The last post on August 5 turned out to be the 1,100th on this site. One thousand one hundred.  That number is too large for me to "wrap my brain around" but I did wrap my brain around each of those 1,100 posts, or at least 75% of them. Probably 25% were written by others. At about post #950 I began thinking about writing about this at #1000 but I couldn't wrap my brain around that either.Public Occurrences has been a part of my life longer than one of my wives and all of my girlfriends. There's a sense of desolation in that.

I'm embarrassed.  I've thought about why I'm embarrassed and I think it has to do with the obsessive-compulsive part of my personality.  I used to watch college tackle football on TV for twelve straight hours on Saturdays.  Then I had a moment of clarity, and stopped watching TV entirely.  I haven't watched twelve hours of football or anything else on TV in eight years, much less twelve straight hours.

The idea of starting a blog came into my head when I read an article by Andrew Sullivan that I had seen previewed on Dennis Dutton's incomparable Arts & Letters Daily. "Blog?"  I had never heard of a blog. It sounded like a curse word.  Mr. Sullivan had just started a blog his own self and was rapturous about it. Thus 1,100 posts. I loved my blog too at first.  It was like a message in a bottle tossed into the cyber ocean, and Message in a Bottle was the alternative title I had chosen for the blog.


The Medium is the Message, Marshall McLuhan taught us, and the blog medium is often analogized to a diary, but with the critical distinction that a blog is public, which makes it not a diary, which is private, at all.  The public nature of the blog had an immediate impact on me. Just the one in a kazillion chance that someone else would read my message in a bottle made me more careful in writing. I read more, researched, and gave more thought--it may not seem that way!--to what I wrote than I would have in a diary, or in the semi-private, semi-public medium of email.

Somewhere on Public Occurrences is a quote from John Bunyan, something to the effect of, "I have written what I intended to write."  That was it.  I thought about a topic, decided to write about it, read and researched it, and then wrote what I intended to write. And was Done. I found out that that process was hard, writing was hard. I don't know and don't want to know how many hours those 1,100 posts represent. I remember thinking about that briefly, but then banishing the thought, when I finished the July 31 post on religion.  The time posted is listed as 9:41 a.m.  That's a false lie. That's the time I posted the first part of that post. I began work on it a little after 8 a.m.  By the time I finally got Done adding on and adding on, it was after 9 p.m., but the post time remained the same. So I have replaced twelve straight hours of watching college tackle football with twelve straight hours of writing on a blog. That does not constitute "personal growth."

I have made friends through this blog, and that has been rewarding. I am more knowledgeable, and that is its own reward, and a few people have made it part of their routine to pick my bottles out of the ocean and read the messages therein contained, and that touches me and flatters me.  "The name 'Benjamin Harris' is well-known in China," Professor Xu Weixin said in greeting in Beijing in November, 2008.  That was very touching and very flattering and among certain groups in China the name is known.  But not as well-known as the name Xu Weixin is in America, and around the world.

The impact that I have made has been non-existent, which makes John Bunyan's quote all the more important as justification for the effort. When Woody Allen turned 75 he said that there was no wisdom that came with age.  So I have learned. I am certainly more knowledgeable than I was eight years ago, but I'm no wiser.

It is a very Western way of thinking to want to justify one's efforts in some way. We crave "meaning."  I don't think there is meaning to our lives as that is...meant.  Let me not involve you in that thought: I do not think that there is meaning like that to my life. I do not believe in a God as I was taught to believe in my Presbyterian household.  I don't think I was put on earth for some purpose which He may or may not reveal to me and which I may or may not fulfill. I exist; at one point I didn't and at another point I won't.

The only meaning I find in my life is effort. I think I should try. For several years I have had this medallion by Josue Dupon on my desk at work:

                                                                  
It's called "L'Effort." A man struggles to move a boulder with a staff. Why the man is doing that is not contained in Dupon's artwork. Because it doesn't matter, the man's trying.

The only thing I have done over eight years and 1,100 posts is make l'effort.  Has it been worth it, which is a different take on the meaning of effort?  In other words, would I do it again?  No. At the moment I write this on this Friday afternoon, which, when I began, was Friday morning, it has not been worth it.  It has been too draining. The Seeking the Soul of China posts of the last two weeks have been too tiring physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Sometimes there's a turning point in one's life and one doesn't realize it at the time. So it was for me that happy, carefree, boozy evening in March, 2006 when my then girlfriend and I began discussing where we'd go on our first big trip together and, chemical reactions being unpredictable, I suggested and we decided: China. I remember we also discussed South Africa.  What if we'd gone to South Africa?

