05 | May | 2012 | Ruined for Life: Phoenix Edition

Ups and Downs

05 May 2012 Leave a Comment

by smkelly8 in musing, news, photos Tags: Asia, Avengers, China, journalism, London Book Fair

The Avengers #200 (Oct. 1980). Cover art by George Pérez and Terry Austin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This story’s bigger than I expected. Here I sit in a kind of bubble, the bubble of an outsider who doesn’t speak the language and lives in a place where openly discussing hot topics isn’t done as far as I can see.

My second year students are doing a news project where they have to put together a short group newscast on Monday’s and Fridays. When a colleague who teaches business lamented over students not reading or knowing anything about the news, I thought I could help with that, thus the group reports. Yet most of the stories are so innocuous. The students must include national and international news, but they have a different take on what’s important. Yesterday we heard about the Sino-Russian military exercises which were significant, buying cars (it’s hardly news that Chinese people want to buy cars, but the student who did that project so rarely comes to class that I was surprised he did anything), the release of The Avengers, an interesting story on how the overuse of ground water is causing buildings to sink in China, and a recap of the London Book Fair, which had a China theme. I’d say two of the stories were far more lightweight than I hoped. And I’d be dumbstruck and unnerved if anyone did a controversial story, but it is so weird how different the foreign and Sino news reports have been lately.

Downing Street China talks ‘likely’ to mention Neil Heywood (itv.com)
Need to Know News: China says activist can apply to study abroad; Bin Laden’s letters reveal a terrorist losing control (piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com)
Zakaria: What happens when China slows down? (globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com)

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Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial Hall

05 May 2012 3 Comments

by smkelly8 in China, travel Tags: Asia-Pacific, China, Communists, Flowers of War, history, Imperial Japanese Army, Nanjing, Nanking Massacre, peace, war, WWII

I knew I wanted to see, or felt I had to see Nanjing‘s Massacre Memorial Hall. It seems that everyone knows about the horrors of the Japanese massacre of Nanjing, everyone except the Japanese deniers. Here’s a summary from Newsweek’s Isaac Stone Fish:

In the winter of 1937, the Japanese army stormed Nanjing, then China‘s capital, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people in what is now known as the Nanjing Massacre. The incident remains the most emotionally wrenching chapter in the history of Sino-Japanese relations. But unlike the Holocaust and other acts of mass violence during World War II, creative attempts to represent the massacrehave been few and far between.

Over the past few years, however, there has been an outpouring of dramatizations of Nanjing in literature and film, as a new generation of Chinese auteurs attempt to grapple with the tragedy, and juggle the demands of their audience, their censors, and their own artistic conscience. Last fall, for instance, National Book Award–winning author Ha Jin published the English-language novel, Nanjing Requiem, which explores the role foreigners played in trying to save the Chinese. And last month brought Zhang Yimou‘s The Flowers of War, the most expensive film ever made in China, which tells the story of a priest, played by Christian Bale, who tries to shelter schoolchildren and prostitutes from the Japanese.

Such reflection on tragedy wasn’t always common. For years, after the Communists came to power, the state wanted to bury the massacre entirely and maintain good relations with the new Japanese government, which could help support China’s struggling economy. Nanjing was the capital of the hated nationalist regime, and the Communists played no role in defending the Chinese from brutality. The massacre did not fit into the Communist Party’s history, and since the state did not tolerate dissenting views, very little was published about it.

Fish I. Remembering Nanjing. Newsweek (Pacific Edition) [serial online]. January 9, 2012;159(2/3):6. Available from: MasterFILE Premier, Ipswich, MA. Accessed May 5, 2012.

I admit I went with some trepidation as I’m so sensitive to seeing or hearing about atrocities. Yet I feel my discomfort is a small price to play for living in an unjust world.

Staggering

I needn’t have feared though as this memorial, which is reminiscent of the Vietnam War Memorial in D.C., emphasizes peace. Also, the atrocities are depicted through the buffer of art, so the point of the horror is made through sculpture and and landscape rather than through raw photos. While the memorial is somber, as one progresses through it a message of hope for peace grows.

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