I was sleeping more than ever today. We’re on our way home now, so there won’t be any more small boat rides. Do you want to know a secret? I’m super-grateful. If I see one
I was sleeping more than ever today. We’re on our way home now, so there won’t be any more small boat rides. Do you want to know a secret? I’m super-grateful. If I see one more penguin, I’ll eat it!
During these days, we had lectures about this and that. For example a guy talked about the environment. He showed a picture of himself driving a boat in the Antarctic, and another picture of himself driving a boat in Australia, and he asked us: “What is the connection?” and then showed how Antarctica and Australia are part of the same tectonic plate. That’s the most gibberish thing I’ve ever listened to.
What he had done, was buying a big part of Australian rain forest. That’s good of course. As for living inside it, I’m not too sure. If everyone would live inside rain forests, we wouldn’t have many of them left. I’m 99.99% sure that every visitor they get, have to get that there by car on asphalt.
If people would like to save the Antarctica, they would be best in just not going there! Not fly at all. Skip the meat. (Or, IF you go there, make it visible with lots of signs *excuse*.)
At least he didn’t love Donald Trump. This image created a bit of tension among all the Chinese. Would it be followed by one of Xi Jinping? It didn’t.
I talked a lot of politics today, with two Chinese people. Both into the export industry, in various ways. One of them didn’t speak much English, so we used his translation app. I asked him: Trump is drowning us for example by leaving USA from the Paris climate agreement, which is what currently holds the world back in the last Madrid agreement, making sure that all of us are running towards the burning wall at maximum speed. So I can choose a democrat candidate, Andrew Yang, and go to the USA to fight for him, and for the democrats overall. I can simply do my part as a citizen of this planet, to protect us (or our grandchildren) from living on a planet that heats out of our control.
But what about China? China is currently building around 120 gigawatts of coal power plants, which could be enough to crush us into the wall. But how do I affect that? Is there a Green Party? What if I go to Tiananmen square with a sign “Stop the coal, Xi”?
I’d get arrested. So, their dictatorship is currently crushing our planet, and that’s why we need to hate it.
He simply claimed that China is NOT building these coal power plants. That the fact that they are, is some kind of lie. Lying is how a dictatorship survives, for a while. I said that if he is true, then that is good news for all of us, but I simply couldn’t believe it. Here’s one link, and there are many more.
We also talked about Taiwan, a full-fledged Chinese democracy where there are various parties that I can relate to, and affect. I can’t vote, but I can stand in front of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall with a sign saying “Build more trains and less cars” and explain to everyone who listens to me, what Taiwanese party to vote for in order to make Taiwan a country that assumes its role in not killing all of us. Just like I did in Brasilia, where I talked to about 5-6 people about my little action (there weren’t that many people there).
He claimed that Taiwan would sooner or later love to return to China. I told him about how every Taiwanese I know hate China, and prefer not travelling to China at all, since when you do, you can’t use your Taiwanese passport, but are put down with a Chinese ID card. Just look at Hong Kong how happy they are to get a Chinese dictatorship over themselves. In Taiwan, it’d be 100 times worse. In fact, we might get a World War III.
I claimed that the only reason that he was allowed the passport to travel, was that he didn’t care at all about politics. But as soon as he got internet, his translation app would give all our discussion to the Chinese government, who might start to look him up. If they felt that he had said the wrong things (which could have been me of course), then he might get his passport withdrawn, he would not be allowed to fly, to use fast trains etc. Like for these guys.
That scared him off. Talking to foreigners could be dangerous.
Then we got our results from the photo competition! Here’s the “Best landscape” and the happy winner.
Here’s “Best photo of people” and the proud winner.
And here’s “Best wildlife photo” and the lovely winner.
The second person I talked to was a bit more educated, and fluent in English. He claimed that the Chinese dictatorship made it a much better country than for example India, because it allows them to build highways across people’s houses. That’s funny, because I’ve never seen an image like this one:
from USA, Sweden or, for that matter, from Taiwan. I understand that building highways in India is a pain in the ass. But the overall messiness of India compared to China has more to do with education long time ago. Mao was an idiot in some ways, but he insisted on making every single Chinese read, no matter what class they came from. While in India, they put the money on university for the best. So now India has its IT centres, surrounded by human misery. While China has everything. Betting on the poor, is betting on all of society, because of all the stuff that happens when people who can read get together and develop things.
We talked about the concentration camps for Uighurs. First of all, he didn’t believe they existed. And if they did, then they existed because of the “other part of the story”, the one I didn’t know, which was about how Uighurs had attacked Han Chinese people with knives.
I’m sure there is a knife story, or thousands of them. But not millions. Here are some links in case you (very nice person!) reads my blog:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 If you’re to lazy to click, then they can be summarized in the Chinese government solving two issues at the same time in Xinjiang. First, they have too many men, since the one-child policy led people to abort girls. So by introducing them to Uighur women, they get rid of the men, while the Uighur men are wasting their time in prison.
And here’s the Chinese Wikipedia post. I can’t really read it, but it’s not simplified, which is a slight hint of the writer sitting in Taiwan or Hong Kong, and is not silenced by the Beijing guillotine.
If you believe any of these sites to publish fake news, please let me know in the comments below 🙂
Later in the evening I met a guy who worked on the ship, and was very worried about how dirty it was. He said that everyone in the crew had similar worries. But a man needs to make his own bread. He had even written a paper about how dirty it was. I’ve read half of it. Great read! I’ll get back to that.
Tomorrow we have karaoke 🙂