The much-vaunted reforms don’t seem to have reached this province yet:

Villagers in southern China’s Guangxi province accused local police on Tuesday of arresting Bible owners and sentencing them to labour camps as part as a campaign to weed out “illegal religious organisations“.

Written testimony supplied to AFP by villagers in Xilin county accused up to 40 policemen of descending on Christian villages in the middle of the night and ransacking homes in search of Bibles and other religious materials.

Official arrest documents also show that following their detention three people from Weishan and Tianbao villages were sentenced without trial to 18 months in a labour camp run by the Nanning Glass Factory in the provincial capital.

Actually, it seems to be an equal-opportunity crackdown, with similar incidents taking place against “illegal religious organisations” in three other provinces. The article says the wave of crackdowns began after Hu Jintao had completed his transition to power in March.

So much for Hu ushering in a new era of measurable reforms.

[Link via Radio Free China.]

This is at least the fifth time I have tried to write this post. Each time previously, I ended up deleting it in a mini-rage, upset that I kept getting bogged down in the quicksand of sentimentality. I’m not sure whether there is a way to describe my emotion-filled final days in Beijing without getting….emotional. Let me try once again.

Right now, Poulenc’s haunting and utterly incredible Gloria is playing on my cheap stereo. I sang in a chorus in Beijing, one of the few sublime memories I have of this period, and the Gloria captured me with its opening notes. We performed it at the very peak of the SARS hysteria. (It made news for being the only live concert in Beijing, and shortly afterwards all theaters were closed.)

This experience, singing in this chorus and writing the program notes for the music, provided some much needed light at a time when everything was becoming increasingly black. Forever and ever, as I hear the Gloria, I will be transported to that night when we sang this gorgeous music in the Forbidden City concert hall. My boss and her husband came to the concert, and so too did my one true friend in Beijing, a young fellow named Ben.

If I were to describe to you the welling of emotion I feel simply by typing this name, none of you would believe me, there is no way you could possibly believe me.

In order to keep my sanity in Beijing, I knew early on that I would need a friend. I would need someone to share my thoughts with, to eat dinner with, to talk to on a regular basis. I really don’t think I could have survived my stay in Beijing without Ben’s friendship.

Ben is 24 years old, the son of an impoverished family from Yunnan, the rural agricultural province of China I wanted so badly to visit in April but was kept away by SARS. Ben was poor but lucky; his grades were always high, and a charity payed for him to go to college. He had made his way to Beijing where he was the pride of his family, working for a marketing company for about $280 a month. In spite of the low salary, he sent money back to his parents with each paycheck. Back in Yunnan, his parents could not afford to buy him shoes until he was about six years old.

When we first met, Ben told me about his passions, especially traditional Chinese calligraphy, and he would later come over with his box of beautiful brushes and a bottle of ink and show me how exquisite an art this can be. If there were a dictionary definition of the phrase “doesn’t have a bad bone in his body,” Ben’s photograph would be right there alongside it.

That day, when we first met, he was describing his family to me when something just touched my heart, I’m still not sure exactly why and I suspect I won’t be able to explain it clearly. I asked him if his parents worked, and he told me his father was retired. Then he said, with a beautiful pride, “My mother is a salesman. She sells vegetables in the market in our village.” I can’t say why this touched me so. I think it was because it told me how much he loved his mother, how proud he was of her, and also that his family was very poor.

From that day on, Ben was my best friend, my anchor in an increasingly chaotic Beijing. I suspect he had no idea just how important he was to me. I know he wanted our friendship to be something more, but I told him up-front that it would never happen, that I would be leaving Beijing in a matter of months, and I told him about my friend JC in Arizona. He said he understood and that it didn’t matter, as long as we were friends and could spend time together.

As I prepared to leave Beijing, it became more and more important for me to help Ben. I know it sounds mawkish, but I felt if I could do something to better the life of this wonderful Chinese man, I would be doing something for all of China.

