| Username |
Post |
| Biswo |
Posted
on 26-Apr-02 04:11 PM
The following picture of Raghu Panta reminds me 1989 photo of Tianmen
Crackdown. A man apparently coming out of a shop with his grocery bag still in
his hands went to the Wang Fujing's Wide Boulevard of Beijing to confront the
tanks brought to Beijing from military units of as far as Xian and Sichuan to quell
students. He got blown up, but his picture got splashed around the world,
making him unforgottable icon for defiance of brutal regime.
Raghuji Panta, whose party UML I never really liked,did what he was supposed to
do. He confronted the pernicious wrath of terrorists by leading a mass of people.
He gave face to the popular resistance.
And what can be more shameful at this moment to see other NC politicians hiding
and hesitating to confront the terrorists? Who can be more odious that the
ministers and MPs of Nepali Congress who overevaluated their properties and
pillaged the national coffer, which is already helplessly being depleted.
At this moment I remember one remarkable character from 'Seto Baagh'. The man
has some kind of cameo role, he is Upendra, I guess, brother of King Surendra.
He used to despise the use of national coffer for private purpose so much that
he coined some special word for them (I forgot!, I guess there was this dialogue
like 'pipaale yo gaiko maasu kina lyayeko' when people bring money to palace).
-------
After listening to the tales of people infinitely lining up for Miss Right, I naturally
remembered Phuchche. He was a hell of a character.
All his life, he thought he was the smartest guy around. The most handsome one.
His father made a palatial house in Chitwan, right in our village, so I was
privileged to see him from near. One day, one of his distant relatives complained
to me that he treated him like dirt."When I accidently touched his shirt, he
sweeped the shirt off with his fingers. I was so angry!" he furiously told me!
At 28, however, he was still looking for a bride. A suitable bride. A beautiful one.
Daughter of probably a landlord. A fair one. A tall one. Somebody he could be very
proud of.I was tired of listening to his criteria. He told me his earning at a cigarette
company at that time was 'almost 40 thousands', but I knew he was fond of
multiplying his numbers, so I had to divide them to find out the right number.
It was evident he didn't get the right girl until late. May be girls pooh-poohed
marrying with a snob one. May be he was just too much proud of himself. He just
didn't get a girl. At 28, time goes fast. He became 29. He became 30. He slowly
lost his leeway, people started ridiculing him, and pesting him asking question
about his marriage.
And his parents lost their patience. They went to DARBUNG, Gorkha, their
ancestral land, and looked for a girl with the following criteria:
1. She knows how to cut grass so that cattles back home don't get hungry.
2. She regularly worships god, and does 'brata' on some particular days.
3. She respects her father/mother-in-laws, and do 'bhajan', and is willing to
join the 'Satsanga' group.(A religious group founded in India).
So, they got a girl, sun burned, 10 class pass, diminutive, who goes to bathroom
with only Lili Saabun and whose father is the ward adhyachhya of some village
up there.
When Phuchche saw the picture, he panicked, and his bubbling fantasy acquired
after watching Sri Devi and Jayaaprada got burst. He told his parents 'give me
some days'. Went to a place beyond Narayani, and saw a girl. Now, the girl was
nice,her voice was beautiful, and she was very courteous, but definitely there
were a lot of girls like her in Chitwan, whom Phuchche always neglected. He
married her and is,fortunately, living happily now. Those criteria,.., he no longer
talks about them .
Hope things will be better for a lot of us. Let's watch 1955's best Motion Picture
(Oscar) "Marty" for more realistic view on this subject.
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| Trailokya Aryal |
Posted
on 27-Apr-02 04:51 AM
Biswoji,
Just a little correction: The guy wearing white shirt and whose picture was spread all over the world by AP, is still unknown and nobody knows whether he is still alive or dead. So, you can't say he got blown away.He might be in some prision, or in a hospital or safe in his home or zai tian. Women hai mei bu zhi dao, zhong guo de zheng fu gen ta zuo shen me. suoyi, bu neng shuo ta si le..
Plus, i strongly disagree with the phrase BRUTAL regime. Tiananmen incident was horrible, but the state needed to show the people that its not as weak as in the period of wen hua da ge ming. The stuents stood up, but they themselves did not know what they wanted. I simply find it funny when people tell that the students were fighting for democracy. I don't believe that. As fara s I know, the students were fighting for reforms. Reforms in the country and reforms within the communist party. Wang Dang (a PhD candidate at harvard) who served some time in prison for "mis-leading" the students during the tiananmen incident, ahs admitted in his interview with Carma Hinton, that he was just demanding some reforms within the party and the state, and that he failed because there was no unity among various fighting student groups and theirn leaders.
