Some thoughts on torch relay

It’s very difficult to avoid these two issues recently when you are a Chinese living and working in London. Whether they are my Chinese friends or from different countries, discussions will inevitably come up as conversations start. I want to write what I think and feel about what happen recently in the Olympics Torch Relay. It’s not easy, but I will try to write them down.

Olympics Torch Relay in London

I went with my friends that day, to support and welcome the torch. But what came to my eye was very sad – protester pointing fingers and shouting at supporters ‘shame on you!’. On the other side supporters holding Chinese flags and shouting back ‘liars!’. What disheartened me most was to see innocent children (some of them were even infants) in both groups. Was that the impression they are going to have towards China and Olympics Game? I was standing in front of protesters pointing fingers to me and shouting very aggressively, my friends and other Chinese supporters were shouting back to them. Among them, I was speechless.

No Violence

It’s not difficult to see violent scenes on the TV news these days. After all, newspaper and news channel are all commercial bodies. They need to feed what readers and audiences want to see. Quite often violent scenes are more eyes-catching than peaceful ones when it comes to attracting people’s attentions. I respect different opinions, people can have protests as they wish, but violent behavior is something that I can never agree on. Expressing viewpoints is good, we need different opinions to make us think and communicate, but if you expressing in a violent way then regardless what a good point you are making, IT’S WRONG!

Objective vs. Subjective

As I said, it’s not difficult to see violent scenes on the news recently, but from my personal experiences, protectors and supporters were 50-50 on that day. Why our supports weren’t shown on the TV? Since the outbreak in Tibet last month, all you can see are ‘military crackdown from China’ and ‘how many people die’ in western media. On the other side, my parents in China saw a relatively peaceful image of the issue. So which one shall I believe?

Before I tend to believe Western media was more ‘objective’ and report the ‘truth’. But now I realise there were nothing like ‘truth’, Western media are just as subjective and the Chinese media. What you see in China is what the media (which are controlled by the government) want to show you - a peaceful and harmonious society. Whereas Western media is determined by income revenue. As I said, the more eyes-catching ones come first. If you take a look at anti-CNN.com, do you still think what you see is ‘the truth’? I guess what drove most people to protest are their believes which based on what they see on TV. But I hope they could think again or even make a trip to China if they haven’t been there. Seeing is believing, but try to see things from your own eyes rather than from cameraman’s focus or editor’s selection of today’s breaking news, especially when you want to make an action on what you believes.

Peace!

I’m not saying that what I think is correct, but it’s my personal feeling and point of view based on my experiences up to now. I respect other people’s opinions but I don’t like hate speech or violence. After all, peace is what we aim for, and that’s part of the Olympic spirit.