The dark side of China

Tiger Temple

Tiger Temple is Chinese blogger who has been documenting a group of homeless people being ruthlessly displaced by urban renewal in Qianmen, just south of Tiananmen Square. That’s almost within spitting distance of the annual legislative meetings of the NPC and CPPCC (‘liang hui‘) currently driving foreign journalists, who have to listen to endless mind-numbing speeches, to tears of boredom.

On Monday Tiger Temple published a post titled “Things of Qianmen” on his blog. Below is a roughly translated excerpt:

For reasons that everybody knows [i.e. the liang hui meetings], the pitiful homeless group of Qianmen was inevitably going to meet with unexpected problems.

The unexpected came on the third day of the liang hui.

Lao Wang [one of the Qianmen homeless] phoned me and said “There’s a meeting in the Great Hall of the People, they have come again to destroy our makeshift shelters. This time they totally destroyed them, there’s nothing left, they cleaned everything up.”

I asked: “Did they really clean up the area?” I did not really believe that those lazy government departments who love surface appearances so much would take so much trouble. If they had already destroyed the shelters, cleaning up the scene seemed like a little too much work. Sure enough, Lao Wang said “They totally destroyed our shelters, but they left the place in a total mess.”

I said, “Isn’t this just messing you around for no good reason!?” But there was nothing I could do.

Actually, anyone could have anticipated what would happen to the Qianmen homeless. Other netizens had expected it, so had I. Even the homeless people themselves expected it.

That is to say: the Homeless People had to be removed because the Great Hall of the People is holding the National People’s Congress!

*****

There is a confused idea that is common in China, namely:

“Foreign media just like to report on China’s dark side; these are our problems and the foreigners should not concern themselves with such things.”

There is nothing I can do about this, but it’s not only foreigners who like to report such matters. There are certainly even more Chinese journalists who like to report such things. Massaging wounds is good for the health.

But do Chinese reporters dare to write about such things? If they do write, do their publications dare to publish? The publishers have the sword of Damocles hanging above their heads: there are people specially designated to watch over them, watch what they should or should not say…

As for the foreigners reporting on China’s dark side, it gives us Chinese people a feeling of shame. It’s not easy to accept. Well, let’s take an example from a Jia Pingwa novel [see link below]. See if it reminds you of yourself: when a man sees his cat or his wife’s belly grow bigger every day when he did not do it, the man feels ashamed, as though he himself had been raped.

But if his wife, or his cat, wasn’t horny, how could she get pregnant?

If China did not have those human rights issues, what the fuck would you be scared of?