China interacted with my peculiar body chemistry to trigger a constellation of behaviors recognized as Obsessive-Compulsive Personality."  It is not that I want to know about "swap child, make food" as much as I need to know about "swap child, make food," as other obsessive-compulsives (like Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets) need to wash their hands fifty times a day. It is not healthy to do either; the hands get chapped in the one instance, the brain gets fried in the other. Such is the condition of my brain, and my soul, at this time, and for the past two weeks. And I haven't even gotten to the hard part yet: what are the things, deep in China's soul, of which behavior like "swap child, make food," are "merely" manifestations?  When I started seeking the soul of China last fall I thought, hoped, and wrote, that maybe this was about seeking my own soul too. If I find my own soul maybe the effort will have been worth it. Or maybe not. I'll try, but only because I have to.  I am Benjamin Harris.

Image: Kafka.

China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun.

Hey Song, take a look at this:

May 12, 2010:

Hello Mr. Harris,

It may sound strange but a trace back to the past may be a link to a harbinger of future sometimes. Without going through many articles on your blog I somehow have learned that you've got some association with a Beijing high school from which I happen to be a graduate, in a different timeframe though.

I have an interest in the tragic death of the deputy principal of the school and think I may be of some help in bringing justice to her family and to a world at large.

To avoid being too intrusive I'm going to stop short here. I hope we can communicate with each other and I hope I can learn from you the necessary evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, for a federal case.

Best regards,

[Song, you don't think I'm going to give you her name, do you?]

May 13:

Hello and thank you for contacting me. I would be glad to communicate with you via email, phone, however you wish.

-Ben

May 14:

Hi Ben,

Thank you for your encouraging message. As you would, either way would be fine with me too. My cell [Song, you don't think I'm going to give you her phone number, do you?].

Maybe I'd start with some background of why I'm contacting you. For quite a few months a high school friend and myself have been contemplating the feasibility of bringing those responsible for the killing to US court after learning one of them is a permanent resident or US citizen. We've contacted a few US attorneys' offices and FBI. We now know it's going to be a difficult case if there's a case at all. Nonetheless, we are determined to continue to pursue what we call project justice even if we don't have a case in the US, for we both firmly believe there will be a day that China is free and criminals against humanity are brought to justice.

Another friend in [I'm not even going to tell you the country, Song] mentioned you yesterday. I don't know how accurate his information is, but he said you were a former prosecutor and once traveled to Beijing to try to find eyewitnesses and/or evidence. But the victim's husband declined to identify the perpetrator(s). 

I was very delighted that there's a prosecutorial legal professional on our side and wrote you right away. Ben, if you'd still like to pursue it, we'd very much like to work with you.

Our resources may help us narrow down or pinpoint suspects and I hope one or more witnesses can emerge. Our puzzle remains to be how feasible it is and what are considered key evidence.

Thank you again, Ben.

China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun.

Song, why did you ever give that "interview" to Carma in Morning Sun?  In what parallel universe did you think that was a good idea?  I really thought you were smarter than that

China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun

YOU, LOOK!  What's your name today, Song Binbin, Song Yaowu, or Yan Song?
You don't get to look away as you have for forty years. Your words ensnare you like barbed wire just as Professor Xu has painted them.

There you are, Song.  You're proud of your role in history.  Drop that faux victim hood you used in Morning Sun, Song.

                                            
There you go!  Celebrate, "Be Militant!"


Song, I have an idea: I want you to speak--to me--and you want me to SHUT UP.  Why don't you sue me?  You know, like you sued everyone in Chinese Feminities, Chinese Masculinities?  With a lawsuit, you can try to shut me up permanently.  And I'll get you under oath, Song. And then you'll have to speak to me. Go ahead. You can run Song, but the faster you run the louder that tin can that's tied to your tail rattles and bangs.

China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun.

"The Death of Bian Zhongyun?"  Or, excuse me, "Bing" Zhongyun.  Death? What, did she die of a heart attack, Weili?  High blood pressure?  Heat stroke?  You play your fig leaf burlesque in a pseudo-scholarly journal:  "I think it's still possible to identify the initiators of that day's events."  I'm doing that from memory Weili, but that's pretty close, isn't it?  "Certain members" of a certain class, were responsible; What was it Weili, third year junior high or first year senior high or third year senior high?  You won't say. You're a phony.

