Black and White Cat

Here’s a translation from two posts on Lian Yue’s blog. They’re emails sent to him by readers. The first is in two parts - this is the young Tibetan woman that drunkpiano referred to in his post “The Enemy of My Enemy” (English translation here). The second is from a government official.

In the first, Lian Yue apologizes to readers for deleting some sections and omitting several names.

Dear Lian Yue,

I really hope you will allow me to say a little on your blog about my own situation.

I’m a Tibetan who cannot speak the Tibetan language. I can understand a little of the Lhasa dialect and I can understand the Gannan dialect, but I cannot speak it.

Right now, I don’t know any more than everyone else about the real situation… (section deleted)

I’ll say a little about my personal experiences.

When I went to primary school in Lhasa, there were schools that offered classes in Tibetan but the quality of teaching was very poor and not many pupils went on to higher grades. Parents would usually choose schools with a higher graduation rate so when I left kindergarten I didn’t take Tibetan classes and I completely forgot how to read or write Tibetan.

Before I finished primary school, I moved out of Tibet for health reasons and had even less contact with the language.

After I graduated, I applied for an office job. One boss asked my to change my Tibetan name to something that Han people could recognize more easily, like Zhuoma or Zhuoga, to give people a strong impression and be more competitive in business.

Later I went to XX for an interview. One manager was extremely interested in knowing whether or not Tibetans only wash twice in their lives. He was very curious to know: “Don’t they mind being dirty?” That took up a third of the interview.

Later on, my parent’s friend introduced me to a boyfriend who was Han. His mother was only worried about one thing: “She’s Tibetan. Supposing there’s a court case - my son would definitely lose.”

A few years ago, my father passed away. My relatives came a huge distance all the way from Gannan and got out butter lamps ready to light. The local committee [组织上] said: “This is the XXX memorial hall. We can’t have that kind of feudal superstition here.” In the end I just had to throw away all the offerings and candles the committee had prepared to resolve the problem.

Also at that time, my sister had to keep it a secret that she went to the Jokhang Temple. If her work unit found out, they would have docked her salary.

A few years ago, I took my father’s ashes to Labrang Monastery where he lived when he was a child. The patriarch of the family braved wind and snow to recover solid remains from the ashes and we stood round him crying. But that didn’t stop a novelty-seeking Han from snapping and flashing away with his camera. In the end I cursed him in Han to chase him off.

People in the county town where I come from don’t wear Tibetan clothes to work anymore because it makes them feel inferior and ashamed in front of their Han colleagues.

In the past, my relatives back home could cut wood and sell it to earn money to buy things they needed. Then, because so many Han went there to cut down trees, the state banned tree cutting. With nothing to live on, they had to go to the city to find work. But with no education, their status was lower than Han migrant workers and they didn’t get the same pay for the same work.

My neighbors often praise us sincerely: “Are you really Tibetan? Hey, you don’t look it. You’re so white and so clean….”

In this city that’s called a center of culture, even my mother, my own family, everyone is trying as hard as they can to avoid revealing their Tibetan identity because we can’t fight off the nasty things people say.

Later, I made up my mind to study Tibetan, but I didn’t realize how hard that would turn out to be. I searched all over Lhasa and Beijing and I sill haven’t found any recorded teaching materials.

Now my Han friends say: “What a pity. You’ve lost your culture.”

The things a lot of people do and say hurt us, even though they don’t mean to. It seems that time and again we’ve tried to ignore this kind of hurt. But, now (sentence deleted). I hope from now on people won’t indulge in this kind of thing.

——————————–

I never thought that in the space of one night everyone would discuss my letter so enthusiastically. In most of the comments, people seriously examined their own thoughts and actions and that really moved me, so I’d like to add the following.

First, thank you to everyone for their care and sympathy. Obviously, I’m quite embarrassed to be looked at so closely. Actually, in all the examples I listed, none of these experiences made me feel inferior. I really am the way some people suggested, living up to the common Tibetan tradition of patience. I listed these things as an attempt to find what the disputes probably are. But the fact that I don’t feel inferior doesn’t mean that others feel the same way.

