Their day has come, and so will ours

Both the sad events of the Tiananmen Massacre in China and the Hillsborough Stadium stampede in English happened in 1989. Both involved the loss of many lives, the former far more than the latter.
But the major difference, as demonstrated by what transpired this week, is that while the truth of the Hillsborough tragedy has been uncovered by a 396-page report by an independent panel revealing that a police cover-up had taken place which had intended to shift the blame to the victims themselves, the truth of the Tienanmen is still hidden.

The victory of the Liverpool families is, of course, largely the outcome of their courage to persist in the fight for justice, but such courage has also been demonstrated by the families of the students who were killed, and the admirable effort of the group called the Tiananmen Mothers is an excellent example.

However, while in Britain the families have the rights and freedom to make the fight and the means and channels in the system for them to do so, in China any such attempts are forcefully suppressed.
And the outcome is that, the victims of the Hillsborough have now been, as Sunderland manager Martin O'Neill said, "totally and utterly vindicated". The Tienanmen victims and their families, on the other hand, may have to wait until the fall of the Communist Party for their names to be cleared. But I am totally convinced that, the day will come when, like the Liverpool families, the Tiananmen mothers will be vindicated.

One country, one system

A BBC article today, called China suicide blast man's 'act of desperation', reported how a wheelchair user blew himself up in a government office in Shandong using home-made explosives, injuring six government workers. According to his brother, the 49-year-old man had been paralysed following an accident at a building site almost 20 years ago. He couldn't make ends meet and had petitioned officials for years, seeking more compensation than he had already received.


The following are some observations made in the article:
The case is a graphic illustration of the social tensions that have been felt across China.
There has been a growing number of attacks on local officials in recent years.
There are thousands of protests every month.
Many people are angry about official corruption and abuses of power.

Ironically and worryingly, these phenomena in China have become perfectly applicable to the situation of Hong Kong today, although they are amplified in different forms here. Social tensions, protests and attacks on local officials (strictly confined to verbal attacks in the case of Hong Kong) have become the order of the day, and these are caused by many people's deep-seated anger about official corruption and abuses of power.

The evidence for the contamination of Hong Kong's way of living following the tighter and tigher grip and more and more naked intervention of China couldn't be more obvious.

'Act of Desperation'

A BBC article today, called China suicide blast man's 'act of desperation', reported how a wheelchair user blew himself up in a government office in Shandong using home-made explosives, injuring six government workers. According to his brother, the 49-year-old man had been paralysed following an accident at a building site almost 20 years ago. He couldn't make ends meet and had petitioned officials for years, seeking more compensation than he had already received.

The following are some remarks made in the article:

• The case is a graphic illustration of the social tensions that have been felt across China.
• There has been a growing number of attacks on local officials in recent years.
• There are thousands of protests every month. 
• Many people are angry about official corruption and abuses of power.

Ironically and worryingly, these statements have become perfectly applicable to the situation of Hong Kong today, although they are amplified in different forms here. Social tensions, protests and attacks on local officials (as yet strictly confined to verbal attacks in the case of Hong Kong) have become the order of the day, and these are caused by many people's deep-seated anger about official corruption and abuses of power.

The evidence for the contamination of Hong Kong's way of living following the tighter and tigher grip and starker and starker intervention of China couldn't be more obvious.

God is smiling

The hunger strike of three students in protest against the government’s plan to implement the controversial National Education curriculum ended prematurely after the blood sugar level of one of the students was found to be very low. The hunger strike, which was supposed to be for 72 hours, ended at midnight after having gone on for 56 hours.

The student whose health condition was at stake was apologetic, saying that she would have liked to persist until the last moment as she had pledged.

Tears welled in my eyes as I saw her say that on TV. I don’t know whether they were tears of sympathy or tears of shame. As I said in an SMS to a friend:

“Those Scholarism [the student activist group to which the three students belong] kids deserve our utmost respect. For them to sacrifice themselves like that is both heart-rending and soul-searching. Shouldn’t we adults be ashamed of ourselves?”

A positive development is that ten citizens, ranging from tertiary students to retirees, have now gone on their hunger strike and taken up the fight with the government.

At the venue of yesterday’s assembly, which was reported to be attended by 40,000 people, a double rainbow stretched across the sky. Obviously, it was God’s way of giving the movement His encouragement and approval.

A riding lesson

Today, as I was on my bike, making the difficult steep climb up the hill like I do every Saturday morning, I thought to myself: “Instead of thinking about how much more upward distance I still have to cover, I should just focus on every single step I make.” That change of mentality did make a difference. Instead of being concerned about the future, I was more focused on the now. The task became less daunting because all I was thinking about was just one next step.  My capacity for enjoying the ride was also increased. The singing of the birds, the caress of the breeze and the fragrance of the plants, which usually were screened out, made their ways into my consciousness, and what a pure joy it was.

So the lesson I have learned today is that by taking one small step at a time, I will get the big thing done in a less intimidating and more enjoyable way.

The Devil's Two Eyes

It is ironic how I have successfully fended off the temptations of watching TV all my life but am now in real danger of succumbing to the attraction of the Internet. 