China's Great Wall of Silence: Principals in the Murder of a Principal

In societies governed by the rule of law, and not by orders,

there is the principle that if one helps another commit a

crime the helper is as guilty as the actual perpetrator. Thus

if Song Binbin desired someone beaten and got someone

else to do it for her then Song would be as guilty as the

one who physically inflicted the blows. Here is the law,

word-for-word, that governs a situation such as the above:


If Song Binbin helped another person or persons commit or

attempt to commit a crime, Song Binbin is a principal and

must be treated as if she had done all the things the other

person or persons did if:


(A) Song Binbin had a conscious intent that the criminal act

be done and,


(B) Song Binbin did some act or said some word which was

intended to and which did incite, cause, encourage, assist or

advise the other person or persons to actually commit or

attempt to commit the crime.


To be a principal, Song Binbin does not have to be present

when the crime is committed or attempted.



This law is not familiar to Song Binbin's defenders. Dr. Weili

Ye, for example, has written that "the actual perpetrators may

never be known...And even if the actual perpetrators could

be identified who's to say who inflicted the fatal blow?"


I have written of Dr. Weili previously here. I do not believe

that she has any intent to see justice done in Bian's murder.

I believe that she knows the names of some or all of the girls

who actually, physically beat Bian. Be that as it may, who

struck the fatal blow is utterly irrelevant under the law.

Further, the inability to identify any of Bian's actual

attackers does not necessarily absolve anybody. Weili

writes that she believes that it is possible to identify "the

instigators of that days events." If that is true and if all of

the conditions of the above law are met those instigators

would be criminally liable for Bian's murder. Of course, Dr.

Weili does not name them either.



The case for the defense presented by Weili and others has

also alluded to alleged pre-existing health conditions that

allegedly contributed to Bian's death. In Morning Sun Weili

makes a statement about Bian having high blood pressure. I

don't know if Bian did or did not. She and others indirectly

and directly have argued that since Bian's husband forbade

an autopsy and because the official cause of death is listed

as having occurred from "undetermined causes," it cannot

be proved that the beating caused Bian's death. That is

simply not the law.



There is another applicable principle of law, easily

understood by the case of the so-called "egg shell skull

victim," that applies here. Let us say that I am at a bar

and I get into a verbal argument with another patron.

During the verbal argument I, liberated of my inhibitions

by alcohol, haul off and punch the other person in the face.

Happens all the time. However in this instance, and to my

horror, the victim dies because, unbeknownst to me, he

had a genetically thin and vulnerable skull and my punch

fractured it, causing his death. I honestly tell the police:


(1) I didn't mean to kill him, I just punched him, and only

once.

(2) I didn't know the man had an egg-shell skull.



Unfortunately for me, the law does not recognize either of

those defenses: you take your victim as he is. In the one-

punch scenario above I would be guilty of manslaughter.



In Bian Zhongyun's case, high blood pressure, or the like,

would not absolve anyone from criminal liability for her

death. As for the lack of an autopsy and the official cause

of death being labeled from "unknown causes" neither of

those would be an impediment to prosecuting the case as a

homicide. Sometimes homicide cases are prosecuted

where no body is ever found, much less where an

autopsy is not performed. The law requires that all of

the surrounding circumstances be considered. Among the

circumstances would be photographs of the body. I have

seen the post mortem photographs of Bian in Hu Jie's

film Though I am Gone. Assuming that those are all of

the extant photographs (from my memory, I do not have

the photographs in front of me), there is evidence of a

beating on Bian's legs. I do not remember evidence of a

beating on her face or upper torso. Her face is fuller, as I

remember, than her face in the in-life photographs that I

have seen. Because of the lack of bruising, on the photo-

graphs available to me and as I remember them, I believe

that Bian's face is bloated because of post mortem edema,

not because of swelling from a beating.



We then consider the eye-witness accounts. In Though I

am Gone, Mr. Wang Jinyao recounts his parting that day with

Bian. He watched her walk to school, watched her until she

disappeared from sight. There is no mention of any

evidence of an acute physical problem, e.g, Wang does not

say that Bian stopped on her walk several times clutching

her heart; he does not say that she fainted or appeared to

be fainting at any time. Thus there is no evidence from the

widower that Bian was about to die from natural causes when

Wang last saw her.



We then have the eyewitness accounts of the physical

abuse inflicted on Bian. Whether from Red Guard sympa-

thizers or not, these accounts are wholly consistent. The

abuse lasted for hours. It took many forms: punches and

slaps, blows with different objects, painful forced kneeling,

scalding with hot water, and the apparent coup de grace,

forced heavy labor. Bian then collapsed and died.




Taken as a whole this evidence overwhelmingly proves

beyond a reasonable doubt that Bian Zongyun was a

homicide victim, not a victim of death by natural or

"unknown" causes. There is not a prosecutor in any nation

of law who would see this evidence and have a doubt that a

homicide had occurred.


