we Chinese can show you western types a thing or two about film-making.’

Beijing clearly don’t mind Ang Lee collecting a few gongs and statues on their behalf, but have no inclination to allow the Chinese public to judge his award-winning films on their artistic merit. Instead, they censor, ban, and blacklist their home-grown talent in the great tradition of petulant state interference. 

Thanks to the internet and widespread piracy, banning a film has little or no effect on who gets to see it in China these days. They’ve tried many times before, as in the recent cases of Lost in Beijing  and Brokeback Mountain. Keep up the good work, boys.

The targeting of actors strikes me as being especially nonsensical and childish. I confidently predict more success for Tang Wei, at which point I hope she gives a defiant finger to the clowns who are compromising artistic expression by telling people what they should be watching.  

I’ve come across the name Lei Feng before. Was it a name uttered in admiration by past students? Or is he a famous character recalled from one of many dips into the enthralling, and often calamitous, cyber-pool of modern Chinese history?  Either way, the lamented and celebrated Lei Feng has re-entered my conscious thought following today’s post by Jeremiah at the Granite Studio :

On this date in 1963, Mao Zedong launched the ”Learn from Lei Feng” campaign. The most important thing I’ve learned from Lei Feng is to look out for falling telephone poles, but maybe I’m not the target audience. Anyway, in case you missed it, Lei Feng was a young soldier in the PLA whose selfless devotion to his brother troops, to the people, and especially to Mao Zedong and his country made him a role model for young Chinese.

I thoroughly recommend the rest of this article and a visit to Jeremiah’s site, which is testament to the fact that you don’t have to be Chinese to be an authority on Chinese history. In addition, I suspect that readers will get a more balanced view of events and personalities than those presented in the Chinese classroom.

It’s a sobering thought to realise that the propaganda posters (like the one above) are as old as I am. You can see more by following the link to the original article, or by going here.

Frankly, I think I’ve stood the test of time better than the posters, although I have to accept that they’ll still be around long after I’ve shuffled off my mortal coil. Unless, that is, Hu Jintao decides to launch a “Learn from Stu” campaign. Suggested poster designs welcome.

I’m going to ask some students this afternoon for their thoughts on this important anniversary. Will they remember?   

I’ve just been reading the musings of imminent fatherhood over at imagethief. The blog’s owner, Will, is an exceptionally gifted and humourous writer. In his post he reflects on the issue of how our perception of time changes with age, arguing that 40 weeks of gestation is insufficient for a decent preparation:

The funny thing is that thirty-nine weeks ago it seemed like plenty. Nine months of pregnancy felt like a school-year did back when I was in second grade: about ten minutes longer than eternity. But one of the curious but well-known side effects of getting older is that time compresses. When I was ten the idea of deferring anything for a year was essentially like postponing it forever, or longer. A year hence was simply too remote and exotic a concept to contemplate…

When you’re forty, and you’re planning investments with a twenty year time horizon and buying insurance products calibrated in decades, a year is a rounding error…

Great stuff. Read the rest here.

It’s very true. New Year seems like yesterday to me, and the beginning of the first semester the week before that. But here we are about to enter the third month of 2008. If it wasn’t a leap year we’d already be there. Frightening!

Even more alarming is the prospect of this perception accelerating with each passing year. I’m reminded of the character Roy Batty’s words to his creator in Blade Runner:

I want more life, fucker.

It’s possible that half of my lifespan is still ahead of me, which seems like a fair deal. That the second half of our lives is perceived as a temporal fraction of the first half is just a cruel joke. And what happens when we try to fill those days with productive output? You’ve got it - they go even faster!  I’m definitely with Roy Batty on this one.