Today, the winds are inexplicably blowing down from the Eastern Hills.  The leaves are all streaming the wrong way, slightly creaking as if in protest.  But spring is bursting out all over.

Ahhh me, so many complex emotions and conflicting thoughts following this week's Olympic torch run in San Francisco.  It's not over yet, emotionally, intellectually, and politically for me.  As a Chinese American whose family fled China after the Communist take-over, I am pleased to know that under economic modernization, the mainland is steadily loosening up its authoritarian political and social structure.  

But not fast enough for many, particularly over Tibet, a cause I've supported for many years.

Many of my Post-80s (i.e., raised entirely under the Modernization) welcome this and have no idea of the political shit-storm about to hit China and possibly embolden the militant, hard-liners to seize back power completely. 

I had always thought the right wing militarists (those "Clash of Civilization" folks) would demonized China, and then by extension, render the Chinese American community as a suspect spying community.   But now it turns out that so many well-intentioned folks, allies of mine, are starting to compare China to Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa.  It is often said that only the government and it's policies are being criticized and not the Chinese people as a whole, but much of the new rhetoric is so much more encompassing of the Chinese people.  And more freely so. 

 Ahhh me -- how to fight the good fight for Tibetans, Darfur, & Burma, the growth of free expression and democratic institutions in China, and yet correct your allies when in their righteousness and frustration, they become rabid --all without being dismissed as a sympathizer or treated as suddenly having gone over to the Dark Side.

Time to go quiet for awhile, play in my garden, and swing in my hammock chair on this balmy spring day. Still, I can't get use to today's wind as I wait for wisdom to arise.  Or not...

(C) 2008. William Poy Lee