Band of Brothers, an American monologue

I have had little interest in watching this piece of work from the famed American directors and actors. They worked hard on this, perhaps in consideration of some anniversaries of Normandy landing or the end of war in Europe. Lest we forget, the Americans fighting in France and Germany deserve our remembrance and respect, as long as these not exceeding the limits of the sky. Through movies and television series, the Americans have indoctrinated the popular, and simple, rules of seeing the war of their way. Hence the depictions of American soldiers in Band of Brothers. That is fine, but just don’t get so cocky and selective that people receive information but not true information.
(Colonel von Heydte, 6th Parachute Regiment, Carentan)
I only tentatively watched two episodes of “Carentan” and “Replacements”. For other episodes I had a glimpse of the beginning of each episode and pressed fast forward. The main point I would like to make is that it is not real. People tend to say it is very real, better than many war movies. That impression is only partly true. As a renowned tradition of Hollywood and movie making in the US, many scenes are very real, in detail, down to buttons and handkerchiefs, to make people believe the actors are telling a real life story and you are the witness. With great help from FX, special effects, and computer simulations, war movies have become livelier, a gun shot sounds like a shot, you can hear the clicking of trigger and dropping of shells, and soldiers’ legs were cut off by shrapnel. The movie industry there has done a fantastic job to make these all up and make people believe the truthfulness of the scenes, and of the stories. Unfortunately, these efforts to make it real cover mostly details, some pieces, or realistic acting by people in the play. Some of the troubles are that what was on show is not real, say in the wrong age, wrong place. That can be pointed out and corrected easily and does little harm. The bigger trouble is that people believe it as a true and correct story, but in reality many come out not reflecting the true situation or story. This is the hard part, as people come to be influenced by the true state of all details and of the parts with truth. No one would tell them that behind the assumed real story are many faults and false information, which the directors and writers did not want to mention and clarify. The whole process is to produce certain impressions on the audience; if that is done, the movie makers feel no obligation to caution you that maybe they used partially correct interpretations, not the whole truth.

Band of Brothers follows Saving Private Ryan in many ways, and we now know the movie is typical of half truth, half fiction. The landing is real enough, as one element causing endless praises. What happens next falls back into the conventional ways of portraying WWII since the 1950s. And it is likely the whole story never occurred in real life. A detachment sent by General Patton, much larger than Captain Miller’s squad, to snatch his relative behind enemy line got what it did not want to face, losses of more men and equipment, coming back with nothing. The movie depicts a mission more like a patrol, storming through many areas controlled by the Germans and lost little. Even if Typhoons destroyed “Tigers” with their bombs, the surviving soldiers of this tiny squad still would not be able to suddenly rush back to their safety, unless the entire area was taken by the Allies in a major operation. Script writers tend to put separate scenes together to make a straight line story, but that does not often happen in real life, you have to get in and out in some ways feasible and can’t just disappear.
Back to Band, in the two episodes I watched, rather fleetingly, there are many places where you are given wrong impressions. In the real Carentan battle, the 101st was a much larger force than the Germans who counterattacked, and they were adequately supported by powerful artillery batteries. In fact, artillery barrages hammered German defence well before the troopers moved forward, including in the famous charge along the causeway. The German counterattack came from about two battalions of panzer grenadiers, hurriedly rushed in, and the surviving elements of the 6th Paratroop Regiment. The Americans had two regiments out of Carentan in defensive positions, again with their excellent fire support from artillery batteries and big naval guns in the bay. The Germans had no tanks, only a few tank destroyers, and mortars. In the end, they kept advancing and almost reached the town. In fire fights, two sides were equal, but the 2nd Armoured rushed in with 60 tanks, as a result of a rumour that the Germans sent in 120 tanks to take back Carentan. The 101st fought the battle with a force big enough in size, rather than an image of underdog projected in the series.
The episode does not want to tell you this, as it also does not want to tell you that through all battles in Normandy, the Allies had their numerical superiority in hand, often to an unbelievable margin. In the scenes, it looks funny that German soldiers did not advance behind or by the “tanks”, but stood in the open in a loose line to fire at the troopers, like having target practice. With such a tardy pace, how could they advance to the railway junction and the town, and some troopers even fled? It is also not real a scene when Shermans appeared, as the Germans had tank destroyers, specifically made for destroying tanks, especially vulnerable tanks like Shermans; they could pound through the armour of Shermans easily at that close distance. It was for the sheer number of tanks there that the Germans retreated. In this episode, only three or four Shermans came out the woods, actually from a wrong direction, and those American soldiers stood on tanks to fire, in the open, with no protection, are more like truckies than tankers. This is just for showing how brave they are, nothing else; in a real battle, they would be dead very soon.
The encounter in a Dutch town in the episode of “Replacements” is even more unreal. First, that is not a Tiger in the scene, at the most a Panther, from its sloped shape, or even an IV. There is no way that a direct hit on the front of a Sherman, at that close distance, would only produce some fire, rather than a big hole or a blown away turret. Tiger 88mm guns could knock out a Sherman at a distance up to 1800 metres. Also about these guns, when the Americans fled in their trucks, not far from the exit of the town, they had not got out of the range of effective Tiger shots yet. If a Tiger chased to the edge of the town and fired into the column, the whole column would be destroyed. German Tiger crews often lined up and fired into Russian T-34s one by one from a distance over 1000 metres. It is ridiculous to think once these troopers got into a truck they are safe. This is more like a battle scene set up by the director, to enter, fight, and retreat safely, not real at all.