Dealing with the poverty I saw in Beijing was always a struggle for me. There was construction going on next to my apartment complex, and each morning I would walk by as the group of itinerant workers gathered to start work. They lived in a shoddy little shack on the construction site with some ripped old mattresses on the ground; the “walls” were old blankets. It was freezing cold, and I wondered how they coped at night. I would walk by them on my way to work wearing my dress coat and suit and they would stare at me as though I were from another planet, and I wanted to just stop and give something to them, do something for them. I had such a guilty conscience, feeling such strong emotions and being unable to do anything at all. (Do you see why I had trouble keeping this post from suffocating in its own sentimentality?)

Ben’s situation always went right to my heart — poor and marginalized in an intolerant country. (No, he was not poor compared with the migrant laborers, but he had so little, and he had to help his family with what money he had.) Being poor is bad enough in China, but to also carry that burden of loneliness….I couldn’t just let it be, I couldn’t just leave and not try to do something for Ben. But what could I do? I had so little money myself, and I was about to embark on a four-week vacation with JC and had saved as much as I could to cover the costs.

I had given my resignation, and in my final weeks there I decided to try to have my firm hire Ben. It was his dream to work for one of the big multinational communications companies and we had an opening. I set up the interview, but I was careful to keep myself out of the process. I simply got him in the door and arranged for him to meet the people who would be managing after I left.

I was totally crushed when they came back and said he wasn’t right for the company. I wanted to protest, to fight, but I had promised myself to handle it as “strictly business,” with as little emotional involvement as possible. When I asked why he wasn’t right, they said it boiled down to one thing — his Yunnan accent, which they said made it difficult to understand his Chinese. And speaking is a big part of the job.

Why can’t things be simple? All I wanted was to give Ben a special chance to prove himself, and I was thwarted and there was nothing I could do. There were only a few days before JC would be visiting me, and then we would leave Beijing, perhaps forever. I still had to do something, I needed to “make a difference” if only in the smallest way. As I packed my things, preparing for the shipping company to take them to Singapore, I gave as much as I could to Ben, books and clothes and kitchen utensils, anything I felt I could do without.

JC was scheduled to arrive the next day, and I took Ben to dinner and begged him to come to terms with the fact that he would most likely never see me again, and that he had to meet other people. This was a sensitive topic and a lot of tears were shed. For the past several months, for the only time in his life, Ben had enjoyed security, knowing I would be there for him and give him advice and be his real friend. And now I was going away forever, and in just a few hours he would return to his old world and once again be a cipher in the vast Chinese population. (At least that is how he saw it.)

My only way at the time to deal with this was to push it down, keep it out of my mind. The reality was simply too devastating: I was leaving one of the dearest people of my entire life to fend for himself in a cruel and difficult land, leaving him totally in the lurch after he had become so dependent on me. But I couldn’t keep it down; it has been pushing its way up for two months now, and in recent days it’s been grabbing me by the throat, and I know it will haunt me forever.

At that dinner, I told Ben there was not much I could do for him. I explained that I didn’t have a lot of money to part with, but that nothing in the world, nothing, was more important to me than seeing him grow and succeed in life. And then I pulled out a white envelope in which I had placed about 1800 yuan, the equivalent of about $240, but nearly a month’s salary to Ben. I told Ben that this was not a gift, it was not for him to buy a watch or a sweater, but rather it was tuition money; he was to use it only for working with a tutor to improve his Mandarin pronunciation and, if the money went far enough, also his English pronunciation.

I knew what would happen next, and I had prepared for it. Ben refused to take the money, just as he always resisted when I would pay for dinner. If only he understood that it was my greatest joy to give to him whatever I could. He pushed it away. I took the envelope and pushed it into his hand and told him I would be insulted if he did not allow me to show my deep thanks and appreciation for all he had done for me. He finally relented and took the envelope. It was one of the most poignant moments of my life, as he looked up at me with an expression of such pain, such helplessness, his eyes welling with tears.

