Around the Andy Warhol exhibition CHINA Around the exhibition China
How can you write in China now without looking constantly present roots and routes in this country?
I made my first trip to China in 1981 with the Italy-China Association, one of the few organizations that had access. I remember when I decided I wondered whether it was prudent to deal with that adventure. I arrived with a head full of propaganda that was made in our newspapers: dim lights, the thoughts of Mao that were read during the hours of work, food rationing. I was expecting a dark country, sad and instead found in the cities I visited Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and some interior villages, people did not seem to be traumatized.
In museums saw Chinese small families, people smiling and surprised to see Western faces. Nothing seemed to me as I had imagined, even if the Chinese were still all in gray uniform, the hotels were dirty (very), the city streets crowded with bicycles, there was only one shop for tourists and there was talk of the Cultural Revolution as the greatest scourge who had suffered the country.
Many topics were taboo for the guides who accompanied us. I also saw one of the few women with bound feet. Feet that were not wrapped to make the most beautiful women but only because they could not escape. I did the first group allowed to enter the birthplace of Confucius, when rehabilitated, along with the craft stalls and the main road was not paved, I found an immense library.
from that trip I reported the impression of a peaceful population, despite the evident poverty.
In return I went to study and China for a year and a half. I read everything I could find around: from the Snow Collotti Pichen, the Macciocchi, the sixteenth-century novel Chin P'ing Mei, which alone is a great lesson on China at that time and all times up to Mao.
I was struck by what Mao had realized how the Long March was a miracle. Snow's explanation of why I was adopted communism: the West was the representation of the occupants of nearby Japan and the usurper. The Russia had helped Mao to establish a policy in the country, had sent technicians: then the inevitable choice.
And over time, returned to China in the wake of my son who has spent 10 years creating great works for a major Italian company, I confirmed my views, watching, amazed at the speed of change .
I was in a yard in Yanan when it took three days of travel to get there. Only the train from Kumming Panzihua employed in nine hours and was occupied by mice over the inability to use the toilet. I remember trying to lean traveled as little as possible to the seat and everything around me.
in Shanghai when I was still that wonderful museum (built in 1995 by a Japanese architect), was not realized, when Pudong, with new quarters and the new airport, there was still when the magnificent opera house built in 1998 by architect French Charpentier, was not expected. I had the privilege of living area China not as a tourist but as a resident, in contact with people everyday.
Now, I want to support what is, without Mao, today, that China would not exist. What I regret that proliferate in many articles in our newspapers, is the emphasis of "totalitarianism" and adverse impacts on the country. Even for the abolition of the Pokemon you have not avoided the ridiculous attributing it to an authoritarian attitude. But who knows these cartoons monster knows that it is only good for a child does not See. And I do not think that Chinese children feel discriminated against for it.
But when the newspapers will learn to be serious?
In the July 16, Federico Rampini, La Repubblica correspondent in China, after taking steps to Snow, have said the heroism and the enormous difficulties experienced during the Long March , ends by saying that Snow could have been manipulated and that even then, the liberation of China from the Japanese, were the seeds of dictatorship.
But there realizes, while the bias and bad faith, but also what it means to a revolution in a country where the Forbidden City, has for centuries been the symbol of the relationship between those who wield power and the population? Inside the walls the life and privileges beyond the walls had no right to exist. Was not the totalitarianism of emperors who "ignored" millions of lives?
E 'against this background that China would put the wonderful exhibition was held in Rome at the Quirinal Stables. The famous, amazing terracotta warriors, bronze, porcelain, the warrior jade, all relics from the tombs of the emperors, what are they but a demonstration of power and wealth of the empires that have followed? How many, how many Chinese died in the construction of the tombs that were to ensure welfare and happiness to those in power even after death?
Mao's intentions were to abolish the distance, giving each individual a life of dignity through work and culture.
Of course, he failed even to him, nor can anyone, just anyone in the world. I can not deny that Mao's regime has not brought death, executions, factional struggles, suppression of enemy.
But who knows that a revolution has not had to pay these prices? What's more, a revolution that was for a billion people.
never forget, in '81, a group of Chinese, in their own department store, look amazed and amused because there contending for the fabrics to four pounds.
told me then that the bodies had floated on the Yangtze River and the Gang of Four who had destroyed historical monuments (Of which I saw some ruins).
But that small group of Chinese people enjoy, in the poor department store, had not reached the dignity of life through work, their daily food, the consciousness of being considered? I saw them: did not look distressed.
There is a price to be paid to exit from the inhumane conditions as poor Chinese who lived before the revolution?
We Europeans we have had tragic experiences, in much smaller size and condition. While Mao built in '34, we were on the brink of the abyss with the arrogance of our civilization.
It seems strange that China today is the country that is worrying the major Western powers and we find it hard to put Europe together?
Besides, if there was democracy in China, as we understand it, there would be no economic development that is taking place. Unable to hold together a half billion people without rules, even authoritarian.
We denounce human rights violations, poverty in the countryside, not the freedom of worship. Surely, it will all be true, there is still much to conquer. But it will come to these goals, I'm sure.
How can we Europeans are incapable of eradicating poverty in our countries as large as a province of China, pontificating on a reality which, as a famous phrase, we think we know after a month, you think of need to deepen after a year, and after ten years you are sure you do not understand a lot?
love China for this potential force and vigor, I admire what he is building, and I hope she can bring to life all its people with the dignity it deserves.