The usual features of WWII movies remain, such as the Germans always missed their shots, no matter how intense their machine guns fired into a crowd of soldiers. On the other hand, an American machine gunner fired into German soldiers crossing a creek at a far distance and got them all. A trooper shot casually to the head of a German sniper upstairs, behind balcony bars, and killed him with that single shot. In a close wrestling fight, an American trooper won. Large numbers of German soldiers ran into open fields for no particular reason or purpose until they were all gunned down. It is always a sudden shot to some troopers and the whole team reacted to fire back and silenced the German soldier or soldiers. In fact, this routine repeats itself many times in these two episodes, and there are no real battle scenes except these skirmishes. Throughout the entire series, there are no decent fighting at defensive positions or taking positions, merely sneaky snatch missions or encounters. This looks more like special forces in action, in so many Hollywood movies of anti terrorism, than real battles of WWII.
The most disappointing part is what the director tried to tell you something and what not to tell. The scene that an officer suddenly announced canceling trip back to England and going to France is very untrue. After the battle of Carentan, the 101st had been a reserve and saw little combat, relieving this or that formation and then moving to the next. They did move back to England by the end of June and stayed there resting and rebuilding for nearly three months. The disappointment of those soldiers when hearing not going back to England looks real, but the following return trip is not mentioned, until the scenes of some new guys appeared to come to duty. The director is obviously trying hard to give an impression of hard fighting all the way, no break, and of being called up so close to Operation Market Garden. This makes audience miss that fact of the Germans in Normandy continuing their fighting while these Americans got their lengthy break. If the director made that point clear, then the impression would be a more persistent and tougher German force than this American formation. That simply cannot be implied in this series, despite it is a truth.

Like many war movies, this series has tried to show the human side of war, of soldiers, with a lot of talks, confusions, emotions, desperation, and fear. It is just that these take too long to end, leaving less room for real battles. Perhaps the writers are more familiar with peace time life or love, that they could hardly resist inserting some humane conversations about feelings, traumatised to the degree to need a shrink.

Some improvements in this series are worth mentioning. It acknowledges that American soldiers did kill surrendered German soldiers on the spot, and some units did run away from their positions being scared. These had not been possible in previous American movies or series, since that would infuriate their home audience and break those taboos. But old habits die hard, especially in this series specifically made for portraying and saluting those war time soldiers.

Red Guards and old Chinese treasures

To a small boy, the grounds of this institute in Beijing was a paradise, especially the centre strips of large gardens, fountains, endless rows of plants, and tall pine trees providing plenty of places to stroll around and hide, without being seen. The centre strips are extremely long, extending over several large blocks till it meets the institute’s library, which is again grand in scale and style. This zone of gardens to me felt like the Central Park of New York, where one can bury oneself in it and wander for days. And it is the perfect place for children to get a sense of water, soil, plants, and insects like butterflies and worms. There was also a man-made hill in the adjacent staff quarters of the institute, whose countless paths and trails up and down at both slopes provided endless fun. I was addicted to exploring and trying all these paths during hill climbing and often stopped to marvel the tall, majestic pine trees at the top of the hill. To me, this was like the hills in Beijing’s Summer Place right at our backyard. Occasionally, if failing to grab the tangled vines and thus rolling down the hill, I got a dressing down from my parents for wearing dirty cloths.
The chaotic Cultural Revolution shook this tranquil place as well, presenting activities mainly in two aspects. One was the spectres of rallies condemning top institute officials, as the guidelines from the top requested. The Grand Hall served this purpose fine, with rallies held frequently by different political organisations. People were called to step up on the stage to receive criticisms, or two opposing factions staged a public debate there. We as kids could often slip to the front section to watch closely those being paraded and ridiculed, the officials who had been in charge of various administrative affairs, and those opposing delegates in fierce debating and often personal insults. I once resided, due to a shortage of accommodation, in a room which happened to house the number two man in this large institute. As a veteran party cadre, he already had white beard and wore a shirt all the time. As he said little and was always in deep thought when not being dragged out to the rallies, he sometimes looked at my direction to acknowledge my existence in the same room. I was of course a little scare of this silent figure and asked to change to another room to sleep. Those exuberant rebel members, actually young lecturers with high spirit and ambitions, let me move to another place in the building. Years later when verdicts made during the Culture Revolution were reversed by Deng, this senior leader of the institute went back to his old post, and he gave me some passing recognition during a brief meeting of being some kind of roommates.
The leaders of rebel groups made their moves in radical ways, in competition to show their revolutionary credentials, also perhaps for their desire to change social status. One emerging leader, a talkative lecturer, managed to get his fame by getting audience with top officials and instructions from there to rise against the establishment in the institute. With these assurances of his direction, he came back to make bold moves to hit hard on former institute officials with rallies and on other groups seen as not radical enough. When his activities were noticed by top leaders, his position moved up to be in charge of the revolutionary movement in the institute. He soon moved out the dormitories he had shared with others and got his official car with driver, a genuine testament that you have made it in those years in China when people mostly walked to work, at best riding a bicycle. This gain was only temporary, a year later he was put in jail for disrupting the proceedings of the movement when things calmed down. My parents often commented on his rise and fall with pity, on the ground that they knew that guy well since they all began teaching there about the same time. But for many in this movement, a brief rocket rise to the top and grabbing the places of power from old cadres were what they desperately wanted to achieve, even at all costs.

