country of amnesia

We'd like to say hello to all our friends in China.

They cannot read this because 50,000+ internet gremlins block it from their bleeding eyes.

Words like June 4, democracy and freedom are scrubbed.

Today the Country of Amnesia says to the 1.7 billion sheep:

ATTENTION COMRADES!

June 4th, 1989 did not happen. Collective brains were wiped clean. Just blend in. 

Leo remembered hauling buckets of night soil shit to fertilize fields near his straw and mud hovel in the Gobi.

It was the price he’d paid for quest-ioning Authority at Beijing Normal U.

- Why do we have to read Mao’s little red book? It's mush for pigs, he’d asked Authority.

- Because you are a tool of the state, said Authority.

- This shit stinks.

- Here, said Authority. Carry some more.

After that melancholy loss Leo didn’t take shit from anybody. He escaped to Australia.

Living in exile with silence and cunning he burned through levels of existence.

Survivors heard a voice screaming from a classroom: Quest-ions are forbidden, said overworked, underpaid and undersexed Chinese teachers named Authority and Social Control.

Ask at your peril. Anyone in the 2% group raising their hand to ask a quest-ion with confidence is shamed or silently beaten into silence. We will murder your family.

You will be condemned to a Reform Through Re-education Labor Unit near the Gobi.

Fear and ignorance are great motivators, forever and a day.

Conformity breeds conformity. Get in line and shut up.

brainwashed

One day it happened that a senior female Chinese university student majoring in English found the courage to say, I don't speak-talk English. My English is poor.

I have no self-esteem. I am too shy.

I am afraid of losing face if I make mistakes in front of a foreigner.

My parents, peers and teachers in socialistic group-think (Oh, George Orwell, where art thou?) reality taught me, or perhaps a better word is brainwashed me into believing, heart and soul that if my English isn't perfect I shouldn't try, especially in front of foreigners.

I’ve learned the less I do, the fewer mistakes I make and the less criticism I face.

I feel safer. I am a robot.

Autonomy and independent critical free thinking are anathema in my comfortable world.

On the other hand, give me a cell phone and I can set world records for text dial-a-log.

Especially when I am sad, lonely and bored.

I know people in the West use the Internet to seek information. Here it’s about entertainment.

I love chat rooms and the TV idiot box where I can give away my consciousness.

educational paradise

Inside a Myanmar prison block of teachers' apartments

reminding him of Chinese reform through re-education schools

in Sichuan and Fujian

where he lived, taught and breathed years ago

hearing underpaid, undersexed and overworked teachers smash sticks on podiums

using fear as a motivator screaming

wake up idiots

near five-story class tombs

surrounded by walls, dirt, silver strands of barb wire

removed from glowing rice paddies, soaring white herons

Burmese pythons constricting choices and consequences

freedom of speech with Big Brother in deep shadows

near goats foraging in trash as village women lugged buckets of water on thin shoulders

or balanced stacks of bricks and rocks on heads to build a new wall

a new tomorrow, forging new futures for the monied class

a man read a newspaper after 50 years of censorship in Myanmar

as sunlight streaked morning clouds above Shan mountains

inhaling a glorious day in educational paradise.

Repair time.

Salute the sun.

 

Curious

Curious enrolled in an English class.

It was a Push Them Through English Scool, said Fool.

He was a native barbarian.

I need English vocabulary and the confidence to speak, to use it, said one.

I know my English is not grammatically perfect, but I know my English is fluent, said a student.

You are the teachers, Fool said to a room of passive dull beginners.

Brainwashed by the insert country here education system.

The less I do the fewer mistakes I make, one said. Smiling with cunning social intelligence.

The fewer mistakes I make, said another with cunning social intelligence, the less I am criticized.

You got that BS write.

Light my fire, said one.

Feed me, said another. I am not a participant. I am a willing victim.

Life is sacrifice. I sacrificed my life.

I know what you mean, said another SAD student.

See with soft eyes.

Don't think, LOOK.

My life now

An old friend of mine is coming to visit, my mother said one day, She’s bringing her son. She lived here during the war met a G.I. and had a baby. She was lucky. Luckier than us. She got out. She took her son to New York when he was two. This is his first visit back to his country. 

His country. Mrs. Lin and her son Michael came for lunch. He was tall and handsome with long black hair. He was smooth and charming. 

I work for a huge computer company in America, he boasted. Big man, small village. His mother had a large house in the village. He asked me out. We started dating. I did all the translating, all the necessary things. Michael played the big man, the rich Viet-American.

Local people resented his attitude, his lack of language. He had no humility.

I lived at home and my mother started in on me. Michael’s a good man. He could be your future, she said.

Maybe yes, maybe no. I had doubts. I still loved Robert. It was a typical mother conspiracy, his and mine.  Working on us. His mother was mean, vindictive.  

Finally one night we were both drunk and slept in his mother’s house. The next morning his mother gave us the silent treatment. Michael set her straight. Don’t fuck with us. We want breakfast, he said. She served us.

We slept late and partied all night. We were hot. He was a big, hot hungry animal and my body was his. He took me in every position and I loved it. Women want fucking, security and cash.

After six fast months he said, Move in with me. He told my mother and she said ok. Every little boy always asks for permission. I needed a man and Michael needed a woman.

My son and I moved in. My mother accepted the reality. 

His mother treated me like a slave. Her spoiled boy could do no wrong. She hated me. He was an accident of her fraudulent passion. Nothing changed. She was mean, violent and alone. I put up with it for the sake of hoping the relationship would work out. People either want control or approval.

I played her game.