it tastes like leaf

so while i was in chiang mai recently, a group of us went to visit a local temple. it was almost sunset and there was a pervasive stillness about the place as the monks had just finished their evening chanting. i was walking along with a few others on a terrace just below the temple, overlooking the city. there was a striking embracing large umbrella of a tree with gorgeous bright purple flowers. i walked under it with a sweet filipino lawyer named bobbie, who had made me cry earlier that day in her presentation about their land rights work on behalf of farmers. i commented on our vibrant purple embrace. looking up at the flowers, bobbie said, "we eat these in my country." i asked her if they were good. she shook her head, laughing, and said, "it tastes like leaf."

i recalled this story for some reason as i watched the footage from china's 60th anniversary celebration extravaganza. perhaps because i felt that despite all the gorgeous red hoopla, the comrades-leader call and response, the more-lavish-than-the-olympics fireworks, and the PLA female soldiers in miniskirts and f**k-me boots, it tastes like leaf.

i, like most beijingers, wasn't able to attend the real deal. in fact, i made it out of town and hightailed it to hong kong just before the government shut the airport down during the parade. my cabbie had to drive with his hazards on because the fog was to dense. it's a good thing that thousands of troops, large cloud pushers and other assorted military "weather control" artillery were on the ready to secure a perfect blue sky. apparently more than $1 million RMB was spent shooting 432 rockets with iodine at any insolent capitalist roader clouds daring to mar the perfect day to prove china's great socialist rise to the world. i wonder if those terms (capitalist, socialist) have any real meaning anymore. and i especially wonder what the party's vision, as expressed by hu jintao of "a rich and strong, democratic, civilised, and harmonious and modern socialist country" really means. sure, china showed its strength. who isn't impressed by inter-continental nuclear missiles being lovingly paraded down changan jie (while citizens living along the street weren't allowed to go to their windows)? but does it ever strike you that all of the party's doublespeak is simply an effort to obscure the fact that the country and the economy are being run to benefit a handful of elite party leaders and their families? this is a community that lives in an inaccessible compound, a new forbidden city, just adjacent to the original that is in fact to inaccessible that it doesn't appear on city maps.* how much of china's rise has helped the lao bai xing - the common people - and how much of it has been, and continues to be, calculated to further enrich and empower the party elite?

speaking of the elite, among the many wonderful articles in the sept. 30th edition of the china daily was a piece entitled "grandson of maos eyes promoted". it was about mao's grandson (presumably the grandson of the entire man, not just his eyes, but the missing apostrophe leaves one uncertain). this grandson - mao xinyu, who among other accomplishments is the author of "the award-winning 'my grandfather mao zedong'", is being promoted to become china's youngest major general. he and all four of his chins. the photo accompanying the article showed a picture of his chubby face squeezed above the collar of a military uniform. in addition to jiaozi, youtiao and jianbing, his interests include promoting mao zedong thought (about which he is an expert) and little red miniskirts (a newly acquired interest).

aiyo, the relative freedom and naturally blue skies of hong kong have gone to my head. refreshing, although also kind of tastes like leaf.





*a public-minded lawyer once sued a beijing map-maker about the fact that this compound and its lakes, zhongnanhai, do not appear on beijing maps. unsurprisingly, he lost.