Mother of young rape victim heads home

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

08/11/2012

Mother of young rape victim heads home

CHANGSHA - The petitioning mother of a rape victim began her journey home on Saturday after being released from a labor camp in central China's Hunan province, saying she will continue her pursuit of justice.

Tang Hui sobs as she embarks on the bus journey home in Yongzhou of Central China's Hunan province. The photo is taken in Changsha, capital of the province on Aug 11, 2012. Local authorities released Tang from a labor camp on Friday, where she was ordered last week to serve an 18-month term for "disturbing social order and exerting a negative impact on society." Tang was challenging the sentences handed down to the men who abducted, raped and prostituted her 11-year-old daughter. Tang's case triggered a public outrage questioning the local justice system. Authorities also said they would investigate Tang's claim that police falsified evidence in her daughter's case. [Photo/Xinhua]

Read more at China Daily

Aug 11, 2012 10:22:37 PM | Crime, Current Affairs

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