Sunday, September 3, 2017

Big Country Diplomacy




Rain, started up as left home.  Rain on a Sunday morning.  An hour ago I was crawling through windows in a dream.  I was staying at some odd beach house. Inexplicably I was soon in the bathroom of the adjoining compound.  As I was walking out, they were walking in and I apologized that I’d sort of just wound up here and had sort of just used their bathroom.  Like me they were mildly confused.  I noticed that they were obviously in a deluxe suite that was better than ours.  I seem to remember savoring this.  Why was that so important for my mind, as it pieced this all together?

4:00AM when last I’d looked had turned into 5:40AM and now I’d have to rush.  Shower and all the rest.  The front gate called a cab for me.  He came quickly enough.  No juice to be had.  No time for coffee.  Yep.  Rain.  The guy had talk radio on.  Some gent was explaining all the different components that made up the iPhone and how much of the cost of the iPhone went to Apple and how much remained in China, where the phone was made.  I’ve heard all this before.  I wanted to talk back to the radio: “What do you expect, dude? The invention is what has value.”  But I refrained myself.  There was no point. 

Driving at 6:30AM we had no traffic and I was at the station entrance within forty minutes.  But the entrance to the station was completely backed up.  Fortunately I was uncharacteristically ahead of time and continue to write in the back seat.  The driver suggested I hop off and walk up, which would certainly be faster, but I wasn’t planning on doing this in the rain.  The queue for security was similarly atrocious.  There was a shout up ahead and somebody cursed someone else’s mother for having cut the line.  Now he needed to be held back by another guy as he called the offending person, whom I couldn’t see, the standard Beijing insult: “dumb cunt.”  Then again, it may have been that he was referring to other person’s mother’s dumb cunt.  The person holding him back, a friend?  A relative?  This guy pulled off is watch and tossed it further away.  He went to get it and this generally cooled things off. 



Tight, but navigable, I soon had a ticket with five minutes or so to spare.  Now I’m speeding across China’s northern plane.  It’s wet outside and it makes the countryside look interesting, romantic.  Up on the screen we have a propaganda loop about what a great country China is, courtesy of our friends at the China Rail Corporation, presumably. Everyone has managed to successfully block it out beside me. I think I should properly time the loop so we can better define it.  Just a moment:

It is a two-minute loop.  This is a five-and-a-half-hour train ride (of which, I will fortunately only continue on for an hour and a half).  That suggests this instructive loop will play over and over approximately one hundred and sixty-five times.  Was there a debate around whether or not it was necessary to play this one hundred and sixty-five times for all the passengers?  “It’ll be good for them.”  What can you communicate in two minutes of spliced clips?  Well, like Graham Chapman responds to John Cleese when he asked just how much he hates the Romans in “The Life of Brian,” . . . “A lot.”  We have firstly, nature.  China has splendid coast lines and mountain peaks and waves and then, we shift to mastery of nature, ships crashing through these waves at sea.  We’ve high speed rail infrastructure laid across the mountains and planes that soar in the sky.  Air China gets a spot, in a way that no American airline ever would.  You may well ask why we are advertising air travel on a high-speed rail line.  Don’t. 

We’ve still over ninety seconds more to go, in our infinite loop.  There is army that can project power across the vast nation and beyond.  There are disaster workers in white outfits marching in line rescuing someone, somewhere no doubt.   There are grateful people from elsewhere in the world, waving.  I am guessing this guy giving us the thumbs up, is from Iran, as he is the spitting image of a young President Ahmadinejad.  People love China. 



We have a strong leader of course.  Xi Jinping is welcomed warmly by adoring crowds at the airport.  He is seen looking resolute with Vladimir Putin.  He can only but look impressive standing next to Donald Trump who is whispering something in President Xi’s ear.  Xi doesn’t whisper to anyone.  There is a picture of the Queen of England’s little royal buggy rolling by.  Xi is then seen with lots of generally African flag flourishes that cannot be distinguished by any particular country or leader, though that may well have been the South African President Zuma’s bald dome appearing for a mili-second or two.  Now it’s time for is a multi-culti march of people after a second flash of the U.N. flag.  Back home there are adoring crowds.  That’s nice.  People are in line, clapping.  Ethnic minorities are jumping up and down. China has children in school uniforms and old people sitting around a table, ageing contentedly. 

China has history.  China has culture.  China has things to see.  The scales of justice appear and a room of party officials stands and salutes.  A gavel striking a table clarifies for all, that all’s on the level.  There are cops marching and people putting up a sign which I believe indicates a state bureau of some sort.  We see a yellow shape that’s part of a traditional ship’s sail that drives on through the storm and emerges into the sunshine.  I wonder what that symbolizes?  And as we fade back from the ships at sea four characters populate the screen:  大国外交: Big Country Diplomacy. 



Sunday, 8/27/17


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