"China's history is for the foreigner to write, I very much agree with this statement."
"There is a foreigner, a lawyer named Benjamin Harris (Benjamin Harris), now in the United States as far away as across the Atlantic and the disclosure of the Cultural Revolution began to study historical facts, it seems incredible."*
有一个洋人，一个律师叫本杰明·哈里斯（Benjamin Harris）的，现在于远在大洋彼岸的美国开始研究和披露一些文革史实，这似乎不可思议。但是他在他的Blog里是确确实实这么做了。
The quotes above are by a Chinese man unknown to me. They appear on a blog at http://24hour.blogbus.com/logs/5334238.html in an article written in May 2007. The article referred to in Part I** is by a Chinese man who I have corresponded with. In a cyber sense we are friends. Both men used the word "foreigner" unabashed and neither used it as a pejorative. In fact, the author of the article referred to in Part I sent me a translated proof, complete with title, before publication. For both men, referring to a non-Chinese as a "foreigner" was a natural term of speech.
At the very middle of the nature of the people of the Middle Kingdom is the concept of "The Foreigner."
China is a civilization of walls. The walls are to keep out all things foreign. Most spectacular is the Great Wall, so emblamatic of the fear and hostility--of the paranoia toward the outside world. Constructed to protect, it was built at such cost to life that every stone is said to represent one Chinese who died in its construction.
Beijing was a city of walls. There were concentric rings of walls around the city, walls within already walled-off sections of the city, walls within neighborhoods of those walled sections. The Imperial City was walled off from all the rest and within its walls was The Forbidden City. The first thing the Communists did in 1949 was tear down the outer rings of walls around Beijing. Atop one of the outer walls of The Forbidden City Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic. He and his top cadres then retreated behind those walls and Mao died there in 1976.
From the time that the first westerners made contact, China has spasmed from openness to contraction--seldom anything in between--the latter phases being marked by rebellion and violence.
* sic: Google translation.
** August 31, 2009.
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