save face idiot

They are thinking: We have ways to make you talk.

They don’t tell me this but I know how it works. I’ve read Tu Fu’s work. I’ve digested their bone dust history through dynasties.

“Yes, well, we’ll see,” she said. “We need to remind you to remember this very carefully.” Her voice rose an octave.

“The bent nail gets hammered down!”

"Just because you speak our language doesn’t mean you are special. We can revoke your visa and force you to pay a fine. We can put you away where no one will ever find you. We will discuss your situation with our leaders. We have driven the talented people abroad. Some went into hiding but we know where they are and we find them. We always do. We find them in their homes, schools, jobs. Some accepted positions at foreign universities where they form counter-revolutionary groups bent on overthrowing the state by writing articles, stories and books critical of their homeland.” 

Her face resembled nuclear fission. She pounded the table. “They are a disgrace! They are running dogs!” 

“I see,” he said, dropping his eyes to save face.

Shanghai Interrogation

The boy soldier was silent. 

“What’s that for,” the female Public Security Bureau official said pointing to the typewriter on the table.  

“It is for writing letters.” 

They have reservations about letters. Letters, they wonder, looking at each other with jaundiced eyes. Black eyes streaked with exploding blood vessels full of fear and suspicion. 

Letters indicate political insurrection, dissent, forced labor, mandatory abortions, propaganda, civil unrest, turmoil, revolutions, tanks in the street, torture, solitary confinement and executions. 

They see party leaders wringing their pale hands, nervously pacing forbidden cities past stone lions, conducting top-secret meetings trying to figure out what to do, how to put a face on all this. How to manage and manipulate disinformation rivers, how to control floods.

The boy soldier and his comrade save face by maintaining blank, stoic expressions.

They suspect I have connections. Maybe I am a plant, a party member sent to check their unit. Assigned to monitor their methods, their questioning tactics, their subtle use of intimidation, their implications to control and influence peoples' lives for the good of the state.

For all they know I am a subversive. A word terrorist.

“Letters. We will keep an eye on this one,” she said to the soldier.

A writer in Shuangliu, Sichuan, China. 

Park it

Where do I park this empty vehicle,

asked a Tibetan monk

burning corpses

after an earthquake killed 2,686 people

in a remote village at 13,000 feet.

A child survivor ate cigarettes,

and paper napkins

drinking his urine to survive.

Life is found in a desperate situation.

Disaster gave the Chinese Party Propaganda

machine a glorious opportunity

to create a new Hero and promote being One People.

Maybe 20

Namaste,

The demanding accusatory tone of voice is always an admonishing attitude of voice how reality is. Shanghai commands are simple and direct. 

Heels strike cold hard pavement in darkness. The sharpness belongs to a girl escaping from family for the night. Muted voices of an old couple walking through narrow concrete canyons echo as heels fade.

An elevator door opened on the 11th floor of a five-star business hotel in Shanghai. 

A beautiful Chinese girl, 20, in a white dress clutching a small black purse stared at a scuffed marble floor. Small puddles of rain water gathered around her shoes.

She raised her face from the ground. 

Deep dark brown rings circled old, tired, fearful eyes hiding her heart's knowledge, revealing her soul.

There was no place to hide, no magical cosmetic concealing the truth of everything she knew. The woman and witness instinctivily understood each other. Passing toward another temporary hope, another ethereal reality.

She was on the wrong floor and pressed another number. Doors closed. She was moving up in the world. Up to the room of a foreign businessman taking her through night into morning.

Everyone in town was making money. 

Billboards shouted, “Making Money in China is Glorious!”

She carefully folded hard earned hard currency into her black purse after a long hot shower and took the elevator down. Gliding through a revolving glass and brass door, she passed a deserted dark empty Japanese restaurant and negotiated gray stained industrial steps to Nanjing Xi Lu.  

One million serious adults in blue industrial clothing practiced Tai Chi with controlled balanced concentration.

Every methodical movement had meaning.

Dawn's collective mist breath crashed around her well worn heels skipping over cracked stones through shadows. 

Metta.

Cycles

Namaste,

The cycle of existence.

A person creates subjective reality and illusions. People feel pure joy with compassion, gratitude and forgiveness. Your center is clear and unified. No past regrets, no future fears.

The Chinese-Tibetan puppet leaders in Lhasa ordered monks to increase 24/7 patriotic education classes in all monasteries. Re-education through reform, ideology, propaganda and control.

It’s about power and control, ruling through fear and intimidation. The Chinese after looting and destroying monasteries in Tibet and mainland China during the 10-year Cultural Revolution, restricted the number of monks at the three major Lhasa monasteries, Sera, Drepung and Ganden.

They recruited Tibetan monks to live and work as spies and infamous informers. This system proved effective during the Cultural Revolution when family members reported on each other, neighbors and capitalist running dogs. It was a practical peoples campaign of fear and suspicion creating paranoia and ideological control.

Monks and nuns allowed to live and practice who resist or question this form of subtle patriotic education risk imprisonment, torture and death. They well know what has and continues to happen to liberal monks and nuns at the notorious Drapchi prison outside Lhasa.

There are two kinds of suffering, said a girl weaving wool carpets in her yurt on the Tibetan plateau below bare brown mountains. Suffering you run away from and suffering you face.

Metta.