Questions about Tibet

Disclaimer:  I am Chinese.

For many, many years, I was a supporter of "freeing Tibet".  My parents and I regularly fought about the oppressive regime in China and the Chinese government's wanton disregard for human, especially religious, rights.  When my parents brought up anything about Tibet being not so great itself, I would scornfully reject it as a product of their Communist education.  Tibet was the paragon of a peaceful order destroyed by the CCP in its quest for world, or at least regional, domination.

In the months leading up to the Beijing Olympics, Tibet was once again brought to the forefront of the world's attention.  There is absolutely no doubt that what China is doing in Tibet is terrible.  The authoritarian control of media access to events in Tibet, incarceration of monks and journalists, and general acts of violence and human rights abuses are deplorable.  Furthermore, the erasing of an entire culture through "assimilation" is in many ways worse than outright conquest.  This tactic of insinuation gives the perpetrators a moral loophole--an excuse of multiculturalism--that allows them to justify what they are doing.  I want to be clear that I do not support the current Chinese policies in Tibet.  

However, I have problems with what the movement for "freeing Tibet" is actually asking for.  I have problems with how the Western media portrays China as the destroyers of a peaceful society, and the attempts to galvanize the world in aiding Tibet to restore proper order and religious freedom to their stolen kingdom.  Consider for a moment, what do you actually know about Tibetan history?  What was the structure of their society before the Communists came?  Why is the "old Tibet" considered a Shangri-la?

I read this article about a year ago.  I do not pretend to have followed up on its claims; I have not done the research to validate any of its arguments or statements.  What I am concerned with is why the contents of this article, and of the sources (books, journal articles, interviews) it cites, are not more widely discussed.  The author, and his sources, claim that Tibet was a slave society, one in which serfs, criminals, and "criminals" were oppressed through systematic torture led by the Dalai Lama and his lords.  Why is there not even an awareness of this history of Tibet--even if this awareness was just, "Looney journalists and authors and historians wrote crazy things about Tibet that have been discounted and dismissed as inaccurate"?

The fact that most of the public is NOT aware of this account of Tibet makes me wonder what the true purposes of the "Free Tibet" movement actually are.  It seems as if such activism may be more of a symptom of sinophobia than an actual desire for the well-being of Tibetans.  I know this will be extremely offensive to many, and I know that many, many people genuinely care about religious freedom and equality.  But do people actually know what the implications of liberating Tibet are?  Chinese Communism, especially in the 50s, was not categorically evil.  But somehow, half a century later, the world seems to believe "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."  

Perhaps I am letting my ethnic biases influence my judgment, and I am the first to concede that possibility.  Yet if you look up the entry for Tibet on Wikipedia (true source for all that is factual and holy in the world, of course), there is not one mention of the societal structure of Tibet before the Communists came; Tibetan history consists of a long list of the various powers that have ruled Tibet.  This is lack of information is pretty much unique to the article on Tibet (look up France, the United States, or for that matter, China).  

Why is there no discussion of life in Tibet before 1951?  I'm afraid that this is one question that will remain unanswered because we won't like what the answer will be.

I have figured out the secret to cooking for one:

Use (super) small pots and pans.

Thoughts on waiting

I'm reading a novel that is set in Communist China (1960s-1980s) and one of the central characters is a woman from the rural Northeast who has bound feet. She is basically abandoned by her husband and is left to take care of his ailing parents (and eventually their graves), the house, their daughter, and the fields. Every year for the past 18 years, her husband comes back from the army hospital he works at to divorce her. Every year, she agrees to be divorced, but for various reasons, her husband has never been granted a divorce.

This woman reminded me of my paternal grandmother--I say "reminded" and not "reminds" because as far as I know, the only things they have in common are years of hardship and bound feet. My grandmother and I have never been close. Even though she (and my grandfather) lived with us for two years, I spent my childhood mostly with my mom's parents. Once I came to America, I rarely talked to anyone in my extended family. Also, my grandmother considered it a part of the natural order that she make all her daughter-in-laws' lives hell, and I viscerally hate anyone who hurts my mom.

And so, until about a week ago, I found it quite comfortable to file my grandmother under "bad people" and had no intentions of reexamining whether or not she deserved to be disliked by her own granddaughter. It never occurred to me that she would have a backstory. Well, this is not exactly true--it never occurred to me that I should care about her backstory. For some reason, I care now.

Until her sons got comfortable jobs in the city and transferred their parents out of the countryside, my grandmother worked in the field and around the house, from sunrise till sunset, nonstop, on her bound feet. She was beaten by her husband, abused physically and emotionally by the family she married into, and had no choice but to submit to her circumstances. I wonder what this kind of life does to a person's spirit, how endless inescapable suffering twists your soul, and I wonder, does your past justify your present?

I wish I had taken the trouble to get to know my grandmother better. She lived through a cultural revolution; she was born a peasant and now has her own condo in a resort town on the coast; her feet are bound and her grand-daughters are worried about birth-control; she is now in her mid-nineties although a decade ago the doctors said her lymphoma was so advanced she'd have at most six weeks to live. 17 years ago, she had a stroke that paralyzed the left side of her body and she has been wheelchair-bound since. My grandmother should be a fascinating woman.

