Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Another great killer of the Chinese people


Here's another great killer of the Chinese people: The Great Wall of China

From the web: "During the Qin Dynasty--when the first Great Wall was built--workers toiled for ten years to build the wall, at a rate of about 25 miles per month".

25 miles per month? Wow! That's a mile a day. Do you believe it? In the first place, I suspect that such a feat is impossible. In the second place, since that "fact" is from the records, and the main source of the information in those records was the supervisors of construction themselves, they are the very people whose interests exaggeration serves. it's probably fake. But still, the work must have gone on at a death dealing pace.

Today the Chinese government uses their great wall as an example of their cultural superiority . Now there lies a great and popular paradox, not confined to the Chinese. Most cultures whose roots go back to antiquity, also have a long record of disrespect for, and destruction of, their own cultural treasures. Once having made a total wreck of their own relics, they are today utterly fanatic about protecting them, invariably claiming the high moral ground, and citing how foreigners don't respect their stuff enough and how outsiders are responsible for all the spoilage. Examples abound. Egypt has closed the Great Pyramid, blaming the damage caused to its inner walls, on the sweat produced foreigners. I did not make this up. This is after those very people stole the entire limestone skin off the pyramids, not to mention the golden capstones. Hey, how about the fact that every single royal grave in Egypt was already plundered in antiquity, including that of King Tut. I mean can you believe it? The history of those people is a history of vandalism, and yet they piously claim that it's all our fault. And China, having massively destroyed its own Great Wall, is today punishing people who seek to do one billionth as much.

From the web: "The Chinese government also hopes to protect the national treasure. Officials in Beijing are considering legislation that, if passed, would convict anyone caught littering or defacing the Great Wall to a jail term of up to seven years."

Ha ha wotta joke. Can you imagine the ruthless and fearsome world power Chinese communist government prosecuting someone for littering?

Now all this is happening even to this very day. I am reminded that during the recent occupation of Afghanistan by the Taliban, those Muslims completely destroyed a huge statue of Buddha that was the single most important ancient monument left in that benighted country. And they did so for religious reasons too. And they got clean away with it too. Imagine the holy uproar that would have taken place if a single American soldier so much as put a scratch on the place.

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