Chinese Opera and the Olympics

By Caleb T. Maupin

(From the Exponent)

On http://www.youtube.com/ one can watch scenes from the Chinese Opera entitled “The White Haired Girl.” One scene in particular catches my attention. It is a scene in which the heroin, a white haired female dances about the stage slapping a well dressed man about the face, as a crowd of villagers looks on in agreement. What is occuring before us on the stage, while the music sways back and forward, is something that actually happened many times during the Chinese revolution. A peasant woman who has been a victim of rape at the hands of rich landlord, is confronting her attacker and calling him out for his crimes.

As one watches this film, and sees a poor woman slapping a rich man in the face, and then realizes that this film was not being suppressed by the chinese government, but actually promoted, one must not help but realize that the Chinese revolution was not the horrible crime against humanity that many of the books at our own B-W bookstore would have you believe.
When I speak with the students from China, I have yet to meet one who will speak poorly of Mao Tse-Tung. I have yet to meet a single one that will say that China prior to the 1949 Communist revolution was preferable to the current order of things.

And I was even more inspired by the speeches of China’s president to the convention of the country’s leading political party. He used the word “democracy” 60 times. He announced that the country would be reestablishing national healthcare, and will be setting up free schools for the countyside.

It is in this light, that I am strongly opposed to those who say the United States should boycott the Olympics in China in 2008. China is perhaps doing some things wrong, but they are also doing a lot of things right.

While western powers moan about “saving darfur” with threats of Iraq style military “intervention”, China is constructing dams and giving a great amount of aid to the nation of Sudan. It is the leaders of the western nations that are attacking Robert Mugabe for giving land back to the African people from whom it was stolen. China has aided Zimbabwe, and stands by this revolutionary African government in redistributing the land to the black majority of the country, who owned it prior to the white colonists.

Though I oppose all use of the death penalty, I find it peculiar that there is only one country in this world that executes millionaires. In the capitalist nations which have capital punishment, the rich alway seem to be able to buy their way out of this barbaric punishment that falls onto the poor. But in China, a crime like endangering thousands of people, whether you be a government bureaucrat , millionaire in the private sector, or everyday factory worker, will be met with similiar consequences.

China, though it has experimented greatly with market-socialism, is in essence, a society run by the working class and a Marxist-Leninist Party. They have many flaws, but they are not an imperialist power.

If the Olympics are held in China in 2008, perhaps George W. Bush could attend. He could learn a thing or two. He could learn about a country that has made feeding people a priority, rather than killing them. He could learn about a society where compassion for the poor is not seen as proof that one is “not a real man.” He could learn about a society which has gone from fuedalism, patriarchy, and capitalism, to a modern socialistic economy, based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.

Perhaps Bush would realize that societies such as that are the future, and definetly not worth boycotting.

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF EXPONENT CAMPUS MEDIA