Another exciting activity was the Red Guards and various political groups converging in Beijing to receive Mao’s blessing during his eight mass public audiences at the Tian An Men Gate from the 1966 on. The Red Guards were a mixed bunch, not a uniform organisation of iron discipline, the Brown Shirt type. They were more of the kind of the young and the restless, eager to be part of the process creating a new era of the republic. They were particularly young, mostly teens and some leaders over 20, from colleges and senior high groups. It is understandable that these zealous groups had the urge and energy to carry out political instructions of Mao’s echelon for ongoing movements. Their tasks to attack the establishment caused plenty of shocks to officials at various levels, and many of them undertook long journeys from far corners of the country to see with their own eyes of Mao and his leadership. They roamed around the country, went to Beijing, and fanned out to other parts of the country, or back to their home provinces, all free of charge, on the orders from the top, since this was a mass movement for political purposes, rather than travelling at low costs. The trip to Beijing is a kind of pilgrim to them, and millions of them saw Mao in person. From many of their memories recalling those years, that pilgrim trip and other travelling changed their lives, at least in the sense of giving them the chance to see the many parts of the country for the first time, out of their remote localities.
Since the institute has large grounds, especially at the track and field place, it became an ideal hosting place for many of those groups from all over the country. Those people lived in large tents and in a military manner, lining up to wash, have meals, and attend meetings. The institute provided all support and logistics to these swarming groups. Altercations and fights often erupted among groups of different opinions; they argued passionately over issues of their own localities and were resolved to get a final judgement or justice when they came to Beijing. When two opposing Red Guards groups from the same province or city came head to head, tempers flied, and it is indeed full of air of fierce attacking. To us as kids, this immense tent city proved a fun playing ground for hide and seek, and also for watching the amusement of public quarreling and humiliation if one was beaten in public debate. There seemed no authority in this chaotic mess, as all pledged loyalty to Mao and claimed to have received true blessings from the top. These provincial Red Guards returned to their localities with deep feud and divisions after Mao’s public parades. It is quite understandable that violent and armed struggles among these opposing groups contributed to most of the fatalities in localities during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, those without direct supervision of the central authorities and with deep vengeance in incredible chaos. It is this kind of torture and death that literary writers have given the most revealing touches, the so-called “scar literature” based on personal experiences or that of close connections. To me, they left a huge mess behind around the institute and especially in that vast sports field. It also heralded a calm-down after the highs of revolutionary fevers, a sign of hollowness amidst the loud calls and echoes from those devoted young radicals.

