Tianamen Incident

Q: Do these readings complicate your original reaction to Deng's crackdown on the protests?

A: My first thoughts while watching the video in class about the Tianamen Square crackdown was that the government was forceful, power-hungry and just unnecessarily brutal. The readings did not change my mind about Deng and his cruel crackdown on the protesters. The reasons for the protests aren’t the point here, the important thing to notice is that they weren’t happy. They wanted change in the government, as unhappy citizens would want. So Deng simply ended up killing them to preserve his own government and crackdown on any opposition.  The Financial Times article only speaks of the reasons for the protests, and the different reasons for the Western and Eastern points of view. 

To Live

The movie To Live was about an ordinary man in China, living with his family. The movie was during the time where Mao, the head of the Communist party, was in power. The movie begins in the 1940’s. Fugui and Jiazhen, the ordinary, married Chinese couple, lose all their money, get separated, reunite, raise two children together, later on they bury two children, and care for a grandchild. They also survive a civil war (Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, and Cultural Revolution). 

When the couple’s daughter got married to a factory worker, the newly wed couple and her parents took a photo in front of a wall with Mao Zedong’s face painted on it. In 1966, Mao launched a ‘super-campaign’ against the capitalists and the reactionaries. The campaign was known as The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The four of them also held The Little Red Book — which had quotations from Mao Zedong in it — placing it near their heart. 

When the couple’s daughter died in childbirth, it was because there were no doctors present in the hospital. This was because during the Cultural Revolution, the capitalists and reactionaries were arrested — in this case it was the educated and trained doctors — which left the unexperienced nurses in the hospital to deal with the Fugui and Jiazhen’s dying daughter. 

Religion theme

The theme of religion in China is an interesting topic because China has never really had a religion from the very beginning where everything is based. China is an understanding and accepting nation when it comes to religion. She has dealt with all kinds of religions. There has been Confucianism, Christianity, Buddhism, Daoism, and many more religions in China. 

One perfect comparison is China, and Europe, during its Age of Exploration. China is a country that believes in monotheism, but it does not kill, shun or reject people, especially its own people. The Europe Christians took their own people in for questioning. They accused them and tortured them if they didn’t confess or accept Christianity exactly as their authorities believed. 

Zheng He, a Chinese Muslim eunuch, went out to sea and traded with foreign lands. He didn’t feel the need to conquer or convert foreign lands and the foreigners, during their voyages. Zheng He accepted their beliefs, and simply let them be. Yongle, the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, believed in a religious philosophy derived from Confucianism, where decisions were made by state officials rather than by elected representatives. 

The map shows Zheng He’s voyages to different countries such as Arabia, Siam (modern-day Thailand), India, Burma and more. This shows the variety of different countries with different people, with their own, separate beliefs and religions that he traded and cooperated with. 

Trading & Economic theme

Emperor Yongle had high hopes for China. Especially with the successful buildings, extension of the Grand Canal for trading, and its booming population. Trading was China’s source of foreign material goods. England was trading her silver to China, and in return, China would give her precious silk, tea and porcelain. Everything was looking great till the trading became the problem. England began to trade opium, along with silver. That’s when China’s addiction started to kick in, and get out of control. 

Let’s say that each family in China was given thirty wen a year for all the silk, tea and porcelain they made. If the families were hooked on opium, and therefore spending their year’s money on it, would they have money to spend on food for survival, or materials to make tea, procelain and silk? No, they wouldn’t. So China had a problem. The government tried to fix it, which lead to an opium war, then a rebellion, and in the middle of the rebellion, a second opium war, and afterwards, another war and a rebellion. 

Unfortunately for China, the opium trade didn’t just continue. After 1830, the trade intensified. China’s lack of production caused originally England’s silver, which was in the hands of the Chinese, to actually be reversed back to England. The treaty that ended the madness and chaos of the opium wars, and of course the other disasters of the Qing, left China’s economy in ruins. 

The pictures of porcelain vase — from the Qianlong era — and silk are examples of what China used to trade with England. The pods of opium seeds that England traded in return for China’s goods, such as tea and silk, is represented by the picture of the poppy flower.