Yesterday, we went to see Angry Monk (no IMDB entry?), produced by angry monk productions and directed by Luc Schaedler. Strange how the Swiss seem to be pretty good at making documentaries. ;)
I like the angry monk productions introduction:
angry monk productions is a swiss-based film company dedicated to cross-cultural exchange and encounters. it produces documentaries on cultural, political and social issues.
The movie follows the steps of a monk that left old Tibet. He travelled through India for ten years, amazed at the modern world outside of Tibet. He kept writing articles for the Tibet Mirror (printed in India because Tibet did not have a newspaper). When he returned, he ended up in a prison in Lhasa for three years, got released shortly before the invasion of the Chinese, and died one year later.
The change he had wanted for Tibet did come in the end, but forced upon Tibet by a foreign power and at a terrible cost.
We talked about the movie for quite a while. Claudia knows another dance teacher who studied Chinese traditional dance in Beijing for a year and who keeps returning there year after year. Tibetan dances are taught in Beijing, she met Tibetans herself, and what she says is that the terrible repression seems to have relented a bit, the repression in other parts of the country are on a similar level, that Tibetan as a language can be taught and spoken, that there are Tibetan schools, etc. Strange, I was expecting the repression to continue unabated. The Tibetans Claudia’s friend would meet in Beijing are probably regime-friendly or else they would not have been allowed out of Tibet, but I really don’t know enough about the situation.
As for the other minorities in China, I faintly remember that there are Turkmen provinces in the far west of China with large Muslim minorities. But I honestly know very little about China, so I would have to read up on it. I can’t remember any recent Monde Diplomatique articles about China, for example.
In the evening, we went to a house warming party by a good friend of ours, where we met an interesting friend of theirs of Sri Lankan descent, raised in several African countries including ten years in Botswana, studied in the states, and now living in Switzerland. She also runs the English language bookclub I’m interested in joining. She has plans of travelling to Tibet, and had seen another documentary, Cry Of The Snow Lion. We ended up in a hot discussion. 😄
We both agreed on our rejection of the Chinese repression, the remnants of the culture revolution, etc. The Tibetan cultural heritage has suffered greatly through the vast attack on their religion, their language, and their population. The Chinese culture itself has suffered greatly from the cultural revolution. It is a very sad thing indeed.
I think the most contentious issue in our discussion was the question of national independence. It started quite harmlessly with me quoting an article in the Monde Diplomatique criticising the Tibetan “government” for
1. not being truly representative because they did not hold elections
2. at the same time trying to negotiate with China
3. not realizing that no progress has been made
4. and starting negotiations with a minimum position that does not allow for any compromise – the journalist suggested that Tibet ask for complete independence and start negotiating from there
So we talked about national independence. Both of us being from a diverse background, not living in the country we were born in, not living in the countries our parents were born in, foreigners wherever we are, we both agreed that fundamentally, the discussion on national terms was useless. From there, we parted ways.
I claimed that we should discuss human rights, support the struggle for cultural issues such as language use, teaching, rituals, religion, and ignore the question of national independence or local autonomy. I claimed that if people are not subject to human rights abuse and allowed to pursue their happiness, then there is no reason to prefer living in one country or another.
She claimed that I was ignoring a basic human trait: All over the world, nationalism was an important phase on the path to modernity. I challenged it and we started citing examples of where it worked, or where it do not work. I said these examples illustrated that the idea of coinciding national, ethnic and cultural boundaries was an idea born in Europe after a million years of alternating migration and bloodshed, hardly suited to solve our present day problems. She said that these examples illustrated how important the national struggle was and how unavoidable the question is, in the end.
We had reached an impasse.
I have to go back to that introduction to Chinese history I read a few years ago: China: Vielvölkerreich und Einheitsstaat von Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer. The title roughly translates to “Multi-Ethnic Empire and Centralized State”. In the book, the author explains how the Chinese define China as that part of the world that was under an administration modeled on the Chinese system. It didn’t matter so much whether the Chinese emperor actually controlled that part of the world, it only mattered whether they used Chinese script, mathematics, and law. The reach of Chinese culture determined the boundaries of the empire.
China: Vielvölkerreich und Einheitsstaat von Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer
Remember that when my ancestor went to witness the coronation of Queen Victoria, it was believed in China that the British sovereign was just another servant to the emperor in a distance province. For more about my Chinese ancestor, see the partial transcript of my grandfather’s memoirs on Roland Li-Marchetti.
I also need to read something about nationalism as an important factor in the wars for independence, the construction of nationalism around the first world-war, and something about marxist historicism. Any recommendations?
#Movies #Tibet