Even thinking about, let alone going to, Tiananmen Square in central Beijing fills the nostrils of Chinese-Australian artist Guo Jian with the smell of blood and dead bodies. It’s the smell, he says, of meat.
At one stage of that terrible night 30 years ago, Guo Jian, a final year art student at the Minorities Institute (now the Minorities University), took refuge with his classmates in a hospital just off the square. “There were bodies everywhere, piled up,” he tells Crikey. “Doctors and nurses were crying, no one had any understanding of what was happening. The blood was so thick on the floor I was slipping over.”
The events of 1989 have had a lasting impact on Guo’s artistic work. In a controversial 2014 installation, he made a replica of the square out of pork mince; a representation of the sights and smells of Tiananmen. Of course, this was always a risky work in a country where the events of 1989 do not officially exist. Guo was detained in 2014, from May 31 until June 16 when he was deported to Australia.
It’s hard to overplay the significance that Tiananmen Square holds in modern China. It was here that Mao Zedong stood in 1949 to announce the founding of the People’s Republic of China following triumph in the civil war with Chiang Kai-shek’s rival Nationalists.
The square is bordered to its north by the ancient Forbidden City, home to China’s emperors until the Qing dynasty came crashing down in 1911. To its west is the party’s austere Stalinist meeting place, the Great Hall of the People. The south of the square houses one of the remaining four magnificent ancient city gates; a rare remnant of Beijing’s once mighty city wall. Today, in the middle of the square is perched the squat and unremarkable tomb of Mao himself — still lying in state.
But outside China, Tiananmen Square is best known for the terrible, bloody events that began in the final hours of June 3, 1989.
There had been protests two years earlier, Guo Jian says; students from Beida (Peking University) and Renda (People’s University) in the west of the city. “The students were marching past so they locked the a gate of our institute and wouldn’t let us out. To be honest, I didn’t really know what it was all about at that stage,” Guo says.
“On April 17, students started marching again after the death of [reformist secretary general] Hu Yaobang [who had been sacked by Deng Xiaoping and other elders in 1987] two days earlier. The gates were locked again so we jumped on the wall. I decided to jump down into the crowd. I was really, really scared. [There were] so many police in uniforms and no uniforms watching the students who were fearless; you got that courage. They were chanting the slogans, I started joining them every time they organised.”
Caught up in the moment, Guo was in one of the first groups to sign up for the hunger strikes that would take place during the protests. It began on May 13, to draw attention to the protest from the outside world, and lasted for seven and a half days.
Martial law was declared on May 20, but the protests continued. And at about 11pm on June 3, with no warning, “we started hearing the gunshots”.
“Everyone thought they were fireworks,” Guo says. “Some people said they had started shooting, so a friend and I decided to ride our bicycles toward the west, to Chang’an Avenue.” Unbeknownst to Guo, tanks and troops were advancing down Beijing’s main boulevard and were almost upon the square.
“People were running towards us, most of them crying and shouting, then we saw some with trishaws carrying bodies. We figured there may have been accidents or soldiers were using rubber bullets. Then one guy who was bleeding put a bullet in my hand. I knew it was real, but still it didn’t seem real.
“It was dark but you saw the bullets flying over your head, some hitting the ground and sending off sparks … My friend grabbed me and we ran into a back alley. We did not know where to go. Soldiers we literally chasing us and shooting at us.
“People in the buildings in the alley were throwing bottles, a soldier threw in some tear gas. I thought I was going to die, but a gust of wind came and blew it back onto the the soldier.”
“Close to the end of the alleyway, we saw the hospital. The doctors and nurses were all crying, and the doctors led us to the emergency room. There were bodies piled up; the smell of blood almost made us throw up.”
A group of five decided to go and collect more injured people, Guo says. “One guy got a white handkerchief and tied it to the end of a stick, he waved it and they stopped shooting. We found a guy who had been shot and brought him back to the hospital. After that success, we went back again and found someone shot in the stomach. As we were bringing him back, they shot the guy with the flag in the back of the head.
“That was the end of it for me. I was really terrified. I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t talk. We watched for a few hours as soldiers passed by… I eventually found my bike and got back to the institute about four or five in the morning. There was still shooting around the city.”