I moved between two places of dwelling, one in the institute dormitories and the other at the city centre where my father’s institute provided some accommodations. That was a typical Beijing courtyard for well-to-dos, built and lived by those with money before the Communist Revolution succeeded. Its centre court is precisely symmetry, with the long main residence set at the north side, with two side houses at east and west wings, each with its own centre entrance and living rooms. The main house is very long in length, comprising about 8 separate rooms, with quality timber floors and hydraulic heating, rare provisions in those early years. With high roofs and ceilings, these rooms provided an air of comfort and sense of space. There are stone steps up to the front doors and neatly laid large slabs in the gardens. The places of treat are stone stools under the two grape vines at each side of the front of the house, for people to enjoy cool breeze of summer nights. The arched timber front gate of the whole courtyard was guarded by two carved stone lions, and one passes first small rooms leading to the centre court. These are obviously the places for doormen and servants, perhaps also for those who provided transport in horse-drawn sedan chairs for their masters. There is also a side courtyard with several rooms, which might have been used by the head butler of the household. Behind the main court, there is a long and deep galley leading to the back gate, perhaps also for housing more servants, such as numerous maids and cooks. The entire courtyard was designed and built for the purpose to accommodate the masters in comfort and style, also for them to be sufficiently supported by large number of resident servants. It was not grand, palace like, but was adequate to reflect on the owners’ status and financial affluence.
We were of course far from close to that group of people, but since the government assigned that courtyard to my father’s institute as accommodation, and young researchers did need places to live, we moved in to take up one of the apartments with two rooms in the main house, sharing with other of his colleagues, one of then took up the side courtyard used to be for the head butler. We could not get more space, because the remaining, dominating part of the main house was taken up by an eminent historian, Professor Gu, and his family. The main house and the wing houses of the centre court had been his own residence since 1949, as a privilege fitting his status. He was already over 80 by the time of the Cultural Revolution, and in the early 1900s he was well known for establishing the principles or guidelines of studying Chinese history, with both traditional Chinese record reading and memorising, and western ways of systematic analysis. His prestige was so immense that even Mao regarded him as tutor and instructed before the Cultural Revolution to provide him with whatever conditions he desired. Hence the large courtyard as his own residence.
All these niceties disappeared when the mass movement ran its course. Fragile Professor Gu received numerous visitors from organisations which tried to find something useful from him about someone in the past. Once I heard shouting and face slapping in his room, and his wife called police. Social order at this stage was collapsing fast, and places of authorities, such as government offices and police, were under attack themselves. Surprisingly enough, two policemen answered the call and asked the visitors from whatever the organisations to leave. In pre-revolution circumstances, police would have had those people detained on the spot. Due to his fame and some high level coordinating, such intrusions ceased to occur.
His two adult sons were quite friendly towards me and let me enter his part of the house, especially his library, I mean library. I had never imaged that someone had so many books lined up in rows of bookshelves just for himself to use, let alone how he could manage and memorise the contents of so many books there. It was a sea of knowledge and you don’t know where to start. This is particularly stunning, since reading in those days was a risky business, as one did not know which one could be deemed not suitable and thus banned some day. His sons allowed me to take a few books back to my place to read, under the conditions of returning before borrowing others. I read quite some interesting writings, in particular a book by a Russian (then Soviet) author, titled “Blood in Sand” or something like it. Such foreign books were of course already translated into Chinese for publication, just as Gunther’s “Inside Australia”, as well as his other "Inside" books, which I also read then. The book by the Russian writer gave me a great shock for quite sometime, mainly because of its stories about ancient tribes and mammoths, the hunting and surviving, the desperate fighting between man and beast. Its vivid descriptions of human community in the wild and the imaginative quality have left a lasting impression on me, so much so that after reading this, I now find the likes of “10,000 B.C.” laughable. The two Gu sons later moved to other parts of the country and disappeared from the scene. The only one left beside Professor Gu was his much younger nagging wife who complained from time to time about how her husband was such a useless burden and therefore treated him with little care.
The charge to attack and replace those people in power was accompanied by the so-called smashing old Chinese traditions, with unaccountable ancient Chinese artifacts in public places and in individual hands confiscated or destroyed. People holding these things from the past were seen as lacking of revolutionary mantel and made to hand them over. In panic, large quantities of old treasures and handcrafted genuine articles shifted from family homes to antique shops. They were actually dumped there, with little thought from the owners for a good price. Ironically, that was a wonderful time for collectors. A nearby such shop was full of old style Chinese furniture made of rare hard wood and countless all sorts of stuff. They changed hands not through auctions but private sales. Because supply was overwhelming and demand collapsed, not many sales could be made. I went through that shop many times, curious about the items on display. My problem was money, unlike others who did not want to buy for the reason of demonstrating political correctness. Some who dared to buy were either with the right political credentials, such as a factory worker’s family background, or with crazy collector’s instinct and determination. The ones who made the purchases and kept their “loots” were rewarded fabulously in later years; a fine china bowl made by imperial kilns fetched about 5 yuan or less, and could easily get well over half a million in late 1990s. But these treasures were openly despised and thrown away as if the owners committed a sin, so there was no real valuation of those worthy assets.

Life in early Cultural Revolution

The years between 1966 and 1976 are a period in China defined by a special term “the Culture Revolution”. The country ran through a turbulent historical course with unprecedented chaos, which touched upon the populace with massive forces and caused devastating results in many cases. People’s experiences of this period vary wildly, but overwhelmingly negative, as summarised by the later official verdict under the Deng leadership from the late 1970s. The surging rise and tragic fall of elite social groups and various individual players have made many refer to this period with utter disgust, and a bitter taste in mouth when the term “Cultural Revolution” is mentioned. It however needs to be pointed out that the suffering of the people in general and the missed opportunities of the country during the nation-wide infighting are in importance well above the random personal sorrow and sense of vengeance of certain intellectuals and learned people.

