Last night we watched the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. I am incapable of describing it, what an amazing display of creativity!! The combination of centuries-old art forms and state-of-the-art electronics, plus fireworks for a thousand Fourths of July left us speechless. The beautiful Chinese traditions and stories were woven together with unbelieveable technological feats. It was long but never lost our attention, each part could have been the finale, it was so unbelieveable. Lovely as it was, it seemed like a greater message was being sent, unsettling for one who follows the news in Sudan, Burma, and Tibet.
Kevin Garside's article was thought provoking.
"Tibet, Burma, Sudan and the colonisation of Africa are the issues routinely raised to keep the dragon in check; human rights the moral stick to beat the beast into submission. Don't waste your time. This was history set to music and dance, every step reminding Bush and assembled world leaders that Beijing stands at the centre of a universe every bit as legitimate as those born of Greece or Rome"
While the spirit of the games is beautiful, China's ever reaching omimous hand silently stretches towards far away places like Sudan. There people suffer daily from the oppression of a government dependent on funding from China. Would there be so many civil wars in Africa without foreign nations supplying guns and weapons while greedily standing in the wings waiting to snap up their rich national resources? The games will soon be over but people will daily awake and live with to the decisions China makes in their far away land. I hope we never close our eyes to that.
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