Friday, February 01, 2008

Fuck Mao and his Fucking Mao Face

Ah, it feels good. So good I will say it again, Mao is the biggest fucking arsehole peice of shit cuntfuck in the world.
And now I am blogging again.
China is fucked. I will go into detail later, but the overwhelming impression I got from Beijing and Wuhan is that China doesn't have a government but is in fact just a big ghetto with a gang. Just like Crips vs Bloods, except Bloods one (because hey are red) and sport some trendy articles of legitimacy such as uniforms, suits and other shit.
I know of three people who have been to China whom I thought like minded, Trav and Morley, both gave me the impression that China is some sort of paradise with 50c beers and meat on a stick for 5c and all that shit. And its true, KFC costs a mere $3.50 upsized and with desserts and they appear to use real chicken in the food.
But there is a realiy to cheap shopping, and that is the shopping is cheap because people are so fucking poor. I felt like Bill Gates, the comment that did it for me was Andy when he had the store hand check all the DVD's I was buying, for about $4 I was getting I Am Legend and about 10 other films and when the first 6 were all top quality I said, tell him he doesn't have to check the rest, trying to save my time and get me out of the cigarette smoke filled store. Andy insisted though and when I remarked it was $2 he said 'tohm you don't get it that's big money here'.
And from then on I felt like some fucking tycoon come to throw money at the peasants and laugh at their squalor and shit like that.
I can't pretend to understand China, like I can do a decent job of pretending to understand Japan, but there are some things China highlights that are simple common sense.
I bought a copy of newsweek that along with a copy of bicycle magazine I ended up reading cover to cover, foolishly not topping up on books when I departed Japan. I made the mistake of thinking I still had a third of my Noam Chomsky book to go, then discovered en roue to beijing I had about 2 pages left and 50 pages of notes and references of articles I am never going to check.
In Newsweek the first bit of insight was gleaned, a Japanese securities investor pointed out that, what I am increasingly learning to be true, that stupidity knows no race, colour or creed.
The gist was that all the hot air being blown about China, and I don't know if the cmmentaries have changed since I was there and their sharemarket crashed, is exactly the same as the Japan bubble of the 1990, the souheast asian tiger bubbles of 1995 and the internet bubble of 2000 and so fourth. Except worse, worse, worse, worse. The rate f growth and the excess that is foolish speculative investment China is making similar to Mitsubishi's purchase of the Rockafeller centre in New York are going to leave a massive black whole of debt on banks and companies that weren't decade old proven institutions like Japan.
But everyone should go to China, I think it one of the best tourist destinations in the world. And one of the most instructive. Particularly coming from Japan, where I read at length to understand that nobody matters in Japan because 'everybody' is what is important. I expected China to be much the same, being a high context asian culture, but China is the reverse of Japan.
Parky put it best when we were talking about the communist party and how old school big brother it was 'it's also the freest society in the world, 'm pretty sure you could do a shit here and nobody would do anything'
China is a farm, a people farm. The government is the union so there are no unions, and as wrong as it sounds for the most part in the governments view the Chinese people are little moe than beasts of burden.
That's litarally all China offers, the economic development is interesting only in that it seems crazy for the communist party to do something as dangerous to itself as create a middle class. One or the other has to go, but I am betting both, because of the greed of al peoples of the world domestic greed and international.
It is hard to be sympathetic for the Chinese, but as I am collecting crazy folk wisdom from around the world it seems the Chinese offering is 'grab feathers when geese fly by' and no shit the photo I read this off had in brackets - 'meaning tak advantage of other people whenever the opportunity presents itself'.
So to truly be the opposite of Japan nobody is important because only you are important. Even the first time I went to Japan I didn't really feel culture shock, but going from Japan to China I sure did. As parky says, children do literally shit on the street, adults piss on the street and spit. The traffic is insightful as well, pedestrians don't have right of way, you are expected to get the fuck out of a cars way. Right of way and merging is all about accelleration, not manners.
I felt like an uptight japanese in China, a sensation that was reinforced when I went to an establishment generously called 'Tokyo bathhouse'
I read an article about a famous lawsuit where an Onsen (public bath) refused foreigners in Japan. I thought 'aha' proof that the Japanese were racist motherfuckers (lke me) but as I read I felt sympathetic. The owners had done it because hairy russian guests were just jumping straight in the bathing pools without washing first. And the onsen was losing its domestic market. It should simply have adopted a black list I guess, afterall japan also bans tattoos from public baths to gt rid of unsavoury yakuza, but if I wiped my arse on the tablecloth in a fine restaurant in Melbourne and made other customers throw up and leave, I would expect to get myself banned too.
That said, I'm pretty sure in China I could wipe my arse on a tablecloth in a fine restaurant and nobody would do anything.
And its because China exists to serve Chairman Mao, the people were impoverished, starved, brutalised and killed to make a docile paddock of livestock to provide oppulant luxary to a small minority that retaned power. And Mao raised himself as a reliion.
I mean Mao killed 38 million people during peacetime, that dwarfs the holocaust, and is arguably worse because he killed the people he claimed to protect and who had faith in him, rather than people he had scapegoated.
If I went to China and discovered that Tasmania was in fact it's own independant democracy, that Labor and Liberal where in fact the same power and answered to the great lord Zoltar and that my whole national identity was a lie, I'd feel like I was Chinese.
Andy and Jerry both exhibit the 1984 symptom of doublethink, Andy sees no contradiction between believing Taiwan is part of China and also that if he wanted to visit china he has to apply for a visa and it takes a whole year.
They think they are doing good in Tibet and that I would be pleased there is a railway there now. I agree that the Tibetans should be entitled to religious freedom and like all other people not forced to accept the 'tibetan lifestyle' simply because they were born in tibet but solving this problem by imposing the 'chinese lifestyle' is not solving anything and infact making it all worse. I think China should get the fuck out of ibet like the coalition of the willing should get the fuck out of iraq, pay people the basic respect of letting them decide for themselves.
Interestingly if you do go to china you have to watch CCTV9, its the best. At first I found it refreshing, and all the bullshit I'd been fed in Australia about China's wonderful economic growth (more on that in a future post) disinclined me to suspect it. Bt CCTV9 is the communist parties english channel, and its all good news. It wasn't the cynical fearmongering of Australian media criticising everything (like me) but the Beijing Olympics were great, every diplomat was talking about how 'they had never been closer' with China, and then Gorden Brown affirmed his support for the 'One China' policy. I assume this means that Taiwan and Tibet belong to China.
The curious thing is Gordon Brown being English, and furthermore the Prime Minister of England, you would think prime material to speak English on China's English speaking channel. Yet while they had recorded his speaches and various addresses they simply had a reporter talk over some muted footage to report that he reaffirmed the 'one china policy' it seems that everyone who visits china does.
Propaganda is the thing to experience in China, it really should be shown in Australian schools to sow a healthy distrust of mass media.
Hence China and I don't agree, as it has censored all user generated content. The CCP is a cowardly little circle hidden away in their secret district whom nobody likes but nobody is educated nor brave enough to simply oust them.
Andy says Hu Jintao is the biggest gangster of them all, I worry that he believes the party doctrine and with the inevitable impending train wreck might do something stupid with a nuclear weapon, as the CCP is pretty addicted to its control of things by the looks of it.
Either way, it is good to have blogs.

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