Liu Xiaobo: Hidden, Missed, Undefeated, and Passionate

One day before the death of human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, I serendipitously met a friendly married couple in Bengbu, Anhui province. They have a little girl and both are highly-educated professionals. Upon learning my nationality, one of them said, "I like the US."

When I asked why, he replied, "Democracy".

So I asked what he thought about Liu Xiaobo, who had sought a democratic China.

After repeating Liu Xiaobo's name several times in apparent bafflement, he said he didn't know who I was talking about. I didn't pursue the matter as we walked into a small crowded local restaurant known for its wontons.

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The following are excerpts from three recent pieces well worth reading in full. They say much about Liu Xiaobo, the reaction to his death, and a conversation I had in Bengbu that could have occurred in many other places in China.

Nicholas Kristof in "Liu Xiaobo, We Miss You":

Most Chinese have never heard of Liu Xiaobo, because the state propaganda apparatus has suppressed discussion of him. Thus the paradox: The first person to win a Nobel for work in China has died, and he is little mourned in his own land. Yet for those of us who followed his extraordinarily important and courageous work over the decades, there is a great sense of emptiness and sadness—not so much sadness for Liu himself, who is now free of persecution, but sadness for China’s backward march and sadness for the timidity of world leaders at the brutalization of one of the great men of modern times. There is so much we can learn from Liu’s courage, decency and vision, and some time I look forward to placing flowers at the memorial to him at Tiananmen Square.

Wu'er Kaixi in "Murdered but Undefeated"

During [the Tiananmen Square protests], I was to talk to US broadcaster Barbara Walters. Liu Xiaobo was my advisor on almost everything I did during the protests of 1989, and he helped to prep me for the interview.

I asked him, “What if she asks, what it’s like in Tiananmen Square? Do the students know what they want? Is it orderly? Is it hygienic?”

He looked at me in exasperation, and said, “Tell the truth.”

I was shocked. In China, you did not tell the truth.

Perry Link in "The Passion of Liu Xiaobo":

It was hard to find people who disagreed with the Charter once they read it, and it was precisely this potential for contagion that most worried regime leaders. That was their reason (not their stated reason but their real one) for suppressing the Charter, for imprisoning Liu Xiaobo, and for denouncing his Nobel Peace Prize. Their efforts have been effective: most young Chinese today do not know who Liu Xiaobo is, and older ones who do are well aware of the costs of saying anything about him in public.

The controls on Chinese society have been tightened during the last few years, under the rule of Xi Jinping—the opposite direction of what Charter 08 called for. This raises the question, “Is the Charter dead? Was the effort in vain?” It is difficult, but my answer would be no. The organization has been crushed but its ideas have not been. The government’s continuing efforts—assiduous, inveterate, nationwide, and very costly—to repress anything that resembles the ideas of Charter 08 is evidence enough that the men who rule are quite aware of its continuing power.

Liu Xiaobo, Dead But Not Gone

"As a tribute to the absent Nobel Laureate, Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Medal and Diploma were placed on an empty chair during the Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony in Oslo, Norway, 10 December 2010. Photo: Ken Opprann."

Incredibly sad in so many ways . . .

Chris Buckley in The New York Times:

Liu Xiaobo, the renegade Chinese intellectual who kept vigil on Tiananmen Square in 1989 to protect protesters from encroaching soldiers, promoted a pro-democracy charter that brought him an 11-year prison sentence and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 2010 while locked away, died on Thursday. He was 61. . . .

Mr. Liu’s illness elicited a deluge of sympathy from friends, Chinese rights activists and international groups, who saw him as a fearless advocate of peaceful democratic change. He was the first Nobel Peace laureate to die in state custody since Carl von Ossietzky, the German pacifist and foe of Nazism who won the prize in 1935 and died under guard in 1938 after years of maltreatment.

Portion of the statement from Ms Berit Reiss-Andersen, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee:

Liu Xiaobo's absence from the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony was marked by an empty chair. We now have to come to terms with the fact that his chair will forever remain empty. At the same time it is our deep conviction that Liu Xiaobo will remain a powerful symbol for all who fight for freedom, democracy and a better world. He belongs to a heritage of former Nobel laureates such as Carl von Ossietzky, Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrei Sakharov, Lech Walesa, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela and Shirin Ebadi, to mention a few.

At the end of June the news reached us that Liu Xiaobo had been released from prison. He had been transferred to hospital, but was still under guard and held in complete isolation. We find it deeply disturbing that Liu Xiaobo was not transferred to a facility where he could receive adequate medical treatment before he became terminally ill. The Chinese Government bears a heavy responsibility for his premature death.

