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The lost generation in China

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acujerjer
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Joined: Sep 10, 2003
Posts: 7770
Location: up your butt and around the corner

Posted: Nov 02, 2004 - 04:56 AM

Coco I never said Chinese women were whores. I may have said there are a lot of whores in China, which is a fact, but I never said Chinese women are whores. Please don't twist my words to get other people on your side. Anyways, I am not against you.
I think my points were valid. I was simply pointing out that no matter how educated a Chinese person is, and no matter how much knowledge they have about their history, they still think and act out of the CCP, China is all that matters, mindset. You say you are so educated and are so open, yet your comments simply show how similar you are to your grandparents. Starbucks and speaking English doesn't make you open or international. It also doesn't show that you are willing to admit your nation's faults and say "f*** the CCP", and stop putting down "foreigners" to make you feel superior. I lived in China for a long time. I speak Chinese and had many conversations. You can't fool me. I know what goes on there and what people think. Don't believe me? Prove me wrong.

Just remember, you are an individual. You are not your country.

Merdy, I don't think all Chinese are like Mao because of history, just like I don't think Germans are Nazis because of their past. But, in regards to China, noone has really moved on in the same way as the Germans or the Japanese for that matter. You are a nation still living in your past. That's all we here about is your glorious past and how the rest of the world is so inferior to you. Why don't you think about what I write before you are so quick to criticize it.

jimandcoco

StreetBeater

Joined: Apr 20, 2004
Posts: 2204
Location: California
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Posted: Nov 02, 2004 - 09:42 AM

Quote:

Coco I never said Chinese women were whores. I may have said there are a lot of whores in China, which is a fact, but I never said Chinese women are whores

That's f*cking bullfeces! You flip-flop bastard!
Your post got deleted that doesn't mean you didn't write it! The way you generalize the whole nation just makes you sounds so stupid to us!

Coco

MaomingMaster
Board Legend

Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059

Posted: Nov 02, 2004 - 12:08 PM

Quote:

And that's a FACT, the whore herself said that

You were there at the time? Strange company you keep...

Michael

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Posts: 5292

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Posted: Aug 02, 2005 - 11:32 PM

good discussion

benyu2004

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Joined: June 29, 2004
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Status: Offline

Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 02:46 AM

jimandcoco wrote:

Quote:

it worries me that u still say liberation in that passage. is there any substantive resistance out there?

Give me a better word.

Coco

...before the establishment of PRC.

Quote:

how the cultural revolution had destroyed their lives.

It was your father's generation who destroyed their own lives.

acujerjer
Board Royalty

Joined: Sep 10, 2003
Posts: 7770
Location: up your butt and around the corner

Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 06:53 AM

Yeah. China destroyed Chinese cutlutre and their own people's lives then blamed foreigners for their downfall. Pretty sad. I remember going to Luo Yang and seeing the Long Men Shi Ku ancient Buddha caves and there were statues over 2000 years old. Some statues had the heads bashed in or cut off. Even in the Summer Palace of Beijing you can see Buddhas destroyed in the outside of temple decorations. Noone will ever figure this one out.

Neighbors ratting each other out, intellectuals being sent to labor camps to keep themm stupid. Women having sex to free themselves of the bondage. Whatever happened, it was all done by Chinese doing it to each other. Just like the thousands of years of Dynasties killing and destroying dynasties to gain power. It isn't the foreigners that are your problem, although that has been the case some times. It is the foreigners that save your ass and help you succeed. Just admit it. WW2 would have ended with China being Japan if the US didn;t come and save your asses. Think abotu it? How else did you defeat Japan? By peasants with shovel;s and rusty guns? The US had the best military back rthen. They saved you, and now you want the US destroyed. Then after WW2 was over, you resumed killing each other in your Communist vs. Nationalist war. Who stole your stuff and went to Taiwan? The Guo Ming Dang, who are Chinese. They started Taiwan. So why not take at look at yourselevs and see how because of China's leaderts, and attitude, you have dug your own hole, and thanks to westerners, you have been saved over and over again. So don't hate us.

dfoo

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Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 08:30 AM

That's an interesting rewriting of history acujerjer.

Regards, Matthew

MaomingMaster
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Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059

Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 09:03 AM

Is it totally inaccurate?

dfoo

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Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 10:29 AM

Its a misrepresentation of history. I think it conveniently ignores the role that the western powers, including the US, played in China prior to WWII.