Secondly, the one thing I do mind, and does make me feel inferior, has nothing to do with Han people. It’s that I can’t speak my own language. It limits the contact I have with my own people, to the point where I’m afraid to deal with compatriots who only speak Tibetan, so learning Tibetan has been my biggest desire since I grew up. It’s because I want to be able to freely and confidently mix with my own people and because I want to do my utmost to understand my own ethnic group.

Finally, there isn’t really any need to give a serious rebuttal to anything, but my sensitivity and sense of inferiority demands that I counter one thing:

“… The question is, does this girl really understand her own people? Does she really love them?”

I don’t think I need to show anyone any proof of my love for my own people.

That post was followed by this one:

Dear Lian Yue,

This morning I read the letter you posted from a Tibetan girl. Just last night I was discussing the Tibet issue and the Dalai Lama’s statement with another government official, criticizing the government restrictions on media reporting and some of the illogical and obviously mindless conclusions. He suddenly asked me: “We’re so good to minorities. When do we discriminate against them?!” I said: “Why is it that so many people, as soon as minorities are mentioned, the first thing they think of is that minorities are backward, ignorant, dirty and uncivilized? They’re like everyone else, an equal group. They all have the right to have their own way of life. They’ve got different customs and a different culture. Why would we have this impression?! Isn’t that discrimination?!”

I felt I didn’t express myself very well and was wondering how to persuade him, Then this morning I saw your blog. I sent the article to him and sent him an SMS. In my email I said: “It isn’t discrimination that’s dreadful. What’s dreadful is not knowing that this is discrimination!”

A government official.

What on earth are we to make of this picture:

Are they taking robes as presents for the monks as a goodwill gesture? Was the photograph actually taken this year?

[UPDATE] As Chiara points out in the comments below, Wang Xiaoshan has now deleted the post I linked to and issued an apology. A commenter at Time Magazine’s China Blog says:

这是武警为电影做群众演员，在中国经常会有投资较大需要人来扮演古代军队等大规模群体时，请武警甚至是军人来当演员。因为他们训练有素，比普通人强悍。这是个很可笑的现象，但是这在中国挺常见。

(These are armed police acting as extras for a crowd scene. Big budget movies needing large crowds, such as soldiers in an ancient army, often ask armed police or soldiers to act. That’s because they are well trained and braver than ordinary people. This is a ridiculous phenomenon, but it often happens.)

That would make Gemini’s joke about costumes for a play quite relevant. The photograph appears to have been used for the back cover of the TCHRD 2003 Annual Report, which would make it at least five years old. A number of websites (eg. this one) are posting it along with an article from the Canada Free Press by Gordon Thomas - a writer whose startling exclusives have included the ‘revelation’ (as in hallucinatory dream) that Osama bin Laden was in China, keeping the peace in Xinjiang. Hmm, not sure I buy that one.

So, once again a picture tells a thousand words. But which words and what do they mean? That depends on what you want to believe.

Ten days ago, when Lian Yue rejected suppression of information on Tibet, he had broad support from his readers. Here’s Danwei’s translation of his post:

Information Theory of Tibet

1. Any power which tries to withhold information should be regarded as a bad power.
2. Any power that keeps people from getting information should be regarded as a bad power.
3. Any information released by a power that has monopoly over releasing information should be regarded as a lie.
4. A power that tries to distort and withhold information should be responsible for the consequences.
5. A power that keeps people from getting information does not have the credibility to tell people what is true and what is false.
6. Information being suppressed is the only cause of the worsening situation and deepening disagreement, because each side can say whatever they want and none of it is provable.
7. Extreme nationalism is passionate and irrational. It is nourished by the suppression of information. Tibetan supremacist, Han supremacist, anti-Japanese sentiment and anti-Taiwan sentiment run rampant in an environment where information is suppressed.
8. Mainland China is a place where [people with] extreme feelings are the biggest supporters of power, and these people and feelings prevent power from reforming itself.
9. Only freedom of information expression can dissolve extreme sentiments. Trying to withhold dangerous information is the most dangerous way to act.

Therefore, one important way to solve the problem is to give the media freedom to interview in Tibet.

Another post by Lian Yue a few days ago was less popular:

Tutu’s proposal on Tibet

Archbishop Tutu has issued a statement of mediation. Much of what he says will perhaps make many people unhappy, very unhappy. However, when someone like this, who is not very likely to harbor malice against China, says things so divergent from what you imagine, perhaps it is time to take a look at your own problems. If the world has really misunderstood you for decades, at the same time as you criticize the world, you should also consider what it is that makes us so easily misunderstood.