It is undeniable that great expectations emerged at the outset of the mass movement when Mao called for struggles against those in power, bureaucrats, corrupt officials, inert cadres, etc. In addition to Mao’s intention to wage power struggles internally, the political party in power operated in general less satisfactorily after years in charge of state affairs. Mao’s early calls for rebelling against the establishment, except himself and a group of trusted leaders, were received with enthusiasms from young and perhaps naïve people who took the future directions of the country seriously. It is a kind of confusion that instructions in fact came from the very top, while the movements and activities against those in power at different levels of government were mostly spontaneous and from the grassroots. People were sort of mobilised, but they also rose to take part in the movement willingly. There were idealists, opportunists, and potential leaders, those who would not have been able to demonstrate their talents in certain areas under normal, orderly circumstances.

When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, I was in early primary school years, at a stage of fast changing social environments. The first school year passed quietly, no drama, but routine early age, basic learning. That was 1965 and things did not show much excitement. My first school locates in the eastern district of Beijing, and the district sports facilities there provided training sessions for students. I was picked to play table tennis at one centre near Wang Fu Jing commercial streets, and one day every week we walked there to have about two hours playing with instructions from coaches working there. I learnt to use back hand playing table tennis and got quite used to it. The following weeks would be the time to learn and practice the right hand playing, the most common way people play the game. But we were told one day that due to some changes all these free training sessions would end. On the way home, I did not know what happened to the sport programme and could not expect much to change in life. The following year came with the news and scenes of the Cultural Revolution, which disrupted all life routines, including my table tennis training. From then on, I have been particularly good at back hand table tennis playing, which surprised friends numerous times, but my right hand playing is weak and terrible, which is also notorious. All these can be blamed on the political movement raging in the nation at that time.
In the second year, it was a time when many pupils changed their colours from Young Pioneers (similar to scouts in western cultures) to Little Red Guards, with red collar ties being replaced by red armbands, with three Chinese characters on them. It made little difference to me and to many of this change, since people who were active would be supposed to join Young Pioneers or Little Red Guards early than others, and pupils with so-called leadership qualities and tendency to show-off would be appointed as leaders in Young Pioneers or Little Red Guards later. I was from the beginning not part of that group favoured by teachers, so getting permission to join Little Red Guards became a delayed process.
Pupils, like other groups of people at the time, were hyper active, not only at frequent public rallies, but also in cases of fights against teachers, especially head teachers and principals at those rallies. It was a routine that we marched to some places to attend rallies condemning some senior teachers, and in the afternoon or the next day attended some other activities supervised or led by those same teachers. Status of those teachers changed dramatically in a day, and it is a question how most of them maintained the sense of dignity and courage to face their pupils after being paraded in humiliating manners at rallies. I remember that one leading teacher stood to receive public speeches attacking him, and later on yelled at some undisciplined pupils to make them behave, not to run down and up the stairs. His authority remained while he was not forced to walk up the stage. These were just little boys, so making them listen was still possible by adult teachers, unlike those high school students who were already tall and physically matured. As far as I can remember as a small boy at the time, physical abuses to teachers did not occur at rallies I attended; a routine practice was to hang a square wood sign with condemning capital Chinese characters around the neck of a teacher, which forced the person to bow low. The only dead people I saw with my own eyes was an old man hanging himself in a room at the next courtyard, who was identified as a former large landlord before 1949, a political crime highlighted in those hectic years. That was a suicide, with one burned out piece of coal in each of his hand, for the purpose of fainting him with the burning pain in order not to feel the short breaths from suffocating hanging with a tight rope, subsequently depriving him of the deep fear of the incoming death.
There were often lines of trucks screaming past the streets, loaded with excited people shouting political slogans. They had different purposes and thus had conflicting slogans, normally with “oppose such and such” versus “defend such and such”. To outsiders, these were quite some shows, and few considered the consequences to their lives if one of these groups won over the others. The key point is not to raise questions about their loyalties to Mao and other remaining leaders not yet named as counter-revolutionaries. As time went by, the list of names at the top became shorter, with some purged one day or another, but the loyalty towards the top two, Mao and Lin, was demonstrated by all different groups rallying and performing daily.