Thus, neither an alleged pre-existing health condition nor

the lack of an autopsy, not the inability--or unwillingness--

to identify those who actually struck Bian, none of the

defenses offered by Weili Ye and others, would absolve

those who, not even present, met the conditions of the

above law on "principals" for the beating death of this

principal.


I am Benjamin Harris.

China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun

Don’t look away Liu Tingting. There she is, in the second row, Bian, your vice-principal, who you beat on August 5. Let this picture burn itself into your conscience, if you have one. 


Song Binbin, aka Song Yaowu, aka Yan Song you can look because you are so deep in denial nothing about this affects you. You could frame this picture and put it on your mantle in Concord or Beijing and be perfectly at peace with yourself.


Look, Carma Hinton and then try to convince yourself that your film was a truth-seeking documentary, because it convinces no one else.


And look Weili Ye. Look at your “Aunt Bian.” I know more about you because of our correspondence. You still have some remnant of a soul, Weili. You are haunted by Bian’s murder. But Red Guard amorality is the bigger part of you. You will go to Cape Cod again this summer and for a few more after that but you will die a conflicted, tortured soul while Song, your ward, will die in blissful denial.
This is Public Occurrences.


Anyone with information on the identity of those involved in the actions that led to Bian Zhongyun’s murder, please email PUBLOCC@gmail.com

Seeking the Soul of China

I fell in love the first time I went to Beijing. My then girlfriend was not jealous for this was the girl I fell in love with. 

                                                                          

                                                       She wasn't interested in me though.  She was too intent on her drawing so I had to move on.  I got lucky:

                                                                                            

These two little boogers were part of the same art class that we stumbled upon that glorious Sunday morning.  I gave them my sure-fire mischievous/playful "Dad" look and (no communications gap) they instantly "got it."  They broke into wide, beaming smiles.  I bent over and clapped my hands twice, my universal sign language to children to "come here."  They got it again and (being girls) playfully squealed and ran off.  I took a couple of steps in mock pursuit (more squealing) and then broke into laughter.  They shyly approached (look at the one on the left with her hands demurely in front of her) and posed for the picture. 

I love children more than anything in the world so I fell in love a lot in Beijing in June, 2006:

                                                                   

                                                                          
                                                                        
"Time to go see granny in heaven."  Yi zi er shi, 易子而食, "swap child, make food."  Children were exchanged and eaten in China during the Mao-made famine of the Great Leap Forward. But cannibalism in China has not been restricted to the extreme situation of famine. There has long been "learned" cannibalism, cannibalism by choice.  

Last week, needing a break from China and cannibalism and especially the "swap child, make food," variety I googled "Man City fans,"  Manchester City being the soccer team I follow and Man City fans being particularly funny to me.  "Our" owner, Sheikh Mansour, is an Arab billionaire.  Along with many others, I was nervous as to how England's soccer fans, so notoriously xenophobic, and especially the blue side of Manchester variety of English soccer fan, would react to a takeover by an Arab.  No worries:

                                                                  

In my search for Man City fans I also found Amos below:

                                                                

That's a Man City shirt my BFF Amos is wearing there, as well as a Sky Blues ball he's resting his foot on.    Trying to get a larger image of Amos I clicked on the site.  It's an orphanage in Kenya. 

                                                                          

                                                                             

I have never seen more beautiful children. I could love them as I do my own son and daughter.  I would love them as my own. 

When you want to understand another people you have to, as best you can, put yourself in the shoes of that people. Then their practices and so forth become less strange and unimaginable. And I have done that. And I can say, having done that, that I could not give these children to a starving family knowing that they would be killed and eaten. I could not eat these children even if I was starving. I would starve to death myself or commit suicide if the pain of starvation became unbearable. And I can say that having never been hungry. And I will say that a people that engage in "swap child, make food" and in discretionary cannibalism is, to that extent, a bad people.

                                                                                

                                                                               

                                                                         

My, Western, American, culture doesn't engage in "swap child, make food."  It is, to that extent, better in my opinion, than the Chinese culture. Growing up, I was made to go to Sunday school and later church every week.  One of the church songs we sung went like this:

"Jesus loves the little children,

All the children of the world.

Red and yellow, black and white,

All are precious in His sight,

Jesus loves the little children 

Of the world." 

I know those words by heart and can sing the tune from memory.

                                  
Header: woodcut from "Diary of a Madman" by Lu Xun.                                           

Seeking the Soul of China

                                                                        Lu Xun

"I take a look at history:  it is not a record of time but on each page are confusedly written the characters 'benevolence, righteousness, and morals.'  Desperately unsleeping, I carefully look over it again and again for half the night, and at last find between the lines that it is full of the same words--'cannibalism!.' "

           -Lu Xun, Diary of a Madman, 1918.

