发信人: luciashen (lus), 信区: Seattle
标 题: 4/14 UW演讲稿现场版
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Wed Apr 16 00:24:01 2008)

接到组织者的电话，希望把这个稿子贴出来。在这里要谢谢这篇稿件的原作者yuanyuan
，没有他（她）的初笔，就不会有现在的这个稿件，也不会有我的演讲。然后要抱歉修
改完全是建立在自己的观点上，修改包括一些语言，政治观点和篇幅，演讲前因为时间
的关系也来不及给原作者审阅。所以如果可以的话，请在转载的时候也一并著上他（她
）的名字，谢谢。

The revision of the speech

March 14, 2008, the date that we, the Han Chinese and the Tibetan Chinese
will remember for the rest of our life.

Lasha, the ancient land of compassion and holiness became a bloody crime
scene of violent killings. Groups of extremists disrupted the peaceful
demonstrations and broke out the riots. We saw shops, cars and buildings
burned down; we saw innocent people killed, injured and crying for help.
Among them were five young women in their early 20th's, who were locked in a
shop and burned alive to death.

March 14, 2008, the date that the world saw the pain of Lasha through the
media. But this is also the pain of China, the pain of us Chinese people,
for what we saw was the killing between brothers and sisters, not between
the conqueror and the conquered.

China is not a mono-ethnic country; instead, we are a diverse country of 56
different ethnic groups! Han, the major one, Zang the Tibetans, Manchurians,
Tu Zu, Dai Zu, Bai Zu, Weiwuer Zu, you name it. We are just like 56
different brothers and sisters who, despite the different dialects, shared
the same history and the same name: CHINESE.

To our great sorrow and anger, this simple fact was misunderstood and
ultimately triggered this tragedy. When we read any newspaper, we saw
headlines like "CHINA, STOP OPPRESSING TIBET'S FREEDOM" "BOYCOTT CHINA" "
FREE TIBET". But the questions are: is it true that Tibet is a land that
invaded by the Chinese? Is it true that the people in Tibet are suffering
from the reign of the modern government? Is it true, as his holiness Dalai
Lama claimed that we, the Han Chinese people are committing cultural
genocides on this ancient land?

Today, April 14, 2008, one month from the riots, we are gathering here to
answer these questions, to air our voices, and to tell the other side of the
story. It's not from the media, not from the government, but the truth from
the HISTORY.

The history of Tibet begins with the rule of Namri Songzen, who first
attempted to unify this land. His son Songtsan Gampo united parts of the
Yarlung river valley, and in 640 Common Era, he married Princess Wencheng,
the niece of the Han Chinese emperor Taizong. Ever since, marriage and
brother- and sisterhood, have bounded the Hans and the Tibetans. In 1290,
Tibet appeared on the Chinese map when Kublai Khan established the Yuan
Dynasty of a united China. As time goes on, no matter how the country has
changed its rulers, how dynasties have altered their names, Tibet has always
been on this Map of China. (Show map)

The question came that whether the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1951; the answer
is, NO. For the Chinese mainland and Tibet have been unified ever since
1290, which is earlier even than the discovery of the New World in 1498.

Tibet had never been a free land before 1959.Its traditionally hierarchical
social structure consists of the aristocrats, the monks, and the slaves who
were 95% of the population. In that society, peasants were traded as goods;
kids were beheaded for worshiping purposes; women were gang raped as a treat
to the guests. When in 1949, the Chinese communist Party claimed the
victory of the civil war and lunched the policy of "free Tibet, eliminating
the serfdom", monks and aristocrats were infuriated since they not only lost
their land and wealth, but also the social privileges that they had enjoyed
for thousands of years. This partially contributes to the breaking of the
riots.

The second question: is the Tibetan people really suffering under the
existing government's rule? The answer is No. According to Tibet
Environmental Watch, an organization related to His Holiness the Dalai Lama,
the average Tibetans' life expectancy has almost doubled from 35.5 to 67
years old over the past half century. I personally have been to Tibet in
2003. When I was there talking with one local Tibetan, she told me that in
spite of the existence of some censorship, the government has improved their
infrastructures and the Medicare system dramatically. According to the data
, over 200 million US dollars has been invested to build schools, sewage
system and public transportation; more than 1.8 billion RMB has been spent
on setting up clinics and training medical workers. Apart from medical care,
a social security system is also being built up in the region to take
better care of the aged and retirees. Were it not this improvement, but
suppression and suffering, how could the life expectancy DOUBLED in only 50
years? Far from being exploited, the Tibetans actually enjoy some degree of
privileges that the Han Chinese don't, including zero income tax for the
Tibetan peasants, no birth control in the Zang region and a lower college
admission requirements. Along with the support of Tibetan modernization, the
Han Chinese also made a huge effort to preserve the religion. The
government has invested substantial amount of capital to rebuild temples and
monasteries. To respect the tradition of monk's high social rank, the
government also subsides them with Han Chinese's tax.

The third question is: are the Han Chinese people committing cultural
genocides? The answer is also NO. If the presence of Han Chinese in Tibet
was a cultural genocide, then should the presence of African-American,
Hispanic, and Caucasian culture be the genocide of the Native American
Culture? If the presence of Han Chinese in Tibet was genocide of the Tibetan
culture, should the western corporations including McDonald's, KFC and
Addidas that are currently opened on the street of Lasha also be called a
Tibitan culture invasion? Indeed, this is a trend of culture co-existence
under the frame of globalization and information explosion, not a so-called
cultural genocide.

Now here are our questions for His Holiness, Dalai Lama. We are wondering,
why you, the 14th reincarnation of Buddha of compassion, the highest and
most respected spiritual leader of Tibetan people, did not free your people
from the suffering of serfdom 50 years ago when they were traded as animals?
Why you, as the 1989 Nobel peace price winner, refused to condemn the Iraq
wars and advocated the protest against the Olympic torch as a tool of
gaining political rights??

Extremist! Extremist! We cry to you. Please Don't hate us because our skin
color, and different dialects. Please don't hate us because we abolished
serfdom system. Please stop the riots and the killing because we are indeed
brothers and sisters ever since 1290. Please stop snatching the Olympic
torch because sports have nothing to do with politics.

America! America! the country that we study and live in and love so much, we
also cry to you. Please stop this misunderstanding and bias toward China.
Our government is not perfect, but it is the best that we could come up with
. While we understand that some degree of censorship is good for such a big
country's stability, we are still trying to open the dialogue to be more
democratic. Please understand that China has opened its doors only for 28
years, which is merely nothing compared to US's 200-years' struggling for
democracy. Chinese government is not perfect, but it's not what the media
has portrayed. We would like to invite you to the Olympics, to our land and
see with your own eyes, how a modern China really is. To see that we are
not living under suppression; we are not living under fear. We are free
people on our land, in Tibet, and in Mainland China.

We invite you to cheer for the world's greatest athletes with us.
April 14, 2008, a date that we aired our voices.
Peace Olympic 2008. Peace world 2008.



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