The official death toll from June 4 1989 remains at 241, including 36 students, with many thousands injured. But various other credible estimates from Western embassies, local hospitals at the time, the Chinese Red Cross and Amnesty International believe up to 1000 people were killed and as many as 6000 injured.
In the following days soldiers would come daily to Guo’s institute and other universities, arresting students and taking them away. They all had to write “self-criticisms” explaining what they had been been doing and where they had been.
Guo was one of the lucky ones. Thousands of students were thrown in jail. Many fled south, hoping to get to Hong Kong, but Guo left his run too late and soon decamped to an Australian friend’s apartment where about 30 people were holed up for several weeks.
The Australian embassy did its best to get some students out, but Guo wasn’t one of the fortunate ones; he would have to wait three years before he would get to Australia to study further in 1992.
Six days after the massacre, a tearful Australian prime minister Bob Hawke made the unilateral decision to allow all Chinese students in Australia at the time to stay. A further wave came in the weeks and months afterwards and all were allowed to stay (an estimated 42,000 in total). In 1993 Paul Keating, by then PM, converted all the Chinese visas — including Guo’s to permanent residency.
Guo returned to China in 1995 for a year to live in Beijing’s first artists’ village, returning to Australia when it was demolished. He made another short trip in 2000, and in 2005 returned for nine years and became a leader in the city’s burgeoning art scene.
But by 2010 artists were once again being harassed by authorities. China’s most famous artist, Ai Weiwei, was arrested on trumped-up tax charges. He was later released, but his studio was demolished by the government.
From 2012, when Xi Jinping assumed power, authorities began cracking down even harder on dissidents and critics. Lawyers were jailed and religious persecution increased; a program of cultural genocide was commenced in the western province of Xinjiang against Muslim Uighurs.
Australians will get a chance to see Guo’s Tiananmen artwork soon; he is recreating it for an exhibition this coming September. In the meantime, we’re seeing a new boldness from Beijing. Last weekend, Chinese military attended the Asia-Pacific’s main annual defence summit in Singapore for the first time in eight years, and Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe actually answered a question on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
“Everybody is concerned about Tiananmen after 30 years,” Wei said. “Throughout the 30 years, China under the Communist Party has undergone many changes — do you think the government was wrong with the handling of June 4? There was a conclusion to that incident. The government was decisive in stopping the turbulence.”
The Tiananmen protests, he added, were “political turmoil that the central government needed to quell, which was the correct policy”.
Michael Sainsbury is the former China correspondent for The Australian (2009-2012) and a freelance journalist based in Bangkok.
They never saw the man in front of tanks again. Pol Pot, Rwanda, Hitler, Serbia, China all the same
It’s easy enough to make a list of pointless non sequiturs. I can add a few. Wounded Knee, Amritsar Massacre, Bengal famine, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, carpet-bombing of North Korea and then Vietnam, Kent State, Pinochet’s Chile etc etc etc. History happens, then moves on.
In particular, I remember Kent State, not that it was ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than any other government atrocity but because of the outrage and indignation levelled (quite appropriately) on the brutality of the Chinese government, whereas the murder and wounding of American students on campus, protesting about the vicious bombing of Cambodia (pre black pajamas) has always have been glossed over and today, more or less, erased from memory.
Along with the My Lai massacre & USS Vincennes’ blowing an Iranian passenger jet full of pilgrims out of the sky, the perpetrators of both not only suffered little more than wrist slapping, but went on to be highly decorated military panjandrums.
Suzanne overlooks not a few American and other citizens who have been eradicated by bulldozers (ok : not by tanks) in a particular Middle East country whose principal object, abetted with a significant change in direction of Foreign Policy by a current President, is intent upon making its own rules (in an artificial country) irrespective of UN resolutions.
The protests in HK (2014) could have gone the same way and may well have done so if the matter remained protracted. The point is that the event has had no effect upon the economy of the subject country or on its political and diplomatic significance. “The hand, having writ, moves on …”
Hi Kyle, Cannot fathom what you are on about. I am talk extreme States, missing people, Communism, Genocide, Socialism and Communism. The political system in China and HK is the same, you speak out you are sent to jail or you go missing. The trials are rigged. Its an offense to criticize the State an the fearless leader is there for life.
