Friday, July 7 Tiananmen Square

[soid]

Woke up before 7. We ate breakfast at the hotel – a hotel buffet with Taiwanese pancakes, steamed veggies, fruit, and precious coffee. 

As it turned out, we blew the tickets to the National Museum because it were all booked out a month in advance, but then, via connections, someone arranged to get us in – we even avoided a long line of young pioneers at Tiananmen Square, slowly moving via security check. 

The museum was crazily crowded; the exhibition started from Zhou dynasty and proceeded one dynasty after another: Warring states, Han, Tang, Song, etc. Here is one thing: look, there were pretty advanced crossbows during the Warring States, 2-4 century before common era, rifle-like with a trigger; that when Sun Tzu wrote "The Art of War". I noticed a lady guide shouting in front of a group of kids, pointing to an exhibit, assertively and strictly, as if she was instructing the kids on the evacuation plan in case of fire. Otherwise, I only noticed that the Yuan dynasty was kind of skipped – those were Mongolians, Chengis Khan's descendants, some of them conquered the West and formed the Golden Hoard, others conquered the East and formed the Yuan dynasty. But, actually, I'm not very interested in all that old stuff, not beyond 18th century; it's all a kind of fiction, I feel like, and I don't care. 

Qing period was more interesting, or at least interesting for me – reading the interpretations of the period sometimes is more interesting than reading the artifacts; they are more telling about the present.

After Britain started the Opium War in 1840, the imperial powers descended on China like a swarm of bees, looting our treasures and killing our people. They forced the Qing government to sign a series of unequal treaties that granted them economic, political and cultural privileges and sank China gradually into a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society.

The contradictions between imperialism and the Chinese nation and between feudalism and the broad masses of the people became the primary contradictions in modern Chinese society. Achieving national independence and liberation of the people, and making the country strong and prosperous and the people happy became the two great historic missions of the Chinese nation throughout its modern history.

Unfortunately, I got bored reading these one-sided interpretations. 

A large glass wall; outside – a squat of soldiers practicing throwing grenades, just outside of the museum. An officer shows them the technique: the arm movement, where to look, what to do after. They look like real soldiers, but I'm sure they are just part of another exhibition – surely, there is enough space to practice grenade throwing besides Tiananmen Square. 

The museum crowd

I'm probably the only laowai in the museum.

Next, the party history. Mao's shoes that look like Mao's socks. Many paintings of the party events; the long march, crossing the Dadu river, and the like.

Then the achievements of the socialist people. This one is weird: "Original manuscript of mathematician Chen Jingrun proving Goldbach's conjecture that every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes" (1 + 2) published in Science Bulletin." The drafts mixing Chinese, Russian and English, but I didn't understand much. I should look it up.

Then, an entire section dedicated for Xi Jingping. Unfortunately, not a single soul made it to this part, only a strange laowai, myself:

In the center of the room – a large table with a column of models of various tanks, rocket launchers, and other army machinery. On the walls – mostly portraits of Xi, with foreign leaders, or among village people, or with military commanders. Various speeches are played on TVs.

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

Chen Jingrun did not prove it. He did contribute, though.

[soid]

Thanks, I see. That makes more sense.