Forums > Travel Yunnan > Cool designs/tribal painting on houses The term is often imprecisely used, generally for any group which has been technologically rather simple in recent history. Tends to be applied, inaccurately and condescendingly, to 'minorities' within a nation-state dominated by somebody else.
In fact, if there is any precision to the word 'tribe', it would be applied to a group of people whose political leadership is in the hands of those selected by age and genealogy - i.e., something like a family writ large.
Forums > Living in Kunming > Why is China so materialistic? Class society produces 2 things: opposition to upper classes and imitation of upper classes. Both become significant internationally as well as nationally, especially with increased globalization and with global media. Happens with intensity with rapid economic rise. Local variations derived from local cultural-historical backgrounds.
Forums > Living in Kunming > Chinese minister's outburst Yes, the western press distorts too, but the question seems like a good one to me. People who can't stand the heat should get out of the kitchen.
Forums > Living in Kunming > The Last Hurrah "Tell us a story about the humans, Grampa. Please, please, prettyplease?"
"Well, my children, once upon a time, way back in the 21st Century, the horrible social machine that they had created for themselves began to produce a competitive individuality so narrow and insecure that, when modern electronic communication was first introduced, they could only turn inside themselves, and it turned out that their narcissism and paranoia had become so intense that everything anyone said was really spoken about himself – and, in a way, to himself. The whole universe awaited, but they ignored it, and even forgot it was there. But then small warm fuzzy creatures like ourselves, whose only function, for over a century, had been to be run over by their cars, rose up..."
Forums > Living in Kunming > Returning to my home country in two months Dudeson, you continue to insist that China is not completely safe. I doubt if anyone here thinks it is - you are beating straw dogs. The only difference between you and the rest of us is that you seem continually excited about the fact.
China, US discuss human rights in Kunming
发布者I think what these governments are most interested in is not human rights, but how not to be accused of violating them.
Inside Kunming's 'dwarf empire'
发布者Tell it to Steven Hawking. A person's physical stature does not limit his/her potential for work that does not rely on his/her physical stature (e.g., English teaching, as well as physics). The cultural attitude that those who are discriminated against because they do not fit the culturally desired norm should be outcast or should be provided for by special environments that can be sold as entertainment venues to those who will not deal with their own prejudices is a cultural attitude that perpetuates discrimination against all who are 'different'. The problem here, as elsewhere, is a matter of dehumanizing those who are 'different' - prejudicial culture that regiments anything that deviates from its standards, rather than dealing with the prejudice itself. Why not have a theme park within which 'foreigners', with all their funny habits, can be kept, so that they do not disturb the 'normality' of cultural prejudices? Actually, there could be many: one for 'black people', one for Tibetans, one for Japanese, one for gay people, one for Han Chinese people who have given up their 'traditional' clothing for 'western-style' clothing (e.g., the great majority of Chinese, over the past century or so) - in fact we could subdivide and subdivide until nothing was left but mutual nonrecognition. All these would help to maintain the narrow identities of 'normality' that can be relied upon to advance support the cultural attitudes that promote the continuing inability of people to recognize each other as human, and to celebrate and accept their differences - not as entertainment items, no matter how 'cute', but as full human beings. How different is all this from apartheid?
This effort to maintain prejudice can, of course, be profitable to those who invest in it, and convenient for social engineers and political elites who want to maintain an elite power status by reliance on it.
The place is an insult to our common humanity and a spotlight on cultural attitudes of exclusion. Those who find that they enjoy such displays should take a good look at the nature of the culture that has formed them so narrowly. Cultures change; cultures have always changed; cultures are presently changing and will continue to do so; there is nothing sacred about cultural attitudes. Our common humanity is an ongoing project, and those who imagine they are not part of such a project are simply contributing their own blindness to it, and limiting themselves in the process. It's not the 'dwarves' who are the problem, its the people who will not accept them as within the boundaries of 'us'.
Around Town: Southwestern Associated University Museum
发布者See John Israel's EXCELLENT book on the history of the university:
Israel, John. Lianda: A Chinese University in War and Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998
Books about universities do not normally strike me as exciting, but this one is.
John has lived in Kunming for several months per year over the past 10 years or more.
Chinese climbers among those murdered in Pakistan
发布者Modern nationalism is a manipulative ideology to manage global capital, and nationalist blindness to actual human beings leads to the punishment of innocents. China is not a communist country. People who murder in Pakistan cannot be extradited to China to be judged for murders of people in Pakistan, even if they're Chinese.
Chinese climbers among those murdered in Pakistan
发布者Which regions are 'these regions'?