Au contraire, Kyle. It has been argued that the bloodshed at Tienanmen helped speed up the economic reforms, as Deng Xiaoping unleashed even further the capitalist flood in order to drug the country into amnesia of that horrific massacre. Unfortunately, it has been quite successful as very few of those born and raised after the event have any knowledge of or even care about what happened.
Outside the country, Tank man emboldened many in Eastern Europe at the time who thought to themselves: “if that kid had the guts to stand up to tanks, what excuse do I have for not protesting”. To me, Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe’s statement confirms that Beijing would do the same tomorrow if it felt the need to, and if it would do that to its own citizens, what would it do to foreigners?
Suzanne and Oldie : I live in the PRC and have done so for quite some time. I have had the honour to teach some very capable students and I have a fair appreciation for what that perceive domestically and internationally. Their objective is to undertake degrees in the Best in the West.
Second, most readers will accept that sentimentality is not my strongest suit. Suffice for preliminaries.
Frankly, Suzanne, “genocide” is the norm in human societies. The Jesuits were as horrified with the punishments that existed in Japan as they were with the conduct of one tribe against another in North East America in regard to hunting grounds etc.
Similarly for Cortes(z). Keep in mind that the context for Europe at the time it was that information for clerical and judicial purposes could be extracted by whatever means was deemed expedient.
Suzanne, the trials (I presume that you are referring to the PRC) are not “rigged” I have known foreigners (mostly yanks) who have been on the receiving end. A murder trial requires only hours (at most a day or two) to hear the evidence and not weeks or
months as in the West. True, there is no Rule of Law as we comprehend the term but there is a form of consistency more akin to judgements in Roman times.
Please read my submission to the article yesterday “What did you do in the trade war, Scott?” and others on this topic of last week. Any questions after reading my submissions : feel free to ask. A Crikey writer and former reporter on China for a major newspaper has his moments; some good and some very bad (as to his knowledge of the region)
Deng Xiaoping was imprisoned by Mao twice! Deng, more than anyone, integrated China into the west. There is a photo of him (Getty) sporting a Texan 10 gallon hat at a rodeo during his first visit.
“Beijing would do the same tomorrow if it felt the need to, and if it would do that to its own citizens, what would it do to foreigners?”
There are two questions that need to be separated here Olide. The hysteria over the matter is not comprehended in China BECAUSE not one foreigner was affected so, from the Chinese perspective the second question does not exist – or it is too hypothetical to be
considered. I have answered the first question (above) and, in the main, your conjecture is well founded.
Consider Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was literate in a number of languages and was intellectually superior to her only somewhat literate second husband Henry II of England. Her family owned almost the whole of France except a few tracts about Paris. One doesn’t get to own the whole of France (and everyone in it) by being nice. The whole of history refers.
As an aside the design of the inbuilt fireplace and chimney is attributed to Eleanor.
I have witnessed first hand the Chinese Courts and what happens in Commercial disputes and how they favour the locals, when the totality of evidence is there against the locals.. So don’t give me your filtered view. Have you read The Art of War?
Kyle, I think Suzanne may have a point here, in as much as I suspect we westerners would get a far better understanding of how the Chinese system operates by reading the work of that esteemed general, Sun Tzu, than from the complete works of Mao and Xi combined. Furthermore, it would not surprise me in the least if the last named gentleman’s writings were scarcely more enlightening than the corpus of the Philosopher-King , Donald Trump.
But tell me, have you really digested the works of the Chinese President or are you just Xi-ttin’ me?
Nothing “filtered” Suz; on the contrary in fact,
Just where in the world, Suzanne, is the legal system perfect or entirely impartial? It certainly isn’t in Oz or NZ dating from the 70s and such is my experience. Even as a ‘expert’ witness I have seen some bizarre stuff in Australian Courts. Our own society is wallowing in post-truth (e.g.) the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh is a case in point.
Take a look at major trials that occurred in the late 70s (for example). The Judge might sum up justifying, at law, the salient points of the case and the application of the sentence. Nowadays, there are 20 minutes of moralising from judicial personnel whom one might have anticipated to know better. So called “victim impact statements” have more or less displaced the evidence.
I accept that there have been cases where foreigners have been screwed but to imply “all” trials in the PRC are “rigged” is not useful or accurate. The experienced barrister, Lloyd Rayney, was not about to place himself into the hands of an emotionally lathered f.wit of a jury. Other examples exist.
