For those of you who have been in contact with Peter and myself over the past few weeks, you’ll know that we have been somewhat obsessed with what is going on with the Chinese Olympic protests. We follow the news and scour YouTube for videos of the Dalai Lama and homemade versions of Chinese and Tibetan history through the eyes of young Chinese nationalists. The milieu is entirely excitable and while Peter tends to revel in the chaos, I feel saddness and great trepidation.

I am as prone as anyone to the thrill of sudden change but in this case, I see clear and immediate danger. The backlash of Chinese sentiment (aside from the government’s insistence that these acts ‘hurt the feelings’ of the Chinese people) is troubling to me. Somehow, they got the wrong message.

I think that when we in the West criticize the government of China in the name of furthering dialogue with Tibet, we don’t think of our actions as being insulting and hypocritical to many Chinese people. For reasons that can’t be covered in brief, many Chinese people seem to show symptoms of having the Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to defending their country.

An inspiring exception to this trend is a young woman/ray of hope named Grace Wang. Here’s an excerpt of her story from the Washington Post [emphasis mine]:

DURHAM, North Carolina: On the day the Olympic torch was carried through San Francisco last week, Grace Wang, a Chinese freshman at Duke University, came out of her dining hall to find a handful of students gathered for a pro-Tibet vigil facing off with a much larger pro-China counterdemonstration.

Wang, who had friends on both sides, tried to get the two groups to talk, participants said. She began traversing what she called “the middle ground,” asking the groups’ leaders to meet and making bargains. She said she agreed to write “Free Tibet, Save Tibet” on one student’s back only if he would speak with pro-Chinese demonstrators. She pleaded and lectured. In one photo, she is walking toward a phalanx of Chinese flags and banners, her arms overhead in a “timeout” T.

But the would-be referee went unheeded. With Chinese anger stoked by disruption of the Olympic torch relays and criticism of government policy toward Tibet, what was once a favorite campus cause — the Dalai Lama’s people — had become a dangerous flash point, as Wang was soon to find out.

The next day, a photo appeared on an Internet forum for Chinese students with a photo of Wang and the words “traitor to your country” emblazoned in Chinese across her forehead. Wang’s Chinese name, identification number and contact information were posted, along with directions to her parents’ apartment in Qingdao, a Chinese port city.

Salted with ugly rumors and manipulated photographs, the story of the young woman who was said to have taken sides with Tibet spread through China’s most popular Web sites, at each stop generating hundreds or thousands of raging, derogatory posts, some even suggesting that Wang — a slight, rosy 20-year-old — be burned in oil. Someone posted a photo of what was purported to be a bucket of feces emptied on the doorstep of her parents, who had gone into hiding.

“If you return to China, your dead corpse will be chopped into 10,000 pieces,” one person wrote in an e-mail message to Wang. “Call the human flesh search engines!” another threatened, using an Internet phrase that implies physical, as opposed to virtual, action.

In an interview Wednesday, Wang said she had been needlessly vilified.

“If traitors are people who want to harm China, then I’m not part of it,” she said. “Those people who attack me so severely were the ones who hurt China’s image even more.”

She added: “They don’t know what do they mean by ‘loving China.’ It’s not depriving others of their right to speak; it’s not asking me or other people to shut up.”

…

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/17/america/17student.php

And then, even though her parents are in hiding and she is receiving death threats, she puts her email address in the article and encourages people to talk about what is going on. This is one seriously brave, seriously smart woman.

Rock on Grace!

In her own words:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/18/AR2008041802635.html