Absurdity, Allegory and China

Yesterday afternoon I watched the video of the April 19, 2008 anti-CNN demonstration in Los Angeles by a large group of Chinese supporters, many of them mainland students on ‘student visas’ in the US. I thought, “Good for them”, they get a chance to see how freedom of speech really works – a minority opinion being loudly expressed in the midst of a disagreeing majority – or, at the very least, a majority who really doesn’t care all that much, which is, more often than not, the case. But not always. Sometimes the concerns of minorities are contentiously resisted by the majority, the civil rights demonstrations in the southeast United States in the 60s being a dramatic case in point. In the US the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the US Constitution, is where many of our basic freedoms are spelled out. These freedoms were articulated and drafted into law in order to protect the minority from the weight and muscle of the majority, or what is more commonly referred to as “the tyranny of the majority.” The binding promise of a Bill of Rights, which was drawn up after the framing of the constitution (therefore amendments), was a pre-condition for constitutional ratification. Without the guarantee of a Bill of Rights, there was not going to be a country. Plenty of the original colonies in the shaky confederation – a very loose and suspicious alliance of colonies who were not that keen on giving up a penny or an ounce of power to any centralized governing body – had their own bills of rights. But collectively they finally had enough good sense to realize that working together was the only way they could build a country which could guarantee the survival of all of its various constituencies. So, if they were going to become the United States they demanded a listing of basic freedoms. And they got them. These freedoms have been battled for, about and over for the last two-hundred years. The freedom to have that demonstration on the LA streets by Chinese Americans, as well as Chinese nationals, was protected under those long ago amendments.

In another forum I posted a comment after watching the video, where, among other things, the demonstrators sang “The March of the Volunteers,” the Chinese national anthem, as traffic sped by between them and the CNN building. I was moved. Here was a large crowd, many of them clearly not US citizens, expressing their displeasure at what they believed was a racist attack upon their country and its citizens, vociferously expressing their discontent in the very public daylight with a bullhorn. I commented:

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with this picture. But imagine a reversal of roles and locations. Say, Beijing, the CCTV Bldg, foreign students and expats waving their home countries’ flags, protesting CCTV’s coverage of a story. Just imagine, a round of La Marseillaise on the Third Ring Road.”

This morning I checked to see if there had been any responses, and though there were three more comments, only one anonymous response was directed at me:

“you stupid, it seems cctv never slander other nations as thugs and goon, and they never metion amercian product are junk because their questioned beef.”

Though I’ve misplaced my decoder ring, I think I get what this one is about, but I’m still a bit fuzzy on the beef. To say that anonymous had missed the point is, I hope, obvious to the reader. If it is not, take a few minutes and read both comments a couple more times before you angrily bang your keyboard. Then, if you need it, take another minute or two and imagine the response on a Beijing street to a demonstrations by angry Americans upset at a perceived cultural snub by a Chinese media story, along with the subsequent singing of the Star Spangled Banner while waving American flags. If you think they should be clubbed and arrested, please go to the top and try reading this again. If after further reading, you still think they should be beaten into paste and hosed into the nearest sewer, then please go somewhere else. We are clearly not a match.
________
Last night I also read an account in the Shanghaiist concerning an attack by a crowd of protesters on an unwitting American volunteer English teacher at a local middle school in Zhuzhou, Hunan, who made the mistake of wandering into a boycott-targeted Carrefours. Upon exiting the store he was “attacked by a mob of about 150 people outside the Carrefours.”

… 3 men started to push him and then he was hit in the back of the head at least 3 times. He started to run, and the mob chased him. He jumped into a cab, but the mob surrounded the car and started shaking and rocking it. The cab driver was shouting at him to get out. Then they started hitting the car. The crowd was shouting “kill him! kill the Frenchman.”

One-hundred-and-fifty Chinese to one un-Frenchman. Bruce Lee would have loved the odds, but most folks I imagine would not. The police had to intercede. This is the sort of behavior which, if not checked, may guarantee a Chinese Olympic medal sweep. There are obviously better ways to win. Or to make a point.
________
In early 1970 I visited Yokosuka, Japan for the first of several times, though it seems odd to call it a visit. I had no passport and no customs line to pass through, had not ticket there or back. I was in the US Navy aboard an old WWII destroyer, a tin can, and we were fresh from several months patrolling the waters in and around Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin. There was a war, even if it was never declared, and we were obviously combatants. Yokosuka Naval Base was one of the two major Seventh Fleet port/bases where ships from the line put into to get patched back up, either to return to the gunline or to make the long trip back across the Pacific. This time it was a patch job prior to our return south.

I had an opportunity to take the train north to Tokyo for a day, so three of us headed to the station not far from the main gate of the base. It was a Sunday. As we entered the station we were met by a trainload of protesters who, I imagine were from Tokyo. They were coming to Yokosuka to protest the presence of the base. There must have been at least a couple of hundred young and very prepared people. They departed the train with their helmets and padding, their shields and banners, their sticks. These folks were ready to rock ‘n roll. And there we were, three young men outnumbered a good 60 :1. Life became very focused in those moments, as the other side suited up on the platform, belting each other up, clashing their shields, cinching their helmets under their chins just right. These were people preparing for battle. What became clear in nearly less time than it took to take three or four breaths was that they had no interest in us. Indirectly we were the objects of their objections, and in that sense, we were the enemy. But we were not the battle. To have attacked us would have been to lose moral authority, to give away the higher ground, and to, ultimately, lose the ‘war.’ They had a mission, and that mission wasn’t to accost three young sailors in the train station, and everyone of the protesters knew that. Some of them even smiled and nodded as they prepared for the assault on the line of police guarding the main gate. They had a goal, it was informed, and together they would try their best to achieve it. I stopped and watched them collect themselves, get it all together, lift their banners high and march out into the street. Then I caught the train to Tokyo.

Technorati Tags: gourley China Olympics Carrefours