China surgery probe after death of TV personality (AFP) – 11 hours ago

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

11/28/2010

China surgery probe after death of TV personality (AFP) – 11 hours ago

BEIJING — Chinese authorities have launched a probe into the death of an aspiring pop singer during plastic surgery, an incident that has sparked concerns about the dangers of going under the knife.

Wang Bei, 24, a former contestant on "Super Girl" -- China's smash-hit answer to "American Idol" -- died on November 15 during "facial bone-grinding surgery" in Wuhan, capital of the central province of Hubei.

"The Ministry of Health has tasked the Hubei health department to investigate and verify the situation... and to announce results of the probe to the public without delay," the ministry said in a statement late Saturday.

Wang, whose beauty had made her a popular contestant on "Super Girl", died in an "anaesthetic accident" as she was having surgery, the official Xinhua news agency reported earlier, citing the local health bureau.

Read more at Google Hoted News

Nov 28, 2010 10:12:44 AM | Current Affairs, Entertainment

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