Heart of Stone, brain of Sharon

Tibet’s cause was done no favors this week by one of its Hollywood supporters, glamor icon Sharon Stone, who did a Glenn Hoddle by suggesting the Sichuan earthquake was the down to bad karma, a kind of cosmic payback for China’s treatment of Tibet.  

The deep unpleasantness and anti-popular attitudes of airhead Western Buddhists and many Tibet supporters go right back to the founder of Buddhism, Sakyamuni himself. Sakyamuni was rich, heir to a kingdom; he sought and obtained the patronage of the rich, and his renunciation of wealth and royal status was always and at any time reversible.

His concept of “suffering”, one of the cornerstones of Buddhist thought, is that of a man who has everything, but still feels there is something lacking in his life. Rather like Hollywood’s ignorati devotees of the Dalai Lama.

Unlike Sakyamuni, Jesus of Nazareth was a carpenter, whose basic instinct was to sympathise with working people and the poor. Blessed are the poor, he said (although his epigones later bowdlerized his words) for they will inherit the earth. It is more difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

For the Christians (the early Christians at least) the rich will be punished in Christ’s Kingdom - or will simply not be present  - while the last (the poor) will be first. For Buddhists, the poor are already being punished and, by corollary, the rich rewarded, on the basis of their good works or mis-deeds in previous incarnations; it is a fundamental difference between the faiths.

All of which should go some way towards explaining the insufferable smugness of Sakyanmuni’s followers. Of course I exlude from this the millions of simple devotees of the Boddhisattva Guanyin. Also the tens or hundreds of thousands of Tibetan monks who, like all monks in history, take orders out of poverty and remain ignorant of everything but the formulae of their monastic routine.

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is Wenchuan China’s Chernobyl?

Seems things are changing. Media organizations have been let off the leash and are competing with each other for headlines. Some are sending journalists to disaster areas without credentials. Publishing companies without the right to report are doing it anyway. Most journalists are party members purely for careerist reasons. The middle class nationalism associated with the Olympics could go either way for the Party. The next few months will be interesting.

Fox succeeds where Wolfie failed

In the years following May 1968 more baby boomers than would care to admit it today hawked their Red Moles and Socialist Workers around the streets and factory gates trying to convince the working class socialist papers were a truthful alternative to the biased bourgeois press.

Their naivety and ineptitude were brilliantly satirized in the TV comedy Citizen Smith about Wolfie Smith, an unwashed but charming revolutionary in a Che Guevara beret, his long suffering sidekick and adoring girlfriend. The series set Robert Lindsay in the title role on the road to stardom.

Circulation figures show the socialist press failed to convince more than a few thousand. Maybe the sports coverage wasn’t good enough.

Now in the course of a few weeks coverage of the Tibet crisis, the western media has managed to convince an entire sub-continent that it is institutionally and irremediably slanted. It takes a lot to convince ordinary Chinese that their own wretched and censored media is preferable to the BBC, the New York Times and so on, but somehow the western press has managed it.

The Chinese people have famously long memories and this lesson will not be forgotten any time soon. I wonder if the scribblers realize quite what they’ve done.

Striking pilots turn round, fly home

March 31. In an astonishingly bold move, striking aircrew turned 14 passenger jets round in mid-flight and flew back to their point of origin, Kunming in south-west Yunnan province. The pilots were protesting against restrictive labour contracts.

The action by pilots of China Eastern Airlines took place against a background of growing discontent among China’s aircrews. On March 14, forty Shanghai Airlines pilots “took sick leave”. Following their example, on March 28, eleven East Star Airline pilots threw sickies.

China’s booming airline business is facing a labour shortage but to prevent pilots moving to better -paid jobs, bosses have forced them to sign 99-year contracts with punitive penalty clauses if they resign. A labour arbitration committee ordered one pilot to pay his employer, Xiamen Airlines, 1.2 million yuan (86,000 pounds). In a case yet to be ruled on, China Eastern is demanding a staggering 12.57 million yuan (902,000 pounds)in compensation from a pilot who quit.

Pilots have tried filing lawsuits against the airlines to have the contracts declared invalid, but the courts have predictably sided with the employers.

“The only option left for us is to go on strike," said one of the China Eastern pilots.

The strike drew a predictable response from the so-called communist authorities. China’s civil aviation authority vowed to punish the China Eastern strikers severely and said strike leaders could face a lifetime employment ban.

Sources: Guangzhou Daily April 2, China.org.cn April 2, and previous China.org.cn stories.

Dalai Lama joins green ink brigade

Has the Dalai Lama lost it? Never the most logical thinker or speaker, the gaffe-prone Tibetan leader, faced with bad publicity re:Tibetan rioters attacking Han and Muslim civilians, is now suggesting that China staged the uprising in Tibet. "Tibetans are non-violent people. We have heard about a few hundred Chinese soldiers received monks’ dress." Dalai Lama suggests China could be behind Tibet unrest , Press Trust of India March 28.

Let’s see if we have this straight. China, anxious to show a human face to the world in Olympic year stirs up trouble in Tibet in order to…well do what exactly?

So the Dalai Lama has joined the nightmare, back-to-front, green ink, conspiracy world of the crackpot ‘blogosphere’ and in particular its elite American division, the lunosphere.

One crazed scribbler has Hu Jintao/Dr Evil/Fu Manchu deliberately provoking riots in March to justify an early lock-down of Tibet so that the Olympic Torch makes it safely to the top of Mount Everest in May. Er, yes..that makes a lot of sense.

The Problem with Cultural Genocide

The first major problem is that cultural genocide is not genocide. It’s a dramatic and emotive way of talking about assimilation.

The British tried assimilation in Ireland for centuries with a great deal of success. Although they failed to wipe out Catholicism, they effectively eliminated the Irish language. (Of course they alternated between assimilation and good old-fashioned genocide – Cromwell, the famine etc.) But despite their success in converting the Irish to “civilised” dress and language, the English still had to get out when their time was up. Dalai Lama and assorted Tibetan nationalists please note.