As to Sun Tzu (5th BCE) “The Art of War” I have taught the contents as an elective – along with a good deal of role-play and contemporary examples (which are ubiquitous)
For western civilisation in the 5th BCE, concepts such as virtue, valor, indeed the law, etc were only just beginning to be contemplated in the context of Homer et al.
“far better understanding of how the Chinese system operates by reading the work of that esteemed general, Sun Tzu, than from the complete works of Mao and Xi combined.”
I have read (and understood) all three. Specifically, what do you mean by “far better” Oldie?
As to your question, if there was a place on Crikey I’d post a pic. of the books or I can send the pic as an an email or to a phone #. I have no social media accounts.
As an aside, I irritate a lot of people by (1) saying what I mean and (2) meaning what I say. There is a VERY big difference between having a devotee-like regard for some author and having read an author for their own sake. For Xi it is the latter and, in my opinion, reading Xi is indispensable for anyone who intends to spend a reasonable period of time in the PRC.
As to a reply to Iskandar the innocuous reply has been embargoed.
Sadly, your assertion that “genocide” is the norm in human societies is all too true. Suzanne Blake’s intimation that it is only “socialist/communist” regimes that are guilty of it is blinkered in the extreme. As an example that indomitable ex-Aussie journalist John Helmer, who writes from Moscow, posted a review today on “Dances with Bears” of a book about the anti-Christian genocides carried out by Turks during the first 30 years of the 20th century. I won’t post the link as Crikey “moderates” comments with links for days on end. Suffice to say that the then-leader, Ataturk, is somewhat revered in this country. His comments about “your sons are buried in our soil so they are now also our sons” still draw tears from Anzac-worshipers, and there is an “Ataturk Channel” at the entrance to the harbour of Albany, Western Australia.
I’ve had to take a chill-pill prior to responding to you Iskandar because I am astonished that the ignorance of the millenials who possess degrees in history. When I enquire as to what topics they deemed interesting there is generally some flannel about investigating their great grand-parents. While all well and good, to a woman, they cannot present a dozen events, coherently, that changed the world from the superstitious 17th century to the scientific 20th century. I’m an advocate for free university education but not for prats that haven’t learned a damn thing in three years.
It is VERY interesting to compare the victory of the Ottomans in 1453 with the events in the 1920s against the Christian Greeks. Two religions are identified in the Book as to be specifically given toleration under Islam.
WWI was the first war where the solders were NOT buried with the horses. However, the conflict in the Balkans prior to WWI has all but been air-brushed from history.
Sociology has more or less convinced academia that all behaviour can be controlled by social engineering. Jordan Peterson (et al) have gone to some trouble to demonstrate that such a statement is fallacious at best and disingenuous at worst. Either way, with sufficient time to settle nationalism reappears – which is all too apparent in Europe now. The disinclination for immigrants to integrate in a new country (and insist on their former life) is a form of nationalism.
It was Colonel Colt who made all men equal. With any luck, the bomb, in Donald’s hands, will take the matter a stage further.
It is indeed disappointing, Al, that this country prefers to ignore the Armenian genocide, not to mention our own genocidal behavior towards our indigenous aboriginal people. However, you should also remember that your own Russian ancestors were not immune to genocidal activity with regard to Ukraine, Crimea and Kazakhstan.
“Dances with Bears”? Any relation to “Fancy Bear”, Al?
Oldie, I know well the history of my ancestral homelands (the Ukraine and Russia) and am well aware how my personal and family histories spring directly from it. In regard to the first part of your final sentence “that your own Russian ancestors were not immune to genocidal activity”, I refer you to Kyle Hargraves’ previous comment that “genocide is the norm in human societies is all too true.”
That said, the second part of your final final sentence is obviously a bit of stick so I reply:
By “Crimea” I assume you mean the Crimean War of 1853-1856 where an Anglo-French-Turkish alliance invaded the Russian province of Krim (Crimea in English). The Russian defenders fought heroically against (for the time) superior logistical odds but finally succumbed, leaving a staggering 127,583 men killed in the First Defence of Sevastopol alone. Orlando Figes has written a very good book about it. The Second Defence of Sevastopol was against the Nazi invaders during WWII, earning recognition as “Hero City”. A third defence was averted by reuniting Krim with the RF and and thus gaining rightful control of Sevastopol before the Americans could get their hands on it.
