Was Kipling Right?

Rudyard Kipling famously said that "East is East and West is West and Never the twain shall meet" at a time when colonialism was the order of the day and jingoism was called patriotism. I used to hate these words when I was a child - especially having been in the charge of two Sri Lankan nannies from around the age of 6 weeks.

As I grew up I used to dismiss this saying as I dismissed everything that smacked of colonialism and, continuing to live in countries where I, a Caucasian, was part of the minority, used actually to take umbrage at it.

But lately I have been wondering whether I was too hasty in my repudiation of Kipling who, whatever his failings, had a genuine and abiding love and knowledge of India and the Indian people. I have begun to wonder, now that I have made up my mind to leave this University, if perhaps Kipling was more the pragmatist than the racist, and I the idealist rather than the humanist.

One of the reasons that impelled my decision to leave was the knowledge that, no matter how long I stayed here, or even if I made The Supreme Sacrifice, I should never be anything other than a Foreigner here. There have, over time, indeed been Westerners who were born, grown and educated here, spending their entire lives in service of their fellows and China rightly honours them. But always as Foreigners.

Although an entire generation has grown up since Expansion and Opening, China remains a land apart and, despite programmes to teach English, Cultural Exchanges, the Olympic Games, the Chinese continue to see themselves not as part of a global community, but as onlookers. It has taken a huge shift, and many years for them to welcome the rest of the world into their country but, since The Games, even the last of the die-hards has come to see the advantages of tourism and of attracting markets into what still remains the largest unknown bloc in the world. But how long will it take for the Chinese to see The West as a destination rather than as a source of visitors?

From students to taxi-drivers, office workers to labourers, the average person here delights in talking about their country, showing it off, explaining its history and heaping its culture upon visitors. Yet more and more I am realising what a one-way street this is. Their interest in The West, fueled almost exclusively by Hollywood block-busters, is no more than peripheral and, were it not for The Dream Machine, the average person would have as little knowledge of the countries outside of Asia as they had in the Ming Dynasty.


As a term paper this year, I have set four of my classes an Essay entitled East and West: Will they Ever Meet? and have outlined my expectations and the requirements necessary for them to complete this assignment. In an article entitled America is NOT The West (http://cireenastudents.blogspot.com) I have tried to urge them to undertake a voyage of discovery by mentioning the geographical features, different cultures, unique sights and adventures which await them if they simply open a book or click their mouse. They have been given a month to prepare for this task and, to whet their appetites, I gave them all pamphlets to read that I had picked up overseas detailing the wealth of experiences, separate histories and cultures at the other end of the world.

With only one or two exceptions, however, they continue to rely on misapprehensions culled from Hollywood; things I have told them in class; or power points I've presented for their "knowledge" of the West. Indeed, several finished their essay on the day it was set without a single reference to guide them.

It could be argued, of course, that independent study is an alien concept to them, and that one cannot inculcate the habits of a lifetime of research into students in the space of one short semester. All this I am perfectly aware of. Yet I recall the research, the excitement and the professional and innovative presentations of which they were capable when the subject has been Chinese Modern Art, Chinese Music - Traditional and Contemporary, or Chinese Folk and Traditional Stories.

One cannot blame the students, of course for this lack of interest. It is one of those huge cultural divides which has caused me to reappraise my views on the quote with which I started this article. It is only when one spends some time here and is just getting to think one is gaining some insight into the culture, that one of these chasms yawns unexpectedly in front of one, and causes one, as Fagin did, to start reviewing the situation.

From the time the Celts started spreading out from their Northern forests to France, to England, to Spain and around the Mediterranean, Europe and The Continent have continually been trading with, conquering, invading, converting and marrying each other. Pedlars, jongleurs, and pilgrims have carried stories of strange sights and customs from country to country and traders have taken exotic goods, animals and even human cargo from one country to another. Crusaders brought back pictures and artifacts to the West, scholars have exchanged manuscripts and knowledge, and explorers and sailors have been sent off on voyages of discovery. Western countries have never known the isolation and self-sustainability that has characterised China throughout most of its past.

The pooling of knowledge and the arts which characterised those two great upheavals of The Renaissance and the Enlightenment by-passed China completely and the Industrial Revolution which saw the apogee of trade between all countries, did not extend here. All that The West brought in the wake of these great movements was the Opium Wars and the determination on China's part to shut out all foreigners even more securely than ever before.

The turbulent twentieth century saw China completely immersed in its own struggles which included famine and war and which turned her eyes more inward than ever. The three short decades since the historical decision to open to The West have encompassed change on a scale that has never before been experienced here and have been taken up with trying to drag an ailing, agrarian economy into the commercial world. Bringing The West to China has been the imperative that has impelled these changes: looking outward has not yet begun.

It will be argued perhaps that the thousands of students who increasingly set out to be educated in schools and universities in the West represents an outward surge. Yet a closer look reveals a different reality. Unprepared by parents or teachers, these students are sent off with inadequate language skills and are completely ignorant of the fact that they will be plunged into an educational schema that is as alien and incomprehensible to them as the societal mores or laws of the countries by which they will be expected to abide. Instead of broadening their horizons this experience has the effect of making them almost completely dependant upon each other and they turn inward for support in this complex environment. Many do not complete their course and those that do are often so traumatised by the experience that it has the opposite to the desired effect and makes them never want to travel again.

Colleagues at overseas universities tell of students arriving from China whose English is barely adequate even for travelling from the airport to their destination, let alone allowing them to follow lectures; and students who have gone overseas send me emails telling of black despair and thoughts of suicide. Twice only in the three years I have been at this university have I given prep classes to students and even then the courses have been of such short duration it is impossible to give them an adequate or comprehensive idea of what they will encounter. Indeed it would be impossible to do so even given more time as the majority of students consider such classes unnecessary and do not even show up, and of those that do, a high percentage do not have enough English to be able to understand what is being said.

I heard with envy the other day of a teacher who has been allowed to establish a compulsory department at his university for students who are going to study overseas. This ensures that students' language levels are at least adequate; prepares them culturally, societally and educationally; and also provides a support system they can access while they are away. I would give anything to be able to establish such a department here, but I know it is only a pipe dream. While the Old Guard continue themselves to have no conception of life in the West, it is impossible to impress upon them the need for such preparation - or even to persuade them to take the first steps of learning even some basic geographical locations and information.

Will the twain never meet, as Kipling insists? I would not be comfortable employing the word "never" - but I do realise that, this early in the Opening and Expansion experiment, the chances are very slim. I am also coming to see how, without some very radical changes to the current situation, unpreparedness and lack of understanding could still work against cultural understanding and respect between East and West even now, and the chasm which yawns before us now may even deepen further.

My Half of the Sky: China - after the Lhasa riots.

My Half of the Sky: China - after the Lhasa riots.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6378807.html

My Little Corner of the World

Amongst all Phyl's (my mother's) hundreds of copies of sheet music was a song called My Little Corner of the World. She hardly ever played it so I can't remember much about it other than the fact that it contained some dreadful lyrics...I always kneeeeew I'd meetsomeonelike yeeew being among them - which was probably the reason it was rarely played. In any case, its not the song - merely it's title which has stayed with me for so long.

Because, though I knew I never wanted the picket fence/McMansion stereotype life (and divorced one husband to prove it), I was always confident that I would indeed find a corner of the world and finally stay put there.

It seems like each place I've ever lived in was never it. It seemed that, wherever I was, I was only there temporarily. As a kid changing schools was so much part and parcel of the school experience that I went almost immediately from being The New Girl to being an Old Girl continuously throughout my educational career. That's just how school was.

Of course, boarding-school when the time came, was always temporary as everyone just lived marking time till they could go home from the moment they arrived. But I remember one rather sickening period when I was absolutely convinced that I had no home, nor parents either.

My parents had moved to a country I had never heard of to which I was to fly for the next school holidays. Well my father had disappeared into the ether first, and, at the time of my leaving our last home at the end of those holidays, no confirmation of his arrival had been given. Actually, once I lived there I could think of a hundred reasons for this not to have happened - ranging from his secretary having a new boyfriend to the lines having been accidentally cut by someone digging a hole. (Both true at various times).