The second problem with the cultural genocide slogan is that it is manifestly at odds with the reality on the ground. Everywhere you go in Tibetan regions you see temples being lovingly restored, not just as tourist attractions, but with the full and enthusiastic participation of the Tibetan people, who donate their money and labour. In many places it seems that half the male population are monks. There are pictures of the Dalai Lama everywhere and everyone asks foreigners have they met him. The impression is not of a culture on the verge of extinction as was the case during the Cultural Revolution but of a resurgent people, growing in confidence; with the confidence, precisely, to stage a revolt.

Of course there are the necessary compromises with the authorities, such as ritually expressing loyalty to the Chinese state, denouncing “splittists” and so on. The portraits of the Dalai Lama are taken down when bigwigs visit and immediately put back up when they leave. But the Irish paid this sort of lip-service for centuries without losing their identity.

The third and biggest problem with the Cultural Genocide slogan is that it directs the anger of the Tibetan people not against the Chinese government, but against minorities in Tibet such as the Han and Muslim traders who bore the brunt of the March 14 violence. The energies of the people are concentrated not on achieving political freedom in a modern state, but on recreating the fantasy-land of Shangrila. At a time when even Bhutan is opening up and adopting democracy, an independent Tibet can’t expect to hide behind a cloud curtain. It should be made clear to Hans and Muslims that they are welcome in Tibet.

The great Irish Rebellion of 1798 was led by Theobald Wolfe Tone, a radical Protestant inspired by the ideas of the French Revolution. The revolt was scuppered when the mass of Catholic peasants rose and massacred Protestant settlers, allowing the British to exploit Ireland’s ethnic division. The most famous peasant leader was the courageous but narrow minded priest Father Murphy.

Tibet has its share of Father Murphy’s. It is still waiting for its Wolfe Tone.

Five dead, nothing said

The brutal slaying of five young girls burnt to death when the shop they were working in was torched during the Lhasa riot went largely unreported in the western media.

It didn’t fit the western preconception that the Tibet uprising was all about Chinese troops firing on peacefully demonstrating monks.

Chinese TV showed convincing coverage of the outrage including interviews with distraught relatives but nearly two weeks later no western outlet had mentioned it. Finally, yesterday the New York Times carried an article which, while acknowledging the tragedy, so minced its words as to be insulting to the memory of the girls.

Let’s be honest, the western press operates under severe restrictions in China, but the restrictions are not new. Basically western journalists while denied access can write what they like. All the more shameful that they got this one wrong while the tightly controlled and censored Chinese press got it right.

The western media has not exactly covered itself with glory with its coverage of the Tibet crisis. On the contrary, it has scored a massive own goal by losing the trust of the middle class Chinese who in the past viewed it as an antidote to China’s laughable state-controlled media.

Echo of class struggle livens up China Congress

More than 30 years after the death of Chairman Mao the class struggle has again reared its head in Chinese politics but this time it’s the rich who are making the running.

At the recent Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, China’s richest woman, paper queen Zhang Yin, called for tax breaks for the rich and opposed moves to give workers the right to permanent contracts. Many delegates and commentators criticized her stance but other entrepreneurs supported her.

Zhang made her multi-billion dollar fortune importing waste from the USA to feed China’s insatiable demand for paper products. Her company, Nine Dragons Paper, is the largest paper manufacturer in China.

Zhang’s willingness to give open expression to apparent self-interest reflects the growing confidence of China’s wealthy. Cities are peppered with extravagant shopping malls stocking the glitziest western brands. The nouveaux riches increasingly enjoy flaunting their wealth in the form of flashy cars, designer clothes, jewellery, gated villas and uniformed servants. For the less well off, dozens of glossy magazines promote an in-flight fantasy world, and soap operas dramatizing the lives of the rich and famous are part of the daily diet on Chinese TV.

The Chinese leadership is only too aware of the widening gap between rich and poor. President Hu Jintao has made building a harmonious society the flagship policy of his term of office. He has abolished the centuries old agricultural tax and pumped money into poorer rural areas. But while Hu has pushed China in what observers describe as a more social democratic direction, he is treading a fine line; the last thing China’s leaders want is to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Meanwhile the poor and middle income earners are increasingly concerned with the rising cost of living, as everyday items such as food, housing, education and health care go through the roof. They are unimpressed by the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy. A recent survey showed that 70 percent of the public, far from seeing the rich as glorious, regard them as self-serving and ungenerous. China’s rich have an image problem that commentators have advised them to address by following America’s wealthy down the road of large-scale philanthropy.

Trades unions, after decades of rubber-stamping management decisions under the planned economy are beginning to take a stronger line in defence of their members’ interests. Their initial targets have been foreign brands such as MacDonald’s and KFC, both recently investigated on suspicion of paying under the minimum wage, but some think it will not be long before some of China’s giant domestic corporations face challenges from organized labour.

The ruling Communist Party has welcomed the new rich into its ranks and hopes that “contradictions among the people” in Chairman Mao’s phrase, can be contained and resolved in one big happy family.

One thing that commentators on all sides have welcomed is that Zhang’s remarks have brought into the open the existence of different interest groups in society and initiated a debate about their competing claims. That, they argue, can only be a healthy development.

US MOVE ON SOVEREIGN FUNDS TARGETS CHINA

The timing couldn’t be clearer. Less than a month after China launched the $200 billion China Investment Corp, the USA has announced that will seek “draconian restrictions” on the activities of sovereign funds at the current G7 meeting.

Having downsized, contracted out, and offshored its industry, turned its workforce into burger flippers, and in the process built up a massive trade deficit, the USA is worried that China might wake up to the idea that it can use its huge foreign exchange reserves to buy America.

You have to laugh.

THE WARMONGER AND THE SHAMELESS OLD FRAUD

While the Dalai Lama seems congenitally incapable of giving a straight answer to a straight question, he certainly knows how to drop a political hint.

He initially lent his support to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but then tried to worm his way out of the controversy, suggesting absurdly that if he stressed his pacifist views too candidly to President Bush, he might be arrested.

Here he is again, standing shoulder to shoulder with Bush, as the lame-duck warrior turns up the temperature on Iran.