Unfortunately, I will never be able to ask her the questions that I now want to. She has Alzheimer's and doesn't even know who she is most of the time, much less who I am. It took me two decades to develop an active interest in my own grandmother, and this interest has come too late. My regrets are somewhat assuaged by the knowledge that she has finally found peace. My mom went back to see her last year, and she said my grandmother's eyes are no longer filled with venom and spite and loathing. She has the innocence of a three-year-old and is happy for probably the first time in her life. God, it seems, has finally given her His mercy.

But, (characteristically) I can't help but be sad. Two years ago, my maternal grandfather passed away. I loved him, and I never got a chance to thank him for those afternoons he spent flying kites with me in the park, the red flowers full of nectar that he picked for me to suck on, for calling me "da bao" when I was the youngest person in the family, for letting me ride my tricycle around his house. He died thousands of miles away, and I couldn't even go to the funeral. I hadn't even talked with him in over a year. I know this is not unique to me, but it really never occurred to me that someone I love so much could die before I got the chance to "make things right". I guess I thought he would wait for me.

I had been operating under the assumption that there would be time to do all the things I wanted and that were important to me. If there is time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate, time for a hundred indecisions and visions and revisions before the taking of a toast and tea, surely there would be time for the bigger things! It never occurred to me that God would dangle a desire in front of me and snatch it away before I had been satisfied. My God is a merciful god, and I think I am just now starting to realize that my definition of "merciful" is inadequate. When you think of all the opportunities you miss, all the chances that you either rebuff or that are taken away from you, it's enough to drive a person mad.

I don't and can't understand God's mercy. I think I need to just accept it and stop asking so many damned questions. Until we find a way to tap into God's mind or develop more reliable methods of fortune telling, it's probably best to remember the Count's words as he finally sails off with Haydée--all of human wisdom can be summed up in two words: "wait" and "hope".

Prof. Rosenberg brought up same-sex marriage and CA in our seminar. I cringed.

In the season 5 premier of The Hills (amazing, btw!), Heidi's mom tries to convince Heidi that Spencer is actually an asshole by ambushing her with an ex-boyfriend and attempting to reunite them in an embarrassingly obvious and tactless way. I hope it was in jest, but the failed match-making was interesting because it only seemed to reinforce Heidi's strange notion that Spencer is the man of her dreams. What is it about getting overwhelmed with one set of information that makes us bolt in the opposite direction?

Last Tuesday, Vermont's legislature overrode the governor's veto on a bill that allowed gays to marry. As a resident of California and a "bleeding-heart liberal", I was deeply mortified by this. Of course I'm happy for Vermont--clearly Vermont has a better grasp on equality and civil rights than California, and I'm glad that gays in Vermont now have the same basic right to marriage--but California. We're the Golden State! we've got San Francisco! and Hollywood!

And Prop 8. Prior to the election, many friends reassured me that Californians would never pass Prop 8. No way would one of the most liberal states in the country take away the right to marry from gays. But we did. Why? I still don't quite understand, but I'm beginning to think that it's because gay rights is such an issue in California. Its very prominence galvanizes the opposition. The fact that many of us support the right of gays to marry gives conservatives something to rally around. Gays and gay-rights are a part of the Californian culture. People are constantly forced to face it--and they think about it without actually thinking about it. Many people (apparently more than half of California) see it as something foreign and strange and automatically reject it. They don't understand that the point of the law is to filter out these prejudices, to erase class and race and religion and every other distinction on which discrimination is based.

In Federalist 78, Hamilton argues that it is the role of judges "to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the ill effects [of] ill humors, which the arts of designing men, or the influence of particular conjunctures, sometimes disseminate among the people themselves, and which...have a tendency...to occasion dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community." For a while I considered writing to the California Supreme Court to remind them of Hamilton's words. I wanted them to tell them that they had at least one supporter who recognized that they were doing the very thing that our Founders thought they should be doing. They did the right thing, and for some reason it angered Californians so much that we passed a proposition to shut them up.

The worst part about all this is that it is unlikely that the California Supreme Court will overturn Prop 8. Doing so would set a precedent that would make propositions practically meaningless, but it is mind-numbingly unfair that such a basic right will be sacrificed in the name of legal continuity.

If California's highest court backs down and does the unjust thing (upholding Prop 8), I will start a new initiative in the next election cycle. I will propose another Prop 8, again to protect marriage, but this time to make divorce unconstitutional. If there are people who are shameless enough to ban gay marriage to "protect the sacred institution of marriage", let's help them really protect marriage. California has stopped reporting its divorce rates, but I'm pretty sure there are more straight people wanting to get divorced than there are gay people wanting to get married. It seems to me that the real and more pressing assault on the sanctity of marriage is straight people thinking of marriage as a disposable commodity, not gay people in love.

Hail to the Chief

How great is it to finally at long last have a president of whom we are not ashamed to send to other countries?  Thank you, President Obama.

****update****

I tried to go jogging today, but when the wind vetoed that idea, I decided to just power-walk around Hyde Park.  On 48th street, there is a block that is kind of fenced off, but there were still people coming in and out, so I thought I'd go check out where President Obama's house probably is.  I set foot on the sidewalk and this exchanged occurred:

Policewoman: "MA'AM.  WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!  MA'AM!  WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

me: "ummm....i'm just...trying to work out?...."

Policewoman: "NOT ON THIS BLOCK YOU'RE NOT!  DO YOU LIVE HERE?"

me: "no....i live a few blocks south?...."

Policewoman: "MA'AM, YOU NEED TO LEAVE."

me: "okay...."

That's alright, Mr. President, I forgive you.  =)