Lewis Hamilton swerves flak and stays focused on repeating win in China

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

04/16/2010

Lewis Hamilton swerves flak and stays focused on repeating win in China

• Accused by fellow drivers of reckless manoeuvring in Malaysia
• McLaren back their man as he looks for second China win
Lewis Hamilton will go into Sunday's Chinese grand prix with the angry voices of his fellow drivers ringing in his ears. Hamilton was given a warning by the race stewards after he weaved on the main straight to fend off a challenge from Renault's Vitaly Petrov at the Malaysian grand prix two weeks ago and the issue was raised at a heated drivers' meeting today.

Hamilton was also criticised by Rubens Barrichello of Williams and Renault's Robert Kubica, but the McLaren driver remained defiant. "I wasn't cutting him up. He was a good car's length behind me and I was trying to get him out of the tow," he said. "I don't feel it was dangerous but we'll see. I thought it was good racing and it didn't affect anyone else. I am relaxed about it."
Read more at The Guardian