The tragedy for Tibet is that when the old political huckster dies, his infant successor will be a captive of his epigones as they jockey for power during a long period of regency – a process from which the Tibetan people will be, of course, completely excluded.

Tibet needs democracy, not theocracy with US military bases.

JIANG ZEMIN ALLY ZENG QINGHONG OUSTED

Few Chinese will regret the sacking of China’s vice-president Zeng Qinghong, the last major ally of former President Jiang Zemin, from the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

Under Jiang, wildcat capitalism and official corruption turned China into the most unequal country in the world. Reckless growth-at-all-costs destroyed the environment. While the super-exploited workforce slaved to make cheap goods for export, a construction frenzy turned Chinese cities into identikit forests of skyscrapers and peppered the countryside with luxury gated housing – to make way for which countless ordinary people were ruthlessly relocated.

Jiang’s also presided over a judicial reign of terror that permitted China’s ignorant judges, many barely older than schoolchildren, to impose the death penalty for virtually any offence. Thousands were shot, mainly the poor, desperate and excluded.

President Hu Jintao has steered China onto, certainly not a socialist, but a mildly social-democratic path. He has abolished the hated agricultural tax, pumped money into the countryside and has even begun to reign in the beserk judiciary.

It remains to be seen whether Hu’s policy shift will make any real difference. China’s economic juggernaut is firmly on the capitalist road. Yet most Chinese people, while understandably cynical about politics, seem to welcome the leadership’s change of emphasis. Hu is certainly more popular than his predecessor.

MORE CHRISTIANITY

A Chinese Christian film maker recently told me that he fully supported the invasion of Iraq, because as the greatest power in the world, the USA has the right to control global oil resources.

I put it to him that, according to his logic, China, as a great power, should also have the right to use force to control at least some of the world’s resources.

He replied that the world should never let China control any of the world’s resources.

Similar infantile views are all too common among China’s small political opposition, which has yet to learn that by opposing every government policy on principle and placing itself in the American camp it is condemning itself to irrelevance.

SILLY BILLY

Willy Wo-lap Lam, senior fellow at the conservative Jamestown foundation permitted himself this flight of fancy in an article on China’s 5th generation leadership.

“China’s aggressive power projection in faraway areas such as Africa and Latin America is raising alarm bells in capitals ranging from Tokyo to Washington”

It’s hard to know where to begin unpicking this. Presumably “capitals ranging from Tokyo to Washington” means …. Tokyo and Washington.

What does this “aggressive power projection” consist of? Has China stationed troops in Latin America? Are Chinese aircraft carriers laden with nuclear weapons steaming around the Caribbean? Has China invaded any countries recently? How many overseas military bases does China have? The USA has 702 in 130 countries.

Actually China’s “aggression” consists of … official visits and trade agreements.

Of course while tens of thousands of US troops are bogged down in lost causes in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s only natural that US conservatives and their supporters gnash their teeth and cast a resentful eye at China’s steady diplomatic progress.

CHINA CENSORS AMERICAN MAOISTS

I recently discovered an internet rarity – an article defending Mao Zedong – but when I tried to read it, China’s net censorship system intervened to block it.

The material was on the website of the American journal Monthly Review and from there I found out the author’s contact details and asked him to email me a copy.

The net censoring system, however was ahead of the game, and blocked the email attachment, which I found a little too personal and slightly alarming.

Whatever one thinks of Mao, it is interesting that in China – where banknotes still carry his portrait – the views of his American defenders are no longer welcome.

THE MAN DATE FROM HEAVEN

Overheard in a bar…. you have to imagine a plummy, English officer-class voice that can slur largeginandtonic into one word.

“Most men who come to China looking for girls aren’t able to judge anything about them, because their Chinese is not good enough.”

“But as soon as a girl opens her mouth and talks for five minutes you can find out so many things. For example, if she can’t even speak standard Mandarin, then she may be OK for a short fling, but not for anything long term. You couldn’t take her anywhere. She’d be an embarrassment. These things are important to me.”

What a guy.

CHINA’S BLOODY CODE

China’s courts are the harshest in the world. Every year around 2000 people are executed. Judges can impose the death penalty not just for murder, but for almost any offense, including theft, forgery, smuggling antiques, imparting criminal methods, organizing prostitution, even VAT fraud.

But what are the social and political roots of this savage sentencing policy?

Most commentators assume it is a hangover of hard-line Maoism¹. But this is more or less the opposite of the truth.

A recent study by Chinese legal experts² demonstrates that use of the death penalty became widespread and routine during the period of free market reforms begun by Deng Xiaoping and continued by his successor, Jiang Zemin.

Deng summed up his policy as reform and opening up on the one hand, and law and order on the other. He dismantled socialism and replaced it with a form of managed capitalism. As Maoist egalitarianism gave way to a highly stratified social order, judicial terror replaced the ideological glue and workplace discipline that had bound Chinese society

The 1979 penal code, summing up the position at the end of the Maoist era, reserved capital punishment for serious violent crime and treason.

But from 1982 to 1995 a series of decisions of the National People’s Congress extended the death penalty to an ever greater number of non-violent crimes.

At the same time, the Supreme People’s Court devolved its role in reviewing death sentences to local courts, effectively giving them free reign. Executions were particularly frequent during periodic ‘strike hard’ law and order campaigns. According to legal expert Zhao Bingzhi, during the 1980s and 1990s the courts developed a ‘blind faith in the death penalty’.

Present leader Hu Jintao, thought of as a relative hard-liner by Western commentators, has recently ordered a rethink. As a first step, the right of appeal to the Supreme Court has been restored in death penalty cases.

The closest historical parallel to China’s system is 18th Century England’s Bloody Code. From 1650 to 1815 the number of capital offenses rose from 50 to 288, allowing commercial landowners to enrich themselves through the enclosure of common land and consolidate their grip on power after the chaos of the Civil War.

In China, a new possessing class, enriched by privatization of state assets, but widely resented and yet to feel secure, is in the process of securing its power following the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

England’s Bloody Code was undermined by juries who refused to convict criminals of capital offenses. In China’s case we can only hope that the desire for international respectability will lead the government to curb its bloody assizes.