The news of Liu Xiaobo's serious condition was met in part with silence and belated, hesitant reactions world wide. Eventually the governments of France, Germany, and the USA called for his unconditional release, as did the EU through its foreign policy spokesperson. It is a sad and disturbing fact that the representatives of the free world, who themselves hold democracy and human rights in high regard, are less willing to stand up for those rights for the benefit of others.

One of the "fundamental principles" endorsed in "Charter 08", the manifesto which led to Liu Xiaobo's fourth and longest prison term:

Freedom is at the core of universal human values. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom in where to live, and the freedoms to strike, to demonstrate, and to protest, among others, are the forms that freedom takes. Without freedom, China will always remain far from civilized ideals.

And a more personal note from Liu Xiaobo's Nobel lecture in absentia "I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement", which he had hoped to read at his trial:

If I may be permitted to say so, the most fortunate experience of these past twenty years has been the selfless love I have received from my wife, Liu Xia. She could not be present as an observer in court today, but I still want to say to you, my dear, that I firmly believe your love for me will remain the same as it has always been. Throughout all these years that I have lived without freedom, our love was full of bitterness imposed by outside circumstances, but as I savor its aftertaste, it remains boundless. I am serving my sentence in a tangible prison, while you wait in the intangible prison of the heart. Your love is the sunlight that leaps over high walls and penetrates the iron bars of my prison window, stroking every inch of my skin, warming every cell of my body, allowing me to always keep peace, openness, and brightness in my heart, and filling every minute of my time in prison with meaning. My love for you, on the other hand, is so full of remorse and regret that it at times makes me stagger under its weight. I am an insensate stone in the wilderness, whipped by fierce wind and torrential rain, so cold that no one dares touch me. But my love is solid and sharp, capable of piercing through any obstacle. Even if I were crushed into powder, I would still use my ashes to embrace you.

Bengbu Experiencing Starbucks' Expansion in China

I have been to a number of cities in China where Starbucks can't be found, such as Ganzhou, Mudanjiang, and Shaoguan. Yet Starbucks' growing reach in China has been readily apparent, whether by coming across their first stores in cities such as Hengyang, Kunming, and Xiangtan or knowing they have opened in cities such as Lanzhou, Yanji, and Zhanjiang since I last visited them. Loosely based on these experiences, when I recently arrived in Bengbu I didn't expect to find a Starbucks here. I didn't even bother to check if one existed.

But I still found one.

Prominently situated at the Wanda Plaza (万达广场) shopping center, the store opened about six months ago.

For those now thinking of making a pilgrimage to Bengbu for mug, a warning: unlike many places elsewhere in China, no city-specifc mugs are available at the moment.

Soon after finding this Starbucks, I saw that another Starbucks will open only 1000 meters away at the Intime City (银泰城) shopping center.

Five days ago I watched workers place the letters for the storefront sign.

Since then, the state of the store hasn't been as clear.

The outdoor coverings are gone and there is nothing external to indicate the store isn't open. Sometimes, as in the above photo, the door is even left open. This seems to scream "we're open", but they aren't. I have seen multiple people approach the outside door only to find it locked or to open it and discover a Starbucks with a ladder standing in the middle of the floor, empty shelves, and no baristas at work. This experience doesn't strike me as what Starbucks should want to deliver. When I asked a Starbucks employee at the other store when the Intime City location would open she said she wasn't sure and suggested I wait a bit.

Whatever the story, the already-open Starbucks seems to be doing well and presumably, someday, the other will open as well. It isn't obvious whether this says more about the growth of Bengbu, which like many Chinese cities has undergone much change over recent years, or Starbucks, which also has stores in nearby cities including Hefei, Suqian, and Xuzhou. But both Bengbu and Starbucks appear to be enjoying the arrangement.

Trying to Understand the Finger Rift in Bengbu

A Werner Herzog quote at the movie theater in Bengbu appeared to a be relatively clear case of what can happen when one attempts to translate translation back into the original language. Figuring this out was especially satisfying because often when I attempt to track down the source of English that for one reason or another catches my attention in China I feel like I am going down the rabbit hole.

Such was the case with an example elsewhere in the same shopping mall with the theater. On a men's restroom wall I saw a decal I have seen in China before in places like cafes:

Romantic City

Love is promised     twisted in the love   between
Finger rift    the fingers

I didn't understand the message, but perhaps nothing is wrong with the English. Poetry often involves creative language usage that wouldn't typically be considered grammatical or is not transparent in meaning. I was curious to see if I could sort this out.

An online search for an exact match to the message came up empty. But I did find an online site selling the same decal. They display it with the words in a different order.