The next day before JC arrived, I filled two boxes with clothes that I was going to throw out– winter jackets, gloves, sweaters — and that Ben said he didn’t need. I carried them down to where the itinerant workers were, and I tried to explain to them in my broken Mandarin that it was my gift to them. They looked amazed, and I don’t think they understood a word I said. I couldn’t understand them either, their dialect sounding like a whole other language. I tried to tell them to enjoy these things, and they thanked me so joyfully, like children, as they pored through the boxes.

I knew it was meaningless. I knew I could solve nothing. But I can’t tell you how my heart ached then and aches now for China and its poor people. I know it’s a cruel world and there are lots of poor people, and I know that in China they are doing better, I know more are joining a middle class, but still the poverty and harshness were all around me and my weak liberal conscience had to come to terms with it, even if the most I could do was one of those worthless gestures that results in no real change. I had to do something, and I didn’t know what more I could do.

So today, two months since I left Beijing, I carry China in my heart all the time. I cannot push it down, I cannot forget about it. It is in my dreams, my nightmares, my waking and sleeping. Ghosts. They are everywhere, and nearly everything reminds me of Ben, the gentle, saintly young man whom I left on his own to fend for himself, even though I know that the system, by its very nature, will make his life a cruel struggle, if it doesn’t destroy him altogether. And I am haunted by this nearly all the time.

Well, I think I should stop there. I know how sentimental and bleeding-heart I sound, but that doesn’t diminish, I hope, the sincerity behind the sentimentality. Let me just end it all with a promise, that if I do nothing else, I will help Ben to rise above his situation and even bring him to America so he can learn perfect English (which can mean the difference between success and failure if he wants to work in my field). That will be my project.

Thanks for sticking with me to the end of this endless post.

[UPDATE: I am removing the pictures from these posts, as they were slowing down my site.]
I wanted to get down some recollections of my aborted trip through South China before they start to fade.

We literally fled Beijing on April 27, when rumors were flying about an imminent sealing off of the entire Chinese capital due to SARS. This is me reading, all alone, at the Great Wall a couple of days before our exodus.

The first stop was the ancient Chinese capital of Xi’An, which was basically an obscure backwater until, in 1974, a peasant farmer unearthed what was perhaps the most astounding archeological find of the century. Under his fields was buried the vast tomb of an ancient emperor who wanted to be buried with an army of life-size terra-cotta soldiers, more than 6,000 in all, each one with a different face and clothing.

As with virtually every tourist attraction we visited, we had the entire place to ourselves. I wasn’t ready for what we saw at this site: the size of the tomb is so huge, you cannot see from one end of it to the other. And the army of warriors is so massive, each of the kiln-baked figures so beautiful and lifelike, that you have to be overwhelmed. Hopefully this photo captures a bit of the magic.

Next we were on to Guilin, referred to in all the guidebooks as simply one of the most beautiful places on earth. The terrain of this region is generally flat, but it is dotted with grandiose limestone mountains that suddenly rise sheer out of the flat countryside and soar upwards at near-90-degree angles, creating a scenic wonder that almost looks man-made. It’s as though they were placed there with an ice-cream scoop, one here, one there. Some are covered in lush vegetation, others are gray and stark. They do not have sharp peaks; most are rounded, almost oval; others culminate in plateaus. These photos can’t do it any justice but are the best I can do:

The highlight of this trip was the boat ride from Guilin to the enchanted town of Yangshuo, four hours up the Li River. This trip cannot be described in words. The limestone constructions are so spectacular and the surrounding scenery so gorgeous they create a fairy-tale quality to the excursion.

We were supposed to move on to Yunnan, the highlight of the trip. Two full weeks were to be spent exploring the Tibet border and Lijiang and Dali and Kunming, and everything was paid for in advance. When we heard the roads were actually being blocked to keep tourists out and that our hotels had been closed, we knew it was time to get out, the sooner the better.