1 See for example The Debate Over the Death Penalty in Today’s China, Zhang Ning, China Perspectives no 62

2 The Road of the Abolition of the Death Penalty in China Ed. Zhao Bingzhi, Press of People’s Public Security University.

TO GET RICH IS .. UNPOPULAR

It’s interesting that despite years of fawning propaganda in the Chinese media, including bogus rags-to-riches stories that would embarrass Mr Bounderby, a recent survey showed that 70% of Chinese people have a low a opinion of the rich.

There’s nothing particularly remarkable about views of ordinary Chinese people. I suspect the results of such a survey in Europe or the USA would be broadly similar.

But don’t expect any letup in the tidal wave of glossy ads for gated housing, Louis Vuitton bags, Rolexes, BMWs etc. etc.

The poor don’t have bucks so they don’t count in China. That’s the way the so-called Communist Party likes it and that’s the way the West likes it.

101 THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOUR SKY BURIAL

There’s a scene in Wedding Crashers where the guys switch to crashing funerals as an even more sure fire way of getting laid.

Well funeral crashing is all the rage across the Tibetan regions of China.

Almost every paleface with a backpack is determined to witness a sky burial. Like the mile high club or bungee jumping – it’s become just one more thing to tick off before you’re thirty.

In Litang I overheard an extremely bumptious Israeli girl demanding directions to the burial ground. She was undeterred when a young Tibetan woman advised her not to turn up uninvited.

A young Frenchman, who called himself a philosopher but had never heard of Foucault, had already attended two burials. He was planning to make an ethno-fiction film – whatever that may be.

Well I hope they both had fun at the funeral of a 23 year old lad who had died of an infectious disease.

Call me squeamish, old fashioned or whatever, but I don’t hold with it. Enough already. Let the families mourn in peace.

SAY CHEESY! CHINA’S WEDDING PHOTO BOOM

In the public park there are giant crescent moons, plaster cherubs, romantic garden swings, and a full-size mock-up of a Christian church. A tape loop is blaring out the wedding march. Dozens of young brides in wedding dresses and grooms in white tuxedos are milling around looking strangely glum.

Artsy photographers with ponytails coax the brides into incongruously sexy poses while lighting assistants fuss about.

It’s only when a bride hitches up her dress to reveal a pair of blue jeans that you realize nobody is getting married today. In China the photo-shoot takes place before the wedding.

Welcome to China’s multi-million dollar wedding photo industry. Couples spend thousands of dollars on glossy albums to record – well – a not very special day.

EATS BABIES SHOOTS DOLPHINS..AND LIVES?

Reporting the recent extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin, most Western newspapers somehow managed to blame Mao Zedong, everyone’s favorite villain.

Apparently, an ‘overthrowing idols’ campaign in the late 1950s broke a long-standing taboo on hunting dolphins and their numbers started to decline.

Now no-one can deny the chairman had a dark side to say the least, but can he really be held responsible for the extinction of a river species thirty-one years after his death in 1976?

In the 1980s there was still a viable population of hundreds of dolphins. Careless fishing practices and river pollution did for the dolphin over the following 20 years.

One could also add that in the 1950s environmental consciousness was low worldwide. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth were not set up until 1972.

The current fashion of blaming Mao for absolutely everything reached a crescendo with the publication of Chang and Halliday’s diabolography (of which pirate Chinese editions are on sale on the street for 12 RMB).

Of course pinning everything on Mao suits both China’s capitalist Communist Party and its Western friends. Everything wrong with China is tagged as a hangover from Maoism and present leaders neatly sidestep any blame.

CHINA’S CRACKPOT CRUSADERS

It’s hard to imagine 100,000 Chinese Christians evangelizing the Muslim world. Yet that’s the target China’s grassroots house churches have set themselves.

The Back to Jerusalem Movement believes East Asia’s Christians have been called by God to convert the Islamic world – now a no-go area for Western missionaries.

China’s house churches are highly organized and intensely political. They see themselves standing side-by-side with America in a clash of civilizations. And in their cult-like atmosphere naive recruits can easily turn into potential martyrs.

But the most likely result of their plans is a disaster similar to the recent Taliban kidnap of 23 Korean missionaries in Afghanistan.

Chinese citizens are already being targeted by Islamic militants. The July murder of Chinese engineers in Pakistan caused a diplomatic spat with a country that China has courted over decades.

The Chinese government will try to prevent missionaries traveling abroad. But if the house churches even partially succeed in their plans, it had better brace itself for more embarrassment.

LIVING BRUDDA

Just outside Litang, I met two young Tibetan monks picnicking on Coke and crisps with one of their friends and his toddler.

As is usual with Tibetans, they asked me where I was from and and whether I had met the Dalai Lama. After a while, one of the monks casually mentioned that his elder brother was a living Buddha. He added that although he himself was a member of the yellow-hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism, his brother was a white-hat.

He told me his brother had traveled to India to meet the Dalai Lama, and had recently opened a private school that had already gathered thirty fee-paying pupils. At the moment, he was in Beijing on business.

I wanted to ask just how maddening it must be to have a big brother who not only bullies you and beats you at games, but is also an officially certified saint. But the young monk was more interested in talking about Wayne Rooney.

A CULTURAL REVOLUTION TALL STORY

My guide to Dali’s lake was an entertaining and lively companion. A farmer with a lucrative sideline as a tour guide, he owns two large houses. Four generations of the family live together in one of the houses; he rents the other house to an Irishman.

He is a man of definite political views. Mao was a bad leader, Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi were all good.

But the most interesting thing about him is his rich store of local stories.

One of his favorites is that during World War 2, future US President Jimmy Carter was shot down over Dali while serving with the US Air Force. He bailed out, but broke his leg, and was rescued by a local peasant who carried him down a mountain on his back. Having no money to repay the man for saving his life, Carter presented him with his service handgun and watch.

During the Cultural Revolution，Red Guards discovered the American gun and watch and used them as an excuse to beat and imprison the peasant as an “imperialist agent”.