Romantic City

Love is promised between the fingers
Finger rift twisted in the love

An online search for an exact match to this version also came up empty, but there were many matches to a slightly different version without the word "is":

Love, promised between the fingers
Finger rift, twisted in the love

Notably, most of these matches appear to be on sites based in Chinese. The quote often appears in a lists of quotes presented in both English and Chinese. This is the usual Chinese version:

爱情... 在指缝间承诺
指缝... 在爱情下交缠

Sometimes the list of quotes is described as "classical English" and some of the other quotes are recognizable or similar to other familiar quotes.

Elsewhere online, it isn't hard to find examples elsewhere of people asking in Chinese about the meaning of the English version. Typically somebody replies with the usual Chinese version without any further commentary.

Despite trying several different approaches, I have gotten much further than this. I couldn't find any attribution for the quote in either Chinese or English. And while I wonder whether something happened similar to what happened to the Herzog quote, I don't even know in which language the quote originated.

So if you can catch this rabbit, please let me know. And finger rift, the fingers . . .

Herzog Translated in Bengbu

At the Dadi Cinema today in Bengbu, I saw this quote from Werner Herzog on a wall:

The quote struck me as fitting for a movie theater. I also suspected the English version on the wall resulted from an attempt to translate back into English a Chinese translation of the quote — something I have seen with other quotes before in China. Indeed, I now see that the original quote in English is different:

It's not only my dreams. My belief is that all these dreams are . . . are yours as well. And the only distinction between me and you is that I can articulate them.

For a more extended version, here is Werner Herzog speaking in Les Blank's Burden of Dreams (1982) — a documentary about the production of one of Herzog's films:

Now I'm looking forward to watching both the documentary and the movie. So, thank you, Dadi.

Today's Diversion: Quantum Fields

So this is out of left field (pun intended), but a lecture by David Tong distracted me from my original plans for today's post.




The lecture is primarily targeted for people who want to learn about the latest scientific theories of the universe's building blocks without getting into much or any math. Most of what he presented was already mostly familiar to me, but I was intrigued by his spin (once again, pun intended) on some topics and enjoyed how he made a compelling story out of complex ideas.

A Q&A followed the lecture.



Tong's response to the first question led me to looking up and reading his paper "Physics and the Integers" which expresses the viewpoint that at a fundamental level the universe is continuous, not discrete. Cool stuff.

A Bit of Bengbu on the Fourth of July

Two days ago in Bengbu, a city in China's Anhui province, I spent the evening trying to celebrate the Fourth of July. Like a big part of my reasoning for choosing to visit Bengbu — appreciating the sound of its name — I saw it as a way to mix things up and learn things I may not have otherwise learned about China. I don't have as much of a story to tell about the night as I did a few years ago for a Fourth of July in Hengyang, Hunan. And while I did find much of interest, it would make more sense to share most of it in other contexts. Still, I have a bit of story . . .

The night started more fittingly than I could have ever reasonably expected. Seconds after heading out, I saw a Stars & Stripes themed motor scooter driving off.

While I have seen scooters with an American flag design in China on occasion before, including one other in Bengbu, the timing here was wonderful. This really happened.

Later in the evening, I saw a scooter with a design seemingly inspired by a country who played a large role in making the Fourth of July happen.

I see these British-looking designs on motor scooter far more often, so this was less of surprise.

After several nighttime snacks including two local items and one Big Mac, I stopped by a small convenience store to buy a celebratory drink. A Bengbu brand of baijiu struck me as a grand idea, and I jokingly asked a young girl who was eager to help whether she liked it or not. With body language playfully suggesting she wasn't exactly telling the truth, she said she did. Her mother (I presume) and I laughed. Good enough.

So for 15 yuan (about U.S. $2.20) I bought a bottle of Bengbu Baijiu — not its name based on the Chinese (皖酒王), which more emphasizes its Anhui roots, but I like how it rolls of the tongue.

During a discussion with the taxi driver as I headed back to my hotel, I wasn't surprised to learn she didn't know July 4 had any significance in the U.S. But I was a bit surprised when she said she liked drinking this brand of baijiu. And I gotta say, as far a cheap baijiu goes I found it to be pretty decent. I didn't finish it though. I had more explorations planned for the Fifth of July.

Underneath Guilin's Jiefang Bridge at Night

Star Tea in Guilin

A familiar looking font:

This drink shop in Guilin didn't seem as lively as Chalmun’s Cantina in Mos Eisley though.

Minecraft and Mao

At a newsstand in Guilin

Diecai Hill in Guilin: Signs, Sliding, Critters, Caves, Refreshments, and Views

One of the popular locations for enjoying the view and taking some photos at Diecai Hill

For some tourists, Guilin is just a city to fly into so they can reach less developed regions nearby with incredible natural scenery. However, urban scenes surrounding karst topography make central Guilin very special in its own way and are a reason not to skip out on spending some time there. Solitary Beauty Peak is often claimed to be the #1 peak for a great view. The ranking presumably plays a roll in its high ticket price of 120 yuan (about U.S. $17.70), which also includes the adjacent Jingjiang Prince City. But nearby Diecai Hill (叠彩山) is one of my personal top choices. Not only does it have more to explore and offer a greater variety of views, but at 32 yuan (about U.S. $4.70) it costs quite a bit less.