But at the time I was not even sure Papua New Guinea even existed so had no idea of island time. Or life. But, what happened after my mother followed my father out in the great unknown - and subsequently into dead silence - was that I panicked and roused a dozing nun to come and help me find the place they were ostensibly going on the huge convent globe.

We found Papua New Guinea at last (in a completely different place to where either of us were looking for it) but of this city called Boroko, supposedly the capital city, we found no trace at all. I was definitely an orphan.

Later, I discovered that Boroko was merely a suburb of the capital city, Port Moresy (seems impossible now that I had gone 14 years into my life without ever encountering it before) and that Phyl and Gee were fine and excitedly kitting out the new apartment which would be home until we found a house.

So I first went to PNG to a temporary place I'd never seen...and then my parents moved into a place I didn't see until the next holidays. I was probably the only 15 year old kid in the world who had no idea what her own home even looked like. But that was just temporary.

After that, everywhere I've ever been has been "just until...." Just until I finish Uni; just until my father gets better; just until I'm sick of it;just until I've had this baby; just until I manage to escape from this homicidal maniac; just until I get my head sorted.

I now find myself in another just until period and it has dawned upon me that this just until has no noun or dependent verb clause. Just until.....what?

My job here has definitely passed its use-by date. Oh, not that I wouldn't stay if offered a consultancy job with appropriate fees and my own accommodation downtown. But in the absence of a fairy godmother pausing in her pumpkin- to- palace work to conjure that one up, my time here is coming to an end. What the hell am I gonna do now?

I know this is not an unusual question. It strikes most of us, with vary degrees of urgency, anything from once a day to once in a lifetime. But, hey, I really MEAN it. What the hell am I going to do? As Lewis Carroll put it "But answer came there none."

Now this is not one of those existential meanderings into the deeper mysteries of life and our purpose in the universe. (Though I can toss one of those off every so often when prompted enough). Instead I find myself with two positions which are unceasingly chasing themselves around in my head:Am I irresponsible and immature?
Or am I a carefree spirit who lives up to her ideas?

Because it's probably all very well, if not de rigeur, to go gadding around the world, living in places most people aren't gonna get to go to even if they stayed home on Saturday nights and saved for year, when you are young and unattached. But, once you hit mid-thirties it becomes brave. By the forties it becomes sort of enviable but with a touch of sniffiness about it. But after that, I am beginning to fear, it is considered decidedly eccentric. Thus attracting such less-desirable judgements as silly bugger, crazy woman and the ever-popular off-with-the-fairies tag, just in case you thought you had a shred of credibility left.

I have come, since my last trip to the UK, to acknowledge that there is something a little unusual about a woman of my age, with two fully-grown sons, having no fixed abode. And not having a bank account. The two are mutually dependent: you can't get a bank account if you don't have a place, country, address of residence.

For the past two years I have given this as my address. After all, its where I'm living, isn't it? But when my contract is over where do I get them to book me a ticket to? There is no family home, no white-haired mother waiting by the fire with her knitting, no life-long friends, no family that has met me or the boys more than once or twice, nor any town with an old apple tree where I carved my initials.

Not even a trace, it seems, of my little corner of the world.

So is it time I settled down, bought a dog, shut up the cows and started to carve one for myself?

Should I claim a country/town/place and put down roots, and make friends and make sure my pension cheque is going to get delivered when the time comes? Should I start learning about income tax and super-annuation, and Getting Seriously Down to Work to Ensure my Future? Do I owe it to my boys to establish a home base? Am I - once again - scarring them for life.(Both of them ought to look like the Phantoms of the bloody Opera by now, with the amount of scarring I've bestowed upon them already). Should I have a verandah and learn to knit for the grandchildren that will one day (but please not too soon) be crying piteously for their Gran? Should I grow organic vegetables and brew herbal teas and become one with the earth?

Or, should I rejoice in the fact that I am at last free to make my own decisions? Should I continue to trust in the world and its inexplicable way of working things out? Should I go with my gut? Or acknowledge that my gut is actually situated these days up in my head. Which tells me that I am just not ready, gimme a break and anyway I might just fall under a bus tomorrow and all the questions would become moot anyway?

And finally...the one that just about clinches it for me, every time: if I don't see all the little corners of the world, how am I ever going to find out which one is mine?

Raising the Bar?

Its the Annual English Speaking Awards time on CCTV9 and this year there were two things that struck me:

1. Chinese English is becoming American English and
2. The standard is abysmal.

Now I don't want the first point to cast me as a sour grapes English speaker bemoaning the fact that USA-English is spreading round the globe like a noxious weed, but rather to wonder at the absence of Chinese-English? Just as I would hate reason number two to sound as though I'm calling Chinese students thick. So I'd better explain quickly - only bear with me, as I'm still feeling my way around this one.

I have spent most of my life in countries where English is not the first language. As well as having travelled round a great deal . But in every one of those countries, those who represented Academia and Media spoke fluent, grammatically-correct English. Depending on the harshness or strength of their local accent not all were as easy to understand as others. However, their use of grammar, syntax and inflection was perfectly understood. It was only one's familiarity with the local accent which might hinder understanding at times.

Most of these countries are small countries where one would have thought that the opportunities of finding a vast reserve of people who spoke near-perfect English was correspondingly small. Yet there never seemed to be a shortage of people who could converse fluently.

One would assume then, that China, with a correspondingly larger population (well, an astronomically larger population actually) would have a correspondingly vast supply of fluent English language speaker. But we haven't. Not even enough, it seems, to guarantee that certain newscasts, general interest, travel and other programme from CCTV9, the one and only English station to broadcast in that language both internally and externally, would need subtitles for the English to be understood at all.

Now why is that? Are the Chinese people, who have produced many writers and philosophers and scholars in their own history, less clever than, say, the Islanders of Papua New Guinea; some of whom have never even worn shoes?

Of course they're not.

Is their ability with language minimal?

Not at all, even if language ability were proven to be a racial trait it would not apply to Chinese people, many of whom speak multiple languages.

Do they not get taught early enough or learn for long enough?

Every school teaches all students for twelve years to speak English, starting at around the age of 5. (Yet I have never discovered a taxi-driver who understands even such basics as "Stop", "Left" or "Right").

The only other explanation left is: - aren't they taught properly? And the answer to that - at least in my little corner of the world, is a resounding..No, they are not.

The other unique contributory factor is, I consider, that there is absolutely no Standard English bench mark by which to teach or to examine or test on.

Throughout their school years English is taught by Chinese teachers whose English is, often, unrecognisable. I have given seminars to Chinese English teachers in which I have had to discard my entire presentation and ad-lib it because no-one in the room could understand me. Most students, after the first, enthusiastic year of learning "Hellohowareyou?" "I'mfinethanksandyou", lose interest and consider English classes a chance to skive off. Just as generations of English kids used to do when French was a compulsory subject in English schools.

So who can blame them? They are never going to travel to an English-speaking country. All the latest movies hit the theatres ahead of the West with sub-titles or dubbed dialogue. They've never met an English-speaking person in their life. What do they need English for?

Even the majority of those who graduate into University Foreign Language Programmes fall far short of even the basics needed to be able to understand native English at a Primary School level, let alone at the levels of their peers in other countries.

So I sat listening to those contestants to-night, each one the best supposedly, that the country can offer, no-one gaining a score lower than 94 where, on a Standard English bench mark, they probably would have scored in the low seventies. I analysed their speeches, their words, their understanding. But if was, actually, one of the journalists reading out a news story that gave me the clue as to why these English-speakers are just so damn bad: apart from the grammatical and pronunciation errs, no-one has ever taught them the rhythms and the stresses of the English language.

In a way, the situation is analogous to a contemporary scholar learning Mesopotamian or any other dead language: - we've never heard it so we don't know what it sounds like. Though we can read and translate it, would anyone from Ancient Mesopotamia understand a word we said? The English of the majority of Chinese students is learnt from someone who, themselves, has never heard the language spoken. They know that English is not a tonal language like Chinese, where the same combination of sounds stressed in four different ways, have four separate meaning.

So they have no idea of the sounds of English. The rhythm of the words that carry along our feelings, the tones which clarify our meanings, the cadences, the light and shade, the very sound of the language.