By “Ukraine” you could mean anything as so many wars have swept over those borderlands over the centuries. Perhaps you mean the Nazi invasion of 1941-1943, where “Ukrainian” nationalist elements collaborated with the Nazis and carried out horrific ethnic cleansing operations against Jews, Poles and Russians before they were defeated by the Red Army. My father fought in the battles of the Kursk Salient where he was captured and survived the war as a POW in southern Germany, leading directly to me being here.
I’m puzzled by your reference to “Kazakhstan”. The modern nation of Kazakhstan and the RF get on together splendidly. Just a week ago (28 May) President Putin traveled to Kazakhstan’s capital Nur-Sultan and met with the country’s leader Nursultan Nazarbayev to mark the 25th anniversary of the Eurasian integration concept and the fifth anniversary of the Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union. You can read about it here:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60596
OK Oldie
Q: “Dances with Bears”? Any relation to “Fancy Bear”, Al?
A: None whatever. Your free association is befuddled. John Helmer, who posts under that title, is a particularly broadly-experienced and well-informed fellow Aussie. Wash your mouth out. Or go to the site yourself as see:
http://johnhelmer.net/
@Iskandar
Thanks for that link. I followed it, including the follow up account of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council. Interesting to read Putin’s fraternal internationalist rhetoric at the Eurasian Economic Council, given how he encourages ethno-nationalism wherever he can to the west. It was amusing to see how he shut down Nazarbayev’s comments (28 May) about extending cooperation to the EU!
I have read little about the Eurasian EU. I’ll be watching that space.
Al, my remarks on Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Crimea were referring to the man-made Ukrainian famine (1932-3), the man-made Kazakh famine (1930–1933) and the ethnic cleansing of the Crimean Tartars in May 1944.
I queried the relationship between the website “Dancing with Bears” and the Russian hacking group “Fancy Bear” because both appear to be directly controlled by and promoting the political interests of the Russian government.
Re-posting this a second time as first post appeared at the wrong place in the column:
Well Oldie, you’ve added three more items to the ever-growing list of massacres, genocides and other historical atrocities that contributors to this thread have provided. All this does is confirm Kyle Hargraves’ assertion that “genocide” is the norm in human societies. I think we can stop this now.
Your assertion that you have evidence of a “relationship between the websites “Dancing with Bears” and hacking group “Fancy Bear” being controlled by the Russian government is feeble. It’s like the “highly likely” cop-outs used by Theresa May and Boris Johnson to back assertions for which they had no evidence at all.
John Helmer is a first-class investigative journalist who writes warts-and-all critiques of business and politics in the RF, and promotes nothing as far as I can tell, except maybe his recent autobiographical book.
That “Fancy Bears” was a “Russian hacking group” has been thoroughly debunked by the Vault 7 Wikileaks release of documents which showed that agencies like the CIA created and distributed software tools that allowed hackers to obfuscate codes in such a way that they could make it appear as if their malware had been produced by a foreign country. The “Disobedient Media” website has posted forensic analyses if you’re interested.
The headline “The massacre that can’t be erased from memory” is worse than misleading, it is totally wrong. The Chinese Government uses sophisticated internet software to remove this massacre from Chinese history. We are no better in the west either. Google Facebook Twitter and the mainstream media can very effectively unperson whoever they like. They are doing it. As an example, Tommy Robinson in the UK has almost disappeared and cannot defend himself using the internet. If you were to search for Tommy Robinson you will only find lies written about him and published in the media.
Then there is the recent deliberate perversion undertaken by the New Statesman in regard to Sir Roger Scruton. That it happened to be Scruton is neither here or there. That it HAPPENED is the point!
Crikey, I am sorry to say, is replete with infantile pronouncements; infantile because there is not the least regard to context, accuracy, or history. The bleating as to flat wages (a global phenomenon) is just a case in point from a general drawer to effect knee-jerking. Similarly for references to “toxic” anything that has happened to displease a disaffected scribbler.
Crikey’s claim to objective reporting is no better than the claims of Pravda under Gorby. To be fair Crikey is no worse than The Guardian which, for objectively lags the BBC & the NYT, or, for that matter, The St Petersburg Times.