Matthew

acujerjer
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Joined: Sep 10, 2003
Posts: 7770
Location: up your butt and around the corner

Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 11:05 AM

I was being real basic and general. What was inaccurate? Why don't you correct me?

peasant
Reacher
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Joined: July 24, 2004
Posts: 323

Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 11:09 AM

benyu2004 wrote:

It was your father's generation who destroyed their own lives.

That sounds quite unsympathetic but there are certain elements of truth in it. What I am going to say is not directed at Coco¡¯s dad whom I believe is a very nice person. I am talking in a more general term.

Not many people will dispute the so-called ¡°Cultural Revolution¡± is one of the darkest age in China¡¯s history. The economy was at the verge of total collapse and tens of millions lived in fear and despair. If you talk with those who went through it, more often than not, they would say how their lives were adversely affected and they are the victims of the CR. But whom should we blame?

Most, especially the foreigners, would point their fingers, rightfully, at Mao. Yes, he was the number one culprit for all the sufferings. And to make things worse, he did this not mainly because of his beliefs or ideology. He did this more for his personal feud with Liu Shaoqi, the number 2 man of the CCP, the heir-apparent of himself. Before the CR, in the Great Leap Forward campaign, Mao¡¯s radical economical policy starved tens of millions of people. Inside the CCP, he began to feel the pressure and had to apologize for his ¡°mistakes¡±. In an expanded plenary session of CCP central committee, Mao had to literally bow in front of a big crowd, a humiliation he wont forget and he was determined to take revenge for. While his reputation was getting worse, that of Liu¡¯s was getting higher. Just to keep his power, he started this ¡°Cultual Revolution¡± and plunged the whole nation into an almost unprecedented disaster. Needless to say, he should take the major responsibility for it.

But what made it possible for one individual to cause such a big damage? In other words, what or who else should also be responsible? The totalitarian system, the Chinese culture and several other things each played a role but that would be too big a topic here. Let¡¯s focus on people here. I would venture to say, many victims were also the tormentors. For example, Mao started the CR by organizing the so called ¡°Red Guards¡±, the young students who stopped class, went to street, beat the teachers, in some cases, to death, ransacked the households, taking away valuables, and in most cases, smashing them, and humiliated millions by organizing the so called ¡°struggle meetings¡±. They actually went further than Mao wished. And later they were sent to the countryside to be ¡°re-educated¡±, most likely reason might be that the government could not simply provide enough job opportunities. But now if you talk to them, most of them would just complain how much they suffered in the countryside. The truth is, yes, they suffered a lot but in most cases, their lives were still better than the peasants they lived with. Few of them would mention what suffering they caused to others when they were the Red Guards.

I am not saying they are the bad people. If I were living in that period, I might well be doing the same thing. I just wish more would reflect on themselves. And help the later generations to draw some lessons. One elderly person, the famous Shanghai writer Ba Jin sets a good example by writing a series of articles, reflecting on the CR. Even he is known to be a big victim of it, his writings are full of self-criticism. But unfortunately, not many are doing that.

Acujerjer, I agree with you that the Chinese people should try to find reasons for their problems among themselves more than complaining about others, similar to what I mentioned above regarding those who went through the Cultural Revolution. But I feel you are simplifying things. For example, the Chinese have been killing the Chinese things you mentioned. I can¡¯t deny there were numerous killings among the Chinese. But I think when we talk about the history of China or its people, we can¡¯t just think the concept in a still, no change manner. The westerners often think China as a monolithic piece of land. But the reality is in its evolving into its current state, more often than not, it¡¯s not a unified country. The Chinese history books tend to use the dynasties created by Han people as the main line to narrate the historical events. But in many cases, the Chinese (Han) dynasties only covered the fraction of today¡¯s China. For example, in later Song Dynasty, almost all territory north of Yellow River was occupied by the ¡°barbarian¡± people, the Liao, Jin dynasties before finally the Mongols took over. In the meantime, in the west, there was a powerful dynasty West Xia. In the south, the Han Chinese rule seldom effectively reached those remote minority people regions. In the last two thousand years, especially from the north, the Nomads from the Steppes harassed the agricultural people. And often they later became settled and only were harassed by their cousins in the Steppes again later. We all know the last dynasty, the Qing dynasty were Manchurian rulers and Yuan, Mongolians. But long before that, many tribes did the similar things in smaller scales. For example, the Buddha caves you visited in Luoyang were not built by Han people but by Xianbei people (Northern Wei Dynasty, 363-534 AD). Their original capital was in today¡¯s Datong, Shanxi. They built stone Buddhas there too. One of their emperors decided to get totally sinicized (becoming Chinese) by changing their languages, customs and moved their capital further south to Luoyang where they built more stone buddhas. They were just one of the examples in the long history. Throughout history, there were wars and killings between those ¡°countries¡± and most of them later became today¡¯s Chinese. The Manchus probably killed no less in Yangzhou in retaliation of the resistance than the Japanese in Nanjing which is very close to Yangzhou. But how many Manchus now can speak their language? very few. They are now part of the Chinese people. It might help to think China as a continent throughout the history. I sometimes see an analogy when I see Europe is integrating into a big union. It had wars from ancient Greeks to two world wars in last century.