Many years later as President, Carter made an official visit to China and asked to see his old benefactor. The kindly prime minister Zhou Enlai arranged for them to be reunited. Shocked to find his old friend’s health had been ruined by persecution, Carter immediately flew him to New York for expensive medical care. Unfortunately his illness proved incurable and he returned to China where he died soon afterwards.

It is a wonderful story, and the guide told it with conviction and in detail, pointing to the spot where the aircraft crashed, the route down the mountain, the difficulty the short peasant had carrying the lanky Carter on his back etc.

The story is widely believed in Dali, especially by the small expatriate community. At the time I was also thoroughly convinced.

The problem is that there is not a word of truth in it. Jimmy Carter was too young to serve in World War 2. He was never in the Air force, but joined the Navy in 1946 and served for 7 years – mainly in submarines. Furthermore, Zhou Enlai died in 1976, the year before Carter became President.

LOW PAY OR NO PAY IN PARADISE

I got talking to a young barmaid in Dali. She had been sent from Lijiang by her boss to open up his new bar on Foreigner Street. He had promised her 500 RMB per month (about 65 US dollars) – quite a high wage for the area where the average is around 350.

But after several months she had not received any money. It seemed to me that the owner had no intention of paying her. She blamed his unpleasant and arrogant Dali partner for the situation. As they played nice and nasty cop with her, the upshot was she was working for a couple of bowls of rice a day and a bed in the corner of the bar.

She works from morning till late at night seven days a week. One evening she told me that the bosses had finally agreed to give her a day off. Except that it was really half a day since they insisted she return to open the bar in the evening.

She was nevertheless very excited and showed me a pretty embroidered bag she had bought specially for the occasion.

She and a girlfriend planned to take a boat trip on the lake but when they got there they found the cheapest ticket was 100 RMB . There used to be many small boats offering trips until the local government introduced licenses that were immediately monopolized by a big tour company.

One evening she told me she was going to the temple in the morning to pray for her father who had died while still a young man. The family could not afford to buy medicine for both her father and her sister who was also ill. So he had died and her sister had lived. She felt she had failed her father and was a bad daughter.

It would be wrong to say she is unhappy. On the contrary, she is an bright, optimistic and innocent girl who talks and laughs continuously.

TO GET RICH IS GLORIOUS

An English teacher friend told me how a barely-remembered former student asked her to lunch with his parents. A limousine arrived to pick her up and whisked her to an ultra-smart beach-front high-rise. On up to the penthouse where the elevator opens directly into the apartment.

The student’s father is wearing an expensive gold watch and a gold ring with a huge diamond in it. Servants were hovering in the background, including a young man in a chef’s hat.

The father, inevitably a property developer, explains that the fish they are eating has been caught on his own personal fishing boat, and everything else has been grown organically on his own farm. He insists that everything is cooked in extra-virgin olive oil (although sensible people think it spoils the flavor of Chinese food).

All this crass boasting went on throughout lunch. Nothing else was talked about, and it was never clear to my friend why she had been invited.

It reminds me that one evening in my favorite restaurant, the Taiwanese owner showed up and asked me to join his table. He made a great show of ordering the staff around and spent the rest of the time bragging that his wife was both beautiful and intelligent. His friends had been drinking heavily and one of them gave a pathetic martial arts show that ended with him falling over in the corner.

Truly, to get rich is glorious.

WELCOME TO HAPPY STREET

In the small town of Litang, 4200 meters up in the Tibetan highlands of Western Sichuan, it seems that one third of the male population are monks, one third are cowboys, and the rest have just stepped off the set of Pirates of the Caribbean.

The monks wear strange yellow hats shaped like duck bills. The cowboys wear expensive stetsons imported from America. The “pirates” wear their hair in giant silver curlers or wrapped up in red bandannas.

The women wear all sorts of colorful costumes – the strangest being a kind of orange busby hat worn, I was told, by descendants of the Mongols.

Litang’s main street is called Happy Street, and it lives up to its name; almost everyone greets you with a smile or a handshake as you walk along it.

Grocery stores display huge slabs of yak butter. Small blacksmiths’ shops sell silver and gold devotional jewelry that looks like exquisite confectionery. Many of the businesses have pictures of the Dalai Lama on their walls.

There are prayer wheels everywhere. Even when sitting gossiping in groups people like to keep their wheels on the go.

A constant stream of people snakes its way up the hill to Litang’s temple which is being lovingly restored at an apparently enormous cost. Many local people help out with unpaid voluntary work. I spoke to a young high school student and a doctor who were heaving huge stone slabs around on their day off.

The people here are superb horsemen and the regular riding competitions make a great day out.

The best hotel in town is the Potala Inn. The owner is a young Tibetan woman who speaks good English. She can arrange all sorts of tours and excursions. Apart from cheap and comfortable rooms it has a large lounge where you can relax, have a beer and exchange travelers tales.

Litang is more Tibetan than Tibet and the great news is you don’t need a permit to go there. So what are you waiting for?

SHANGRILA LEADERS STUDY LIJIANG

Shangrila’s old town is in the process of being built.

Using traditional methods and tools, local craftsmen are faithfully re-creating an authentic Tibetan town.

The local leadership has carefully studied the example of Lijiang and intends to create a similar tourist paradise, or trap, depending on your point of view. Copies of decrees restricting private housebuilding are posted on walls throughout the designated scenic area .

It has to be said that everything is being done in in excellent taste, except for the the giant mechanical prayer wheel on the hill.

In the main square, local people turn up every evening to perform traditional dances for the visitors. Similar dances are a established feature of the Lijiang experience and are especially popular with Chinese tour groups. It doesn’t seem to matter that the locals seem as unsure of the dance steps as the tourists.

From a balcony adorned with a giant red star, the local party bigwigs chain-smoke and look down on the dancers with paternal smiles that express satisfaction with the progress of their plans.

The rows of souvenir shops are still empty and the early investors look a little anxious. As yet very few coach parties make it to Shangrila, but there can be little doubt about the direction of its future development.

There are already plenty of bars and restaurants, including the Raven, a genuine English Pub run by a Londoner, which is the only place in town you can get a cold beer.