Statement on Tibet and China

I wish to express my solidarity with the people of Tibet during this critical time in their history. To my dear friend His Holiness the Dalai Lama, let me say: I stand with you. You define non-violence and compassion and goodness. I was in an Easter retreat when the recent tragic events unfolded in Tibet. I learned that China has stated you caused violence. Clearly China does not know you, but they should. I call on China’s government to know His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as so many have come to know, during these long decades years in exile. Listen to His Holiness’ pleas for restraint and calm and no further violence against this civilian population of monastics and lay people.

I urge China to enter into a substantive and meaningful dialogue with this man of peace, the Dalai Lama. China is uniquely positioned to impact and affect our world. Certainly the leaders of China know this or they would not have bid for the Olympics. Killing, imprisonment and torture are not a sport: the innocents must be released and given free and fair trials.

I urge my esteemed friend Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Tibet and be given access to assess, and report to the international community, the events which led to this international outcry for justice. The High Commissioner should be allowed to travel with journalists, and other observers, who may speak truth to power and level the playing field so that, indeed, this episode — these decades of struggle — may attain a peaceful resolution. This will help not only Tibet. It will help China.

And China, poised to receive the world during the forthcoming Olympic Games needs to make sure the eyes of the world will see that China has changed, that China is willing to be a responsible partner in international global affairs. Finally, China must stop naming, blaming and verbally abusing one whose life has been devoted to non violence, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a Nobel peace laureate.

The first reader’s response to this post received the most number of votes:

If China let people who think like you run the country, things could only get worse!

In 1989, I was still a child. When I saw students everywhere carrying big tape recorders playing Voice of America broadcasts and mobilizing crowds, I admired them a lot. But time has allowed me to understand what is right. Time will also test whether or not you are right.

Human civilization is very complex. Let time tell what is right and what is wrong!

Lian Yue, if you have talent then please start from the basics. There’s no way the Chinese government will allow someone like you to go into politics. But national relations and relationships between people are based on much the same things. Try setting up a business - it can big or small! See if you can do well and how many people you can provide a livelihood for.

One step at a time
Give 100 people a living.
Give 1,000 people a living..
Give 10,000 people a living…
Even more and more…..

If you can do this, a great many people will support your ideals. Talking to much is useless. Thinking too much is useless. Try it out and see.

In short, I really hate you. Honestly.

Right now 143 people have voted in support of this comment, 76 against. There was, however, this response from another reader:

“There’s no way the Chinese government will allow someone like you to go into politics.”

This sentence is quite interesting. Is it the people who will or will not allow ** to go into politics, or the government who will or will not allow Lian Yue to go into politics? We can tell a lot from this judgement about a person’s way of thinking.

This comment currently has 36 votes for, 3 against.

It’s been quite some time since Yahoo mercifully closed down its news discussion boards. Especially at times of crisis, whether real or perceived, they could make you lose almost all faith in humanity. Below is a translation of one Chinese person’s reaction, posted on Woeser’s blog, to the same phenomenon in China. Text in square brackets is mine, and does not appear in the original Chinese post.

For days on end, events in Tibet have been the hottest news in China and abroad. Today, the Chinese mainstream media news site Sina.com carried another Xinhua article with the headline “The Dalai clique destroys social stability in Tibet; it is doomed to fail.” It goes without saying that the article was full of vocabulary like “a small handful, an extremely small number, organized, premeditated, meticulously plotted and directed, there is sufficient evidence to prove, exercised enormous restraint.” Anyone who has lived in China for more than 20 years will probably know these words well enough to recite them. There is nothing new about them.

What did draw attention was the readers’ comments at the end of the article. Thanks to the Internet, we can now hear the voice of “the people” straight away. This time, “the people” and the “central government” maintained a high degree of unanimity, singing in unison “the Dalai clique” and “rioters” (this name is also very familiar, much like 19 years ago when every student and resident of Beijing at Tiananmen had this nickname). But these voices sound very shrill and brutal. Here are some representative quotes for the benefit of the reader:

– “To dare to split China this year, that’s really asking for trouble, like throwing an egg against a rock, courting destruction. I advise the central government to punish them without mercy. Those who deserve execution should be executed. Those who deserve life imprisonment should be sentenced to life in prison. (This netizen’s comment is reasonable, restrained, analytical and has a definite legal awareness. He doesn’t call for all of them to be executed - some can just be sentenced to life.)

