吾中生友

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http://giantwoo.blogbus.com/logs/5102964.html

The shock of the massacre has been somewhat relieved with several days’ passing, and the story behind the shootings seems much clearer with hundreds of pages of coverage.

The very noon when I logged on to find such astonishing news on the front pages of all the main portal websites, the suspect killer was said to be possibly a Chinese student. And 163.com gave a large portion of the page to Lu Gang’s killing in 1991, implying its affirmative attitude towards the hypothesis posed by Chicago Sun Times, which—indicating not only the “attitude” but also the “hypothesis” together with the columnist and the newspaper that created and helped spread this pseudo report worldwide—was later but immediately criticized verbally, lingually, and mentally by the mass media mostly and mainly from China. Now that the killer has been identified as a Korean descendant—mind you, not a Korean national—the heavy load is thrown upon the shoulders and backs of our neighbors in the east. Apologies followed, fear of revenge followed, and the cancellation of Korean tourism commercial on CNN followed—the day I got to know the tragedy, I made an intentional effort to download the TVAnts for a better view of the CNN, on which I happened to see, for quite a few times, the TV commercial which I mistook for a Chinese one at its very beginning that resembled the state of mind in ancient Chinese landscape paintings. At that time no one had a clue that the killer had something to do with Korea, and the Campus Massacre special report was consecutively inserted by this commercial.

What matters if the killer is a Korean, let alone a Korean descendent “It is only an individual case,” said the American authorities, “which has nothing to do with race, nationality, or terrorism.” That’s the general American way of thinking. We are not. We are Chinese. We are from East Asia.

Besides the various angles from which we probe into this tragedy, one needs particular attention. Someone posted in the forum, interrogating the super sensitivity and quick responding of the Chinese mass media to this foreign news event as against the tragedies happening every day on our native land. A retort went that the shootings were human disasters while those lethal accidents were natural calamities. Were they merely natural calamities Cannot they be averted by human efforts One week before the VT shootings, there happened a house collapse in Chengdu, 10 dead, 24 injured; between the two shootings in Virginia Tech University, there happened a coal mine gas explosion in Henan, 33 miners trapped in the well which was later sealed to stop the resulted fire from spreading out, thus 33 dead equaling the number of deaths in the VT shootings; two days later in Liaoning, there happened a dropping of the molten steel ladle, claimed to be the most severe steel industry accident since 1949, burning 32 directly to death, equaling the number of the victims in the VT shootings excluding the killer himself; in the following two days in Hebei, there happened two coal mine calamites, 9 dead, 19 missing … I know this list is bound to be continued, as always.

Till now, the coverage of the VT shootings is still occupying the front pages of most portal websites, while the house collapse, the coal mine calamities, the molten steel disaster, etc. all went unmentioned and unnoticed in any conspicuous spaces, not to mention those we do not know and may happen to have good luck to know from some foreign sources. The foreign governments try to reveal the disasters to the public lest future tragedies, while our government manages to conceal the information to reduce the impact to the minimum. I tried hard to search online to find a coal mine calamity website, but I failed to find one except a non-official blog—well, I think I have got one, the website of the State Administration of Work Safety httpwww.chinasafety.gov.cn

President Bush attended the funeral of the victims and the flags there were lowered at half mast. This has never happened in China, even in those accidents killing thousands, because the dead were civilians. When a certain celebrity dies, he or she can enjoy the heated coverage posthumously and lastingly. But not the civilians. Netizens suggested casting the steel which contained 32 bodies into a monument. I strongly agree with them. Because they are civilians.

I still remember the last scene in Jia Zhangke’s Golden Palm winner Still Life, a dozen of workers, knowing the dangerous working conditions in Shanxi coal mines, heading towards the wharf. They are going to earn a living—also going to risk their lives.

Giant Woo
2007-4-21