In every other place I have ever been where English is taught, people are at least familiar with the language. They've heard it around themselves, or on the radio, or blaring incomprehensibly through radio stations or, at the very least, from their English teacher at school. But millions of Chinese people have never even seen a foreigner, let alone heard one speak. Or laugh, or cry.

My students are often amazed to learn that I very often haven't a clue what a colleague from the deep South of America has said. Or that people from America can't understand people from various places in Britain very well . Or that English-speakers from South Africa speak English in a way that leaves some Australians baffled, or that people brought up in India are often incomprehensible to their relatives in England. They don't know that there are different ways to speak English, they have no idea why some words are stressed and some aren't, nor that tone of voice can carry meaning irrespective of the content of the words being spoken. They don't see the need for a standard because they don't realise that a standard is necessary. They have no idea that there is a correct way and an incorrect way to pronounce vowels or diphthongs, the building blocks of language. They are incapable of telling an educated voice from an uneducated voice or distinguishing good English from bad.

Look, I don't care if the bench-mark is Standard English, British English or American English. But there has to be some notch one can carve into the wall when someone has said something correctly. Whether Chinese English teachers are trained by CD or by qualified Native-English teachers is immaterial: but the person who records those CD's must be speaking English which is not idiosyncratic, and the Native-English speakers must speak English of a certain level to which all students must aspire.

As the national average is far below the level acceptable in foreign (i.e. English-speaking) Universities, those who want to work or study overseas are ill prepared. There was a recent article on OLO by Christina Ho, herself Chinese, but working in Australia, who highlights the plight of many Chinese immigrants to Australia. Though coming from highly qualified backgrounds many were working menial jobs, she pointed out. Consequently many women, for the first time in their lives found themselves unable to work. Their English, for which many have gained high marks at a school or University in China, is insufficient often to get them through a job interview, let alone into a job.

Chinese students, sometimes whose understanding goes little further than a few basic greetings, are incapable of following a lecture in their foreign universities, nor can they easily make friends with native English speakers. Many of them return home but, even those who manage to make it through, return with their spoken English little improved as they spent all their time with other Chinese students being thus marginalised in campus life. Mainly, however, they come back with very little understanding of the country in which they have been living, minimal travel experience, none of the contacts they were going to find, and a memory of a truly miserable time in their lives. Many hopes are dashed during this ordeal.

Every country has a local accent when speaking English, which identifies them: - the French with their rolling rrrrrs, the Germans with their guttural fricatives, and the Jamaicans with their round vowels. They have been taught a standard way of pronunciation which, combined with their own language, is unique. So far, there is no definitive accent which can be pegged as Chinese English.

One of the other reasons for this is the mushroom-like Language schools which have sprung up all over the country. These exist not only for those older people who did not learn English in school, or the businessperson who never was good at English in school but now finds a need for it, and the hapless students bound for foreign Universities. These are the main originators for all those "If you can speak English you can teach in China...." advertisements.

Consequently back-backers, retirees, travellers, those escaping home for the first time, as well as some genuinely, dedicated and wonderful teachers, flock to China from a variety of destinations. Two friends from Calcutta will start up a school and hire a couple from South America, a Filipino girl, someone from Ireland and a Swede. They will all then start conducting English classes despite the fact that they have difficulty understanding each other in the staffroom after work. To students who have never heard the English language spoken, this variety of accents it confusing...Will the real English please stand up?

Who now decides when English is good enough to receive a diploma for? Does it matter if the candidate confuses verb/adjective positioning (What's verb/adjective positioning?) Does it matter if they always say "s" for "th" 'cos that sounds kinda cute. Is anyone gonna care if they have absolutely no concept of the when to use the word "the?". Is it really important, in the great scheme of things if they use verbs as adjectives and adjectives for verbs? And if everything is said in a flat, uninflected monotone does that really matter as long as they got the vocabulary right?

Well, yeah. It does. Or it damn-well should be. China is trying to shake the image it has in many places as being the land of the second-rate: second-rate toys, clothing, milk powder. Isn't it cause for shame if they remain second rate English speakers?

There is much talk at the moment here - as in other countries around the world - of educational reform. It is needed in many areas. If there are to be any areas of change in the educational system then the way English is taught and understood is a major area in which some new thinking is absolutely necessary. Personally, I don't see the reason for English to be compulsory for so long. If it were an optional, or even compulsory only for the initial years, or in High School, then I suggest that those who did learn would be those who were at least prepared to stay awake for the duration of a class or refrain from making calls or playing games on their phones.

But if English is going to be taught at all, at least let it be real English. The standard English that is taught all over the world seems so far to have worked just fine elsewhere. Let our standards be high - why is there an assumption that it is harder for Chinese people than, say, people from Indonesia, or Finland. Why do we not insist upon and expect a criteria? The whole programme, concept and methodology of English language teaching needs seriously to be addressed if China really is going to take its place in the global community on equal terms with others.

Dirty Old Men

When I was a kid my mother told me never to put any money in my mouth because Dirty Old Men had been handling it. I had no particular idea in my mind of who or what these Dirty Old Men who went around handling money all day looked like or actually did.

Neither, it seemed did my father who, one day, finally asked the question.
"Oh George," she laughed in a-we're-all-grown-ups-here kind of way. " You know what I mean. You brought one here once."

She went back to reading her letter. My father, who was not in the habit of dragging ancient money-handling parties in off the street, looked astounded.
"What the hell....?"
"Oh, George, you know you did."
Two sentences beginning with "George". My mother was flustered. When she began to get terribly busy plumping up cushions and aligning newspapers I also knew that she considered my father was being disingenuous and forcing her to look daft. As if the fact that he had brought one home one evening wasn't burned across his consciousness until his dying day! He must, though objectively he couldn't be held responsible, subjectively have been beating himself up about introducing the snail-trail of nastiness into the Innocent garden of the Family Home ever since! And she was being made to look as though SHE was making a big deal out of it.

My father then said "Pet, I..."
So phew, that was all right then. "Pet" meant amused (I didn't learn the word "patronising" until a long time afterwards).
"George!" Whoops. Three strikes and you're out, George. Now she's angry. "That.. that.. man!" Oh yeah! The slight stutter. She is furious. He knows EXACTLY who she means!

"What man?"
"The man with the...the...doo-dah"

It was pretty much downhill from there - my father genuinely having no idea what on earth she was talking about, and my mother genuinely feeling he was being deliberately obtuse until at last, goaded, she would hiss:

"Of course you know.The one with the new thing - oh what WAS the bloody thing called? You know perfectly well, its a...a.."
Light would begin to dawn and my father would hazard "infra-red, night sighted telescopic lens for Military armaments?"
"Yes! she would crow, vindicated "That doo-dah!"

Because of all the convolutions of ever having to sit through conversations like these when querying some of my mother's more bizarre statements I, though puzzled, had learned not to enquire.

In the final instance my mother's explanation that some mild mannered business man doubled as a Dirty Old Man could be stated thus: Because when she went into the guest lav. straight after him the hand-towel was unused. This meant he hadn't washed his hands. Which in turn explained why he was a dirty old man:Because there he'd just been, fiddling with his willie and the child had just been about to put that coin straight in her mouth!

They'd go wandering off down umpteen different paths before they were finished
( "What do you mean, fiddling, exactly?"
"Well, touching it. Fishing it of his trousers and waving it about."
"Do you mean urinating?"
"Of course I mean urinating! What else on earth could I possibly mean? "
"Waving it about?"
She'd be a little sheepish now, realising that might have been a slight guilding of the lily.
"Well..." grudgingly. Then, with a twitching of the lips "You knew what I meant."
"But why should touching his penis in a strictly legitimate and necessary way make him a dirty old man?"
"Oh George!" my mother was one of the last of the breed of women who could, when the occasion presented itself, flounce. She would flounce now "you know perfectly well what I mean."and drift out of the room.

All things considered my idea of exactly what a Dirty Old Man was, or looked like, remained odd for quite some time after that, until I found out for myself.

This was the sort of thing that happened to me again and again in my childhood. Not having other siblings and moving continually meant these strange gaps and inane nonsense convo's got me into a lot of....(I wanted to say "pickles" because talking about her brings back those speech patterns. But we don't say "pickle" anymore in that sense and I'm damned if I can think of another word that carries the same meaning exactly. Saying "trouble" sounds like very un-British hyperbole. After all, I'm here, aren't I?)