[The Gate of Heavenly Peace by Carma Hinton]
Trailokya
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 27-Apr-02 11:36 AM
Trailokyaji
In Time's top 100 series, it depicts the man as one of the top icons, and says, "he
was killed shortly afterward." Given the unhesitating nature of PLA at the time,
I think it is safe to assume that he was 'blown away'!
I agree with you that 1989 protest wasn't for 'multiparty democracy' as the world
think. It was primarily a protest originated out of a requiem of one popular
politbureau leader(Hu Yaobang?). But the regime that crushed it was brutal. Any
regime that mercilessly crush its own populace should be termed brutal, and
massacres can't have any pretext. Tell me what was wrong when the students
say "the princes of communist party leaders are having everything, and this
unfair accumulation of national assets should be stopped!"
I know a lot of Chinese who participated in the protest regret the participation
itself. It was spontaneous protest, sans any ideological backup. There was no
organization to support those students, except for some overseas organizations
whose only motive is to weaken Chinese government. But the killing of Tianmen
Square can't be justified in any way. It was brutal, bestial and ,actually, contrary
to the long standing principle of CCP(not to kill unarmed and innocent people) itself.
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| Oh, REALLY? |
Posted
on 29-Apr-02 01:53 PM
>He got blown up
Biswo,
What is your source confirming that the man who stopped the column of tanks during Tiananmen Square was killed? I have heard from several sources who were in-country at the time that the gentleman survived and went on to deliver lectures in the West. Just curious that our versions differ...
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 29-Apr-02 04:15 PM
Hi everyone:
Here is what I know about the person from various sources.
Wang Weilin, a son of local factory worker, a dependent of one of those Danwei,
was coming back from somewhere ( a shop) the fateful day.
The boulevard of Beijing, green and deserted, was swarmed with tanks arriving
from as far as Sichuan(because local boys didn't want to blow up students, and
more than half a dozen generals had protested officially any move to kill students
in official Renmin ribao). People were fearfully looking at the tanks moving towards
the Tiananmen square from the closed windows of their house flanking the
boulevard.
And then this guy, Wang Weilin, with totes in his hands, stands in front of the
tanks. The tank driver, from PLA which was reputed to save Chinese life, not to kill
it until then, hesitates, and swerves to the shoulder to avoid Wang. Wang also
goes to shoulder. Tank comes to middle of the road. He comes back to middle.
Proving that the guy was in deed trying to block the tanks.
Then he rides the tank. Whispers something in the ear of the tank driver. Then he
comes back to shoulder. The video airing to the world is just this much.
Then according to the story floating around China, he mingles with some of the
hiding onlookers who were looking at what he did with disbelief. And that is when
the tank blew them up! I must confess I don't know if this story is correct. But what
I can say is this: there was no person who showed up later, after 1989, claiming
he was 'the' person who stood in front of those tanks.
Given the indescriminate firing of tanks even in embassy area in Beijing, I always
took this as the plausible truth. I welcome any contrary story about the person.
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| Trailokya Aryal |
Posted
on 29-Apr-02 11:32 PM
dear biswo xian sheng,
I still have a hard time believing your story, because the version that i know is totally different from what you have written. I am not contradicting you, because i myself don't know what happened to that guy, but i can share the story that i have heard, may I?
Its true that the soldierts of Beijing didn't shoot the students, although li peng had given them the authority to shoot the students and vacate Tiananmen. Then, troops from other provinces were called to vacate the square. This is a well known truth.
Now, when the troops were coming to Tiananmen with their tanks and all, the studeents were still in the square.
Now my version:
The tanks started coming in, people who were blocking the tanks from enetring Tiananmen started to go to their houses, and the streets were quite empty. The tanks which started rolling in starting early afternoon, didnot crush or blow any studednt/civilians on their way to Tiananmen. Then, in Tiananmen boulevard, this guy wearing the white shirt, stopped the tank. He probbaly said to the soldier inside that "the PLA can't shoot people", then he disappeared. And nobody knows his whereabouts since then. One thing that comes out from this:
Until the tanks moved in Tiananmen, the soldiers from Sichuan did not have the orders to shoot the students. If they had, then why would they stop for that guy wearing white shirt? they could have just shoot him, run over him.. blown him into pieces, they did not.
