Shalom Chaim

Israel is my personal curse. Although I know I shouldn't go there anymore, I can't resist the craving inside my heart.

So, here I come. 6th visit to Israel. Semester program of modern Hebrew at Hebrew University. September 2011 to February 2012. If next year is the end of the year, let me be in Israel where love is lost, girl matures, and life goes on.

Shalom shalom.

Disaster vs. Mob

Recently, too many tragedies happened in China. Or maybe to call it "tragedy" is a blasphemy for all the innocent lives lost. Maybe we should call it "crime".

After the crimes committed, what I saw were angry people, furious, outraged. They criticized the government, hurled abuses on the officials, and discredited every bit that is made in China. Overnight, all those silent people stood up and condemned the crimes. However, where were they? They've been living in this country for long. When babies were toxicated by the milk power, when workers buried live under coal mines, when passengers roasted to death on the terrorist bus, they said nothing. Or maybe they said a word or two, and then returned to their normal lives as if nothing has any impact on their very lives. So that's fine.

And now people are outraged again. Honestly, I'm tired to see it. I don't know for how long this time that people will keep being outraged. And after this accident, what will remain, apart from the old newspapers, vague memories, and long-forgotten words spoken out?

Foreigners sometime say, China needs a grassroots revolution to overthrow the monarchy. True, maybe China needs a grassroots revolution. But so far, I see no possible "grassroots" that are capable of doing this. Everyone, apart from the super rich and powerful who'd very much like to continue their ruling life, is netted into the invisible system that imprisons every single aspect of commoner's life: education, health care (if there's any at all), civil servant system, party membership, tax, insurance (if there's any at all), etc. No one is courageous enough to do anything "reckless" unless they can get political refuge in the US (well many people go riot just for the green cards... not many succeed). Therefore, apart from yelling and forgetting, what else can they do?

Now people are yelling again. They yell at everything and anything. In order to yell louder, they begin to spread rumors to stimulate the flames of hatred. Now the definition of "good guy" has changed: "good guy" means "the best bad guy in the bad guy groups"... The famous scientist should be proud of Chinese and their application of "relativity"?

Surely we need democracy and freedom and human rights and everything, you name it, we need it. But democracy is not built up by mobs. Freedom will be turned into destruction. And human rights are only one of the excuses for one group to repress the other.

Freedom

Me: I know this is not the right time to say it, but I have to. Right after almost all the terrorist attack on the Western world, most people would suspect the "Orientals", namely, Middle Easterners and other religious countries. But it is not always the case.

Lucia: True that. I wonder why.

Ariadne: True. I wonder why the New York Times just got away with naming a random Islamic group for the Oslo attack

Me: because we need to respect the freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of suspect and the freedom of imagination

Ariadne: ‪I didn't say the opposite. But if a major newspaper is running such a big story, they can, you know, apologise afterwards. Or check their sources in the first place. This is called journalistic integrity.‬

Me: I'm afraid, facing one of the strongest stereotypes and political reality, journalistic integrity is so trivial and thus marginalized..

Falun Gong Protest in Tel Aviv

My friend told me that Falun Gongists are protesting from 6.00pm to 8.00pm tonight outside the Chinese Embassy in Tel Aviv. Then I think it's just so timely for me to say a word or two on Falun Gong. By the way, the religious leader of Falun Gong was from my hometown Changchun. When he was still a worker, my dad actually met him for once. It's funny to think about it.

OK, first of all, I need to say that I fully respect the religious freedom of Falun Gong so much the same as I respect Flying Spaghetti Monster and it's great to see the FSM's oriental counterpart born in China (not in South Korea, since South Korean anthropologists spend most of them time finding evidence that every Chinese has Korean ancestor...well I don't.)

Secondly, I love to read their Chinese newspapers, Da Ji Yuan, when I was in NYC, in Washington DC, and in London. Every time I feel life sucks and boring I will get one copy for free in Chinatown. In the Chinese version of Da Ji Yuan you'll find all kinds of jokes. My favorite ones are "young Marx joined cults in Germany before he became a communist and he also learned dark magic in one of the cult", and "all the Chinese Communist Party members (700,000,000) resigned altogether overnight", etc.

Thirdly, I fully support their canon advocating people not to go to hospital when they feel sick. If you need an open-heart operation, they suggest you to just relax and stay at home, everything will be fine! Think about it, there're so many people in China living in poverty. If they can save the money for an open-heart operation and ride it over, it would be fantastic!

It is so sad that the Chinese government won't allow such a hilarious grassroots religion to exist. Although its existence seems to be an insult for the I.Q. of the Chinese people, you cannot negate the fact that there're some abnormal people living on the planet and although they seem very retard, they still deserve a place and a say, right?

So I would very much like to join their protest for FSM...sorry, for Falun Gong's religious freedom tonight at Tel Aviv. However, it's a bit far away from Jerusalem and I'm really lazy tonight.

Just one small hope for their future development: it will cut the cost if they write the same thing on both their Chinese publications and English publications. The English readers would also like to appreciate the "Marx joined cult" jokes the same as the Chinese readers.

Hope they have a bright future and more followers!

Facebook and Xiaonei (Renren.com)

As everyone knows, Facebook together with another bunch of foreign websites are blocked in China. Someone interprets this censorship as follows: because these foreign websites refuse to collaborate with the censorship system of the Chinese internet security, therefore it's better to block them all. However, many mainland Chinese netizens use proxy software to obtain a foreign IP and they still can connect to these websites. Chinese diplomats, interviewed by foreign media and overseas Chinese students, said: well I don't understand why Chinese must use Facebook. Because in China we also have similar social networking websites and the most famous on among the many is Xiaonei.com (later renamed Renren.com).

So is Xiaonei.com the same thing as Facebook? I don't want to talk about it in a diplomatic, political or human rights way. Last time we had dinner together with a group of Chinese students in London Chinatown and we talked about the culture difference between Facebook and Xiaonei.

On Facebook, people post about their lives: what they did, where they went, what they liked and disliked. Generally it is an expression and display of oneself. The "I" is the center on the stage. People facebook to let their friends know what's going on with themselves and hope to generate comments.

On Xiaonei.com, the users would rather "share" resources posted by others (notes, album, etc.) and the main purpose is to learn new things and collect new information. The most popular type of posts which got shared the most are the notes and album to teach new knowledge, new skills, or even basic living skills. I got a feeling that most of the time, Xiaonei users get online to learn, instead of showing oneself.

I guess this might be one cultural difference between America and China (if I can conveniently use Facebook and Xiaonei as examples).