I soon moved to dormitories at my parents’ institute in the west of Beijing, at the National Institute of Ethnicities, a place for teaching and studies of the 51 (now 56 officially recognised) minority ethnic groups of the country. My parents came from the same university in Sichuan province in the south, both of them from families of medium-sized landowners, but they got into tertiary institutions after 1949, having passed political examinations of their family backgrounds, seemingly acceptable to the government at a time when China urgently needed people for the reconstruction after decades of political disintegration and wars. They were selected to move to Beijing to do research work at two different institutes. Their major subjects were history, however, not much to do with the actual building of the nation, only literary enquires on issues of the past. In those times, people well known in literary and humanities fields enjoyed great prestige and took up top and key academic positions. The head of the later National Academy of Social Sciences was a celebrated poet and revered historian on early Chinese history, especially on reading scripts carved on animal bones two thousand years before Christ. University presidents also mostly came from humanities faculties. A prominent dean at my mother’s institute graduated from an Australian university with a Doctor degree, Sydney perhaps, and was regarded the ultimate authority in anthropology and sociology in China. Most of the deans at my father’s institute of history in that National Academy had already enjoyed reputation beyond national borders in their relevant academic fields before 1949. These were the people you should look up and pay great respect to, with thorough knowledge and wisdom not to be casually challenged. A short essay from one such authority in academic value is worth more than a couple of books university researchers now publish. That was a time of authentic academic research and education, for the purpose of these two alone, unlike the situation today when economics professors and business experts command the show, giving people an unmistakable impression that they lack depth and are too market smart to be true scholars. And there is now a sea of worthless publications around every year.
I was not daunted by the prospect of meeting those great scholars at the time; the more obvious and attractive fact was the institute itself. It was located in a quiet part of western suburbs, midway to the Summer Palace, after passing endless green fields, giving one deep impression of getting into the countryside. The road leading to the institute was divided, with one way traffic on each side, separated by an up to ten metre high hill running all the way to the far north, until it met the famous Beijing University campus. Dense woods grew on the hill, making it an ideal place for boys to play and charge up and down the hill at will. The whole area surrounding the institute was green through and through, an ideal area to have spring time outings and picnics. All those natural setting is now gone, replaced today by annoying endless motor traffic, crowds and plain buildings of concrete. The institute was a beautiful place to live for thousands of students annually, with most of the buildings coming to the existence in the 1950s under Russian influences. The remaining influences of this kind of architecture can still be seen today at the grand Friendship Hotel, not far from that institute and initially for accommodating Russian experts. The ground of the institute is expansive, wide boulevards separated by large and elaborate gardens, lined by rock solid buildings of high ceilings and ornate entrances. Universities established decades later certainly lack this kind of luxury in design, space, building materials, and attention to details. Especially the Grand Hall, as shown in the picture of its grand entrance, it was massive with deep back stage, several dozens rows of comfortable seats and elaborate decorations around, and four more entrances by its sides, fit for lavish concert and opera performance. The institute is, was, itself a magnificent garden and designed and built to last.

The Age's news reports from Beijing

It is only natural that readers in western countries rely on foreign correspondents of their local papers to get some glimpses of life in other countries. This medium is so important that the risk of some resident correspondents tending to abuse the trust of their home readers and give fuzzy pictures of their liking is very high, and few at home country have the means to check them out, they are in effect the lords of news by themselves. For an important country to Australia, China has drawn attention from media organisations from Australia, and resident correspondents are common in Beijing and routinely give their say on what is going on over there. It is in this respect that a reporting by such Beijing correspondents shake and form the minds of Australians about China. Needless to say, the picture is seldom pretty in their writings. One particular correspondent, Ms. Toy, has been particularly picky or nasty in her news reports, as far as giving misleading messages and displaying her preferences openly. "Openly" means she was hardly checked for accuracy, and her readers had no way of knowing what is true, especially when she quoted sources in Chinese. I have been reading the Age's China reporting for a long time, and found it hard to accept her version of things on many occasions, especially hard to swallow her own sentiments and bias in many of her writings. Routinely, I wrote to the Age's editors to remind them something is wrong in her reporting and interpretation of things in China, but few responses came. The following are some of my views expressed on Ms. Toy's strange ways of writing from her Beijing post.
I am glad to report that perhaps as a result of this pursuit of made errors and prejudice, Ms. Toy's name dropped from the list of news reporting Beijing correspondents from the latter half of 2008, and her written pieces disappear from the Age's news columns. But if she persists, she could find a place in another western media organisation to continue her career of reporting on China in her old way.

1.
After reading Ms. Toy's leading article on Olympic relay, I wonder whether she stations in Beijing or in Melbourne. Most of her quoted sources are from overseas, Europe or the US, those comments people can read anyway from thousands of other English language papers. One important information missing on the same day her article came out is from President Hu Jin Tao, which says clearly the issue with the Da Lai La Ma is of national unity and security, not religion, ethnic minorities, or human rights. And the President said all these to the face of Kevin Rudd, visiting at the time. Is this clear enough? Why her report is slow to include this newest information in relation to Rudd's visit, a visit many Australian reporters hope to get explosive outcomes or confrontations, good for news? Hu's words have indicated clearly the way forward, the way the Chinese government and nation will handle the Tibet (Xi Zang) issue in the future. Then why her piece still asked the question of the way forward? The objections and disagreements from the West, and some Chinese, now are not relevant, after Hu's direct, no-nonsense talk with Rudd. If Ms Toy did station in Beijing, she would not have missed this important information. Another possibility is that she did deliberately not to report on this official stand of the Chinese government, in case it conflicts with her written reporting back to the Age.
Another sign of her article being late is that the relay in Argentina went smoothly, as reported in the Age, contrary to her prediction of ongoing violent protests to the relay everywhere thereafter.
One more sign is that the Olympic Committee President already stated that boycott is not what people around the world (including those in Europe and the US) wanted to see and that even if some western politicians decided not to attend the opening ceremony,the Games will be a success. This is not at all in her reporting from Beijing, especially that of the President's statement.
One more information lacking in her article is about the mounting waves of protests by overseas Chinese against western media's unashamed bias and distortion on the issue of Xi Zang (Tibet). Instead, her report cites a few unknown Chinese writers' letter which allegedly differs from the official policies.
This letter, even if it exists, is certainly unrepresentative and unpopular in China and among overseas Chinese, and is anyway dismissed outright, as shown in President Hu's statement. Her report relies heavily and repeatedly on a celebrity architect Ai, son of a famed Chinese writer who himself suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Taking Ai's words as a typical Chinese public opinion, especially on the issue of Xi Zang (Tibet), is definitely unwise, and he has shown consistent tendency to please his western visitors and journalists, to say what they wanted to hear. And citing one source for over half a dozen times is also questionable, for the reason that the two parties may forge an alliance, thus losing crucial objectivity in later reporting.
If Ms Toy was a journalist stationed in Melbourne, these mishaps and missing information should not be taken seriously. When Australians rely on overseas correspondents to provide them with the latest and correct information on countries of significance, such reporting will only cause confusion and breed misconception to readers back home.

