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08 May 2008
Reading between the lines of the Le Monde link and the rather oblique beat poem I posted the other week, you will probably have surmised that I witnessed, and indeed was caught up in, a demonstration a couple of weeks ago. I was somewhat loath to write about it in more explicit terms due to the vague but all-pervading sense of paranoia I've tended to feel about my use of the internet, or indeed any source of information, it all being so controlled and closely monitored. However, upon checking, I see that my blog is once again blocked by the Great Firewall (it seems to go in and out of acceptibility) and quite frankly, my dear reader, I've stopped giving a damn.So, what happened? Essentially, a large-scale Anti-European demonstration, with Carrefour as its focus. I had taken the bus over to the irritatingly-named Central Business District to shop/amble/use the free wireless in Starbucks, as I often do. Upon arriving, it was immediately evident that something extraordinary was going on: the first thing I could see from the bus was an absolute army of police. I have never seen so many police officers in one place before: they stood in their hundreds, more or less at ease, but evidently ready to take action should the need arise. Some were amassed around the entrances and exits of Carrefour, which stands alone as a large department-style building on the main road. Others stood across the ten-lane artery, where I could see the beginnings of what would become an enormous crowd of people. I got off the bus, naturally curious (like many others around me) about what was happening, and walked along the road, intending to retreat to Starbucks to watch from a safe distance. However, as I reached the Sunshine Department Store, where Starbucks is located, the crowd began to surge in my direction of travel, along the road towards the corner of a junction. As they came closer, pedestrians halted to watch, and I found myself surrounded by people standing in little clusters, holding up mobile phones to take video and photos of the proceedings. Unable to understand the shouted slogans and upheld banners of the protesters, I sought out an American woman and asked her in my best polite talking-to-fellow-expat-strangers way if she knew what was going on. Having enquired as to which ‘Shire’ I was from (no comment) she informed me that this was an action again Carrefour, and more generally France as a representative of the West, in the light of the furore over the Olympic Torch Relay. I later read on the websites of Le Monde and The Guardian that these protests were taking place in a number of cities across China. Having thanked the woman for her help, I felt rather at a loss as to what to do. Starbucks was ridiculously crowded, and at that moment the protest seemed to be moving in its direction, so that seemed like a poor idea. I suppose in hindsight it was not the best idea, but I had in fact intended to do some shopping in Carrefour later on. I could see that there were some customers continuing to enter the store, and the protesters seemed to have moved away from it. Furthermore, I was feeling rather targeted, and a little indignant, about all of this. I decided to quietly use my yuan to show a little European solidarity. To cut a long and slightly confusing story short, it seems as soon as I entered the store the protest surged back up the road to its doors once more, and proceeded to grow at an alarming rate. Looking out from Carrefour over the road (the store is glass-fronted) I could see that an enormous mass of people had appeared, many of them waving Chinese flags. The traffic had been stopped, and as I watched, the entire thing came to a head. As I sat inside the store (having retreated to the Japanese restaurant on the basis that it might be less likely to be stormed if the worst came to the worst… and because I was hungry), a tension crept into the scene outside. The chanting ceased, the police drew together, and a hush fell over the crowd as everyone waited for something to happen. I was most alarmed to find, meanwhile, that we had been locked into the restaurant with a heavy chain and padlock. One man broke rank outside, shouting and tussling with the police as they pulled him away from the scene. And then, somehow, things began to move. The crowd started to disperse, and the traffic gradually began to flow again. Having been allowed out of the restaurant, I hastily made my way towards the exit, only to discover what must have been the reason for the end of the standoff: the store was giving in and closing for the day. I made my way out, past the police and out surreptitiously to the side of the store, trying to hide my shopping bag for fear of attracting attention from the protesters. I did not encounter any overt aggression or comment from the demonstrators, although this was perhaps a) because of the massive police presence b) because of the language barrier or c) because despite their anger over Western attitudes the Chinese are still very eager to please us as tourists. I couldn’t really make a judgement as to which was the case. I did, however, feel extremely uncomfortable, having just encountered the other side of the coin to the protests in the West: the anger of the Chinese about it all. Of course, I don’t doubt that this protest was really only tolerated because it was pro-Government. Nationalism being strongly encouraged, it did not present a threat, instead supporting the policies and actions of Beijing. It is an interesting thing to have witnessed, and I suppose my presence there was not more of a concern to the police et cetera due to its message. I would not like to think about the potential for getting into trouble and/or being detained had I been unfortunate enough to stumble across an anti-government protest. Although, of course, one gets the feeling that such things are unlikely to be allowed to develop… You can see a couple of photos of the protest on my flickr (linked at the bottom of the page), including one taken from inside Carrefour of the enormous crowd that gathered in the road. For obvious reasons, I did not attempt too much documentation of what was happening. utterly utter [
10:52 ]
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