Well ya, thats exactly what im talking about! Good for you. Thats the bare minimum. Im sure many will justify buyin made in china by saying you dont know their supply chains and all that. Hence it being called the bare minimum…just want to make that point doubly clear for when the justification for doing nothing follows below haha.
What you are doing is great. If we billion people do that, what message does that send to the business world? I do the same.as you. I am more strict within my.own.industry of course, buu say phones is out of.my league. So.items i know use a lot of oppressed labor or support business that will literally start a war with my country i dont buy. Phones as an example i buy second.hand so as not to give my cash to the enemy. I would need to be pretty entitled tothink me needing the newest iphone is more important than my countrys future.
We did just buy a new computer made in taiwan. Gigabyte, which likely has components from our enemy. However we spent over a year looking around, talking with companies, emails an.phone calls back and forth. Interestingly as it turned out after purchasing the gigabyte computer one of our customers i.smarried to an engineer there. So we talked further about their companies policy is sort of anti china but they are not allowed to discuss this. So in my eyes, supporing a company that is working towards a good goal of eventual “decoupling” from china is well wirth the money. If my programs load of second slower or whatever, thats not a high price to pay all things considered. I mean picking between an apple or samsung, we have to admit just how privelaged we actually are to be able to choose such things. They are luxuries, regardless of our opinion on what we deserve. At the bare minimum we can try not to give the money to a world oppressor…no?
Microsoft Bing is one of the few foreign search engines that are accessible in China, because the company has agreed to censor results for sensitive terms such as the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square or Falun Gong.
We’ve done this for a few years and, though initially it was due to ethics, really, it’s resulted in a lot of good purchases from great companies. I would rather buy something that lasts for years and years and, if I’m in a store and a pair of products look nearly identical but have different prices, I usually simply ask the reason. Nine times out of ten, it’s something like 'that cheaper product is made in China but this other product is made .
I only have pics of pre-Tiananmen…the day after I purposely left my camera at home as I did not want to be detained…so most pics are just in my mind…burning buses, soldiers, etc. I did not see death. I spent each night listening to gunfire and watching ambulances go by my hotel to hospital across the road. My most interesting story is seeing hundreds of soldiers resting in front of KFC. I walked up to an on duty line of soldiers who set up a parameter around them…each carrying a machine gun. I stood face to face with a stoic soldier and while standing there a couple showed up with their child and stood next to me. I heard the mother say “Seems the chicken store is closed. Too bad. I really wanted to eat chicken.” Right in front of them is hundreds of soldiers…most with machine guns. I thought to myself…life goes on.
I did share my story with a reporters via phone while still in Beijing. Here are a few more pics:
Area where speeches were usually done:
Tents for students:
The nicer tents sent from Hong Kong:
Messages pasted on wall to support students:
My artistic pic…trying to capture the little girl with the “shy” old couple:
Well, ya. Thats why i say its the…bare minimum… everyone can do. done by a billion, it does make a difference. In fact it can reshape the entire globe on that scale. Im not naive, i realize the difficulty in trying to get 1 billion people to agree on anything. But i absolutely dont agree with the methods that the ccp has already forced 1 billion people to comply with. I hope for an education based approach that teaches sustainability as well as morals and compassion.
I think as citizens of earth we all should feel obligated to push forward towards more moral means and sustainable lifestyles. Not everyone is willing, sure. But there is rarely a good excuse to buy made by nazi, i mean made in china, when we know damn well what that means now. Ignorance is no longer an excuse these days.
@flakman keep them coming. I think everyone really enjoys historically important photos. I sure enjoy seeing your pics and would really enjoy seeing more!
Most of what I have is more of the same but here are a few more…
Showing how empty Tiananmen was before the Goddess arrived.
Showing the crowds to see the Goddess…note the guy who was taking pics of me…saw him in few photos.
There were so many emotions flowing through Beijing at that time. By that I mean people were gathering on street corners to watch the long two section busses being parked across the big intersections on the ring roads to try to slow down any planned army movements through town. People seemed excited but not sure about what. Of course, my Chinese was bad but no one could express what the excitement was leading to.
I guess most of the emotions at that time could be summed up in the conversations with some students who moved in with us (for their safety as dorms were being raided). They were naive about their government. They thought what they were doing was for the good of the people and expected the government would respect that. Being a student myself I could empathize with their dreams but could see they were grappling with even understanding what any other form of government could be in China. Well, they had no experience with anything else so that is understandable. Their tears made a deep impression on me. A few months later I received a letter from one of them…I just think they needed someone to express their frustration to again.
As I walked along roads filled with glass (people were breaking glass bottles as form of protest against Deng Xiao Ping…“ping” is bottle) and burning busses I could see couples and their child walking along the roads in their good clothes trying to enjoy the day. Did they know what happened? Did they care? Were they simply understanding what the students did not understand?..that the situation was not going to change.
That,m y friend, is an amazing post. provbaly cew of us can.imagine being.there at that time being friends with people going through that level of oppression. I would hope you could sit down and write a nice long article about thevexperience. I at least would be keen on.reading!
This is the sort of base level shit we talk about when we want taiwan to remain a free and independant country. I worry most people dont grasp that or just simply dont care what that means.
Thanks for your interest. Until I come up a summary of the time there I leave you with two experiences there.
1)after Tiananmen every night at midnight I would pull a chair into the hallway at our hotel and sit next to a window…that is because shooting always started after midnight.
2)every day I would turn on the TV to watch the “news”. On the days right before the news would show an empty Tiananmen. After Tiananmen the news was replaced by shows about agriculture. What a pisser. I did not know how much the outside world knew about Tiananmen until we made our way over to Lido condos which had foreign stations.
