Notes From Xi'an 西安随感

I don’t really follow the news cycle and I haven’t kept up to twitter-speed with all the developing aspects of the Chen Guangcheng case, although, I am of course aware it is going on, and that it will continue to go on for years to come, whatever happens in the next few days and weeks.

It does seem to me that in some ways during stories like this the modern media world of major corporations, blogs and social media show their worst side, even if we like to think they show their best. The desire to have the next part of the story – whatever the story is – every few minutes or seconds, leaves everyone chasing each other’s tails for that next instalment, to stay in the loop, or just to stay on the edge of their seat. Until, the story actually reaches a point where we can begin to take stock and see where it sits in a wider context. Or, when another story just simply comes along to wipe it off the front pages, and the cycle goes again.

What I will try and do, though, is take the excellent Evan Osnos, from The New Yorker, as a lead, when he states that:

“[I]t’s time to learn more about how he [Chen Guangcheng] got there, and where he goes next.”

So, as I do not know a great deal about Chen, over and above the basic facts of the case, that is what I shall do.

I will write a comprehensive Note in due course, once I have gathered more information about Chen’s tragic yet inspiring life to date, but for now I will include an extract and link to an interesting piece over at The New York Review of Books. Where the author, Perry Link, compares Chen’s contemporary case with that of Fang Lizhi in 1989:

“I do not know what US officials are saying to Chen at the moment, but I can report first hand what they said in a strikingly similar case twenty-three years ago, when the physicists and human rights advocates Fang Lizhi and Li Shuxian took refuge at the US embassy following the Tiananmen Square massacre.”

As I am contemplating re-focusing my mind somewhat by beginning a Masters programme, it seems as good a time as any to go back to basics and start to pay a little more attention to some of the more concerning aspects of our societies. And, I do not mean just in China. I mean parts of a society, or even whole societies, where there exists a distinct inability to allow full lives and more equal communities to flourish, but where there is a desperate desire for wealth and power (on a multitude of levels).