Cofty: Thank you for sharing some great images.
AlwaysBusy: Wow... I love the photos...thank you!
Thanks for your appreciation, I thought the images were interesting also, which is why I posted them.
Yes, I post a lot of stuff about China, but surely of all events in the world of today the rise of China is the most interesting.
I was only 16 when I got interested in it. This is how:
I was not a JW, (yet) but interested in the problem of poverty and wondering why humans had to fight wars all the time? Socialism was a party on the bohemian fringe of Sydney at the time. This event happened about 1950/51. Somehow, I got a leaflet advertising a talk and slides on the newly established People's Republic of China and decided to go. I was (maybe not surprisingly) the only westerner in the room. All the others there were elderly Chinese (maybe 20 of them). The information was presented in Chinese (Cantonese), but I could see the piks, and it all looked positive. But the defining moment was at the end when apparently donations were requested. And, I was amazed!! At the time, I was getting about 6 quid (pounds) a week. I think my Dad earned about 12 quid a week. And here I saw these elderly Chinese, who did not look as it they had two bob (shillings) to their name, putting 20 quid notes into the hat that was passed around. The money was counted in front of everyone and the total announced and the audience made their satisfaction clear.
So that was my initiation. I started wondering that day, what was going on in China to make these old men so generous.
Not much later, I was working as a laboratory assistant at a local universityn and became friend with some Chinese guys - if I recall clearly some were from Malaysia and some from China, and they started talking to me about what was happening in China, and were quite excited to find an Aussie who thought something good may have been happening in China.
They decided to introduce me to another Chinese (from China) who they said was in charge (I remember his name was Shang) but he was not pleased to be introduced to me. These days I think I appreciate why. The Australian PM of the time, one Bob Menzies was elected in 1949 and was always threatening trouble for Australia from "reds under the beds."
His government legislated to ban the Australian Communist Party, but the legislation was struck down in the High Court in a five to one judgement. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Communist_Party_v_Commonwealth ). An Australian Communist Party still exists, but can garner only a handful of votes these days.
I'm pretty sure that Shang was a cell leader and fearful of being exposed and unsure of what to do. But in spite of the efforts of some in OZ, we never experienced the shameful purge of left wingers that the USA did.
Not long after all that I got caught up in Yahweh's chariot and could mentally zoom around the world imagining Jesus ruling and turning the earth into a real worker's paradise.
Upon my escape from the Jesus Gulag I resumed some of my old interests, including China. So that's why I post some of the things I learn.