The food in Shangrila is hit and miss, and the Tibetan dishes are especially bland, but I noticed a case of Cabernet Sauvignon being delivered by cycle rickshaw.

All in all this is a pleasant town set in a strikingly beautiful high plateau. On a bright summer evening it’s easy to forget the altitude until you notice the white fluffy clouds sitting at the end of the road below eye level. Scarlet robed monks glide into the car park in a Toyota land cruiser and hop out talking into their sleek, up-to-the-minute mobiles. Prosperity, it seems, is on the way.

Shangrila is just one more example of the Disneyfication of the entire nation. But after all, what is the alternative for a poor rural community? At least its altitude and relative inaccessibility may spare it the full horror of Lijiang.

“JOURNALISTS” FOR THE PROSECUTION

I got talking over dinner to a big guy and a little guy in a roadside restaurant in Yunnan. The big guy said they were journalists from Beijing. Then he qualified it

Well, we’re sort of journalists. We’re a film crew and we record interviews. But most of the stuff we film is never seen by the public, only by the leadership.

So it’s like the emperor traveling incognito to find out what’s going on at the grass roots?

The big guy laughed. (There’s a popular TV show about a famous Emperor’s secret trips around China).

The big guy showed me his ID. At this point the little guy started to squirm in his seat.

They were from the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, China’s prosecution service.

The little guy was edgy but the big guy still wanted to talk.

We’re after corrupt officials. But we don’t arrest them. We just interview people and gather evidence. Other people carry out the arrests. Tomorrow we’re going to film in a small town down the road.

By this time the little guy made it clear to his friend that he was being indiscreet, and steered the conversation towards football.

The next morning I saw the entire film crew loading up a couple of land cruisers. The big guy waved me a cheery goodbye.

Don’t some people have interesting jobs?

CHICKENTAIL BAR

A friend of mine believes that machine translations are as enlightening as Zen poems; he says they reveal the deep structure of the world, or something along those lines.

Anyway here are a few mouthwatering items from the menu in the revolving restaurant at the top of the Jian Yin hotel, Xining.

Wine of delightfully fresh chicken tail. The color and laster is deep and red. Special of flavor this inside wine. Plus clear dry and tiny and bitter fuck the gin.

Cuba Libra – a style chicken tail the wine bore.

Three text fish bone body

Yum!

CHINA’S CHRISTIANS IN LEGAL LIMBO

Zhao Haiyan teaches English at a prestigious state school. She is also a devout Christian. Bright and attractive, she is quite open with her colleagues about belonging to an unregistered, and technically illegal, house church. Her conversations are peppered with references to “the Lord”, and her “brothers and sisters”.

The school officials are Communist Party members. Yet far from persecuting her, they recently invited her to devise and teach an elective course on Christianity. Her enthusiasm for the course is matched by its take-up among the school’s mainly middle class students.

Kim Chul is an overseas student at a Chinese university. He is in his late forties and arrived from Korea in 2005 with his wife and four children. While his young classmates live in dorms, Kim leases a huge apartment spread over three floors. The living room is strewn with Bibles and Christian literature. Kim attends class irregularly and makes little effort to conceal that his real business in China is missionary work. In many parts of China, Korean and American missionaries, officially students, teachers or businessmen, operate more or less openly.

Christianity is not suppressed; on the contrary, many of China’s leaders – most recently Jiang Zemin – have been well-disposed towards it. But the law allows freedom of worship only in officially sanctioned churches that are shunned by many believers in favour of unregulated house churches. The differences between the two lie not in doctrine, but in loyalties. Like England’s Elizabeth I, the government does not “seek a window into men’s souls”, but neither will it permit what it sees as allegiance to foreign powers.

In practical terms the legal position of worshippers in unofficial churches is far from clear. Wide discretion is left to local government and the level of tolerance varies. In Henan province nearly 2000 house church members were arrested during 2005 alone. In March 2007 40 house church members were arrested in Nanyang city; their preacher and his wife were detained for 10 days. The authorities often claim they are responding to complaints about noisy prayer meetings.

Many of China’s Christians are evangelical Protestants. They tend to preach an aggressive self-help doctrine that is popular among the middle class and the entrepreneurial poor. Yet this message differs little from official enthusiasm for the free market.

What irks the authorities is not so much the individualist, pro-capitalist message but the suspicion that under the cover of religion some organizations are seeking to undermine Communist Party rule.

Some house churches are heavily influenced by overseas evangelicals who push a hard-right, pro-American agenda. Many Chinese Christians hold pro-American views on world political issues including the invasion of Iraq and unqualified support for Israel. Some house church leaders even talk about evangelizing the Islamic world, an ambition that could cause foreign policy embarrassments and even lead to tension with China’s large Muslim minority.

LATEST T-SHIRTS

Seen on a T-shirt in Nanjing.

“Inflict pain and bring horror to your opponents. Don’t let your friends speak to ugly girls.”

SUMMER HOLIDAY IN NANJING?

Who would take a holiday in Nanjing – one of China’s three famous furnaces – at the height of its sweltering summer.

The answer is people with very little choice; for example Henry Kissinger who has to be careful where his plane refuels in case he’s hauled in for questioning about war crimes. Mr K spent a few days at the Nanjing Sofitel last week.

Of course he knows he is in no danger from the fearless judges of People’s China who have other fish to fry such as bicycle thieves, shopkeepers who sell fake DVDs etc etc..

DALI POLICE DISPERSE PEACE FESTIVAL

Police in Dali, one of China’s most popular tourist destinations, have dispersed a Rainbow Gathering, organizers of the event said yesterday.

Around 50 people from a dozen countries had gathered for the month long peace and new age festival. The loosely organized Rainbow group claims to have organized many similar events since 1972, and recently held gatherings in Israel and Thailand.

On 19th June, police officers, accompanied by Dali’s deputy mayor, ordered participants to leave a mountain camp that the group had established with the agreement of local farmers and villagers.

The handful of Chinese supporters left immediately but about a dozen overseas participants defied police orders, formed a circle and chanted the Buddhist greeting O-Mi-To-Fo.

By this afternoon however, the remaining campers had begun to trickle down the mountain to Dali’s old town.