Well, let's just say it led me into an interesting life. And lets further state, just for the record, that I am at last beginning to acknowledge the fact that my home-life wasn't, strictly-speaking, exactly The Norm. Nor were either of my parents.

But what I am starting to do is to connect the dots. Is this the kind of wisdom they talk about age supposedly bringing? If so, does this in turn mean I am getting old: not externally - that's a bloody given - but internally?

Does there actually come a time in all our lives when we start to see the pattern? The wonderfully intricate, crazily executed, inexorably entwined with those of other people, pattern of our lives? Is that what age gives in return for all the embarrassment and sadness - the realisation that all the bits that seemed so random and inexplicable now fit seamlessly together?

Or - and for all the aforementioned reasons, I am definitely not sure about this at all - or, bloody hell, is all that stuff supposed to come in your mid-twenties and am I actually a late bloomer?

But at least I never put money in my mouth.

The Great Realisation That We are A Mob of Sooks.

So I was in England for the whole of the Olympics. At the risk of shocking people: it didn't really matter. I find the Olympics rather a huge bore. Actually, the last time I was in a country where the Olympics were being held I unknowingly scheduled a party for the famous Closing Night Shenanigans , and couldn't understand why all my friends, usually quite gregarious types, kept wandering over to ask when we could turn the telly on.

I truly am dedicated to fraternity, sorority, peace throughout the world, Understanding Between Nations...all of those noble Olympic goals. I just don't want to stay strapped down in front of a tele watching sweaty people with hairy armpits and steely determination, in order to prove it.

However the Olympics couldn't help but be in the forefront of my thoughts this year and so, a couple of times, I plonked down to watch various chat-shows, or General Interest-type programmes to get the British slant on it all.

I was astounded. There I was, in the land of loony dog-lovers, gentle old parties who actually nod at you when you pass(I mean c'mon: when was the last time you actually nodded at someone?), helpful women in museums and interesting travellers on trains. And it appeared that they were all united in their feelings towards China: like their ancestors of yore (a town in East Anglia)they metaphorically spat in the dirt, narrowed their eyes and were prepared to swallow any old cobblers about them queer-folks down-along. Albeit that down-along these days is slightly further away than the approximately ten miles that constituted exotic furr'en parts in the days of aforesaid Yore. (Which was the County Seat in those days).

Or so I assumed by the plethora of China Experts or Wo/man On The Spot shows which proliferated. Every one of which was, in the vernacular, dissin' China. Or, if you prefer, pissing all over China. It caused me to see yet another angle in all this Good China/Bad China speculation that appears to have - not too long after the day of The Yellow Peril - gripped the West.

Oh, there's nothing original about this conclusion; its been voiced, in various contexts and constructs, in umpteen places. But it sank in while I was in England and then was hammered home when I caught up on all the chat-shows, satire spots and comedy gigs etc. that the media had run during the same period back in Oz.

While I said this conclusion wasn't completely original, I would like to think that my take on it is a small thing but mine own. I have therefore named it "The Great Realisation That We Are A Great Mob of Sooks." Kind of rolls off the tongue.

(For those not up with Aussie vernacular: the word "sook" denotes a namby-pamby, timorous beastie; a vaguely unpleasant type who would probably rat on the neighbours as soon as look at you. Thought that last bit might not actually be part of the translation I certainly was firmly conscious of these connotations when I christened the concept. )

Because when all's said and done, we are like a mob of kids in many ways. (Or would that mean instead, that there is no such thing as rising above the level attained in childhood in some areas for our species? That's kind of when we peak?) For Instance: - we spend our entire childhood aware of deadly menace in our environs: whether it be the monster under the bed, the bears in the cracks in the pavement or, sadly quite common, over-affectionate Uncle Bob/Daddy/Auntie Tammy?

Once we grow up, therefore, and find logical explanations for our world and our fears, or else turn to fundamentalist religions - or else grow bigger than Uncle Bob/Daddy/Auntie Tammy - we have become so used to that feeling of menace around us that it seems quite normal. It is normal in our society to fear something. So fundamentalists use The Devil and the rest of the world chooses China.

I am harking back once again now, to the Lhasa Riots coverage around the world and what an enormous effect that incident had here in China. Many Chinese newspapers and popular web sites/blogs ran the apologies made by foreign media. The confessions and unravelling of wrong-doing were all over the place here. It seemed that the explanations were all accepted, the wrongs righted, the public overseas as aware of the public here of the culpability of some publications and we all lurched on to the next crisis.

But no. Once arrive in England and it seems like all the man (woman?) hours wasted on exposing the ...er..mistakes (silly me, I almost typed "frauds"1), the dissecting, the discussions, the protests, the blog wars here in China, were our own private bunfight. I doubt now whether, in the West, those apologies and retractions were ever featured in anything but a paragraph buried somewhere very boring where nobody goes, like in the classified advertisements for government employees. Because, if they were made aware of the story of the coverage of Lhasa, then the population at large is, well...a bit simple.

If they knew that, about 5 months earlier, a completely admitted hatchet job had been done on China by the world's media, surely it might occur to some viewers that maybe, just maybe, the coverage they were currently getting might be just a tad, well, predictable?

There they all were - stock characters: the disaffected homeowners, the angry citizens being rude to foreign journalists, the terrified "source" unfolding tales of desperate deeds and stolen body-parts. We were being brought this stuff by the same old crew we were familiar with - after all, they are the Person on the Spot in any news-foment around the world....jetting into cities, learning about them in the local bar with the local bore, and coming to us all concerned and more in sorrow than anger a couple of days later, revealing to us yet another "typical" Chinese with a horrific tale to tell.

Did it not occur to anybody that out of 1.6 billion people there might be just one who could give a giggly smile from behind her Mickey Mouse sunglasses and tell us that life in China is pretty cool thank you very much and no, I'm not a communist or the recipient of a forced abortion. And yes, I can get the BBC and porn on my internet , thanks?

Did nobody the length and breadth of the British Isles or the Wide Sunburned Land not think for a moment "Christ, they're a gloomy lot. And when are we going to see some tits and bum?" Anchor people kept sycophantically asking "And can we possibly have the views of the Man...(sheepish cough, leery grin) or should that be WOE-man in the street, please Cliff/Andrea/Randy?" or "And what do the real people of China think, Cliff/Andrea/Randy?" and "So what about the ordinary people of China, the real people?" as if that amorphous Beijing we're always hearing about, had, with fiendish oriental cunning, posted plastic facsimiles around the television studios to give recorded, CCP approved recordings. But this was the cue, of course, for Cliff or Andrea or who-bloody-ever would wheel out someone who lost 5 kids in Tiannemen Square, spent 20 years in a labour camp, and had had 8 fingers removed by a machine in an over-crowded sweatshop.

I'd been watching a steady diet of these things and doing various deconstructions, critical examinations, and deep philosophical streams of thought. I'd brushed through Hobbes and Locke and various latter-day scholars in order to get to the root of this continued need for everyone to show, see and feel the very worst of what China had to offer when, finally, all the bits clicked into place and the Great Realisation dawned upon me: We are a Mob of Sooks.

It felt so good to huddle safely in our beds after a goodnight kiss, a decade of the rosary, an MP3 (or even a transistor back in the day), or a locked door had reduced the monster to ineffectual powerlessness outside our charmed, familiar world. We had it under control. We were invincible. Until tomorrow night.

So, while we have accepted fear as a normal part of our human state, we have also learnt how good and cosy it feels when someone keeps the monsters at bay for us. Mmmmm. Lucky us, eh? We may perpetuate mindless fears throughout the natural course of our lives but hell's teeth we know how to feel good about it.

It's like we are all continually yearning for our blankies. We are a mob of sooks. Just as we cannot conceive of life without that particular piece of old blanket, so many of us cannot conceive of life without our good ole mate fear. Its primal we tell each other sagely. A means of self-protection that ensured the continuation of the race. Its why we spent decades instructions young people to Be Prepared. We need that fear in order to be human. Besides, if we got rid of it, we'd get rid of that nice, glowing feeling we get when we are isolated in our little charmed circle. When we're in control.

