tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32671574.post6795929741832279725..comments2024-03-22T14:47:42.501+02:00Comments on Tibeto-logic: Hearing Disabilities?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32671574.post-64292520975299288362008-04-05T21:14:00.000+03:002008-04-05T21:14:00.000+03:00Nope. I'm afraid you're the only reader, and an Ar...Nope. I'm afraid you're the only reader, and an Arno-nym-ous one to boot! And no, I never claimed to be fully justified>?|:> Well, there's that other "anonymous" whoever s/he is. Tibetans in eastern Tibet in particular are not suffering from any fatigue. They just keep on demonstrating. You'll hear about more very soon. Guaranteed.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10453904366382251766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32671574.post-60975008282815865832008-04-03T23:35:00.000+03:002008-04-03T23:35:00.000+03:00Dear Dan,Sorry, I was certainly unaware of your pr...Dear Dan,<BR/><BR/>Sorry, I was certainly unaware of your previous mentioning of Prof. Ge's statement and am glad that now at last I could read M. Kapstein's letter of 1994 to the New York Times.<BR/>In general I think your blog is the best in the field, not least because absolutely no other scholar of your standing would be prepared to spend so much time in the WWW and make use of it in such a brilliant way as you do. Some of your blogs (including the one you just referred me to) I simply find too long. Reading on the screen is very different from reading on paper, and our eyes have been weakened by decades of reading fragmentary Tibetan texts in badly lit reading rooms.<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://www.leafdigital.com/class/lessons/graphicdesign1/7.html" REL="nofollow">Fully-justified</A> paragraphs are generally considered inappropriate on the web, even more so if they appear in narrow columns of the size you apply to your musings, at least this is my understanding. Had Prof. Ge appeared further up in you post I might have read his statement.<BR/>Hope you don't mind my poor attempt at self-justification...<BR/><BR/>I eagerly await your next blog, and presumably many more silent readers do as well!<BR/><BR/>Yours,<BR/><BR/>Arno<BR/><BR/>P.S. Have indeed been suffering from the Tibetan Freedom Syndrom for several years, no fatigue at my end.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32671574.post-41796472294206504422008-04-03T12:16:00.000+03:002008-04-03T12:16:00.000+03:00Dear Arno,Thanks for that. You may or may not hav...Dear Arno,<BR/><BR/>Thanks for that. You may or may not have noticed that I mention Prof. Ge's publications on this point in an ancient blog. Here (http://tinyurl.com/2eslp5), actually.<BR/><BR/>These days in my experience it's only some Sinologists who continue to think that Tibet was always a part of China. Anyone who has actually looked into the matter knows Tibet was really truly (skipping the Latin legalistic crappy word for that) independent between 1913 and 1949 or 1951 or 1959. Among people who use Tibetan sources this is unanimous, ignoring of course what some of PRC Tibetologists have been made to say for Xinhua or "China's Tibet" magazine. <BR/><BR/> Just to say something about that, my breath is simply taken away with astonishment whenever I see some international journalist accepting a Xinhua story as a news source of some validity. This is wrong on just so many levels. For one quite recent bit of enlightenment on this score, I recommend people have a look at the piece entitled "Commentary: Stop fiddling with…just stop. Please. Stop." by Chris O'Brien<BR/>(http://tinyurl.com/36b9w2). <BR/><BR/>The comments attached to it are, for a change, truly engaging, thoughtful and even moderately funny by turns. That is, if you aren't already suffering from TFS. What's TFS? you may be asking. Although its etiology is unsure, evidently people in Sinology and Beijing-based media posts develop it in an extraordinarily short period of time... I don't believe I've ever been the least bit susceptible, have you?).<BR/><BR/>Yours,<BR/>DanDanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10453904366382251766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32671574.post-77099335509058243952008-04-03T00:22:00.000+03:002008-04-03T00:22:00.000+03:00Dear Mr. Myself,Thanks for alerting us to no. 376!...Dear Mr. Myself,<BR/><BR/>Thanks for alerting us to no. 376! Too far down for most of us, but someone has to do the job.<BR/><BR/>Wangchuk wrote:<BR/><I>I think even many Chinese scholars would agree that before PRC rule, there is little evidence that Tibet was an integral part of China...</I><BR/><BR/>This reference to Chinese scholarship has reminded me of a press release from February 2007, in which noted Fudan University scholar <A HREF="http://www.baf.cuhk.edu.hk/apib/public_seminar/hb/profiles.htm" REL="nofollow">Prof. Ge Jianxiong 葛剑雄</A> was reported to have stated (originally in Chinese in the <I>China Review</I>):<BR/><I>It would be a defiance of history if we claim that since the Tang Dynasty Tibet has always been a part of China - the fact that the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau subsequently became a part of the Chinese dynasties does not substantiate such a claim.</I><BR/><BR/>This translation is not my own, it's from <A HREF="http://voyage.typepad.com/china/2007/02/tibet_not_alway.html" REL="nofollow">here</A>. <BR/><BR/>What Prof. Ge Jianxiong is quoted to have said strikingly contradicts the many statements of the "Tibet always part of China" sort reiterated on YouTube and elsewhere in the past two weeks. And indeed, a recent <A HREF="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-03/29/content_6575290.htm" REL="nofollow">article </A>(updated 2008-03-29) in the online edition of the <I>China Daily</I> quotes another professor of Fudan University, namely Prof. Wu Jingping, under the heading "Tibet <B>always</B> part of China" (my emphasis): <BR/><I>From these historical documents of 65 years ago, people can be sure that China undoubtedly possesses the sovereign rights in Tibet.</I><BR/><BR/>He talks of the years shortly before the Chinese invasion in 1950 and bases his conclusion on the reading of an exchange of telegrams between Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang finance minister, in which <B>Winston Churchill</B>'s view of Tibet being an independent nation is challenged. How these telegrams are to be seen as conclusive evidence that Tibet was not independent is hard to grasp. I find it quite puzzling, too, that here we have the statements of two Kuomintang members being used to verify the views of communist China. Hail to the Queen!<BR/><BR/>Yours ever,<BR/><BR/>Arno NymAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32671574.post-18783499804424300902008-04-02T15:45:00.000+03:002008-04-02T15:45:00.000+03:00Greetings to myself,I definitely recommend, if you...Greetings to myself,<BR/><BR/>I definitely recommend, if you do go to the link to Nicholas D. Kristof's NYT "blog" as given, that no matter how irritated you will surely get with most of the writers for a host of reasons (writers who are by no means all Chinese, although they were the ones who were invited to write...), you really should not miss the words of Wangchuk, comment no. 376.<BR/><BR/>Very cool, succinct and pointed. On target. Well written. Pity that Tibetan voices are so few and seldom heard in places like this one. I suggest Wangchuk start his own blog, if he hasn't already, and get to work.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10453904366382251766noreply@blogger.com