Kyle, you forgot the Moscow Times, which I think is the best Russian English language paper. What’s the perversion story on Scruton about? Last I heard he was making idiotic comments about scrapping universities. Did he get thrown out of a university because of some perverted behavior?
HIs comemnts as to disolving universities WERE tongue-in-cheek but (present company exempted) the nongs took him seriously. I’m NOT a devotee of Scruton but he has published (to a very high standard) on everything form conservative political ideology to architecture and the environment.
As to conservatism as a political ideology the late (Sir) Michael Oakeshott is the master but Scruton is reaching for the batten. The editor of the New Statesman deliberately had Scruton misrepresented (i.e. the editor lied) and Scruton lost a government post overnight. Such is our era of post-truth. The Spectator (among others) has a good coverage of the matter.
As to the Moscow Times – yes – but I have been to the offices of the St Petersburg Times and there is a mixture of opinion, race, experience and hope for the future. I was impressed.
Don’t forget his treatise on fox-hunting. For that alone he deserves a good rogering.
Oldie, with all due respect, when reading Scrution, and for that matter Bertie Russell, its a case much less of what happens to stated than the reason for the inclusion of the matter (or topic) in the first place.
Take Russell and “The History of Western Philosophy”. Every third or fourth paragraph contains an elaborate item of humour but if the reader does not understand the humour then the knowledge of the reader is insufficient to appreciate the contents of the book or rather, the contents might be appreciated only in a very limited sense. Similarly for Scrution.
For example, Scruton’s quip in regard to the winding up of universities is a reference to the extent that post-structuralism and post-monernisn (similar but quite different philosophies) have (1) crushed empiricism out of existence and (2) are very much responsible for the post-truth condition that exists nowadays.
The mere respect for empiricism that existed (say) 40 or 50 years ago would have prevented the libel in which The New Statesman engaged recently. ALL of the former regard for accuracy (which sustained the latter 19th century) has disappeared up the butt of post-truth qua post-modernism.
In other words, Oldie, at ones peril does one take Russell or Scruton (and others) at face value. Reading Russell (or Okashot or Wittgenstein – less the case for American philosophers) means reading the references and footnotes in their entirety prior to continuing. Then, one has to be careful of sources. Is the person in question being read in the original or is the reader appealing to a secondary source.
Anyone who thinks that the average Chinese gives a rat’s about Tiananmen should watch the SBS show “If You are the One”.
Despite a M/F sex imbalance in excess of 117/100 they feature a dating game in which 24, usually highly accomplished and successful, women compete for a bloke.
If those women ever decide to forego custom/tradition in favour of self assertion they won’t just be “holding up half the sky“, they’ll so shatter the gerontocracy of testosterone as to make Lysistrata seem like a Barbie doll Stepford Wife.
Yeah, but they’re up against it in a country where 5 women were jailed for PLANNING to hand out anti-sexual harassment stickers.
AR, as usual, is more right than wrong. Its less a matter of “imbalance” than of compatibility. Even university lecturers and senior professionals prefer (in the main) a wife with (only) a high school education.
There is a public face and a private face in Asia in regard to marriage and the family. If the husband provides for the public face (house, food, clothing etc..) then no more can be asked of him and after age 38+ his own life becomes his own – at his option.
Indeed, until the age of 5-7 the grandparents are typically responsible for the infants after weaning. Students, generally, have MUCH stronger emotional ties with their grandparents than with their parents.
A fluent foreign language speaking educated (degree or higher degree – or overseas qual) female has an up-hill task of finding a reasonable guy. I am friends with such women whom some refuse to liaise with guys who smoke. That, in itself, dismisses circa 70% of the eligible male population.
As to distributing pamphlets or whatever I am unfamiliar with the (specific) case but I can tell anyone that there is more to the matter than what appears to be the case. Everyone knows the rules : no public display of objecting to official policy. Private, in-house objections are ok and are tolerated.
It could be that their husbands or themselves have not paid their company tax or there is some other matter that has occurred and the police have bought down a number of birds with the one stone. Its difficult to say without being privy to the facts. I can tell anyone that there is more to the matter than what appears to be on the surface.
Overt displays of emotion, in Asia generally, are what foreigners (i.e. white) are known for and rather despised for. In Asia “yes” an mean “no” but “no” always means “no”. For any country in Asia its a hard culture to crack and it can take years just to get a glimpse.