But the thing is, no matter how some sections of our shared society might rattle their sabres and rail against modern, wishy-washy, greens, lefties, feminists, New Age people, Gay Rights, or those who eat quiche, its undeniable that the world is changing. (In deference to the sabre-rattlers, I substituted the word evolving with the word changing. Even though I personally feel that, in this instance, the two are synonymous).

The Berlin Wall came down, the Africans are all too diseased or hungry to rise up against the White Man, Communism let go of Czechoslovakia, Russia smelted the Iron Curtain, a black person is going to be the leader of America...who is there left to fear? Well, there's always one third of the entire world. There's China.

To be fair, I do see that there might be a couple of holes in the argument for my latest thesis. Perhaps a psychologist or sociologist or a philosopher may have been able to argue it with a tad more finesse and polysyllables. But at the moment I am at a loss to to explain why the hydra-headed Public at Large sucks in a depressing and unvarying diet of palpably biased commentating on the subject of China without a murmur of - well, not protest, exactly, but at least the demand to know if anyone at all in China is just a normal person like you or me or the couple next door.

I was also, for a long time, a little stymied as to why "Experts" on China think they are being daringly original to uncover yet another riot or malfeasance, and whether it ever occurs to them that, inside a country that contains one third of the entire world's people, you'd be hard pressed NOT to find an individual or group or movement that was not fed up with the status quo. I mean, when we read the World News, all the stuff they are reporting from all over the world comes from only one other third because the last third represents the people who are comatose from hunger and neglect and illness. They only count in the News stakes when taken as a whole, not individually; because they're too busy dying slow deaths to do any plotting or rioting or in any way worthy of the Late Bulletin. Sheesh! Compared to all the lunatic fringes, revolutionaries, mercenaries, criminal organisations, corporations, serial killers and cult followers represented by the other third of the world, China is a haven of sweetness and light.

But I realised of course, that it actually is within the interests of the "expert" journalist brigade to keep parading the interchangeable stories about Abominations and Human Rights Violations in front of us. Firstly of course, a respected journalist would look like a bit of a pouf if they recorded a story about typists from some provincial city or the funny men in the lift, or their riotous night out at one of the clubs where they learned to say "What's yer name, where'y from an' what yer on?" in Mandarin. I mean, with everyone else digging up hidden criminals and underground movements, you'd feel a bit of a tool handing in a story about two jolly business-men from Wunan you met in a lift, wouldn't you? Especially if they had never been beaten, could access regular web-sties from their computers, and were Buddhists.

So, in order not to feel like a nob, and, more importantly, in order to make sure that Cliff, Andrea and Randy keep getting sent swanning off to furr'n parts on company expense accounts (and in some cases, because they actually know squat about China - last week they had to bone up on Afghanistan), the real people of China, in all their complexity, diversity, continue to be represented by anyone who can make a Westerner reach for their blankie and say a decade of the rosary.

We've got to hang on to the old familiar fear-feeling because to lose it would argue against our ancient origins. We'd lose our edge without it. So, with a shrinking field around us of people to be scared of, its rather convenient to hang on to China. There isn't likely, any time soon, to be a huge uprising in which Beijing, with tears in its collective eyes, flings wide the prison doors, decks itself in flowers and begs America to show it the way to democracy, christian values and apple pie.

Cliff & co. (who are currently praying for a juicy little uprising in The Bermudas) are probably all employed by Murdoch anyway, so they know from all the recent memos exactly how those wily Chinese need to be reported. Besides, no-one wants to look the dickhead, do they? "Real people" indeed!

Ah well, those of us in China can just join Cliff and Co. in trying to summon up that Bermudan coup. Maybe the new government there will make VooDoo the national religion, enforced by by an unlimited stay in G'tmo. Then everyone can stop using China as the blankie and get themselves really, gut-churningly frightened of the Bahamans instead. And then maybe people would listen to what the real Chinese people have to say.

Guess Where I've Been?

Strange. I was looking for an image from the hundreds I took which would encapsulate England for me: - but in the end this little gateway did it more than all the flowers and meadows and city-scapes.

It's the gateway to a Roman temple which was built in Colchester at a site which had had significance for the small collection of huts that had squatted there since long before 43AD. It was around here that Boudica challenged the Roman Empire after her treatment at their hands..

After the Romans left it fell into disrepair but a Saxon chief decided the site was a good one on which to build his own fortified encampment in the period long - and erroneously - called The Dark Ages.

Once the Normans had invaded and taken over England in 1066 orders were given for a Norman castle to be built on this same hilltop. The Norman castle in time became a hospice and then, in the Middle Ages, it was rebuilt by an English family before once more falling into disrepair and becoming a prison, then a warehouse. It has recently been taken over by The National Trust and preserved as a museum which showcases the many stages of English history from its misty beginnings to its present.

To me it epitomises so much of Britain where history is part of the fabric of life.

I spent the whole of the summer in UK and came back to China to find a virus had chewed up my computer. Once fixed, it quickly succumbed to yet another virulent invader and then, with pressure of work in a new semester, keeping up this blog became the lowest on my list of priorities.

However, this summer changed a lot of things for me. I realised that as long as I stayed in China my post-graduate studies would probably always remain more of a dream than a reality. I also realised how daft I'd been to choose to specialise in the women writers of England in the 17th Century from thousands of miles away. I thought of all the days, weeks, months I had spent chasing up information from books and pamphlets that weren't even available in Australia when, in Cambridge, I simple walked into a museum, idly asked if they had anything concerning, say, Margaret Cavendish and was given access to the full collection of the correspondence she and her husband William had before they were married. (And not one person said "Who?")

I also re-discovered the joy of like minds. Once I stepped outside the campus environs at Uni in Australia, I was back again in the world of Centrelink payments, of dole bludgers and people who thought that Literature was a dirty word and History the preserve of eccentrics.

Yet everywhere I went in Cambridge the talk was of the past - it was inescapable when one was buying one's lunch in an 800 year old pub, sleeping in an old chapel, punting on the River Cam underneath the bridge that Newton built, or visiting at the college that Erasmus attended, or crossing the very gutters which gave us the idiom of Hobson's choice.

Even when I left Cambridge and went to Warwick and further afield I was still surrounded by people whose knowledge of the subject which had always set me apart from most of those with whom I mixed, was instead a bonding feature. I no longer felt like a nerd. Anyone else who has ever been considered one will get what I'm on about. When I engaged in long conversations with totally random people I was free to talk about stuff I knew about without being considered a show-off. It was totally liberating.

Since I've been back I have even gained the courage to join a blog group called "I judge you when you use bad grammar " - a site I wouldn't even have clicked on to before I left for fear that someone might discover my search history and consider me an elitist. Yet, having clicked on I found that this site is fun and funny and while I still not might actually post on it much, I get great joy out of the empathy I feel with other people who also laugh out loud when they see a sign outside a fish and chip shop that says 'we sell "fresh" fish!'.

Another way this summer changed me was to give me reassurance. Since I have been out of the West I mainly keep up with the news through the Internet. And its usually Australian news and blog sites that I access.

What this has done for me is to depress me unutterably. The West has come to seem like some vast Dantean dream where paedophiles give art shows and cops are all corrupt and progress is an unstoppable Leviathon which is transforming our landscape and way of life beyond all recognition. Love and peace and justice are words that belong to the Hippy movement of the 60's, people who disagree with one have the right to abuse, slander and defame, strangers are The Enemy and everyone is suspicious of everyone else. Indeed, on one of the sites for which I write occasional articles the Battle of The Sexes is daily and acrimoniously fought tooth and claw, religious fundamentalism seems to be considered the norm and all Immigrants should be thrown into the seas.

What I found this summer was that my impressions were a load of cobblers. Gender wars were a non-event, policemen were still polite and helpful to the general public at least, strangers were still kind, people still went out of their way, and the sleepy hamlets of England's green and pleasant lands were still as green and pleasant as they had been when I was a little girl. Yep, the primary school I remembered was still there and though the actual town in which it was situated might now be rather seedy, 5 miles out of it were still the green meadows and little cottages I remembered. Not a single bus driver, train conductor, shop assistant or teenager was rude to me, and, all in all, there was no evidence that we were all going to hell in a handcart.

