August 23, 2007
WHERE'S JIMMY CARTER WHEN WE NEED HIM?:
In Beijing, Orwell Goes to the Olympics (ROSS TERRILL, 8/23/07, NY Times)
The penalty for “Chinglish” is usually humiliation, not incarceration. Still, citizens are asked to snitch, Mao-era style, on people who shame China with their shaky English. An outfit called the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program issues prefabricated foreign phrases to workers who cannot converse in any foreign tongue. The Olympics have become one more tool in the authoritarian state’s box of tricks.Yes, curbing Chinglish — along with current efforts to eliminate spitting, littering and pushing to enter a bus or train — shows the better side of authoritarianism. Clean streets are agreeable, and Beijing’s may now be better than New York’s. The city’s Spiritual Civilization Office has begun a monthly “Learn to Queue Day,” surely welcome to all who have been victims of the scramble to board a Chinese bus. It reminds one that China could have a government far worse than it has now.
Yet behind the attack on Chinglish lies an Orwellian impulse to remake the truth. Banished from Beijing for the Olympics will be not only fractured English, but disabled people, Falun Gong practitioners, dark-skinned villagers newly arrived in the city, AIDS activists and other “troublemakers” who smudge the canvas of socialist harmony.
This summer, around the time of the 18th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, the government honed house arrest as a device to smoothly eliminate dissidents. Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan, a young couple who often speak up for rights granted in China’s Constitution, and who were already veterans of hundreds of days of house arrest, were again locked up just minutes before they were to fly to Europe to show their documentary film “Prisoner of Freedom City,” which depicts the gap between fact and fiction in the political life of Beijing.
Fictions will abound for the month of August 2008. On all fronts the party-state will pull the rabbit of harmony from the hat of cacophony — “What do you mean by dissidents?” Scientists have been told to produce a quota of “blue days” with a clear sky, perpetuating a Chinese Communist tradition of defying natural as well as human barriers to its self-appointed destiny. Mao vowed to plant rice in the dry north of China as well as the lush south, to prove the power of socialism. “We shall make the sun and moon change places,” he cried. None of this occurred.
We will disgrace ourselves if we participate in this Potemkin farce. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 23, 2007 3:21 PM
So the Harmonious Society of Fists doesn't like it when people speak English.
Posted by: Lou Gots at August 23, 2007 4:55 PMOn the contrary, it might be their undoing.
Posted by: erp at August 23, 2007 5:20 PMMy main question is whether the media will dare to report the obvious massive doping that will be behind China's inevitable spectacular improvement in the medal count...
Posted by: b at August 23, 2007 6:31 PMErp: Precisely. A boycott would be crude, bad PR, and ineffective. Let the ChiComs try their fakery, and let Americans go and be Americans, We are inherently subversive of tyranny.
And what if tens of thousands of foreigners surprised everyone with a demonstration in favor of Chinese democracy, broadcast live on cellphones? That might well be enough to crack the regime. Wouldn't it be nice to see the fun while they decide if they want to arrest tens of thousands of foreigners for a peaceful demonstration?
Posted by: PapayaSF at August 23, 2007 11:18 PMFrankly, it's disgusting that we're going, but the whole Olympic movement is inherently disgusting. Why give any dignity to dictators and kleptocrats just so we can collect a handful of medals?
Posted by: Ibid at August 23, 2007 11:26 PMHitler survived having Americans at the Nazi games rather easily.
Posted by: oj at August 24, 2007 6:50 AMIt would be better for the President to lead the US delegation, and make a barn-burning speech about freedom when the plane lands in Beijing. And throw in a few words in Chinese, like freedom, democracy, liberty, inalienable, and spirit, moral power, and soul. Drive the suave commie thugs crazy - and insist on walking through Tienanmen one afternoon. If they don't like it, tough. It is hallowed ground, no matter how hard the goons try to erase the memory.
Posted by: jim hamlen at August 24, 2007 7:07 AM"It reminds one that China could have a government far worse than it has now."
This repugnant quote about "the better side of authoritarianism" from Terrill's piece shows that even someone who by now understands how the Chinese dictatorship works can say foolish things. It is precisely the point that the Chinese regime can curb Chinglish or clean the streets through authoritarian methods which proves China has a bad government.
Posted by: X at August 24, 2007 7:52 AMHitler didn't have tens of thousands of athletes and visitors with cell phones taking real time videos and sending them around the world. Should the Chinese try to take away their toys, then they'll have a riot on their hands. It's quite a different world nearly 75 years later.
The medals? If the games aren't run fairly, both the Chicoms and the Olympic committee will open themselves up for needed reforms and everyone wins. Remember the French skating judge(s) being run out of town on a rail. One of the most exciting events in the annals of the modern Olympic games and one I never thought I'd see.
Times, they are achangin' and I can't wait to see how it all plays out next summer. Just think how exciting -- two political conventions after long months of media frenzy and the opening up of the Forbidden City by hordes of exuberant Anglospherians! Ya gotta love it ... and the president and his lovely lady attending the games. What a great idea.
We may just get one of those new-fangled plasma TV's with pixels aplenty to celebrate the occasion.
Posted by: erp at August 24, 2007 8:26 AMAthletes are sheep. They'd eat fetuses to win medals. They aren't going to buck the system.
Posted by: oj at August 24, 2007 11:16 AM