Foot in Mouth Disease

I met with the student that I’m tutoring again on Friday. After a delicious meal of lamb dumplings, Allison and I sat down with her to work on her English for the typical two hour session. The tutoring session went well, and I discovered what the probable source of her comments about the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans might have been.

I had thought it might’ve come from whatever she was picking up in the media or from her school. But it turns out that the source was likely much, much closer to home. Her dad, as I mentioned, is a doctor who specializes on kidney problems. Her grandfather was a medic in the People’s Liberation Army, and had participated in both World War II and the Chinese Civil War, culminating in the triumph of Mao Zedong’s seizure of control of the mainland. Knowing this, I already knew I had to tread carefully, even on top of whatever care I’d have to show with typical propaganda she may have received. But it’s unlikely her grandfather has influenced whatever she thinks of the Tibetans, because he only recently moved in with the family, and he’s getting to an age (he’s in his late 80’s) where he’s more of a cute old man than a fiery ideologue of any kind. And as I mentioned before, he apparently didn’t have much of a problem with the KMT, but really hated Chiang Kai-Shek, and this was the main reason he joined the Communists.

No, if she received any kind of distorted view of the Tibetan situation, she probably received it from her mother. Her mother is not only a Communist Party member, she actually has a career working for them as an administrator of some kind. She’s been gone the last month or two, doing work for them. I knew she had been away for her work, but it wasn’t until Friday that I discovered that specifically, she was in … Tibet. It seems that much of her work in the Party is specifically on Tibetan issues, and the riots were what led to her needing to go on an extended work trip.

So, did I say too much? It’s possible, and I know that if I had known that, I would’ve said far less about Tibet and the Dalai Lama than I did. But with any luck, it was still neutral enough to avoid me getting in trouble. Mainly, I just maintained that the Dalai Lama was probably not responsible for the riots, since he advocates non-violence. He doesn’t support independence, and opposes efforts to disrupt the Olympics, since, he says, neither stance helps the Tibetans. Rather, I told her, from what I had read, it sounded like the violent incidents (distinguishing those from the non-violent protests that comprised most of the activities of that week) were instigated by the more youthful members of the Tibetan exile movement, who function independently of the Dalai Lama, and explicitly reject many of this teachings. That, and the typical opportunists who pop up whenever there’s a situation of instability. People should just start talking to one another to work out their differences peacefully. Above all, that’s what I suggested. I suggested the teapot analogy – that if you increase fire to a teapot, without providing a place for the steam to escape, eventually the teapot explodes. So if people can start talking, instead of making group-based assumptions about one another, the steam might have a place to vent out.

That was probably the most potentially subversive thing I said, I suppose. On its face, it’s an innocent suggestion, but in practical terms, I was basically saying that the Chinese government should back off and allow freedom of speech and religion, but I couched it in terms of social stability being served. After all, I pointed out, the Puerto Ricans can openly advocate independence or whatever they want, and they don’t riot in the US.

Her mom is due to return from Tibet soon, and I’d be surprised if my student didn’t discuss the matter with her mom further. I only hope this doesn’t get me in too much trouble. I’d like to enjoy the awesome meals at her house for the few weeks I’m still here in China, and Allison has offered to continue tutoring her for free, as long as they agree to speak Chinese exclusively during mealtime, so she can get her language practice too.

Earthquakes Of A Different Kind

Today, Allison and I saw one of the strangest things we’ve seen in China during our entire trip.

Here’s the scene. Allison and I at a SPR Coffee Shop (a Chinese-based Starbuck’s knock-off), where, after a delicious lunch of Mongolian food, we’re plotting our schedule for the next week or two, culminating in a possible trip to Xinjiang. And at about 2:30, we hear this loud noise outside, like a car horn, soon joined by other car horns and by what I can only assume was an air-raid siren. The woman working at the coffee shop walks over to a control panel near us (more of a light-switch-looking thing), and flips off the music. Everyone in the shop, except for Allison and I, drops what they were doing, and stands at attention, and gazes intently outside. Outside, people have likewise stopped in their tracks, and seem to be staring out onto the street, or perhaps at the Chinese flag flown at half mast across the street. Traffic has stopped. Entirely. This is on a busy street, I might add, a major street passing the East Gate of Renmin (People’s) University. But no cars, no bikes, and no pedestrians are moving, save for one guy who looked like he might’ve been a reporter snapping photos, and a single bike guy moving toward the end.

What on Earth?, I mouthed to Allison. We both stopped what we were doing too. It sort of dawned on both of us at the same time that 2:30pm was probably about the time that the earthquake hit Sichuan province exactly one week previous. This, we realized, was some sort of national moment of silence, lasting a total of three minutes. I had just read of three days of mourning declared by the PRC government, but I had no idea that this was going to be called. I imagine it must’ve been in local media, but I hadn’t heard or read any in the last 24 hours or so. I had only read in the western media something about the three days mourning, but hadn’t really read any more deeply than that before then.

I later read of 1.3 billion Chinese doing this across the nation, as a means of paying tribute to the dead. The English-language radio station DJ made a comment that made me uneasy about this whole thing, and perhaps unwittingly crystallized what may have been bothering me about it. “Just think,” she said, “1.3 billion Chinese, all thinking the exact same thing! Very inspiring.”

Not exactly the term I’d use. “Creepy” comes to mind. Still, I appreciate that this is cool in one way. This is the first time, I read, that a national day of mourning has been called for the death of people who weren’t politicians of some kind. The last time three days of mourning were declared was for the death of Deng Xiaopeng. I don’t believe anyone else was ever given that kind of send-off, apart from Mao, who, if anything, was probably given an even bigger national mourning. In some ways, perhaps the optimistic libertarian in me can read this as yet another step away from the official religion declared by Mao: state worship. I would’ve naturally preferred people just did their own thing to show their condolences to the people of Sichuan. After 9/11, there were impromptu gatherings, displays of the American flag, and the like, and these struck me as more genuine.

If people got something from this form of remembrance, far be it for me to take that from them. But it just looked, and felt, creepy. It reminded me of that scene in Fight Club where you see several groups across the city and the country chanting to themselves, in tandem: “His name was Robert Paulson.” I admit that I thought of the earthquake victims with a sense of sorrow at that moment. The loud noises created by the air raid sirens and car horns were supposed to symbolize a collective expression of wailing. But I mainly experienced a sense of creeped-out unease, and I don’t think that was the intention.