But perhaps the main thing this summer did for me was to stem my rootlessness just a little. I have always dreaded the polite enquiry - de rigeur as a prelude to every conversation in China, especially - "Where do you come from?" as a sort of multiple choice one. Depending on the circumstances, geography or time some people know me as "That Aussie" others as "The girl from South Africa", some as "The chick that comes from PNG" of "The Pommie bird" but, by far the greatest majority as "that foreigner".

While it is still impossible to point to any particular place and claim that I am a product of that environment or culture, going back to UK did at least pencil in a sort of provenance. Stepping out of the bus in Coventry where George, my father, was stationed briefly during WW2, I was confronted by a statue of an Air Force officer, hand negligently in pocket, familiar cap at a jaunty angle, and immediately felt kinship. The famous George Hotel in Grantham that my Great Grandmother ran might have been subsumed into a large shopping complex, but it was comforting to know that my Grandmother had shimmied out of its window from under her mother's watchful eye and run down that same street to elope with my grandfather. Even when I had to spend a night sleeping on Birmingham station which, though refurbished and updated and split into two, still stands, it was with a kind of wonder that I realised that it was here my father would have disembarked from boarding school in his school holidays. A trainride listening to a group of people on their way to Crufts brought back memories of reading my mothers first prize-winning essay in an ancient school newspaper, of the first time her father took her with him on that very trainline to show Brian O'Rouke, their famous bulldog. While the spinney that I used to play Roundheads and Cavaliers in with my cousin Julian, now tamed and tidied, still held the echoes of our childhood laughter.

So, as much as anything, I guess, this summer taught me irrevocably, that there is "some part of me that is, forever, England."

Is Misogyny really a Hate-Crime?

Now I have never exactly been a household name - except in one small area of a vast sub-continent - but I've come in for my share of public crits. and reviews. I've been called a "Ball buster" and had that fact trumpeted from every kiosk and newsagency in the land. (actually I thought that was more funny than anything else, though). I've been called "Our newest Funny Lady" and been somewhat disappointed that my serious work wasn't given much of a plug; I've been reviewed as "One of our Finest Up and Coming Writers" when in fact I'd been well and truly up for far longer than I had been coming; and, in common with most writers, I guess, had what I considered to be my finest piece of prose dismissed as "Not on a par with her other pieces".

But it wasn't until I'd submitted to an Internet publication that I was ever exposed to the power of hate. I remember first reading the comments to an article I had written on Shakespeare. It was a purely tongue-in-cheek piece of whimsy in which I had speculated that the great bard may have had the odd nut or bolt loose. In was taken from a paper I had written and submitted to one of my lecturers who, although subscribing himself to the view that William should be canonised, had ruefully conceded that I had managed to provide proof for my theory however much it went against his particular grain. We'd had a glass of wine and a giggle over it and he had asked if he could pass it on at his next meeting of the Shakesperean Society just to put the cat in amongst the pigeons.Now that particular man is an erudite and learned scholar whose views and opinions I admire and whose criticism I have been known to regard as Holy Writ.

But the opinions which were expressed by the general public in response to a precis extract of this self-same paper knocked me for six. I was accused of being ignorant, a poor scholar, someone who had no knowledge of my subject, an inadequate writer....and all by members of the public whom I had never met. I was gobsmacked. I showed these comments to one of my thesis supervisors who laughed contemptuously and told me not to be so daft as to take it to heart. But I did.

Yet that was nothing compared to the personal abuse I copped when I wrote an article on feminism.

Having, as I have explained elsewhere, come rather late to feminist theory, I gobbled up every book, pamphlet, blog, paper and debate I could lay my hands on. I spent the two years following my discovery of this theory doing an intense kind of crash course during which I devoured perhaps more literature on the subject than the average person would read up on in a life-time. I revelled in the revelation that what I had thought of as my own deepest, darkest subversive thoughts were shared by millions of others. The questions and queries I had thought my own were also keeping others awake! What I had thought others would label as disloyalty, ignorance or revolutionary were commonalities of thought amongst people all over the world. What I saw as injustice, nonsense, unfairness and plain idiocy others saw in the same light.The points of view I had never shared with another living soul were common currency amongst people of differing nations and creeds. I felt as though I was being reborn.

After that preliminary two years I settled down a little and, though I continued to digest feminist literature at a prodigious rate, I now began to include criticism, debate and rebuttal of feminism and to explore the different branches as it was applied in fields such as sociology, psychology etc. where I found as much to argue with as to agree with.

By the time I had started submitting to this online zyne, about 5 years had gone by since I first discovered the ideology and, my studies being rooted in the seventeenth century, had realised how female dissatisfaction with the state of the world, while not having had any unifying labels until relatively modern times, had existed and been expressed within the world for centuries.

This came as a huge and thought provoking surprise to me. I had always assumed that women were complicit in the way they were treated. I thought it was only we more enlightened, modern women who saw the unfairness in a society which treated women as dependent children.

It took a while before I reasoned that that was solely because I had never heard any women's voices from "the olden days". The only thing I had to go on was what men said about the state of the world. Until The Brontes and Austen, all the poetry and essays and books and pamphlets I had ever read had been written by men. And the same applied, I further reasoned, for the majority of people. Until I started ferreting about and discovered those feisty, outspoken, cunning women whose words had languished at the back of museums and in library back rooms for centuries, I had had no idea of what my foremothers thought and felt. When that famous visitor to England in the Seventeenth century made the quote about England being a "paradise" for women and horses, I was not quite silly enough to take him at face value - but I hadn't realised how far removed from paradise women felt.

So, acting on the assumption, from the gross distortions and actual rubbish that people connected with the word "feminist" ( some of which I had absorbed myself before I really knew anything about the subject) that a lot of animosity was simply because some people didn't know enough about womens' movements, I decided to share my findings. Obviously I had not been alone in my ignorance and, assuming that those who had also a dearth of knowledge on the subject would be pleased to know that they had been misinformed, I submitted and published a short essay. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5414 )

I don't know that I actually envisaged vast hordes of people yelling Hosanna and saying "Thank you Cireena Simcox, you have put my mind at ease". But what I wasn't prepared for was the fact that the majority of people who spouted all the wildest and weirdest "knowledge" of feminism and, by extension, of women, didn't want to come within a hair's breadth of anything that would change their opinions. They actually revelled in their ignorance: not the in the real sense of the word which infers nothing but a lack of knowledge - but in the sense of not WANTING to gain further knowledge. I was shaken.

I have a friend who regularly tells me I am naive. I laugh like a drain at this because my life experience is extremely broad. But, reading the comments that thread attracted I realised that, for all the "broadness" of my knowledge of people, I really am naive in many ways.

Word limits in an article such as I wrote constrain, and I was also well aware of the fact that I was writing for a very diverse readership so, yes, the article was neither in-depth or erudite. I had hoped that a broad outline, a quick foray into the reasons (or so I, in my naivete assumed) feminism was misunderstood by many to-day, and a reassurances that no evil conspiracies or coven-like activities were taking place, might lay some peoples hackles back down and perhaps inspire those who had been misguided to find out a bit more for themselves. Any criticisms of my actual writing would have been well-deserved on many counts and I was well prepared to bite the bullet and suck 'em up.

But what nothing had prepared me for was the fact that not everybody seeks the truth. That there are people who adopt a belief, regardless of its veracity, and, in the face of proof to the contrary, will not only cling steadfastly to it, and defend it, but revile those who do not adopt the same stance.

I am not, I hope, being disingenuous here. In my time I have swallowed hook, line and sinker the odd urban legend, public opinion "eye-witness" accounts and even information from the friend of a friend. And I'm not some George Washington type who will stand up tall with a pink and shiny face and accept I am wrong without feeling like a complete pratt. But being wrong, while embarrassing, is nothing actually to be ashamed of, is it? Surely one would, ultimately, feel worse knowing one was full of deliberate bull-shit, than mumbling to ones steel toe-caps that "Woops. Aren't I the wanker? I honestly did think that. " And surely people who choose the bullshit option do find it bad for their digestion, for it seems that the more off-the-wall the vision of feminism is, the more strident, angry and vitriolic the comments are. The following, I thought, was rather a beauty: repeating my title "What is a Feminist?" this good ole boy stated:

"A political idiot.A sexist supremacist.A paranoid and self fulfilling victim.A dork.A fool.A danger to themselves, their children and all of society.The enemy of all good men, women and children around the world.So to put it bluntly, in my opinion you understand, a feminist is simply, a human disgrace.
Posted by Maximus, Tuesday, 13 February 2007 8:10:53 PM"

Just a tad over-stated, perhaps?

