Tibet roundup: 16/3

Radio Free Asia reporting that Lhasa is now under effective lockdown, protests spread to Lanzhou and the Kham regions of Western Sichuan. Nomads!

“On March 15, there were two demonstrations in the Lithang area. During the morning, the nomads from Othok Nyakchuka [home of detained lama Tenzin Delek Rinpoche] rose up and demonstrated for quite awhile. One of the main leaders in the area was detained. Then on the same day the nomads from the same area as [jailed nomad] Ronggyal Adrak also demonstrated and shouted for quite some time and one monk was arrested. So the atmosphere in Lithang is very tense.

The Khampa fought a sporadic guerilla war against the Chinese back in the 1950s.

Onwards. YouTube now blocked in China. Extended blog post dated Friday from Han Chinese resident of Lhasa translated by Roland Soong here. Dave at Tenement Palm has been monitoring the conversation on the various Chinese equivalents of Twitter here and here and reprinting extracts:

While at university in Nanchang, local people said that a local high school has Tibetan students who regularly beat up Han students, parents complain, school administrators said not to cause a fuss, because from teachers to the school to the education bureau to local leadership, the watchword is "accomodation". It was a Han student who told me this story]

Ah, that’s it: the evils of multiculturalism. Elsewhere, Dave asks:

…for years now I've seen alot of Chinese netizens discussions be completely ignored or simply missed by English-speaking netizens, who too often think that Chinese netizens are all completely brainwashed. Well, guess what? Some of them think you are too. Instead of dismissing each other as fools, how about we try to talk? So I say, Tweet Back! Tweet in English, a lot of Chinese people know some. If you know Chinese... what are you waiting for? I've been translating a lot of Chinese tweets on Tibet this weekend, and a lot of them break the stereotype of the frothing nationalist Chinese blogger. These are Chinese people who adopt alot of Web 2.0 applications a lot of the time, they aren't just blowhards in chat rooms. Some are journalists, professionals and students.

Of course, this isn't going to be easy. First steps usually don't work so well. But its time to start trying some things instead of just throwing our hands in the air and dismissing the other side as brainwashed, indoctrinated or oppressed…

And offers a quick tutorial.

UPDATE: err...yeah:

China's goal is to take over the earth and eradicate all non-Chinese.

Comments

[godoggo]

So since I don't know jack about Tibet (or maybe I do, it's all so confusing), I thought I'd wikipedia it, and one of the 1st things I learned is that when Tibetans speak Chinese they call it "吐博 Tǔbó." And I couldn't help noticing that, you know, if you take away the mouth radical (the little square) from that 1st character, you get a perfectly good word that means "land," which is pronounced exactly the same as the one they use. Only that one means "spit," or (if you change to 4th tone) vomit. Which leads me to the perennial question, "What the hell's up with that?" I suppose I could jump into one of those threads and ask some brainwashed Chinese people...

[godoggo]

And yes yes I know the mouth thing often indicates nonsense sounds I'm not a complete idiot but it's still weird.