Years of Poems and Spirits

Remember had dim sum with Shange and Matthew in Beijing. Shange is a Mormon living in SF and Matthew is from Connecticut and went to U Chicago, working as a Foreign Service officier in Beijing after a tour in Korea and Taiwan.

During the meal, Matthew complained Beijing’s nightlife is not even as good as in Taiwan. But Shange has been saying that Beijing is so much a western city.

The two Americans can’t agree with each other on whether Beijing is American enough. That is probably the least surprising in the U.S. because America is so much about embracing diversities (within a boundry of course). A prep boy (I guess) does not feel he has to adjust to a Mormon–no one can claim he is the orthodox American.

The problem I felt so repugnant about is that, in Beijing, on the one hand, there is this strong pretention of being the center of the world but at the same time a mindless drive to mimic the West. The West becomes an object with an Platoian essence that is in fact just some slangs in a rich language.

Before the Chinese can really embrace their own diversity, there won’t be a real Chinese cultural renaissance.

I have fell in love with the Diane Rehm Show. Although at first I was put off by her voice (little did I know that she had undergone a throat cancer operation before), soon I was hook because she has the uncunny ability to pick the right subjects and to get the right guests on her show. For example, couple of month ago, she did a piece on the French youth’s protests. It appeared as a typical French-are-whiners story in the mainstream but her guests were able to put the story in a context so I understood better why the protests were so vehement and that the whole thing did not start from nowhere.

Anyway, the recent developments about the war between Israel and Lebanon. For a long while, I thought it was the Iranians trying to divert attentions on their nuke program. My friend Arif told me something quite different:
1. There has been cross-border raids before. This is NOT the first time Hezbollah kidnapped/killed Israeli soilders before.
2. Israel’s previous reactions were much more restrained.
3. There was even a large scale prisoner exchange in early 2004 between the two sides.
4. There is a significant secterian dimension (in Arif’s word, disrupted previous Shia-Sunni equilibrium) Some Muslims apparently see this re-configuration of power as the source of current disturbance in the region and the result of the invasion of Iraq.

With those storeis in mind, it is now easy to understand why the Lebanonese are crying faul: why so harsh this time? Or why the leaders of Hezbollah confessed they were surprised by the attacks too.

Now that is something even Diane did not mention.

Follow up on Aug. 27:
Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah … said that he would not have ordered the capture of two Israeli soldiers - the event on 12 July which sparked an Israeli offensive - had he known it would lead to such unrest.

Some public criticism is finally being heard of Hezbollah for triggering the conflict and that is no doubt why the Hezbollah leader has now spoken of a miscalculation, our correspondent says.
–BBC