The only problem here in Bangkok right now is the oppressive heat, and much of the day is spent trying to get out of the sun. Still, it’s always a haven for me, and
after so many weeks of insanity in SARS-decimated Beijing, a haven is just what I need.

[Note: I have edited and retitled this post, which started off as an update on SARS, but ended up more an indictment of my host country’s inherently wicked government. TPD, April 19]

I was intrigued to see the NYT article today on how the Chinese government’s mishandling of SARS has totally demolished its painstaking efforts to position itself as a fast-changing, dynamic society that is moving closer and closer to liberalizing its laws, its policies and its general philosophy. You must read this article in full to understand just how grievously China has damaged itself with this fiasco.

There is no doubt that in some ways China is changing, especially in regard to trade and economic policy. There have also been some baby-steps in the right direction when it comes to education (problem solving is slowly being encouraged, not simply “chalk and talk” memorization). But what SARS has shown the world is that for all the fireworks, for all the self-congratulatory praise we see on CCTV and read in China Daily about “the new China,” politically the country is rotten to the core, atrophied and senile.

The article wastes no time getting to the point:

China’s restrictions on information about a highly infectious respiratory illness has undermined five years of diplomacy intended to alter its image as a prickly regional power and to improve relations with neighboring countries, Asian politicians and analysts say.

Beijing’s secretiveness for much of the last several weeks about severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, contrasts sharply with the openness of its neighbors, even one-party states like Singapore. It also reflects the emphasis China puts on overall social stability above individuals’ well-being, many argue.

That last sentence contains the keys to understanding this strange nation. The obsession, to the point of insanity, that the government places on “social stability” and “harmony” makes this government an enemy to its own people. To ensure social stability and harmony, the fundamental necessity is to look good. This is a government that lives to make itself look good, so that people remain placid and accepting of (or better still, oblivious to) the shit going on around them.

Worried about a new catastrophic disease that could kill your citizenry by the thousands? Don’t give it a second thought — the Chinese plutocracy has the ideal answer: Don’t do anything. If you say nothing, you might be able to contain it. Taking that awful risk is far more attractive an alternative than informing people, and in so doing creating “disharmony.”

Now, any sane, rational government knows that contagious diseases don’t give a flying fuck about Mao’s Red Book and won’t be contained in just one village because Jiang Zemin wants them to be. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt for a moment and assume the Chinese leaders are not totally brain damaged. Let’s say they really believed this sort of wishful thinking might work. After learning that this policy was an absolute disaster — in fact, a tragedy of unimaginable dimensions for millions of Chinese citizens — wouldn’t they then know at least not to do the same thing again?

Normally the answer would be yes. But this is no normal government. This government did the exact same thing for nearly 10 years with AIDS, ignoring it, stigmatizing those infected, and setting up every conceivable obstacle to creating awareness and preventative measures for its people. Its people, for whom this government supposedly exists. Ha. (For reference, see what I wrote just a few days ago on the AIDS holocaust here in China.)

In other words, they learned nothing from their repellent “see-no-evil” approach to AIDS, which now threatens to turn China into the next Africa in terms of AIDS infection. The audacity, the sheer hubris of these pompous oafs who, as SARS began to spread through Beijing were lauding one another on television and clinking champagne glasses for the farcical rubber-stamp “People’s Congress” — these bastards knew, and they did nothing, just as they did nothing in the late-80s as contaminated blood flowed into the veins of its citizens across their vast nation, sentencing innocent men, women and children to a lifetime of stigmatization and the guarantee of death without dignity. Acknowledging the tragedy may have made them look bad, and we can’t have any of that now, can we?

They knew. And they said nothing. Fifteen years ago, and today. And you wonder why I am hard on the Chinese government?