2.
Reading Ms Toy’s reporting on China often gives one a sense of reading last week’s newspapers. One feels that while there is nothing new in her reports, she tries hard to impress the reader of her closeness to the story or deep-throat sources, or something all the people missed but she doe not. This show of self-centredness is quite annoying sometimes.
Take her dispatch on May 24, for example. She presents the story of tents missing in Chendu in a serious tone and claims all Chinese-language newspapers and their websites reporting such incidents are blocked, so implying Chinese people are deprived of their right of knowing the truth. In fact, this is old news, as there have been tons of blogs writing about the story with photos, and officials already promised to investigate and prosecute those misbehaved. All of these are on open websites, under discussion constantly. One can’t believe Ms Toy pretends to be the only one on this story while others are in the dark.
For the allegation that there is little reporting on quake prevention or substandard construction, I don’t know what Ms Toy has been reading, as if she is unaffected by daily hot debates and discussions online and in newspaper sites.
The story lines on initial response to restrict news reports on the quake allegedly by the Propaganda Department are also old and cold, and your correspondents have made a big fuzz about that already, including Mr. Garnaut in Beijing. So, Ms Toy recycles that story in order to fill up this bucket of report.
About reporting mostly on tragedy and heroic human actions, rather than negative gutter journalism and digging of possible neglect or corruption, Ms Toy appears to be late in reporting again. The choice between the former and latter as the focus of reporting or discussion has been widely and openly debated in the media and online in China. Initially, angry people were hard to control their rage and condemned those who may be responsible. Gradually, the mood changed, as people reached the conclusion that during this unprecedented tragedy the first priority is to save life and get relief in, the most humanitarian choice at the moment. Investigation and possible punishment will follow, but not to impede current rescue effort. That is why it seems journalists toed the line, as Ms Toy prefers to describe, simply because first the magnitude of the disaster warrants the emphasis on life rescuing rather than cynicism or sarcasm, and second organization and rescue effectiveness obviously improved as time goes on. There is no shortage of exposing bad behaviours in this whole process either, including the reporting on missing tents or substandard building materials (the party disciplinary commission made the pledge to do just that a few days ago).
Ms Toy is accustomed to naming a few sources which cannot be identified, and making those invisible figures back up her main points. And some of the “volunteered” opinions are really weird and cannot be substantiated, such as the claim that the government’s days are numbered after this quake. No wonder that senior journalist and dear friend of Ms Toy’s had his remark rebuked, since that would make the publication appear extremely silly and become the laughing stock in the country and among overseas Chinese.


3
After reading today's report by your Beijing correspondent Ms. Toy and the original speech in question in Chinese, I believe she added a little too much of her own elaborations in the piece, as well as largely ignored the main text.
The key points of party control of legal departments are drawn from a couple of sentences in the original speech, about which I have to say the translation is quite liberal, either picking out a few alarm-sounding words or failing to see the limited significance of routine party jargon. She virtually amplified the volume of the jargon and made them stand out in the whole text.
Several of her assertions are hard to be found in the Chinese text. "Better-educated people"? This is not to be found; instead "socially mobile citizens" are mentioned in a way as to organise them in an orderly fashion. We all understand this refers to millions of roaming peasant migrants to big cities, but they are certainly not "key citizens" or "better educated" of the country as presented by the correspondent.
Also, about "re-education camps for political and religious activists", it is in the text of work-and-study schools for law breaking teens (you can say that these schools are loosely in the large category of re-education camps, but not precisely the same). The sharpest words in the report, "an independent judiciary was not appropriate", seems not coming out of his mouth.
The whole text focuses on restoring the reputation of the legal system and work for the "harmonious society". Many measures and words in that are surely responses to the worsening injustice and unfair treatment of people, exactly aiming at countering the corruption and illegal activities mentioned at the end of this news report. Whether this speech works or not is not the point here.
I strongly recommend that the editors download a copy of the text, get someone who really read Chinese, and check the text word by word before convinced of those words indeed spoken and approving the report. I don't blame the routine tendency in the media to print sensational overseas stories; I am just amazed how often original words turned into something else in the papers.

