Very interesting...

I had the most remarkable conversation the other day with a girl from southern China. I'd never met her, but had instead been connected to her through a site called myspace.com (very much like friendster.com or hi5.com: put up a "profile," invite friends, personalize it some ways, blah blah blah...). I don't frequent it very often, but having a few friends who use it a fair bit I check it out once in a while. A couple months back I changed my location to "Taiwan" and since then have gotten a few wanna-be friends "invitations" from people, mostly girls, in this part of the world. This girl was one of them. We exchanged emails anyways and I added her onto my MSN Messenger list but we'd never chatted until a few nights ago.

It began with the usual chit-chat, but upon being reminded that I was in Taiwan she said I should come and visit China. I responded by saying I'd like to someday, but that not being a fan of her government I'm reluctant to go as I don't want to in any way support it. Her response, "I don't understand."

So I start discussing the specifics of what I don't like about the Chinese government: its brutal annexation and ongoing ethnic cleansing of Tibet, its beligerence towards Taiwan and claim that it is but a "renegade" province of China that must at some point be reunited with the mainland instead of the rightfully independent country that it should be recognized as, its lack of democracy, use of slave labor, persecution of the Falum Gong members, and continued denial of any lives being lost when the "Peoples Liberation Army" ended the pro-democracy protests in Tianenmmen Square on June 4, 1989 among other things.

To say that she didn't appreciate my lack of appreciation would indeed be an understatement. "Oh, so you're probably one of those who think Taiwan should be independent," was more or less the gist of her response to which I replied that that is exactly what I think; saying furthermore that I didn't think China had any legal right to Taiwan and that China should respect the right of self-determination of the people of Taiwan as expressed in the UN Charter to which it is a signatory.

"You just don't understand; you're not Chinese" was then her only response to my requests for reasons as to why Taiwan "belonged" to China, but I insisted sending her links to the Wikipedia page detailing the Tianenmmen Square massacre and other Chinese atrocities which only seemed to make her angrier so then the insults started. "Gay" was the least of it, culminating in the "C" word for female genitalia - she was livid; insisting that she could say whatever she wanted, contrary to my condemnation of China's lack of freedom or press, assembly and religion, and that I didn't know anything about China. When I insisted otherwise, mentioning more details of the Chinese government's horrors, she continued the insults before finally quitting the conversation.

What to think of a young woman who has obviously been so brainwashed that any opposing viewpoints are attacked as heresy? She was on her way to Bali for a vacation so she was obviously not very poor, but clearly had never been exposed to any "truths" other than those of the Chinese government she found nothing wrong with. And to think that there are undoubtedly hundreds of millions of people just like her in China. A scary thought indeed...