So for the very first time in my wide-ranging and peripatetic life I came face to face with a truly scary proposition: what if there are men around who truly, and honestly, just don't like women? Once again I'm not being disingenuous. In the course of that wide-ranging and peripatetic life I have been raped, attacked, beaten, sodomised and had cigarettes extinguished on my bare belly and vagina. I've been made to do unspeakable things and been abused, reviled and slapped around while doing them. But I always reasoned that the persons who did these things to me were very sick puppies: one had been brought up in a war zone which had done his head in. Another had been abandoned by his mother while another actually was in the Military and we all know what that does to people. I considered these men were aberrations;the one in a million who are the exception. And I reasoned that to a person who, like me, has lived on several different continents, gone to fifteen different schools, lived in some of the worlds trouble spots, travelled around quite a bit and, as a journalist, got into many weird situations, it was just not so exceptional that I had managed to meet quite a few of the world's weird people.

But, perusing the comments that article engendered proved a milestone for me and certainly chipped away at that Pollyanna-type glad, glad, gladness. I knew, on a detached level, that men had treated women shockingly through the ages. I figured it was social constructs, and outside influences and childhood traumas that were to blame. Even witch hunts I put down to mass hysteria and religious over-zealousness. I had never, seriously considered that anyone would wish an entire gender ill. That's a conspiracist's delusion...isn't it? I mean, we, as a gender, are not culpable, are we?

Yet for the first time, despite all my academic knowledge and learned experiences I have at last been forced to consider seriously a question I had never even thought about before. Is it possible that a misogynist is not simply a curmudgeonly bloke-with-a-heart-of-gold like Professor Higgins? Or are there really men out there who actually do hate, despise or loathe women - not because of their mothers, or wars or for any other reason than that we are, well....women? And how does one ever, definitively, find out?

Amnesty, China, and Firewalls and Unsensoring

O.k., already, if the hype is accurate, by typing the above words from a computer in China, I've earned myself a one-way ticket to a jail, torture centre or re-education programme. Previous blogs featuring the word Lhasa in the title should have slammed me there already. So anyone who is reading this should already have an idea that my use of the word "hype" above was somewhat justified.

A friend this morning alerted me to the Amnesty site which calls for people to get together to fight to pull down the Great Firewall surrounding China's Internet. The fact that I was able to access this site, FROM CHINA, free to sign up if I so desired and that nothing in it was deleted should also give pause for thought.

Before I actually logged on, and reflecting solely upon the information my friend sent me - that there was a movement which wanted to unban all sites - I was already in a bit of a moral dilemma. Yes, technically, I believe in the right of free speech. When you have been born and brought up in the countries which pioneered free speech you are ready to champion the cause for all those whom we've come to regard as repressed. When it never actually affects you personally, its easy to take a moral stand on many of the social questions that cause so many of us angst. But I've spent a huge chunk of my life living in countries where such rights do not exist - and in terms of day to day life and social organisation, it becomes really difficult to take a stand. It seems that the more I see of life and the further I travel to experience it, the more I begin to doubt whether any of us are really qualified to take a moral stand on anything which we don't experience personally. A statement which would have shocked the person I used to be to the core.

I spent a long time (far too long) in South Africa - mostly post Mandela. I did arrive there in the last days of the old regime, however, and was immediately plucked out of the waiting queue in front of Customs at the airport and thrown into a cell, where I was held - with no explanation, no water, no toilet facilities - for around 12 hours. Well, that's one of the reasons everyone hailed Mandela you'll probably be thinking. He brought freedom and peace and tolerance.

No. He didn't.

At the risk of tearing down idols, the truth is that he was never really anything more than a figurehead and, once in power, ensured that the eyes of the rest of the world slid happily away from South Africa and focused elsewhere. Not, unhappily, on Rwanda because that was far too big a mess ever to get ones head around, and not, until the last few years, on Zimbabwe; - but far away onto Bosnia thus leaving South Africa to slide further and further into violence, corruption and repression.

As a (hopefully) illustrative segue back into life immediately after Mandela took over: the streets of Durban which, when I first arrived was a modern, fairly safe international capital city instead became a no-go area. Wimpy bars were terrorist target areas, rubbish bins were removed as they harboured bombs, beggars (both black and white) slept in the streets, people were knifed, shot and attacked in broad daylight. In the seaside town where I lived army Caspars were parked at the ends of the streets, sometimes we were unable to leave town because the highways became battle grounds, little boys could not access public lavatories unless their mothers were prepared to find them dead and bleeding with their little genitals removed and every kid, while not knowing perhaps who Tigger and Eeyore were, could spot an AK47 from 100 paces. Every garage in the street harboured at least 4 refugees - some up to 15 and we all, black and white attended weekly funerals of those we held dear.

During this time my father died and I flew back to England to make funeral, and other, arrangements. At a gathering of typical middle-class, upwardly mobile and very socially-concerned friends and acquaintances one evening I was handed a glass of Australian wine with the remark that though it was o.k. to drink South African wine again, people had discovered other brands out of the sheer desperation of being voluntarily deprived of their favourite tipple while they were "doing their bit" to protest apartheid. My mind flashed back to the land my children were living in and the way of life that none of these complacent, well-meaning idiots could comprehend and I had to go outside for a while to get myself together.

It was useless to tell these good people what they had done. They expected me to applaud the hardship they had endured in declining South African wine and signing pledges. They would never understand that the thousands and thousands of workers and families they had put out on the streets and condemned to slow death when the businesses closed down were their fault. Or that the violence of our lives initiated by street kids had caused the murder or so many of my own friends and acquaintances. Or that the mothers of South Africa, black and white, cursed them from the bottom of their souls. To this day people come up to me to tell me how they did their bit and, in their eagerness and expectation of my thanks and appreciation never dream that I won't fall upon their necks with glad cries and hail them as heroes.

I expect I sound bitter in the above. I am. I learned some terrible lesson the hardest of ways and my two children unwittingly learned them along with me. Those lessons, the sights we saw, the things we endured, will stay with us until the day we die. And the unquiet ghosts of all our dead haunt us still.

From South Africa to China is a huge step and the two situations in both countries are very different. But when I accessed that Amnesty site this morning my mind played strange tricks on me - my thoughts went straight back to the days we, my sons and I, have all put behind us now but that are an indelible part of who we are. Once again people with no complete understanding of the complexities of certain issues are being asked to step in and become pro-active. Once again well meaning citizens whose only desire is to change the world for the better are taking stands. Once again the brilliance of the white and the emptiness of the black sides of an issue are masking the shades of grey that lie between. And I, personally, have no idea what the right thing is to do.

The argument that Internet sites are monitored in China affects me not one whit. It would be an extremely naive person who did not know that the Internet sites of all countries are monitored by various governmental agencies. That FBI involvement with Wikipedia allows it to change, delete and provide misinformation is a cause never fought against. The fact that with the amendment of laws through the Howard and Bush governments key words flag posters in Australia and USA is no secret. If that were to be argued as a reason for change in China it would have to be a global movement against all governments.

But the censorship question? Ah, there I am caught indeed. Yep. Ladies and gentlemen there are indeed sites in China regarding which the firewall proves impenetrable to all but, one imagines, the most dedicated hacker. These are porn sites - kiddie porn most especially. I look around me to Australia and UK and the USA and I find that my knee-jerk reaction against censorship is here tested to the limit. Do I want to be part of a movement which would result in 1.3million more people in the world having access to and increasing the demand for the kind of industry that such sites represent? Do I want the little kids I see everyday to be as much at risk as the little kids in First-world countries? Do I think that Chinese society needs to live with the knowledge that their precious One Child families are so endangered?

