Inspired by the Tibet experience

Most of the time, I am reading. I read more than I write.

Today, one particular post had me in deep thoughts, and I would like to share them with Taiwanese all over the world, especially those who live on the island once exclaimed by the Portuguese sailors as ‘Ihla Formosa’.

Will this island remain beautiful a few years from now? That will depend on you and me, and I think I have done all I can and to the best that I can possibly do.

I just read an interview of Pico Iyer by another author, Jon Wiener.

Pico Iyer was born in Oxford, raised in California, and a resident of Japan, sort of like a global resident just like me. He has a new book called, The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.

The interviewer, Jon Wiener asked Pico Iyer why in his book, he described the Tibetan population as being “slipping ever closer to extinction”.

And these were the words of Pico Iyer:

I wish they were overstated words, but they’re not. The Tibet autonomous region is more and more a Chinese province. Lhasa is now 65 percent Han Chinese, so Tibetans are a minority in their own country. The Chinese are practicing what the Dalai Lama has called “demographic aggression”—trying to wipe out Tibetan culture through force of numbers. Two years ago they set up that high speed train, which allows 6,000 more Han Chinese to come to Tibet every day. I first saw Lhasa in 1985 just when it opened up to the world.

The high speed train, if I am not wrong, is the masterpiece of the Canadian Bombardier (this link had been discovered and used in my other post).

The railway represents an overtly political project by China to facilitate its control over Tibet. Tibetans are already a minority in their own country and the railway has further marginalized them. It has allowed China to deploy troops and missiles to the Tibetan plateau more effectively, and has also enhanced China's ability to extract and remove Tibet's vast mineral wealth. The Dalai Lama has referred to the railway as "some kind of cultural genocide".

Sadly enough, this is what many western businessmen have said about more engagement with China will make China more open and democratic.

And some country who had tried to “help” Tibet had its own agenda.

The CIA had “helped” them during the cold war era as Pico Iyer said…

Yes. The CIA really moved in during the 1960s, when they trained Tibetans in Colorado, of all places, and set them up in Nepal. The CIA wasn’t concerned about Tibet; they were only concerned about trying to foil their great communist enemy China. It was a fitful resistance but the CIA was more than ready to help—until Nixon and Kissinger went to Beijing. At that point, the Dalai Lama realized that violent resistance would only bring more suffering to his people, so he sent a taped message to the guerillas in Nepal and told them to lay down their arms. They did, but some of them were so heartbroken that they took their own lives.

And this reminds me of the dark days of the martial law era in Taiwan when the US administration supported the Chiang Kai-Shek’s rule over Taiwan in order to block the red communism from spread out but did not care much about the human rights records of the KMT regime.

When their interests changed as the cold war ended, again our concern was never their concern!

Did the US administration help the Taiwanese society democratize? The recent Taiwanese history taught us that the democratization of Taiwan came gradually with the help of its own people’s struggle against authoritarian rule coupled with the timing of the rise of their former president Lee Teng-hui, a Taiwanese native, within the KMT party.

And now the US federal deficit (and China being their major creditor) has kept me worrying about what’s next for Taiwan. Why doesn’t the US administration encourage domestic production and domestic consumption to counter the trade imbalance instead of having to exchange favors with the Chinese authority, and in the process concede to Beijing’s requests on the Taiwan issue?

Back to the Tibet interview…

The Chinese Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s was a turning point for Tibet. Pico Iyer said

They tried to destroy Tibetan culture—much as they tried to destroy their own culture, but even more brutally. According to Tibetan estimates, 1.2 million Tibetans died—that’s 20 percent of the population. All but 13 of the 6,000 monasteries were destroyed. Little kids were asked to shoot their parents. Most violently, the Chinese sought to tear apart every last shred of Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Monks were asked to use sacred texts as toilet paper. It was a brutal thing, which the Chinese government has since repudiated.

Dalai Lama’s fear…

He knows that as soon as he dies, the Chinese government will alight on an amenable little boy, probably the child of Communist cadre, and reenact a kind of monastic search and declare “This boy is the fifteenth Dalai Lama.” Of course he will be completely loyal to the communist party and probably be an enemy of Tibet.