As I prepare to leave this country, I worry less and less about telling the truth. To say that another way, I have always tried to tell the truth here, but often I felt I had to tone down my rancor, soften the blows. Right now, I just don’t care, and I want whoever happens to stop by this little site to know the truth about China, or at least what I perceive that truth to be: China is the Evil Empire, a tottering, power-drunk, paranoid nation of thugs dressing themselves up as saviors — a bad country. It was for the bastards we saw smiling and waving at the “People’s Congress” that my God made hell.

Any questions?

Footnote: I refer only to the Chinese government here. The people I know here are gracious, kind and good. They know, to a large extent, what their “leaders” are all about. Luckily for these good people, the SARS fuck-up has been of such great magnitude that it could end up resulting in long-term change and improvement here. Maybe. It has certainly opened the eyes of the world as to what “the new China” is all about.

I was just interrupted by an unusual phone call. I am going to take a gamble and write about it now, although I’ve never blogged about such personal subjects before. If only a couple of people see it, it will be worthwhile. I must by necessity live a secret life here in Beijing, where being gay, while no longer a crime per se, is certainly something one doesn’t announce to one’s colleagues. So I keep all aspects of the topic out of this diary and out of my worklife. I have entrusted one colleague of mine, a very mature and wonderful young lady, with the URL for this site. Amy, if you are reading this tonight, I am counting on you to honor my trust in you.

So the phone rang a short while ago. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t believe that I can ever be happy here. I can never tell my family about the man that I love, I always have to live a secret life.” So said my friend David, one of my first friends here, a 21-year-old student at a local university, his voice choking with emotion. David told me about a teacher he was in love with, an American whose father had just suffered a heart attack. He had to return at once to America and David, who has been looking for love for so many months, was utterly devastated. I hardly knew what to say as I heard his sobs, but I felt that I was hearing a cry of agony from all the gay men in China. “He was the only man I loved and now he’s leaving me. I know why he has to go, I know it’s his father and I would do the same thing. But still I feel so frightened and so alone, I have never felt so alone. I looked for this man for so long, and tomorrow he’ll be gone. Finding love in China is almost impossible, and I am frightened I will never find it again.”

In Hong Kong, I felt terrible for young men who felt they had to marry and have a child because it was so much a part of their culture — the very idea of coming out was anathema to their way of thinking, to their way of life. In China it is infinitely worse. At least in HK there is a gay community, a place to go and know you are not alone. In China this community is so much in its infancy, so small and so fragile that it can offer people like David little support. I urged David to recognize that life is often sad and unfair, but that there is enough joy and happiness to make it worthwhile. I told him that at the age of 21 it might be hard to realize that life goes on after the man you love goes away, but that it does. I told David that the key to his happiness would be his relationships; he had to reach out, to have a support system, friends he could go to like me.

I was sincere, but in my heart I wondered how easy that would be in China. It wasn’t the first time I had heard a young Chinese man gripped with extreme panic as he looked with hopelessness at the many obstacles that stood in his way to happiness. The time before was in Shanghai, where a very brilliant friend of mine was reduced to tears as he told me that all he could see in his future was pain, frustration and boundless loneliness. I put my arm around his shoulder and tried to give him encouraging words before I too broke down, a fountain of tears, because I couldn’t tell him that his fears were unfounded.

David was never a close friend of mine, but in this moment I felt he was my brother, and I wanted to reach out and shield him from his anguish. As soon as he said hello, I knew something was very wrong, and I got up from my computer and sat down on the couch. I knew he needed all of me. I know that I made a difference for him tonight, and our talk was long and serious. I know I couldn’t heal the problem, make it go away, but I know that I helped him just by giving him perspective. But what can I do to help ease the anguish of all these millions who, like David, see their lives as a kind of death sentence? China has, of course, by far the world’s largest gay population. How tragic that so many of these people go to bed each night and wake up each morning with an aching heart, knowing that even if they do as expected and marry and have their child, they have been sentenced, through no crime of their own, to live a life of unspeakable aloneness, bearing a sense of shame and self-hatred. Tonight I feel as though I have cried for every one of them, for every one.