I neglected to emphasise that in the vast majority of episodes I’ve seen, the bloke leaves without being given a second glance, often before finishing laying out his wares.
If not for the cameras and public tears, this incident would not rate any higher than the numerous other ones we’ve ignored since then.
I guess you’re right. There’s probably been thousands of similar scale massacres in China since then that we’ve not heard about or won’t hear about because there were no cameras around.
At least their shiny new mass surveillance sytem should potentially stop those many thousands from dying in the future. Thankfully we have something similar.
It sure will. Being able to monitor any gathering of more than 2 people in any public space for more than a couple of minutes, means there’s no chance of any future protest in the country, except of course for anti-western or anti -Japanese ones. Funny how they NEVER FORGET things that happened over 70 years, not to mention a hundred years ago, yet don’t seem interested in something that happened 30 years ago.
Oldie, I appreciate that it is not just “you” but I am sorely tempted to write something like “Look, you conceited bastards, to your own phones and social media accounts and conjecture the amount of YOUR personal information is hocked on a near hourly basis to major companies with Big Data tools and THEN presume to bang-on about freedom” but I won’t write any such thing.
Does anyone actually read anything that is remotely authoritative in regard to encryption, surveillance or social control these days? Apparently not!
As to the “funny how” remark – with all due respect Olide, you are going to have to spend some time here (in Asia) to get the feel of the place because – with respect – lounging in your arm chair, slurping chard and comparing international incidents with domestic incidents isn’t working for you or anyone else.
If you are ever so lucky to come across Prof. Nackani’s “Japanese Frame Ideology” do buy it. Its out of print so Lizzies might have it; who knows. Some reading on Asian culture , ethos and world view is something that the scribblers at Crikey have yet to undergo; never mind the subscribers (in the main).
The above is NOT about apologies to a culture but about knowing what the f. one is presuming to clam as knowledge. I have mentioned a number of references (for differing learning styles) on related topics and any are informative.
Kyle, I appreciate your candor. The 5 women I was referring to are known as the ‘Feminist Five’. There was something about them on SBS not long ago which may enlighten you, if you are able to leap over the Great Firewall. As for my armchair, I don’t have one and living on a basic pension in a rooming house with zero assets, my meals are, alas, usually what the salvos can provide, supplemented with my standard fare of baked beans.
As for understanding other cultures, I’ve found that one can learn a great deal by making friends with people who are born in and grow up in those cultures, AND feel they can talk freely about them here in Australia. This is how I’ve gained some knowledge from Russian, Chinese and Indonesian Muslim friends, limited though it may be.
Oldie, one can post on Crikey with a number of intentions. On the topic of the Greens, yesterday, a person posted , as you doubtless saw, (M… June 5, 2019 at 7:23 am “What an utter load of rubbish”). The guy (1) has no capacity to make a constructive contribution to the topic and (2) is seeking five seconds of fame.
My vain wish is for specifics on important topics ,at least, and on which account I find many of the articles deficient.
Making friends with a range of people from a range of cultures is all to the good but one needs to take into account that only particularly like-minded people travel or come to immigrate. Thus, the “sample set” possesses its own characteristics which are not necessarily reflective of the entire population (although considerably better than nothing).
A grade up is independent tourism to a different culture but the “clincher” is living in the country of interest for some time as one of the locals and, thus, to come to experience their issues or whatever.
For my part, the longer one tends to live in a place the less one is inclined to generalise about the country in question. Depending upon the question (and from whom) I find it quite difficult to discuss Russia or North Africa or Asia or whatever. If the person is seeking (obviously) no more than a moderate sentence I preface the reply (emphasiing) “in general … ” – but the reply is utterly inadequate.
Kyle, I agree with what you say about living in a country being the best way to understand it, but for the overwhelming majority of us, that is simply neither practical nor possible, in which case the next best option is to read about and meet people from the relevant country and, if possible, learn the language. As you must well know, Mandarin is an extremely challenging language for Europeans to learn, particularly the characters, so this also a very limited option. That leaves us with the relatively accessible option of meeting people from other cultures, quite easy in our multi-cultural society here, and reading books (and watching movies) by talented foreign writers who have lived there, such as Peter Hessler and Rob Schmitz. It won’t make you an expert, but it gives you some idea of the culture.