Bush Fires and Marysville

It is shocking to learn the sad news of bush fires raging in hills around Melbourne these days. Death tolls rose to the levels Aussies have never seen before; the Ash Wednesday looks pale against this. Luckily no one I know or my son Bob knows in the city has been reported missing or gone in flames. Even if not being there, I can feel the sorrow and horror of seeing the fires right a front of you and having one's properties completed up in the smokes.
We have particular sentiments regarding the areas this terrible fire has affected. When we were students in Melbourne, we lived in the north of the city and not far from the Kinglake area being burned by fire this past week. The road to this hilly area, with some expansive national park and woods, is a straight one at one section, you don't need to adjust your steering wheel a tiny little bit for several minutes in a high speed drive. It is an ideal road to learn driving, not me, some other guys I know, because the first thing to do in driving is to gain confidence in handling the monster, and a cheap way to get that confidence is drive at high speed, to have that feel that driving is not bad, and is simple, just put your foot down. So that straight road for miles did help.
The Kinglake area can be reached by winding and sloping up roads, not a problem for good cars, but troublesome for our second hand, manual car at the time. A trip up there demanded concentration in driving and managing sharp turns. It was a pleasant place to be, country, bush, and hills all at once. The disappointment was the tiny falls in the national park, as water came down in small streams, rather than big falls we had expected. The sceneries were wonderful, green and woody in the national park, and brown fields of farms along the roads. The first impression was the wide open space, and you wonder what kinds of people live here, far from each other and far behind the shabby, wobbly gates along the roads. It is in fact hard to see anyone around and out there. One of my uni. tutors lived somewhere in these woods, in a mud-brick house, miles from anyone, good for thorough and deep thinking of how people and societies have evolved. An old lady we knew also from the uni. had a ground, not farm, and house there, it covered several footy grounds, and tall, dark trees formed a forest at the far end of her estate. She said just that woods, if chopped down for timber, would return handsome money. Those were the outings for immersing in nature and fruit-picking we did to the north of Melbourne (Bob has great photos there labouring in strawberry picking with his kid friend), and Kinglake is a name we remember well, a little mysterious really, imagine we had a farm there and kept away from people, just like Brian Nylor did. One unfortunately thing was that a friend of mine was fined there after finishing strawberry picking, because he did not fully stop at the line before turning to the left, and a police car happened to be right behind him. Two things followed, he vowed never to go to Kinglake again, and we have seriously obeyed the rule of stop at the solid line before turning ever since.

Marysville is another matter. That is a place I always wanted to go and look around when we had time. It looked great and sensational in tourist brochures, for a holiday place for just a couple days. I am not sure we have been there or passed it before. During numerous trips up the hills in the north and east, partly for enhancing my driving skills, in particular dealing with winding and uphill roads, we passed a lot of small towns and were impressed by how pretty they were, and then wanted to come back there again. But driving in the hills were very confusing, even with the Melway, so not long after we forgot what towns we had been to and never traced the tracks exactly again. But the name Marysville stuck and had been a place name on my schedules for later outer Melbourne trips. I have never had that chance again after leaving Melbourne. What a shame! This God’s own garden is no longer there any more. Even if it was rebuilt, it would not be the same, and the scars of heavy losses remain. I sadly take it off my list of traveling in later years.

A familiar face emerged in the list of the deceased in the fire, and I never would have thought that he would be on the list. I did not know Brian Nylor had a house in Kinglake; he was not a farmer or academic intellectual, those guys like to reside in those areas, and his residence could be in any of the blue ribbon areas of the southeast. We benefited so much from him, not financially, of course. In our earlier years at uni. we basically learned and improved our English language from him and David Johnston of Channel Ten. These two newsreaders showed us the perfect way of speaking the language, clear and formal, easy for us to understand and follow. That tone sounded official Australian, with residual of BBC English, but better and livelier than ABC English. Although theirs are a little far from everyday Aussie and British talking, we felt much better at least having someone speaking something we understood, without much difficulty. That was a very long time ago, and we heard little of Brian Nylor after we left, until this terrible news of him, a person in our neighbourhood (a far off neighbourhood from our first home in Bundoora) and a language tutor-like man giving you most of the news in life. His image has not been tainted by that kind of celebrity scandals, and few newsreaders in Australia today would be able to catch up with him in the ways people’s life are influenced.

A bad feeling about this horrendous fire and huge losses is that we probably have to forsake the idea of living in a country residence, especially a bushy one. The lovely hilly towns in the north and east of Melbourne now look less safe and attractive. But we will visit them in our holidays; only wished we saw Marysville more before this tragedy happened.