What Kills Us this Week!

I'm doing this very late this week because what I had to say on this week's big issue is so rude and contentious, I was attempting to avoid arguments for as long as possible. But now the wonderful Hong Kong columnist Chip Tsao has actually said it all which means I can humbly jump into his wake and allow myself be carried along pretending I'm merely quoting him.

This week's big drama has been, naturally, the Christies' sale of the two bronze heads looted by the French from the Beijing Summer Palace back in 1850, with China carrying on like a Mainland flight-misser at Lap Kok Airport, with much flinging to the ground and screaming about how deeply angry and offended all Chinese are about this.

Mmmm! Although the anger may be real up North, it's an obvious beat-up here, with all the protesters outside the French Embassy looking deeply embarrassed and like they'd prefer to be any place else and doing anything else. Shopping at YSL, maybe? And it's all rather worrying that they think they have to be doing it. Support for Beijing? Or are they being paid? Or forced? Curious, huh!

And, gosh, I did laugh when YSL's life-partner said he'd return the heads if China returned Tibet! Love that guy!

But here's what I really wanted to say: All this screaming about their lost legacy; their missing art; their stolen treasures! All this carrying on about the French and English looting treasures from their Summer Palace back during the Opium Wars! The tragedy! The heart-wrenching travails! How could we, the rest of the world, constantly do this to them?

Umm, here's the real question here: why are the Chinese practising such hypocrisy! And why are they rewriting their own history this way?

We all recall, although they seem to have conveniently forgotten, that in November 1967, at the behest of Uncle Mao, the Sino-Taliban - oops, sorry, I mean The Red Guard - went into the Summer Palace and, in a month-long orgy of destruction, smashed the place to smithereens. Chip Tsao says that over 6000 infinitely precious artifacts - much that was ancient and irreplaceable - were destroyed wholesale.

This event was, as we all know, the ushering in of the Cultural Revolution ... and from there Sino-Taliban took it out into the rest of China and for 10 long years, they "unleashed the juggernaut" and everything precious, irreplaceable or worth anything culturally, spiritually, artistically or historically, was ta-ta-ed bigtime.

So this Chinese outburst over the sale of these heads? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! What they should be saying is "Thank heavens YSL had those heads in 1967 or we'd have smashed them to pieces, silly big duffers that we are!"

Lost Legacy? Ha ha ha ha ha! Only Legacy, more like, since the only treasures China has left, apart from the stuff hidden by brave souls, are those pieces removed from the country prior to China's decade-long Temper-Tantrum - sorry, I meant Cultural Revolution! - so China should be weeping tears of gratitude and shaking hands of those Nations and people who "lost them their legacy", crying out "Thank you for saving us from ourselves, big stupid dunderheads that we are!" instead of strutting out these Big Fat Angry Lies that are serving no purpose beyond annoying the rest of us who believe that History doesn't become History until it's told in total, analysed, synthesised and written up as such. And that lying-about and covering-up things that happened in the past means they aren't IN the past! And if they're not in the Past they're still in the Present and thus it is still possible that they will again "unleash the juggernaut" and what has been regained will then be lost.

Admit it, China! YOU lost your legacy! You willfully and of your own volition destroyed your own precious past! Admit it! Confess it! Learn from it! Put safeguards in place so it won't happen again! THEN, maybe, the rest of the world will be more sympathetic and help you reassemble what is still around, safeguarded by other Nations and people.

Or maybe not! Here's another thing: remember how, once, not too long ago, there was a Museum of Modern Art up there in Dafen? Full of fabulous paintings? And remember how the price of Modern Chinese Art skyrocketed and how Margaret and I walked in on The Red Guard packing it all up and shipping it out? Where are those paintings now, we should all be asking? Who took them and what did they do with them? Those paintings were supposed to be owned by the Chinese People collectively, so under what ruling did this become not the case?

And by this I mean that China is currently so capricious and corrupt, there are no safeguards that ... well, the stuff that China gets back won't just ... well, be recycled when some corrupt and capricious individual is strapped for cash! And then all this screaming will start again about "Stolen Art and Lost Treasures!" when it comes back on the market again ...

Oops, slipping into dangeous waters so here's where I should dunk myself in Chip Tsao's wake and quote him:

"School children in Germany are nowadays taught about the crimes of Hitler. Meanwhile, Mao's embalmed body is still enshrined in a Beijing mausoleum. Wouldn't it be in the greatest interest of mankind if more Chinese antiques remain safely outside the Middle Kingdom? At least as long as there is no guarantee that the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution will happen again.
Artworks like these that enrich the world are best kept safely preserved in institutions such as the British Museum for an indefinite period of time, or at least until China is deemed mature enough to possess them again."

Oh yeah! You go, Chip!

So that's my choice for this week's ...

Threatdown:

Revising history for the sake of self-righteous rhetoric!