A Simple Story From China

[Chinahand]

Found this student project on the web.

 

Its got a simplicity and nievity that's quite touching so I thought I'd pass it on.

 

Behind the glitz and China-Boom hype China is still an incredibly poor country struggling with development problems and the inequalities they bring.

[Tugger]

It is incredible really. I used to walk to China Life Tower in Beijing from the Swissotel (both of which are in reasonable districts) and had to go through a number of neighbourhoods that would easily be classed as slums in the west.

[Celt]

China, I feel embarassed and ashamed that yet again in life I need to be reminded that there are people so much worse off then myself.

 

The only thing I've ever wanted is enough for my family and that is the same for these people yet what I would call enough would be riches to others. The sad reflection on the Human Race is that your post topic is not uncommon in many countries.

 

A thought for these people and the hand of friendship costs nothing yet in both I'm in debt. Thankyou for that post China and hopefully it will remind me how futunate we are and I for one will try to repay that debt.

[Chinahand]

Found something similar, though more hard edged, lacking the innocent sadness of my original link.

 

The poverty stricken migrant workers - Mingong - living in a doss hotel built in a nuclear bunker under Beijing.

 

Link

 

As one says: "I have lived together with all kinds of people, burglars, prostitutes, and even convicted felons. They behaved just like normal people, friendly and even funny, except when the policemen came - poverty is the root of their crimes."

 

You don't have to just watch Little Dorrit to see a Dickensian world.

[bluemonday]

And how much did the chinese gov lay out on the Olympics?

 

Priorities.

 

Similar to India, Pakistan and so on.

Big armies, nukes, getting into space and yet a lack of basic social provision.

 

Priorities.

 

Obviously addressing grinding poverty and despair isn't one of them.

[Freggyragh]

Japan too has a lot of poverty - but, perhaps more shocking, it is often post-capitalist poverty. When the effects of the bursting of the 'Bubble Economy' started to hit in the nineties a lot of middle-class, middle-income, middle-management types found themselves out of work and in negative equity - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/asia...less/html/1.stm

[Chinahand]

Resurrecting this thread for a simple story from China and a village officials fall from grace while dealing with all the stress of being a CPC minion.

 

I suspect it is laying things on a bit thick at the end - yes, the watchman's hut is sparse, but he also goes home to his wife and their apartment after work.

 

But still it does say something interesting about the changing face of China.

[Chinahand]

Hee hee ... threads die for 6.5 years and then get two posts within 10 mins.

 

This story is also fascinating. BBC justifying its licence fee again.

[woolley]

All countries have poverty. Western Europe has largely eradicated the worst of it, on credit, for the past few decades. We have lived in a time of plenty which is not the norm historically or globally. We have been most fortunate.

[rmanx]

All countries have poverty. Western Europe has largely eradicated the worst of it, on credit, for the past few decades. We have lived in a time of plenty which is not the norm historically or globally. We have been most fortunate.

 

The calm before the storm so to speak.

[woolley]

So to speak. Or perhaps more pertinently, the lull within the wider storm.

[Chinahand]

The Internet does allow people to reach out and touch others.

This simple story about a terminally ill boy from the US causing people in China to reach out to fulfil a final wish touched me.

 

Ah sentimentality! But he's a little kid, who's had a tough life. It is great people want to give him some joy.

[Chinahand]

Years ago I stood for many hours winding my way through Chinese bureaucracies trying to sort out visas etc.

I often had kindly Americans for company holding tight little bundles of life unwanted by a Chinese system which mandated one child per family and no more, on threat of forced abortion, sterilization, refusal to educate or care, and fines.

This is a simple story about the consequences of that policy, and of the care these Americans gave to those little babes, and the guilt of the parents who were forced by a brutal regime to give up their children.

Short news item here.

Full documentary here.

[Chinahand]

Watched One Child Nation this evening.

The One Child Policy was hugely de-humanising on a scale only possible in a totalitarian state which juveniles over a billion people through thought control, violence and fear.

It is a hugely poignant documentary especially in the simple manner it discusses the cruel impact of the policy on girls. 

One Family Planning officer, now wracked with guilt at the thousands of abortions, many of them forced, she had performed charitably offers fertility advice to help create life after earlier extinguishing it.

An extended family talk about their attempts to get rid of unwanted girls born the wrong sex in a society which demands a son. An uncle is overcome with emotion remembering leaving his daughter in a basket in a market, but having no one show pity or care and how the tiny bundle of life died of exposure two days later untouched; another aunt laments handing her daughter to smugglers never to be seen again.

An artist, who started his career photographing rubbish strewn in Chinese gutters discusses how his artistic career changed direction when one pile of trash he found to photograph contained an aborted corpse.  He then spent his career documenting this human waste thrown carelessly away in a society which traditionally respected and buried bodies with multiple rites.

He is chilling talking how years of indoctrination are needed to persuade young nurses to become mass practitioners of death.

集体利益高于一切 Jítǐ lìyì gāo yú yīqiè     The collective above all else

个人服从集体 Gèrén fúcóng jítǐ   The individual submits to the collective

党是不会错的 Dǎng shì bù huì cuò de The Party is infallible

A younger brother sneaked through against the rules is wracked with guilt that his elder sister was refused education so he could receive his, while old men glory boys for carrying on the family name while women leave to join another patriarchy.

Then child smugglers who took abandoned babies from streets and bins and desperate mothers to sell them to orphanages tell their tales - imprisoned by the state and mingling their tale of monetary greed with a care for the bundles they passed on to be adopted by rich foreigners.

A family tells of officials, desperate not to exceed their quota of births, kidnapping new borns and if the family does not pay up selling the child once again to be adopted abroad.  A twin cries for her missing sister and hopes she is happy far far away, eventually reunited via the internet.

An adoptee American dedicates his life reuniting children adopted in good faith as orphans with the families they were torn from.

The film ends with the documentary maker noting the irony that they had left one country which forces people to have abortions to go to live in another country which is working to restrict women's rights to abortion - both desiring to take away an individual's right to decide how to control their bodies.

I am very lucky in that I've never been placed in a situation where I had no choice but to do evil.  Person after person in the documentary admits a brutal state and mass poverty again and again resulted in indifference, acceptance, even agreement with a policy which was dehumanising and had terrible consequences for millions of mothers whose only crime was wanting a child; all approved by smiling propagandists, who threatened any one who disagreed with the void.

We need to remember this evil and the Party who still control China who infallibly thought it good.

 

[woolley]

I can certainly understand why they tried to stem the growth of population. Indeed it might be termed prescient of them in view of the overpopulation of the planet that we now see, and its effects on the environment. Of course, what they did not see was how it would inevitably go wrong and the unintended consequences of the dead hand of the state. A very sorry tale.