Naturally, it would, in turn, be naive in me to assume that it was only porn and sex sites that were impenetrable. Of course there are political sites that are also banned. Not being a political activist I have no idea of which sites these are. In teaching Journalism classes I have never come across any sites that were not available. In my day to day dealings I am aware of no areas I may not go. So I am simply not qualified to gauge how many of our rights are being denied by the places we cannot go. I can, quite comfortably, say it doesn't affect either me or the majority of citizens. Yes. theoretically I can see why the fact that complete freedom is not available could be considered indicative of repression.

But, practically, I think of my students and the young people of China. Slowly their innocence is being stripped from them and they are beginning to discover the facts of life for themselves. I have complete faith in them however. It is their country, their government, their future. I feel perfectly confident that they will never countenance a halt to the increasing changes that are occurring in this country. They are not puppets but thinking, intelligent young men and women who, since the Lhasa coverage, are looking around them with different eyes. Sadly, I look with them at the world outside their borders where rights and justice and freedom are loudly proclaimed and see the accompanying sides of those coins: the drug culture, the paedophilia networks, the fact that corruption and greed and repressive ideas like fundamentalism are as rife under the name of democracy as they are under any other name.

I will not be adding my name to any Amnesty lists, I think. I don't wish to wear a badge on my site which would signal that I know what is right and what is wrong when I am so clearly undecided. I have learned my lessons not only in South Africa but in the trouble spots of the world to which my fathers job led us throughout my life. And I, as well as Pandora, am well aware that once one has lifted the lid, no power on earth or in the heavens can put all the undreamed of or unknown demons back in the box. I remember that Pandora was unaware of what consequences her actions would have and I know that in the current climate there are no guarantees that, whatever ones intentions, one won't allow the demons out too.

Books and Their Covers

I have always reassured myself that I am not a judgemental person. My friends all come from different age-groups, ethnicity's, genders, creeds, occupations and ideologies. I don't talk baby-talk to children or condescend to octogenarians.

But the other day, sitting sipping a coffee and gazing out the window at the passing parade, I was mortified to discover the worm i'the bud (and not, thank goodness, i'the coffee). Even I, that paragon of open-mindedness and acceptance, make assumptions - or at least have certain expectations - about people dependant on the way they present.

I was idly scanning the passers-by at the time. This is actually quite a unique and novel experience for me because usually it is the passers-by scanning me. An occupational hazard of being a foreigner in China. It suddenly occurred to me that there was something different about the usual Saturday afternoon conglomerate here compared with, say Sydney or London. Well, not different perhaps: it was the same assortment of smart secretaries, harried housewives, bombastic businessmen, languorous lovelies and cheap and cheerfulls to be seen on any city street anywhere.

And that's exactly where I cottoned on: I was assigning all these people persona, life-styles and occupations loosely based on their appearance. And o.k., if I wanted to wriggle out of the judgementalism I could claim that this was not actually unrealistic: secretaries do tend to wear suits and high-heels and look like corporate clones; housewives often wear a harried air, comfortable shoes and shopping bags with green stuff rather than designer labels prominent; and those on a budget, by necessity, tend to dress from chain-store racks and "brighten up" their choices with personalised accessories.

But the difference here, in China, is that none of the above has any relevance whatsoever.

It struck me then that this is perhaps the reason behind the fact that I feel so comfortable in China, too. Yes, its true that people stare and point. But its simply because they have never seen a foreigner of any ilk before. It has nothing whatsoever to do with how you are dressed - which is the main reason I get the subdued whispers, sidelong glances and different attitudes I have been known to encounter in some Western cities. (And let's not even MENTION the reaction in some Western suburbs!). Not that I am some deformed crone, or have a single eye in the middle of my forehead or anything, but, although it took me many years finally to admit what my teachers, best friends, lecturers, and assorted members of the public had been telling me all my life...I do tend to be a little...well..different. Oh, all right - the word eccentric has even been thrown around too.

It has absolutely nothing to do with trying to make a statement of any kind. I just like clothes. And jewellery. And shoes. And I don't feel bound by any particular external need to arrange them in any particular order. Some mornings I get up and regard myself as a tabular Rosa - to be decorated like a Christmas tree with bells and chains and silk squares. Another morning I may feel the need to disguise my monthly bloat with scarves and flowing draperies; or an Indian sari or a Melanesian Meri-blous. On another (far less frequent, admittedly) day I'll feel like swanning around in sheer black stockings, tailored Chinese brocade, matching glasses and upswept hair. I kinda figure that its my body - I have complete autonomy over it and will adorn it to fit my passing fancy and not anyone else's. My only constant is that I wear a minimum of twelve rings, five bangles, a nose ring, a discreet star tattoo under my right ear (the other tat may well be the subject of a whole other blog) and bright pink, purple, blue or red hair. And not one single person in China makes any judgment based on this.

Actually to digress a moment (Ah hah! Bet you thought the last two paras. were one huge digression?) I had only been in China a few days when a newly acquired friend came to visit. I was cleaning out my flat at the time and dressed in an old goth. t.shirt with the sleeves ripped out and vast areas of red bra showing, a pair of stained and obscene cut-offs and a grubby anklet. My visitor suggested I take a break and asked me to come for a wander around the almost deserted campus. What he didn't tell me until I stood in his immaculate office, was that he was taking me to be introduced to the Dean of the University, to whom I offered a grubby paw reeking of bleach and rubber glove. When I afterward wailed about what a drastic first impression I must have made and asked him why he didn't get me to change first, my new friend looked amazed and then grinned. "Oh, don't worry. He probably thought it was the latest cool look from the West. I did!"

So, although visiting academics have been known to look a little sniffily in my direction, not one of the staff or students has ever considered there was anything remarkable about whatever I choose to wear. But it wasn't until last Saturday that I finally worked out why.

My sweeping generalisations above fitting people's occupations etc. to their clothes just don't apply in China. I have landed, finally, in a country where 1.3 billion people have exactly the same attitude towards dressing as I do: we please ourselves.

It is inevitable that I have from time to time attracted the label of New Age or Hippie - especially in summer when I favour long flowing skirts and leather sandals entirely for practical reasons. At other times I have been asked do I do my clothes shopping overseas - when I am wearing Vinnies designer label cast offs - or carrying any one of the six incredible pigskin leather handbags I picked up from the tip one joyous afternoon. I have been dismissed as inconsequential when I have pottered into the supermarket in paint-stained overalls and barefeet. Everyone can claim similar experiences.

Except in China.

Here in China there has never been a hippie movement, a New Age movement, a Green movement, an Eighties Big Hair movement. In Ningbo there are no goths or street gangs or emos or dole bludgers. No-one has ever been told that boys who wear pale pink or lavender or embroidered shirts are pansies. Or that girls who wear army fatigues and boots are butch. Everyone works hard and conscientiously and it doesn't matter whether that's as a painter, an office worker or a shop assistant. A persons image is not defined by their appearance. And in a big city in this newest capitalist country in the world, the incredible array of goods available are not regarded as "unsuitable" for any particular group.

The woman tottering past in a denim mini-skirt and incredibly high pencil thin heels is probably not a street walker but the harried housewife. The bloke over there with the oversized basketball-type shorts, silver chain and backward cap is probably an office worker. The girl with the gathered knee-length skirt, demure Peter pan blouse and flat pumps might be the street walker while the one with her, wearing the sequined top, gold threaded shorts and net stockings is probably her sister, the PhD candidate. Its beautiful, bizarre and entirely as it should be.

On the particular Saturday afternoon on which this revelation hit me I reached the end of my coffee with a somewhat melancholy feeling. I thought of all the people I knew in other countries who weren't so lucky. Imagine if clothing was not considered tarty, or bad taste, or cheap, or too young or too old in other countries?

The middle aged lady down the corner shop might emerge from the chrysalis of trackie daks and runners wearing paste diamond shoes and a dress made of layered net. Council workers could walk around in pin-stripes and ties after work and taxi drivers would call them "Sir". Your local chemist might emerge from his high counter wearing a pale pink embroidered shirt over black silk shorts and a pair of silver Keds. While your doctor could attend you sporting a pair of pearl-encrusted short-shorts and a t.shirt with with Minnie Mouse in hot-pink applique.

And it would never enter anyone's head to call me eccentric.