A Shame

A Shame

“Shame on you!” Philip said without turning his eyes to me from the television where two herds of man were tracing a round solid object colored in black and white named by human on this earth for soccer or football. I realized that I had made a mistake for which only an angel or a creature from the Mars could get an excuse. I just wanted to clarify the differences between the National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the National People's Congress (NPC), or, exactly, I wanted to know other person’s feeling towards such issue.

The two conventions are alike in many ways, the issues they discuss, the participants, the institutions, and the leaders; especially both of the two are paid by tax. The two conventions, if they are the same, why they are separated? If not, why they are doing the same thing? Every Chinese people are concerning this event because it is relating to the stock markets, real estates, people’s life, national development, all of which are the affairs of the state, while I am amazed to see the state issues they are talking about in this party’s convention are like something in their pocket.

I am so deficient in politics that I always have an itch to touch a button even though I know there is always a solid answer which is not fun, not surprise at all.

“Apparently, you were not a good student and you did not grasp what you should have learned in the law school.” Philip continued.

When I was in law school, I did not understand why it was named “Politics & Law”, for I was born to hope that law might be mere knowledge of law and separated from politics, at least in the portion of lawyer or Legal Philosophy. Therefore I kept a distance from a mainstream, while many students joined CPC and hope, by this way, to get a promising future, while all people in my family, my father, mother, sisters and their husbands were CPC member.

“I could understand what the NPC is by consulting the constitution, but how could I know what the CPC’s congress is?” I was striving to vindicate myself.
“By consulting the Party Constitution.” Philip spoke to the screen.
“I am not a CPC’s member. I am just a citizen of this country, why I should read the Party Constitution? Is the State Constitution not enough?” In fact, I couldn’t recollect the Party Constitution was a lesson in Chinese law schools.

“Because CPC is the governing party.”

Staring at Philip’s left side face in the dark, which was illuminated by the beam radiating from the screen, flicking with the action of the soccer men on the green field, I could imagine how stupid my eyes would be. I am suspecting that I was losing clear-headedness during these two months after coming back from the U.S.
“Governing party”, this is the solid answer which I am lured to overstep. It would be dangerous, so it would be spicy.

“Good shot!” Philip shouted. As I looked at the screen, a man in a red uniform was dancing on the grass wildly.
“I thought,” I spoke to the dancing man, “Politics & Law was an ugly name.”
“Me too,” Philip said, “I didn’t like it, but I had to learn it well.”
“CPC has its own logic which is supported by Marxism, with the addition of Jiang Zemin’s theory the three represents,” Philip recited fluently, “the Party should always represent the development needs of China's advanced social productive forces; always represent the onward direction of China's advanced culture; and always represent the fundamental interests of the largest.”
“Even Prof. Cho could understand it, but I don’t understand why you can not understand.”
“Because Prof. Cho is from Korea but I am from Mars.” This was a self-mockery.

“CPC is the boss of the country and is beyond the state constitution. NPC implements CPC’s policy and laws are just one of tools for CPC.” Philip was preceding his lesson, “you graduated from law school and you once were a Chinese lawyer, so you ought to know something better than normal people.”

“I can not understand it from the angle of law, but you can understand because you accept the reality.” My reaction was a bit hollow, for I am not sure what kind of law perspective I possess. Who could act the judger and by which rules to judge, the Western or the Chinese?

“But,” Philip paused for a second, “once I explained this to a classmate from Germany, he compared CPC with Nazi. I could not respond him at the time, but I agreed with him afterwards, the dictatorship, brainwash, etc.”

Brainwash, in Chinese, has a term called “unifying thoughts”. All of Chinese people receive Marxism education when they are young. Sunny and the South Korean kids and the blond ones in her school, like all the elementary students in China, vowed to the red flag and then became a young pioneer of CPC, marked by wearing Red Scarf. When I was twelve, I received Marxism lessons in middle school. And then, in high school, in college, this kind of lesson, Marxist dialectical materialism and the history overwritten according to Marxist historical materialism was repeated again and again, resulted in distorting the knowledge about the whole nation’s history and culture.

In the autumn of 1989, after the failure of the student’s movement in Tiananmen Square, I resumed our semester in the law school. Students were imposed to confess and declare in classes. It is at that time I discovered my potential comedic talent, because my presentation made all the class burst into laugh. But that night, when I listened to the effulgent Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 from the headphone in my dormitory, I burst into tears, for I found that the heaven was so distant while reality was so ugly.

As to the National Day on 1st October, year by year they continued the same deceit and strengthen this logic: state = motherland = CPC.

Philip’s sounds echoed in the dark, “I once hoped that Hu could do something since he emphasized reformation of political system early of this year. But after the dinner with Prof. Jiang, I understood that a person could do nothing to the inertia which has been piling up for five thousands years.”
Prof. Jiang is a rare scholar who can give keys to a lot of question on history, legal, and current society. We had a nice talk on 8th October.

I slippered across the living room to my study and check some information before going to bed. I logged on a forum which I took charge of the system operation, and a message forwarded by the forum’s owner jumped out, asking me to pay more attention on messages about Dalai Lama.

Actually, before the 17th CPC congress, by the end of September, polices had reinforced control of websites, once any unsuitable information was found by cyber polices, the forum would be closed for good. In order to avoid disasters, most forums had to take the safest way that all posts should be checked by the background processor like me before they could appear on websites.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama appeared on CNN on morning, and at night I was informed to delete any relevant information. Chinese Cyber polices will be especially busy these days.

Shutting down the computer and turning off the kitchen light, I announced, “With lonely soul, all my life,” Philip shot me a glance before he turned back to his soccer game, and I swallowed the rest words as I walked to the bedroom, squeezing my frozen left shoulder, “since this world doesn’t work in my logic.”

It is a shame that I am not smart, not crazy, not diligent, and not romantic enough, but, yeah, it is a fortune to this world that not many people are capable to become Bin Laden, Che Guevara, or Karl Marx, the human being who drove the planet to chase their logic.