There were no reports of arrests or violence, although one of the Chinese supporters who was present on the mountain said the police made threats and used strong language.

The authorities cited the risk of fire as the reason for their action. The mountains around Dali are heavily posted with warnings against lighting fires, and smoking is banned in forested areas. Rainbow supporters regard fire as sacred and fires form an important part of their gatherings.

Dali is China’s most popular backpacker destination and a favorite with overseas students. Marijuana and other recreational drugs are readily available and there are many Western style cafes and bars.

Locals had been watching with mild surprise and amusement as dread locked Rainbow supporters walked through the cobbled streets carrying agricultural implements.

The small expatriate community expressed mixed feelings about the newcomers with some worrying that the Rainbow Gathering would bring unwelcome police attention to other foreigners living in Dali.

Rainbow supporters say they will now reconsider plans for a larger gathering in China in 2008.

For further information about Rainbow you can visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Gathering

EURO BIZ MAG SAYS CHINESE COURTS TOO SOFT

While leafing through the imaginatively named Eurobiz, magazine of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, I found an article calling on China’s courts to get tough with violators of intellectual property laws.

The drift of the article was that the softies on China’s bench had been allowing piracy to run riot, although there were recent, reassuring signs of a crackdown.

Now, China’s judges are not used to being criticized for leniency. They sentence 2000 people to death every year. Nor are they scrupulous about fair trials. In 2006 they acquitted less than one percent of defendants.

I turned from Eurobiz to the Yangtze Evening Paper which carried a familiar-looking picture of dejected, orange-clad defendants lined up in court. As if on cue, Nanjing’s Xuanwu court had just handed down the heaviest sentences ever recorded in a Chinese intellectual property case.

A young husband and wife team of DVD traders, Wang Yuansheng and Wang Yanli, were sent to prison for 5 and 10 years respectively. Their supplier, Chen Hezhong, was also sentenced to 10 years. Xu Hongbing, the big fish among the Wangs’ customers, got 5 years. Four bag carriers received sentences of between 1 and 5 years. The total value of stock seized by police was less than $20,000.

All this fuss was to mark International Intellectual Property Day. Yes, there really is such a day and it is celebrated, if that is the word, on 26th April every year. It is promoted by a United Nations organization with a $500,000,000 budget. Just think how many fine lunches and Powerpoint presentations half a billion dollars can buy.

I’ve never met the author of the Eurobiz article but I’m sure he would never dream of buying a pirate DVD, which almost certainly puts him in a minority among foreign business folk in China, whose cupboards are usually packed to capacity with them. It would be mathematically impossible for some foreigners to watch their stock of films in their remaining lifespan.

I’m sure there are serious (and dreary) arguments in favor of defending intellectual property rights but I can’t see what is gained by destroying the lives of small shopkeepers struggling to make ends meet in China’s tough, unforgiving society.

As the old song goes; it’s the rich wot gets the pleasure, it’s the poor wot gets the blame.

COMPENSATION NATION

Compensation scams are common in China; a while ago I had a ringside seat for an elegantly executed example on the train from Hong Kong to Shenzhen.

The mark was a fat, middle-aged American with a young Thai girlfriend. In the usual melee getting on the train, a Chinese woman – the victim – fell over and accused him of pushing her. After a minute or so of exaggerated wailing, a young man – the enraged bystander – joined in the accusations. As the argument heated up, another man – the peacemaker – intervened and insisted that the best solution was to to call the police. He then quickly pulled the communication cord. The train stopped at the next station and a guard arrived.

The mark, his girlfriend, the victim, and the angry bystander continued their argument on the station platform. The peacemaker – despite being the one who pulled the communication cord, was allowed to stay on the train, but got off at the next station to rejoin his accomplices and repeat the trick.

In Hong Kong the aim is usually to extort money from the mark in return for not making a formal complaint. On the mainland, compensation crooks happily carry their scams to trial, confident that a corrupt or inept judge will find for them, especially if the defendant is a foreigner.

SILK ROAD NOT SO SMOOTH AS TEMPERS FLARE IN CHINA HEAT WAVE

Enraged road-workers attacked a passenger bus between Dunhuang and Jiayuguan, two of the main scenic spots on China’s Silk Road. They dragged the conductor from the bus and beat him senseless after a dispute about the right of way on a half built highway that follows the old trade route to the west.

The new highway runs through north China’s Gansu province across an arid plain dotted with the remains of Buddhist stupas. China’s government hopes the road will spread prosperity to China’s far west.

Those building the road, though, might be forgiven for wondering how they will share in the wealth. They are mainly local peasants supplementing their meagre farm incomes by working long hours in searing temperatures on the new road. Wages are low and payment is uncertain.

There is no traffic management system to protect the road workers. Work goes on in the midst of speeding vehicles and workers risk being killed or injured by reckless drivers. With no road signs or traffic lights available, the work teams improvise diversions using stones, concrete slabs and bulldozers to block the road. Inevitably disputes occur.

Bus drivers are China’s least patient road-users. As soon as a bus leaves the station, the crew is on the lookout to add passengers who pay them cash in hand. Willing to subject ticket holders to almost any detour and inconvenience to boost their private business, they refuse to tolerate any delay not of their own making.

This incident was sparked when the bus driver refused to stop when requested and edged forward aggressively, causing one of the road-workers to fall in front of the bus. For another worker it turned out to be his unlucky day when he was later arrested by a passenger who happened to be an off-duty policeman.

The passengers reaction was mixed, with some resigned, some expressing sympathy for the workers while others condemned them as naturally violent.

“We never used to have this sort of thing, but now it happens more and more”

“The workers real problem is with their bosses, their wages are too low and they are very angry”.

“Peasants are like that; they get angry and want to beat people up”.

No-one, including the off-duty policeman, intervened when the bus-driver carried out a cowardly revenge beating on the arrested worker. The worker was taken to a local police station where, after the bus had continued on its way, a small group of his family and friends remained to protest his arrest.