When the shooting started in Tiananmen, the guy wasn't tehre. He was GONE. That night's news on CCTV showed the video of that guy's daring act and said what you expect to hear from the governmnet media:
"look at the insane nature of this guy.. trying to defy the state. the people's government.. blah blah blah..." But they too did not say whether he was arrested or killed. Carma hinton's movie, the gate of heavenly peace, which was made after a few years of the incident, has clips of that "insanity". And the narration that: Nobody knows what happened to him. He just disappeared. Maybe he is in Hongkong (this is likely) or in a prison in China, or in the US, women hai bu zhi dao.
The killing started when the soldiers got the order to shoot and vacate the square. First, they asked the students to leave. And this is when Wang Dan made his supporters go back to their houses, where as Cai Ling adamantly stayed there (but she disappeared from China and found herself in the US. How? the mystery remains) and got many of her supporters killed.
Time magazine is a credible magazine, i wouldn't contradict anything published on it, but when they published the story, they probably were unaware of the facts. I find it funny when i read back issues of the Newsweek that covered the Tiananmen incident. There are so many versions of the Tiananmen incident, and only a few of them can be belived, because when the shooting started, there was a curfew imposed in Beijing. No journalists were there to actually witness the shooting. Foreign journalists just had to speclate the numbers of people who died because they were either confined to their hotel rooms or at places from where they couldn't see what was really happening in Tiananmen.
**************************
Three Ts, Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen always come in the way whenever the Chinese government makes any important decision. I guess T is an unlucky alphabet for the Chinese state.
By the way, the Tiananmen Papers by 3 most credible sinologists of the US is quite boring. Not worth spending 24-25 dollars. Biswoji, there's a new book (published last year) called "The Modern Chinese State" (thank you raju and archana for sending it to me) which is a collection of essays by sinologists to honor one of the most credible sinologists of the US, Franz Micheal.This book is highly reccomended to stundents of Chinese history and to anyone who just wants to read what's been happening in china in the last 100 years.An easy read and a break from serious scholarly works of Fairbank, Lattimore and Spence.
Biswoji, hee's another highly reccomended book for a serious Chinese history reader like you, "john Rabe: The good man of nanking". You'll know who John rabe is if you have read the "Rape of Nanking". And its his diaries, translated from German into English (and 200000 times better than the Tiananmen papers whioch is like reading a film script. Nathan could have done more).
Its very interesting to see that people in kathmandu reading books on China. I was at the Mandala Book Point a few weeks ago, and to my surprise they had a book on Zhou EnLai by someone i know. I looked at the price, 1200. Reasonable.
And i just wondered who buys those books in kathmandu? ek-damai khas khas bhayera, i asked the counter guy, he said that now a days even nepali scholars and students buy books on China!! It was a nice surprise. I wish there were other book stores that carried more books on China, so that I wouldn't have to keep on troubling my friends in the US to send me books.
Trailokya
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 30-Apr-02 12:39 PM
Trailokyaji:
Here we go again, in that proverbial deadlock regarding Mr Defiance. I tried to
prove he was killed by saying that the person never surfaced again. You are
saying that since nobody saw him being killed, no one can say what happened
to him, and was perhaps spared!
>Three Ts, Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen always come in the way whenever the
>Chinese government makes any important decision. I guess T is an unlucky
>alphabet for the Chinese state.
Interesting observation. At least one T (Trailokyaji) is not unlucky for Chinese
government. So is B(Biswo)!
Thanks for referral to those books. I hope I will be able to read them. Now that
scmp.com wants us to pay money for its web version, it has been particularly hard
to find news regarding China these days.
I think China related books sell pretty well in Kathmandu. I myself have bought a
lot of books in KTM re China/Deng/Mao before and during my study in China. For
general knowledge about China, KTM is a good place. Btw, I never thought our
book stores were that inferior. In Shanghai, a scholar bears particular brunt of this
scarcity. Imported books are scarce, but any book that has a slight content of
opposition to the Chinese government is very difficult to find. Hongkong is a lot
better in that respect.
I am overall supportive of CCP. But I just don't understand why the hell these
people are so afraid of books? Criticisms don't weaken a legitimate regime if it
has willingness to rectifiy itself. Criticisms only harm those regimes which are
incorrigible, which have no interest in correcting themselves, whose sole purpose
is to stay at the power as long as it is possible.
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