Come to think of it, these are different media, but do have a lot in common. Both work with a screen. Both provide messages and images. Both involve  sedentary human consumption. Worse of all, both are addictive.

And the Internet is much more powerful than TV. With today’s highly sophisticated information and communication technology, the Internet as a medium can do everything that TV is capable of. And more. And better. This is because the user’s engagement with the Internet is highly interactive.  Whatever the user fancies, whether it is a friend (real or virtual), an answer, a commodity at the other end of the world, or anything we don’t want to name, the gratification is almost immediate. And whatever we do on this platform, be it just passive browsing or active chitchatting, as long as it gives us pleasure, the tendency to do it again and again will get stronger and stronger. As Norman Doidge said in his book The Brain that Changes Itself, neurons that fire together wire together. Not only that. The satisfaction bar keeps moving up so that it gets more and more difficult to get the same level of pleasure. One has to plunge more and more deeply into the habit. Internet porn is an excellent example.

Fortunately, awareness is the crucial first step towards solving a problem. I do need to keep my habit of passive browsing in check. Otherwise, I can easily just waste as much time, if not more, on the Internet as I would on TV.

Towards the end of the last century, Chris de Burgh tried to warn us of the habit of watching TV by portraying the box as The Devil’s Eye in a song of the same name. In the song, the Devil says:

“Oh side by side

We will cross that Great Divide

’Cos nothing’s gonna save you now from the Devil’s Eye”

If the television is one of Devil’s eye, guess what is the other?

Looking at money and time with the same lens

There are many things I like about Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project. One is that she reviewed a lot of literature to explain or back up what she said. She included a lot of good quotes in the book. This one, by Gertrude Stein is my favourite: “Everyone has to make up their mind if money is money or money isn’t money and sooner or later they always do decide that money is money.” The peculiar nature of money and how people view it is shrewdly expressed.

I have an idea that we can perhaps say the same about time. “Everyone has to make up their mind if time is time or time isn’t time and sooner or later they always do decide that time is time.” I certainly hope that this blunt attempt of mine in no way blemishes the beauty of the original sentence.

Absurdity in society

Messages from the local media are seldom worth quoting. But I would make an exception of the following (translated) line from a newspaper article a couple of days ago:

"...recently, countless and astounding events of absurdity happen in all manners in society. What is in common is that the common sense, composure and civilised standard of the past have all lost their effects. They have been replaced by distortions, lame excuses, lies and defamation."

Well said, except that there is still one word I would contend with. Has these all just happened "recently"? Or is it the remarkable frequency, intensity, magnitude and shamelessness of the more recent events finally jerking people to their senses?

I cannot remember how long ago it was when I started noticing this subtle but sure sign of degradation, mainly from the advertisements. As said, you seldom find anything from the media you would rave about, but there were, in my childhood and adolescent years, some advertisements that I would find classy or humorous. In the last decade or so, that isn't the case any more. You no longer see any good puns or storylines in, for example, the TV advertisements. "You have to understand that these advertisements are not for us," I remember telling my wife many years ago. "They are for our compatriots." I was referring to the media's targeted audience in the Pearl River Delta, who have access to Hong Kong TV channels.

But it is actually worse than just a lack of wonderful productions. The phenomenon reflects a lack of respect for the audience. These days, producers and script writers either just freely bombard you with visceral sales lines, or create scenes and images which are absolutely contrived or contorted and completely removed from reality. Simply put, the strategies are either bluntly brainwashing or blatantly lying. It is a complete insult of the audience's intellect or, worse still, it was as if they think the audience are complete idiots with no intellect to insult.

Unfortunately, it was not until recently, when such degradation has become more and more obvious at different aspects of our life, when these strategies of bluntly brainwashing and blatantly lying have been widely, openly and shamelessly adopted by politicians, that people begin to feel hurt and to cry foul.
It was rude awakening, for sure. But they should have known better. What else can you expect when you are under the rule of the Communist Party, a gang of criminals who only look to strengthen their administration by fooling and intoxicating the people.

Fittingly, the above-mentioned newspaper article finishes by saying:

"Integration between China and Hong Kong is just around the corner."

"Post every day, that's absolute key"

"Post every day, that's absolutely key."

In her bestselling book The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin recounted her experience of starting a blog. The above was a piece of advice one of her friends gave her.

I know it is a good piece of advice. My blog started to go wrong the day I broke the habit.

For over a year, I was committed to uploading an entry a day. I remember hurrying home late at night so I could blog before the day was done. I remember blogging away on a tatami bed in a Hokkaido minshuku late at night, my wife in a slumber next to me. Then one day I realised that  there was no need to do so, as I could just date back any entry. And that was when I started relaxing, and I delayed my writing and uploading for longer and longer, until I could no longer keep up.

This is, like what I said yesterday, again a matter of discipline. When I started throwing my self-discipline out of the window, everything crumbled.

I would now like to pick up the habit of posting every day again and see how far I can go.

That, as Gretchen Rubin’s friend told her, and as I found out from my bad experience, is absolute key.