Rewriting History
I was reading a Newsweek article by a Melinda Liu with the somewhat twee title “Mao to Now”. The article breathlessly introduces China as being thousands of years old yet having been made anew during the past three decades - along with the writer’s family! It’s all very Wild Swans-esque. . .
Actually it isn’t such a bad article. By the end though I was starting to wonder. Talking about the Hong Kong handover ceremony Melinda had the following to say:
“Papa came to Hong Kong to watch the handover ceremonies in the company of old friends. I remember Prince Charles delivering a stiff-lipped farewell speech while a summer downpour dripped from his cheeks and chin. One flaglowering event featured a team of three motley Brits, mismatched in height and gait, and each in a different outfit. One wore a kilt. They made a sad contrast to China’s towering honor guards, perfectly synchronized in their movements and wearing impeccably tailored uniforms. A PLA soldier unfurled a gigantic Chinese national flag with a single fluid motion and a snap so loud and clear you could practically feel it. A burst of pride and vindication swept through millions of Chinese—my father included.”
I didn’t remember having a similar impression of the hand over ceremony, except perhaps for the bit about Prince Charles. To make sure I looked on Youtube for a video. You be the judge. . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWkE-8mK8g0
- The three “motely Brits” look unremarkable enough to me. They look like you’d expect of an honor guard at this kind of event.
- I don’t see any mismatched gait in the British. Maybe I need to watch more closely but nothing leaped out at me. Melinda must be either very sensitive to this stuff, looking very hard, or talking rubbish. The only difference I see between the British and the Chinese is a difference in marching style, with the Chinese style being more formal.
- I agree the British are mismatched in height. I expect Melinda Liu and Herr Mengele would have had plenty to say about this had they ever met.
- Yes, one of the British is wearing a kilt. I guess that would be his uniform? Is he really wearing a kilt because some high spirited horseplay back in the barracks saw his real uniform run up a flagpole? Maybe Melinda Liu knows something the rest of us don’t?
- I can’t judge the quality of the tailoring in the uniforms from Youtube, so I’ll have to take Melinda’s word for it that the Chinese uniforms are “impeccably tailored”, unlike the British. Maybe the Chinese negotiated some good rates on double stitching? It goes to show that the Lonely Planet Cantonese Phrasebook only gets you so far when dealing with a Hong Kong tailor.
- Exactly like the “motley Brits”, the Chinese guards are also “each in a different outfit”. Could Melinda be imagining the “contrast”?
- I don’t really get how the British guards are “a sad contrast to China’s towering honor guards”. Admittedly the Chinese guards are fractionally taller, but the difference hardly seems striking. Surely only Melinda and Herr Mengele would notice this stuff? Of course now she points it out I guess the Chinese were very aware of the height issue and bred these guys specially or something, a la Yao Ming.
- Unless the television coverage somehow differed from the live ceremony I missed the “PLA soldier [who] unfurled a gigantic Chinese national flag with a single fluid motion and a snap so loud and clear you could practically feel it”. I cannot see any “single fluid motion” in any of the messing around with flags, and if there was any “snap so loud and clear you could practically feel it” then surely it can only have resulted from the strong (artificial?) wind that saw the flags nicely displayed during the ceremony? Melinda seems to be suggesting a Chinese superiority in the art of flag snapping that I see no evidence of.
Not a bad article but the writer seems so desperate to paint the picture of European decline, Asian pride, and so on, that they have rewritten reality to do so. Not very impressive and it can really grate to read it.
