Vagabonding : China

Remember Tibet!

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The 50th anniversary of Tibet’s uprising

The Dalai Lama speech

“A hell on earth”

That is the way the Dalai Lama described the Chinese occupation of his country during his speech this morning.

Today is the 50th anniversary of Tibet’s sad attempt at an uprising (yes, they actually had a military if you want to call it that) which resulted in the Dalai Lama fleeing to India - where he still lives today. He loves his country and the people love him beyond words, but sadly he may not live long enough to ever return home, at least if Hu JinTao and company have anything to say about it.

50 years ago today, literally hundreds of thousands of Tibetan people were slaughtered, their temples burned down, and their identities taken. This isn’t ancient history we are talking about - many survivors of the Chinese invasion are still around.

Unfortunately they probably won’t be telling their story any time soon. When I was traveling China in 2007 my website and even the entire WikiPedia were blocked by the Chinese National Firewall which controls all data, coming and going, on the internet into China.

As much as I loved my time in China studying Shaolin, learning Chinese, and wandering around the mountains of Yunnan, I still can’t shake the thought that I was frolicking with the enemy. Within my father’s lifetime, this same government has murdered nearly a million innocent people who posed no threat whatsoever. I wanted desperately to visit Tibet and was queued up for an entry permit in Chengdu when they had a skirmish in Lhasa, causing the government to stop issuing them for weeks.

No one seems to be too bothered. Hell, lets give them the Olympics even. They can’t seem to load the boats fast enough to get their junk to America and people line up to buy the products made cheap by misery and oppression. Sadly, most American’s couldn’t even point out Tibet on a map.

A few people did hear the speech this morning and there were some small protests outside of Chinese embassies in India and Australia even. Unfortunately for the Tibetan people, its not enough and tomorrow when they get out of bed, they are still being treated cruelly by an evil government with a history. Made all the more efficient thanks to the new railway from Beijing all the way to Tibet - now they can deliver Chinese capitalists and soldiers right to the front door of Lhasa.

Since I cannot lend a twitchy trigger-finger to Tibet, I will do what I can from here to support them. Every time I’m forced to buy cheap imported junk I grimace.

AVAAZ.org is one of a handful of organizations that try to raise money for Tibet awareness. I launched the rather unsuccessful www.peacebookings.com last year to try to raise money to donate to them for their efforts. Rather than typing in Hotels.com and big travel sites like Priceline.com, please go through my link to raise money.

I don’t hate the Chinese people - actually the opposite. I would like to officially throw their government the middle finger however. Go ahead, ban me and my website - I’ll be back.

Posted in China, Ramblings |

Vagabonding in China - notes

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Vagabonding in China

My personal mantra even way before I ever started traveling has been: “Always go where the action is.”

Love it or hate it, China is by far the place to find some serious action for your vagabonding buck right now….and if you have a little travel money jingling around in an account and are staring at a map for answers - I highly recommend it.

I was lucky enough to spend 3 adventurous months there in 2007 and left roughly around this time last year. As my wheels left the ground for the last time in Beijing, my feelings were so mixed up that I didn’t know what to write in my journal. All at the same time I felt joy, stress relief (China can honestly wear on you after a few months), sadness at leaving a mystery I had spent so much time trying to figure out, and a loss of something.

Like an ugly, air pollution induced tumor - China had started to grow on me and I hated to see it go.

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Posted in China | Tags: China, vagabonding

Tibet, TLG, and the Olympics

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I don’t normally get into these things, but I have some strong feelings about China and the Tibet situation. Beware, I have decided to vent my negative chi into something positive with this post!

This is a petition to try to get the Chinese government to come to the table and talk rather than sending in more AKs.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/98.php/?CLICK_TF_TRACK

They are currently at around 800,000 signatures and need a million. I don’t know if the PRC will pay any attention to it, but it is also a good thing to send the message out to the rest of the world as well - including the brilliant Olympics Committee that is strangely rewarding these people for their actions.

Tibet has always been China’s dirty little secret. By the end of the cultural revolution, 1.2 MILLION Tibetans were killed and 6000 religious sites were destroyed by the Chinese government under Chairman Mao. Tibet posed no military threat to them whatsoever.

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