Guess what? Melissa and I don't have class until the 16th, so we're taking full advantage of the situation by travelling to Beijing for five or so days! We leave tonight on an overnight train, which will be our second attempt at such transportation trip to Yangshuo, being the first), so our fingers are crossed...
We arrive in Beijing on the afternoon of the 5th, and we look forward to seeing things like the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, among the potpourri of other things to do in that gigantic city. One thing that is bothering me about our trip though is the timing... Today is the twentieth anniversary of a certain little incident that happened at TS.
I didn't really know why China's censors were kicking into overdrive these past few months, but considering the momentous anniversary at hand, it's all starting to make sense. Of the sites that don't work anymore in China, I believe this list now includes Youtube, Blogger, Twitter, Tumblr, Livejournal, Xanga, Wordpress, Friendfeed, Flickr and Live.com. I guess I should feel lucky that Gmail still works! All of these social networking sites could be used to disseminate information about the Western view of what happened twenty years ago in Beijing, so the government shut it all down.
So, why would the Chinese government shut down sites that relay information about an event that everybody already knows about? Well, it turns out that most Chinese don't know about it, or have been convinced that it wasn't that big of a deal. It is not taught or referred to by anyone in Chinese society, and when it was happening twenty years ago, the entirely state-owned media spun it so it looked like a bunch of unruly hippies disturbing the peace.
Some people in China do, however, recognize the significance of this anniversary, and they have decided to wear white today as a form of protest. You see, white is the traditional Chinese color for mourning. Even our field director sent us an email last night warning us not to wear white today. Therefore, it came to our surprise that so many students and teachers were wearing white today. Were they silently protesting? Nope. They were just wearing what they always wear! It seems that Yueyang doesn't recognize this day like the rest of the world does, which makes sense considering the control on information.
As I was saying before, the timing of our trip is pretty bad because I fear that things might be a little bit more restricted than usual in Beijing. Tourist sites that may be open to the public may be closed, etc. Also, the weather's supposed to suck... Yeah, that too.
In any case, we will bring our camera and attempt to document the whole experience for you guys, so look out for us in about a week!
0 comments:
Post a Comment