Chinese antiques come to mind when I recall the British commonwealth Games in my home city Victoria Canada. It was 1994, and Victoria was hosting the commonwealth Games, as they are called. They are bigger that the Winter Olympics, are held every four years, two years apart from the Olympics. They are a huge success wherever they are held, as they were here. They begin and end much the same format at the Olympics: athletes from Australia through Canada and India to South Africa to Zanzibar.
The athletes at those later ceremonies paraded around in order to the foot stomping cheers of all, in joy of this impossible club of peoples who loved each other, and spoke other languages, but all also English. So it was a constant meeting of dancing blacks and browns and goldens and whites all singing and swaying to some Jamaican drums. And this was the last year for Hong Kong, being taken over by China the next year.
The Chinese antiques moment, for me, and moment from hell for my vigorous son in law, came next. My son in law Darren and I worked out with each other at the gym weekly. Darren asked this young athlete who his favorite English football team was, his was Tottenham. The young man looked puzzled into my son in law’s eyes. He paused, shrugged, and said, “I don’t follow that stuff myself, that’s for old blokes from pubs.”
And although some where birds sang and the sky was blue, for my son in law it was if he had been slapped hard, as he jerked his head back. We never spoke much about it. But two summers later I took my youngest daughter, then aged ten, for a glorious six weeks holiday of Europe. The day of the flight, he and I watched England lose to Germany in Europe Cup Finals in London. He drove us out to the airport. We flew all night, and arrived in London early in the morning. I asked the cabbie to drive us to our hotel by way of Buckingham Palace for my daughter to see.
We did that, and then proceeded down the Mall towards Trafalgar Square into a scene of litter and debris and police wagons still loading drunken men into vans. We detoured, and the cabbie explained that the lager louts at the stadium felt that Hitler had won the war after all when the Germans won the game, and had been rioting all night long, they were worn out and it’s all over but the clean ups and window glaziers. And I knew somehow that the athlete who had spoken those words was off training somewhere, not tossing his empty beer bottle through a German sounding pub window.
And in global terms today, we see the world showing a deeper outrage against the torch bears of China, as they try to run this symbol of a far greater civilization from ancient Greece that also allowed an athlete to speak his mind, even as in the case of Socrates at his peril. Consider the immense change, a miracle of nature, or God we prefer. How can the inner fires of mother earth sometimes shoot almost up side down lightning strikes through streak of common coal, or creating a democratic small group of citizens of Athens so long ago. That this was almost a lightning of fair progress to humanity from the heavens above, so as a strike from the inner fires to the surface of earth brings us diamonds. Or lumps of coal.
Ownership of an area, in law, usually depends on how early you arrived by boat that determines your claim to true roots. As in, China took over historically independent Tibet in 1950 in a land that treasured Buddha for over two thousand years in peaceful independence: surely Franklin Roosevelt’s Shangri La, that created so many legends of mysterical people living long holy lives up in the mountains unbothered by the outside world. Until, as we say, 1950. The Dali Lhama was forced into exile by 1959 into India, and has been reviled as a terrorist in China since.
And to acknowledge, as a Chinese official did yesterday on British television, that Chinese and other civilizations were great and did not need to be democratic. And I thought of how the previous Chinese had been treated by the mighty boy named Tamujai who created a need for a Great Wall of China, by becoming such a fearless leader of his Mongols that they invade and took over vast China in the most bloody way, killing millions. They always did save artisans and those with civilized skills, but as example many had to be put to the sword until all who still survived learned to bow and submit to the Mighty Khan.
And so Marco Polo entered a peaceful kingdom, all very Confucian in their stoic understanding that the Emperor was to be obeyed, learn to be very good at your skills, and all would be well. And so it seems to continue today, except the valleys of the artisans are being evicted of old factories such as, perhaps, the old Ming place, for a fine new coal fired burning plant to make fake copies of Ming vases, and at these waqes, they will buy in the west, while we invest in their best. Enough! If we think this through, as Japan has accomplished so well, China is doing to us again.
Except this time it is not cheaper, better, smaller cars, it is enough that we are in huge line ups at our discount stores with our huges buggies of junk we do not need, can not afford, and will be out at the yard sale same time as dumb Ed in the line three over from you. Is this not what made Japan so rich it could buy up our treasures? At least we got a car that ran so well it changed the auto safety standards of the world to compete. But this stuff? Leave the line up to Ed.
Stay home, click on the net, notice that Chinese antiques can still be had for some very reasonable bargains. Why is that, you might well ask? Well, as with every quickly getting rich peoples, they always become so excited about their new cell phones, gadgets, coffee shops, high rise tower in the city, they do not rate high gradma’s old Ming vase, not by a decade of wealth building yet. But you and I, if we stop with the buggy and the line up; clear our mantles and begin an oriental flavor in honor of the new rising power.
By the time the new richer Susie Wong wants together all her old family song, she may search the net, and you can be find you have the rest of grandma’s Ming vase set. Will you sell? For a price, you bet. That may come as the world goes funny again, or you need back surgery, which is causing Ed to try to sell his lead lined CO2 fake pottery, whih nobody wants because nobody needs, because their yard sales has the same. While you enjoy, inflation oh boy, how those Chinese worked and got so rich. Investments that please the eye, till you again say goodbye, are rare. But they do come by. And never last forever, moments taken or not. You choose.