– “Kill all the terrorists who attempt to separate Tibet!” (This netizen’s language is very frank. From his slogan, we can see he has the air of a bandit and he presumably drinks quite a lot. It’s a shame he was born in the modern age, otherwise there would have been 109 heroes on Mount Liang [a reference to the classic Outlaws of the Marsh])

– “The people of Guangdong resolutely support striking the Dalai clique!!!!!!!!” (A call from the south. Guangdong has responded quickly. Within such a short time it has formed a resolution and elected representatives. What I don’t know is by what procedure did this dear friend qualify to represent the people of Guangdong. Aren’t all the People’s Congress representatives meeting in Beijing?)

– “President Hu, do what ever you need to do!!! The common people all support you!!! Resolutely strike these bastards!!! (So genuine! So sincere! This sounds like a woman, sucking up just after Comrade Jintao was reelected president of the nation. With people like this behind him, is there anything the president will not dare to do?)

– “The state spends so much money supporting the monks and they turn round and do this!” (This friend certainly feels very aggrieved and distressed, but he or she does not have a very good understanding of state policy on religion. The government has never paid monks’ salaries. Any monks that do receive money from the government are almost all government informers. They can’t “turn round and do this.”)

– “I support the state striking hard against Tibetan separatists! I support the state striking hard against Tibetan separatists! I support the state striking hard against Tibetan separatists! I support the state striking hard against Tibetan separatists! I support the state striking hard against Tibetan separatists! I support the state striking hard against Tibetan separatists! ….” (This guy yelled his slogan 55 times. I counted each one. He really is very sincere, it’s a shame he has such a meager vocabulary.)

– “Kill them for me!” (Brief and to the point, imperious, like an officer commanding troops at the front line. But who is he commanding? People should be wary of following a person who has such simplistic methods for dealing with problems. It could put your life at risk.)

…………..

OK, enough of the quotes. That’s already too many. Sina.com posted this article at 2:21am on March 17, 2008. As I write this short piece at about 2pm, there are already 26,625 comments! At least 99% of them express similar passionate opinions.

This is a very interesting phenomenon.

Mainlanders have also had their fill of government bullying, scarcely less than the Tibetans (the number of abnormal deaths since 1949 is proof of that). Mainlanders also curse the government. But in the face of other ethnic groups, these Han seem to forget that they too have been bullied by the government, and become part of the government “family.” It seems the government is their guardian angel, and they consciously serve as defenders of the government.

This phenomenon continually troubled me. Then I gave this kind of relationship a specialist name: relationships by rape - “Family relations established through rape.” I don’t know if it’s appropriate or not and I haven’t consulted with relevant anthropologists. For the moment, it is the term I will use. To borrow the form of a sentence by Lu Xun: For actually the earth had no kinship to begin with, but when many people had been raped, kinship was made. [Lu Xun’s original words were: “For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made.” From My Old Home] Are we not trying to make our Tibetan compatriots the same as us, forming this kind of “kinship” with the government?

Finally, I would like to remind those friends who are filled with popular emotion to calm down and ask themselves:

How do we judge what is and what is not from a news source and the evidence it provides? Is this source and evidence reliable?

Why can we only see news from one side, and what exactly is the real truth？

What is the basis for equality and mutual respect among ethnic groups?

Should all ethnic groups have the right to self-determination?

Does each ethnic group, ensuring its own integrity, have the right to choose its own method of attaining happiness?

What is the difference between invasion and aid?

Doesn’t the phrase Chinese race* in itself imply “cultural imperialism”?

[*中华民族. I have never really been able to determine what this phrase really means. The overwhelming majority of Chinese nouns do not have a plural or singular form. So 中华民族 could mean one singular “Chinese race” - something that does not exist - or it could be plural, meaning “Chinese ethnic groups.”]

See also:

Danwei - Tîbet: Chinese sources and foreign correspondents on the ground

Rebecca MacKinnon - Tibet… is discussion possible?