We had a lot of discussions a while ago on Japan. US helped China in its fight to resist Japan but it was largely out of its own interest. US hoped China would engage as many Japanese armies as possible to reduce the pressure on the pacific. In fact, China did. By the time Japan surrendered, excluding the army in Manchuria, there were a million strong Japanese troops in China. In fact, even the Japanese later confessed that it was a strategic mistake for Japan to expand the war in China, falling into a quagmire. Of course, Japan was much stronger than China but neither Chiang Kai-shek nor Mao surrendered. Jiang and Mao might be arch rivals but they both agreed the war with Japan would be realistically a protracted one. But China was much harder than Japan anticipated to conquer. When the emperor Hirohito talked with Army Chief of Staff General Sugiyama, the emperor complained ¡°last time you said it would take three months in China¡±, Sugiyama had to explain by saying ¡°China is bigger than we thought¡±. As for if the Chinese would become Japanese, most likely not, if not the other way around, if you look what happened to Manchus who might be closer in blood to Japanese than to Han Chinese. As a matter of fact, by the time Japanese had to leave, most of its people in China (not military people) could speak fluent Chinese.

But I agree with you that Chinese people should do more reflections on themselves and complain less.

acujerjer
Board Royalty

Joined: Sep 10, 2003
Posts: 7770
Location: up your butt and around the corner

Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 11:33 AM

As I reasd your post Peasant, I realized that many people were reading all of your post at the same time.

I was being way to general. That is true. But although different dynasties were run by different ethnic groups, I believe most Chinese refer to Mancurians, Mongolians or whatever as Chinese now. Not Han, but Chinese. If there are supposedly 56 ethnicities in China, then that would mean all these people, are so called "Chinese" so I was right about Chinese killing each other, although, that is just one aspect of much more China has to offer. It wan't all dark.

The US helped China a lot in WW2 and many Western Countries help China out a lot now by helping China develop. All I was saying, is that China uses Westerners for help, yet I still feel there is animosity towards foreigners. I'm just saying don't hate people that help you. They talk so much bad stuff about America, but never do you hear any credit for helping them out against the Japanese, regardless of why US did it.

And finally, just mentioning that China needs to look at the log in their own eyes before they acknowledge the splinters in other's eyes. Self reflection would totaly transform the nation. Thank you Peasant for your words.

dfoo

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Joined: Jan 19, 2005
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Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 11:46 AM

Ok, here you go.

The western nations all established empires in China at the expense of the Chinese in the 19th century. Once Germany was defeated at the end of WWI in the treaty of Versailles the western powers conveniently gave Japan the German rights in the port of Shantung. The Chinese for this reason never signed the Treaty. They eventually made their own peace with Germany in 1919. The Chinese were by and large totally disgusted with great powers after this decision. They had pinned alot of hope on Wilsons 14 points, and had expected the great powers to hand over control of Chinese assets to China as part of the principal of self determination.

A very strong argument can be made that the hand over to the Japanese of Shantung lead directly to the formation of the Chinese communist party, and the subsequent take-over in 1949.