KASHGAR CONVERSATIONS

It is Friday prayers in Kashgar’s rambling, rickety old town of mud, brick and wood; men of all ages are carrying their prayer mats towards the packed mosque. Loudspeakers relay the sermon to the overspill crowd in the adjoining streets; traders simply lay their mats next to their stalls. A little way down from the mosque, toddlers play happily in the aptly named Hope Nursery that optimistically offers to teach them English.

Kashgar is China’s most westerly city, close to borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kyrghizstan. It is the second city of the resource-rich Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which covers one sixth of China’s land area, but has a population of only 20 million, of which around 40% are Uyghurs, a Turkic people with a history of resistance to Chinese rule. Few of the Muslim Uyghurs speak good Chinese; perhaps more than half either cannot, or will not speak it at all. “They take pride in not speaking Chinese”, a Uyghur medical student told me.

On the road out of town to a beautiful Islamic building that the Han Chinese call the tomb of the Fragrant Concubine, and the Uyghurs call the Abakh Hoja tomb, is a new housing estate. The estate is low rise, of good quality, modern but built in a pastiche Turkic style. At first sight it seems a sympathetic development, designed to fit in with its surroundings. But two years after completion, the estate is still largely empty.

As we passed the estate, my taxi driver gestured to the old town. “People would rather live there than in new apartments”. She regards the old houses as slums and those who cling on to them as perverse. Like the Uyghurs she is a Muslim, but a member of the Hui national minority. Unlike the Turkic Uyghurs, Huis speak Chinese and physically resemble China’s Han majority.

Sitting in his brother’s elegant restaurant, a Uyghur schoolteacher says guardedly that the reasons for not moving into the estate “may be political”.

The medical student says the area used to be part of the old town. The old buildings were demolished and the previous householders moved out with inadequate compensation. Unable to afford the new houses, they moved to cheaper areas. In any case, he says, people prefer the old style houses. “They are practical, warm in winter and cool in summer. People like them and don’t want to move to modern flats”.

Since the railway arrived in Kashgar in 2000, the number of Han Chinese residents has jumped sharply in the previously overwhelmingly Uyghur city. Today, perhaps 40% of the city’s 600,000 people are Han Chinese and many of Kashgar’s Uyghurs feel that their way of life is under threat.

One Uyghur who speaks Chinese is the middle-aged owner of a makeshift roadside bar. “There are just too many Chinese here” he says straightforwardly. His young Han Chinese assistant grins as he half-heartedly argues while trying not to upset his boss. The exchange is good humoured but there is no doubt they are talking about a real issue.

“To tell you the truth, relations between the Chinese and the Uyghurs are not good” says a Han Chinese taxi driver. “It’s OK for Uyghur boys to date Chinese girls but if a Chinese boy dates a Uyghur girl there’s trouble”. In a town where men routinely carry knives it is easy to see where trouble may lead.

A elderly man from the Kyrghiz national minority shook his head and said ” Every day there is trouble between the Chinese and the Uyghurs”, not indicating whose side, if any, he was on.

China has big plans for Kashgar. The local government plans a free trade area, new factories, roads, and airports, with the aim of turning Kashgar into the hub of the Central Asian economy. Such developments may threaten the traditional way of life of Xinjiang’s Uyghur majority, but the authorities hope that increasing prosperity will help ensure most will at least acquiesce in Beijing rule. There are some signs that this strategy may be working, at least among the middle class.

The medical student also told me “Although In my heart I am a Muslim, I don’t often attend the mosque as our university does not allow it. Actually, many people who go to the mosque are hypocrites who drink and do other bad things. I am nearly in the Communist Party. In China if you want to get on, you have to join”.

SACRIFICE YOUR SERVANTS

More enlightened social attitudes.

“Models of everyday objects such as cars, servants and televisions are offered as sacrifices” (objects are shown burning).

From a Hong Kong museum of culture film documentary about a temple ritual. July 2006.

A LAND OF PERPETUAL STUDENTS

When I first arrived in China, as I returned from teaching each evening I would often see a young man pacing up and down outside the foreign experts hotel with a book in his hand, talking to himself in English.

He was there almost every day. When autumn turned into winter and the evenings became dark and cold, he would stand under a street lamp for illumination and read aloud from the same book.

My elder brother is rather tall – he would declare – and my younger brother is rather clever!

On Tuesday we will visit the British Museum – he would inform a non-existent tour group – and on Wednesday we are going on a boat trip to the Tower of London!

His voice rising to a crescendo, he would shriek to anyone within earshot – I like pineapples very much, but my favourite fruit is banana!

I thought he was a little odd.

Wandering around the beautiful and leafy campus at weekends, I noticed dozens more people studying in the autumn sun, open books across their knees. Sometimes I would see groups of music students sitting under the trees, singing arias from western operas – a dozen different tunes entwining in a crazy fugue, against the raucous rhythm of the cicadas.

And it wasn’t just students who were busy studying. In the early morning I saw groups of elderly women learning complicated T’ai Chi and dance routines using drums and fans.

Other groups were learning sword forms – some using two swords at once. The routines were energetic, and the swords looked pretty real; on occasion I was afraid that a beginner might chop her own head off.

Soon afterwards I began to talk to some of the people practising T’ai Chi, and an 80 year old master – who looked no older than 60 – offered to teach me a sword routine. He, in turn, was occasionally corrected by an even older teacher, a man who could not have been less than 100 years old and was now too frail to use a sword, but instead demonstrated tiny adjustments and refinements with his walking stick.

It seemed to me that the whole of China was constantly studying and learning. It was as if the world’s oldest civilisation was being passed on in front of my eyes. In England, businessmen are very fond of buzzwords and catchphrases, and one of the latest is lifelong learning, supposedly necessary to prepare us for the knowledge society, but China has clearly been practising lifelong learning for centuries.

Modern as well as ancient disciplines get the same treatment. I spent last semester in Xiamen, and while walking on the beach one day, I saw about twenty earnest young men juggling bottles on the sand. It took me a couple of minutes to realise that they were training to be cocktail barmen.

I have long since joined in China’s perpetual learning society myself. I study Chinese and T’ai Chi seriously, but with modest ambitions.

As for the guy under the street lamp, I decided he was crazy after all.