                                                             Zheng Yi

Cannibalism for ideological purposes

There have been some reports of cannibalism for ideological reasons during the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward. The most well documented example is in the village of Wuxuan, Guangxi Autonomous Region where in the local officials began to practice cannibalism between May and July or 1968 during the Cultural Revolution, resulting the imprisonment of 15 local officials. Although the Party and the relatives of the victims know about it, it has yet to be made public in China. In 1986 and 1988, Zheng Yi (Cheng I), a former Red Guard and the author of Scarlet Memorial, went down to Guangxi where he obtained documents detailing the cannibalism. "For the first time in our long history Chinese ate people, not because there was a famine and they were starving to death, but for political reasons. I think thousands participated in the cannibalism and at least many hundreds were eaten. The Party knows all about it," said Zheng. According to Cheng, hundreds of children, women and men deemed enemies of the Revolution were killed and eaten by the perpetrators, with such comments as human meat apparently tastes better when broiled than boiled. In this province alone, 100,000 innocent people met this fate.
     -Wikipedia

^{......................}

A Tale of Red Guards and Cannibals

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, January 6, 1993 Newly disclosed confidential government documents suggest that the Cultural Revolution plumbed previously unreported depths of savagery. The documents, prepared by local government offices in the 1980's, two decades after the events they describe, seem to offer a meticulous record of how Red Guards and Communist officials in one province not only tortured their victims to death but also ate their flesh. Copies of the documents have been smuggled out of China by Zheng Yi, a prominent writer wanted by the Chinese authorities for his work for the democracy movement at Tiananmen Square in 1989. After three and a half years as a fugitive, Mr. Zheng is to arrive in New York on Wednesday.  Some Ugly Details At some high schools, students killed their principals in the school courtyard and then cooked and ate the bodies to celebrate a triumph over "counterrevolutionaries," the documents report. Government-run cafeterias are said to have displayed bodies dangling on meat hooks and to have served human flesh to employees. "There are many varieties of cannibalism," declares one report, "and among them are these: killing someone and making a late dinner of it, slicing off the meat and having a big party, dividing up the flesh so each person takes a large chunk home to boil, roasting the liver and eating it for its medicinal properties, and so on." The documents suggest that at least 137 people, and probably hundreds more, were eaten in Guangxi Province in southern China in the late 1960's. In most cases, many people ate the flesh of one corpse, so the number of cannibals may have numbered in the thousands.  Found Only in One Province The cannibalism described in the documents was apparently confined to parts of Guangxi Province, a relatively remote area, and was subsequently kept quiet. There is no evidence that anyone in the national Communist Party leadership endorsed it or even knew of it. The documents are stamped with official seals, and there is no indication of any tampering. A spokesman for the Guangxi Region Foreign Affairs Office said he could not comment on whether there had been cannibalism and could not allow a reporter to visit the area and investigate directly. The incidents reported from Guangxi were apparently the most extensive episodes of cannibalism in the world in the last century or more. They were also different from any others in that those who took part were not motivated by hunger or psychopathic illness. Instead, the actions appeared to be ideological: the cannibalism, which the documents say took place in public, was often organized by local Communist Party officials, and people apparently took part together to prove their revolutionary ardor.  A Proof of Loyalty In an interview after he left China and was waiting for his United States visa, Mr. Zheng cited one example from his own research in Guangxi: the first person to strip meat from the body of one school principal was the former girlfriend of the man's son; she wanted to show that she had no sympathy for him and was just as "red"  as anybody else. "These are the most gruesome and shocking revelations to date on the Cultural Revolution," said Robin Munro, an Asia Watch specialist on China and one of the few people who have examined the documents. "This evidence reveals horrors from the Cultural Revolution that rival in character if not in scope the worst excesses of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia." Mr. Zheng said he secretly photographed the documents on trips to Guangxi Province in 1986 and 1988, using a false letter of introduction to win cooperation from the authorities.  An Accent on Terror Even by the standards of the period, the reported horrors extend into previously unknown territory.  Mr. Zheng cites an example from the documents of a woman who was forced to identify and denounce the mutilated corpse of her husband, who had been killed, stripped of his flesh and mostly eaten. As punishment for having loved a "counterrevolutionary," she was forced to sleep with his head beside her. Some of those reportedly involved in the cannibalism received minor punishments when the Cultural Revolution ended after Mao's death in 1976. Wuxuan County expelled 91 people from the Communist Party for having eaten human flesh, and it demoted or cut the wages of 39 non-members of the party, but apparently no one faced criminal prosecution.