I quote from a history book that I have:

"Coincidence counts for more in history than some may care to think, and in 1919 an alternative presented itself to the Chinese. Not the alternative of returning to China's traditional ways, but the new order in Russia. The Russian Revolution offered an example of a traditional society, not unlike China's, which had apparently skipped ahead to the future in one bold and glorious move. The disillusionment with the West, their own dismal experience with Western-style democracy after 1911, and the clear alternative presented by Russia all came together to make communism seem the solution to China's problems. ... A year after the Paris Peace conference, a group of Chinese radicals met to form the Chinese Communist Party. Many of the leading demonstrators from May 1919 were to become members. ... under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai who had also been active in the May 4 agitation, the party went on to win power in China in 1949"

Best Regards, Matthew

costes

Talker

Joined: Feb 21, 2005
Posts: 80

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Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 03:30 PM

acujerjer, im not a history buff but i do know that if i can spare the time, ill find sufficient material to rebutt your points. whilst i agree with you that self-reflection is something the chinese need to develop, i would add that you need to practise what you preach too. with all due respect, your comments are naive, oversimplified and bigoted.

for example, if i may just draw your attention to your following phrases:

acujerjer wrote:

...there are a lot of whores in china.

you imply as though this is a situation peculiar and unique to china. perhaps you should try visiting cities in other countries (e.g. in thailand, india, holland, mexico etc)

acujerjer wrote:

...many Western Countries help China out a lot now by helping China develop.

it would be fair to state that many western countries who "help china develop" are doing so out of political or economic self-interest, and not out of some charitable or altruistic motive as you imply. in any event, one would note that several western countries, most notably the US, are threatened by the rise of china and have been finding ways and means to keep china down (please refer to the rejection of cnooc's bid for unocal for a recent example).

cheers.

acujerjer
Board Royalty

Joined: Sep 10, 2003
Posts: 7770
Location: up your butt and around the corner

Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 03:37 PM

This is an old thread and I don't agree with everything I wrote here. Someone just dug it up out of the woodworks.

About West helping China, my point was only that maybe Chinese should give the West a little credit for their help, instead of being so resistant to acknowledging it. . Thats all.

Edgewood
FooSlinger

Joined: Jan 28, 2004
Posts: 3906
Location: Colonial Shanghai

Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 03:45 PM

Quote:

Its a misrepresentation of history. I think it conveniently ignores the role that the western powers, including the US, played in China prior to WWII.

Here are some names for you to check out, dipstick:

Adam Schall
Ferdinand Verbiest
Peter Parker
Frederick Ward
Charles Gordon
Horatio Lay
Robert Hart
William Martin
John Fryer
Edward Hume
Mikhail Borodin
Oliver Todd
Norman Bethune
Claire Chennault
Joseph Stilwell
Albert Wedemeyer

_________________
Conlige suspectos semper habitos

Edgewood
FooSlinger

Joined: Jan 28, 2004
Posts: 3906
Location: Colonial Shanghai

Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 03:50 PM

And for you, Peasant my old friend...

Quote:

neither Chiang Kai-shek nor Mao surrendered

That's because Mao was hiding in the mountains the entire time. In fact, the Communists only engaged the Japanese Military once, and the general who was in charge of the Communist forces at the time, was later punished for doing so.

_________________
Conlige suspectos semper habitos

dfoo

Post Roaster

Joined: Jan 19, 2005
Posts: 4140

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Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 05:45 PM

Edgewood wrote:

...
Here are some names for you to check out, dipstick:

Adam Schall
Ferdinand Verbiest
Peter Parker
Frederick Ward
Charles Gordon
Horatio Lay
Robert Hart
William Martin
John Fryer
Edward Hume
Mikhail Borodin
Oliver Todd
Norman Bethune
Claire Chennault
Joseph Stilwell
Albert Wedemeyer

Congratulations, some missionaries, some generals who were involved in the opium war. As for Stilwell, Chennault and co, they arrived on the scene after the great powers gave away parts of China to Japan thus arguably instigating the communist movement in China.

You're just too subtle for me. What's your point?

Regards, Matthew

dfoo

Post Roaster

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Posted: Aug 03, 2005 - 05:50 PM

Edgewood wrote:

And for you, Peasant my old friend...

Quote:

neither Chiang Kai-shek nor Mao surrendered

Seems like a fairly wise course of action if he was convinced that the KMT would win, especially since the KMT was accumulating arms/ammo and such from the US.

Regards, Matthew

acujerjer
Board Royalty

Joined: Sep 10, 2003
Posts: 7770
Location: up your butt and around the corner

Posted: Aug 04, 2005 - 02:58 AM

DFoo are you a pro Communist patriot? Are you Chinese or just a highly misinformed lao wai. You seem to have no ability to seperate propoganda from reality.

dfoo

Post Roaster

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Posts: 4140

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Posted: Aug 04, 2005 - 06:11 AM

What makes you say that? The fact that I don't agree with you -- resorting to personal attacks around here seems to be a very popular debating tactic.

