China angry over Manila hijacking

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

08/24/2010

China angry over Manila hijacking

China on Tuesday demanded answers from the Philippines after a 12-hour hostage drama in the heart of Manila ended with eight Hong Kong tourists dead along with their Filipino hostage-taker after a day of botched negotiations. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said his government was "appalled"

and telephoned his Philippine counterpart Alberto Romulo to voice concern, while Hong Kong residents expressed outrage and media outlets in the Chinese territory denounced Philippine police as incompetent.

"The Chinese government demands the Philippines launch a thorough investigation into the incident and inform the Chinese side of related details as soon as possible," Yang said, according to a statement posted on his ministry's website.

Read more at The Hindustan Times