Do you have any fear as a Taiwanese? Or do you care only if you have a bowl of rice on your table today?

And this is what I think…

Every little action in your daily life counts, it does not matter how insignificant it may look such as speaking to your children using your mother tongue, or buying your country’s products instead of the cheapest ones, or loving and caring for your environment.

After thoughts...

Tibetans are not extinguished, have you ever thought about an alliance of the Taiwanese, the Tibetans, and the Uyghurs?

Walk out from your nutshells, TI supporters !!

Michael in his blog mentioned a language issue that he and his kids encountered in the campaign gatherings of pan-green:

Every speech was in Taiwanese, except part of one (KMT rallies offer a mix). My kids sat there bored, addressed by people who couldn't be bothered to find a way to talk to the two Taiwan citizens I am raising.

and in a meeting of FAPA:

It was painful to watch. Sometimes I contemplate taking out ROC citizenship, but the brave new world they advocate doesn't include me or my children -- and if a strong supporter like me gets that vibe, how then the young on the street who chatter in a delightfully liquid lingo that is predominately Mandarin, with leaven of Taiwanese and English? Every person at the FAPA meet was older than I, and they were speaking Taiwanese. Not one speaker or two, but Every. Single. One. As I listened to a bunch of speeches in a language I didn't understand -- every word reinforcing my overwhelming alienness, one of the photographers standing next to me turned to camera guy next to him and remarked, rhetorically: "Why are they speaking that language? I don't understand a word they are saying!" Not one of those people took the time to compose and deliver their speech in Mandarin, a language spoken by everyone in the room -- and, mind you, a language understood by the people they most urgently need to communicate with: the Chinese. Of course there was no English, the language of the international media. Brilliant to hold a press event in a language the press don't speak.

I am very sympathetic to Michael's situation about this.

It's been a very long time since I started voicing the same view of Michael's to those die-hard TI (Taiwan Independence) supporters. The first time I reminded them was in a talk given by a TIer in a university IN USA. YES, IN USA, and he spoke Taiwanese !!! Without any translation to English, not to mention to Maderin !

It was at a time when China didn't look so huge. Many oversea Chinese students never had a chance to learn about Taiwan democracy development, and are very earger to learn more.

So they went to the talk, but couldn't understand a single word. One of them raised the issue to the speaker, requesting a translation service --- at least to English. The speaker refused and remarked,

"We have the right to speak what we want. It's your own problem that you can't understand."

I was so shocked and in disblief. After the talk I told them if you want to deliver your idea, speak something people understand. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

It's been more than 10 years. I couldn't believe these die-hard ancient TI fighters never learned. If there's only one single organization that can deliver strong TI messages in multilanguages, FAPA is probably the one. Yet they chose to cuddle among themselves. I really wonder what they expect to achieve by hugging to keep each other warm. To me they are filled with so much hatred that clouds their minds in a way that "feeling good" is far more important than "winning the battle."

To me, it is equivalent to treating themselves as pity victims. In that sense they don't really need opponents.

And, I am telling you, the language thingy is just only one of many "out-dated, suicidal behaviors" they have. There have been so many times I almost gave up fighting with them for their other certain-death approaches.

Certainly, they don't think they are suicidal. They call it "principle" --- "Without principles we have nothing."

Yea right. Look what we have now.

Anyway, I am with you, Michael. There's a long way ahead.

Update: Unlike those English-as-the-first-language people who are most likely to complain about this situation, I was born and raised in Taiwan. I speak fluently in Taiwanese, Mandarin and English. I was raised in a way that you don't speak secret language in front of others. If one of our Mandarin-speaking friends jumps in when we are talking in Taiwanese, we all switch to Mandarin and continue the topic. When we came to USA, if an English-speaking friend came to our party, we all switch our tone to English, even when many of us are really terrible at it. My family behave that way, and friends I met behave that way.

As a result, it becomes a basic politeness for me to respect visitors by not leaving them in darkness. Therefore, the strong resistance of TI supporters to Mandarin in a situation where they need it most looks alien to me.