What I said about the treaty of Versailles is historical fact. Of course, the part about giving Shantung to Japan directly resulting in the formation of the Chinese communist party is partly opinion (although the connection is very clear) -- but in no way is any of it "Chinese" pro-communist propaganda! The book was written by Margaret MacMillan - a Canadian history professor.

Regards, Matthew

peasant
Reacher
Reacher

Joined: July 24, 2004
Posts: 323

Posted: Aug 05, 2005 - 09:55 AM

It¡¯s great to see you and Acujerjer posting more often now, Edgewood. I remember those days when both of you and several others were very active. The posts by your guys are very interesting, to say the least. Hope you have been doing well.

Edgewood wrote:

And for you, Peasant my old friend...

Quote:

neither Chiang Kai-shek nor Mao surrendered

Mao¡¯s communist forces didn¡¯t have many large-scale military confrontations with the Japanese during the whole war. When the war just started (September, 1937, excluding the actions in the Northeast (Manchuria)), part of the communist Eighth Route Army led by Lin Biao had a victory over Japan¡¯s Fifth Division led by Seishiro Itagaki (°åÔ«Õ÷ËÄÀÉ). China¡¯s history book seldom forgets to mention this battle even after Lin became a bad guy. In fact, the Japanese force was just part of their 21st brigade, a supply envoy that was ambushed by Lin at Pingxingguan in Shanxi. Then there was this so called ¡°Hundred Regiments Campaign¡± led by Peng Dehuai. It was not a single large battle but a series of small offensives. Peng was punished by Mao later but not mainly for this campaign but for speaking out against Mao during the Great Leap Forward Movement in late 50s, though one of his ¡°crimes¡± cited by people was this campaign against the Japanese drew the Japanese attention to the communists and that led to the heavy losses of the communist forces in the subsequent Japanese retaliation.

But Mao¡¯s communists did present a constant harassment and frustration to the Japanese forces by employing the guerrilla warfare in North China plains. And Mao was good at it. Though he was ¡°hiding¡± in the mountains in Yan¡¯an, literally in a cave (where people lived in caves), he was planning the strategies and gave instructions in methods. You have a Japanese Imperial Army soldier in your avatar, Edgewood. I think you must have read the book ¡°Soldiers of the Sun¡± by Meirion Harries. His tone in the description of the Japanese army is often admiring and he didn¡¯t often give enough credits to the Chinese resistance (He got his raw material largely from Japanese sources). But nevertheless, he gave high marks to Mao for his guerrilla war. He devoted one whole chapter ¡°At War with Mao¡± to Mao¡¯s guerrilla warfare and he used the word ¡°success¡± quite a few times to comment Mao¡¯s tactics. Even in the chapter to talk about the sufferings the war brought to the Japanese civilians, the first sentence of that chapter is ¡°Mao¡¯s success ensured that the Japanese people would suffer, in material terms at least, almost as much as Chinese civilians¡±

I at one point didn¡¯t believe almost anything the government said since I saw so many lies in the media and books, including their history about fighting the Japanese. But later I actually found quite a lot in the Japanese publications and history records about the fights with communist guerrillas that collaborate with the Chinese records. In those books, the guerrillas were their very formidable foe. I didn¡¯t have the exact number with me now, but a few Japanese generals and major generals died in the fighting with the communists too. A number of Japanese books written by the formal soldiers had very detailed records about individual battles and many are largely in agreement with the Chinese records. I can provide the titles of several of such books in Japanese if anyone can and wants to read in Japanese, since no English and Chinese translations are available for them.

It¡¯s true that towards the end of the war, the Chinese forces, both Nationalists and communists, were trying to avoid engaging the Japanese. For Chiang, he saw the eventual fall of the Japan in the hands of the Americans and he probably thought it¡¯s a better idea to let the Americans do it. He might think he was smart doing this, but there was a high price for China to pay. Roosevelt was very disappointed with Chiang and he didn¡¯t see China could be a major force to defeat Japan. He went to Stalin whom he tried not to ask for help if China could do more. The secret agreement reached between FDR and Stalin at Yalta was the formal recognition of the independence of Mongolia as one of the conditions the Soviet would join the fight. At that time, FDR probably wasn¡¯t sure about the power of the atomic bombs that was dropped exactly 60 years ago. Mao might be also busy trying preparing his forces to fight Chiang after the Japanese was gone.