Before sharing some of the excellent views available from the tallest two peaks at Diecai Hill, I will highlight a few other aspects of the park I noticed during a late afternoon visit not long ago.


Signs

One sign at an entrance reminds people, if they bother to read it, that drunk visitors are not welcome. So save indulging in the local sweet osmanthus wine and Sanhua baijiu for another time.

Of course, all of the signs in the park use Chinese. English typically appears as well. Indicative of Guilin's status as a tourist destination, other languages sometime appear as well. Some of the directional signs went with an impressive five languages — Chinese, English, Korean, Japanese, and German.

Falling rocks are apparently a problem in the park. In some sections, signs point towards an area of safety.

In other places, there is no haven nearby, so instead the recommendation is to keep on moving.

Heeding this advice, some people may be tempted to stride. They will be discouraged from that too.

Although this translation is somewhat common in China, the message is probably lost on many who can only read the English. Basically, this is a "don't cross over" sign, which makes sense giving the steep drop on the other side.

Sometimes there aren't even rails blocking one from a disastrous fall. In this case, there may be a sign with a message clear in both Chinese and English, though the potential danger is hard to miss regardless.

Those thinking about a touhua or two on the hill will be disappointed. There is a sign warning against it.

For those thinking "what is touhua?", this is another sign with translation issues. Presumably "touhua" is the result of a translator giving up and going with the pinyin version of the Chinese — not particularly useful for English readers. In this case the sign discourages people from trying to ride a slide for free, presumably by climbing up from the bottom. "The consequence of the consequences“ sounds deep, but I would probably go with something in the spirit of "break the rule at your own risk".


The Good Luck Slide

The touhua sign is near the bottom of the the Good Luck Slide (also called the Good Luck Chute depending on the sign), which offers a quick way to descend Bright Moon Peak, one of the two highest points in the park.

The view from slide is blocked, which would seem to take away much of the enjoyment of sliding down a hill with much greenery and other sights.

Near the top of Bright Moon Peak is the entrance to the Good Luck Slide.

I didn't take it for three reasons. One, as mentioned before, the side views are blocked. Two, there are two routes to walk down. I had walked up one of them and wanted to try the other going down. Three, the slide costs 20 yuan per person, which seemed a bit overpriced. But there's a possible away around that. On this day as the slide was being closed around 6 p.m., several people were able to score rides for just 10 yuan each. After tying on a sliding apron and putting on some slide gloves, they headed down. I never saw them again.


Critters

I don't have any photos of mosquitos, but I left with plenty of signs of their presence. They were most a problem when I stopped at the edge of a wooded area. And really, I shouldn't have stopped there because of the whole falling rocks thing. Anyway, some mosquito repellent worked well at stopping the onslaught.

The one insect I photographed doesn't suck people's blood as far as I know, which is a good thing — although I am biased in this regard.

Cool bug.


Two Caves

Windy Cave (风洞) offers a path to reach the top of Bright Moon Peak.

Inside the entrance of the cave on the other side, one can pay their respects to Budai.

Crane Cave (仙鹤洞) fittingly cuts through Crane Peak — the other high point in the park. Although it is not possible to exit the one side (at least I wouldn't advise it), the view is worth a look.

Refreshments

After reaching the top of Bright Moon Peak one can take a break at a refreshment stand with seating options nearby.

Very exciting.

OK, more than signs, slides, bugs, caves, and refreshments, the main draw to Diecai Hill are the views so . . .


View from Bright Moon Peak

Bright Moon Peak doesn't disappoint and offers a view of Crane Peak — the closest peak in the next photo, just left of center.

Crane Peak is on the far left side of the next photo. The arching bridge and pagoda at ground level are attractions at Mulong Lake. That will set you back 70 yuan to visit. Or you can just enjoy the view of them from here.

The next few photos capture the view moving further around in a clockwise direction.

Hills at Seven Stars Park in the background and Fubo Hill closer on the right ride

Fubo Hill on the far left and Solitary Beauty Peak on the right

The view from Crane Peak

Crane Peak is worth a hike as well. From there you can look back at Bright Moon Peak.

There is also much else to point out.

Below are a set of three photos capturing views moving around in a clockwise direction.

And finally, Crane Peak has only one path and no slide. But the way down offers a view perfect for ending a visit to the park.

Cross-Straight Competition at an Asian Supermarket in Texas

Taiwan Beer or Tsingtao?