To Kathy

Hi Kathy. Hello to thousands of Kathys. This is an open letter to all who feel the same way about Kathy in Don't Understand Podcast #23 , also from a Kathy.

I am a post-80s Chinese, and I have been a dissident within the definition of the CCP since 2008 at the latest, and it has been 14 years now. Somehow, I began to reconcile, or rather, coexist with my political anger and political pain.

Of course, I can still feel the anger and pain to this day, and am amazed to see that what I have long been afraid to speculate with the greatest malice can get even worse.

But when you think about it, I've never fallen into political depression, even when I'm in tears over some tragedies that shouldn't have happened. I don't dare to think I'm doing something right, maybe just because I'm lucky, but I did get the confidence and strength from some people and things that kept me safe.

I'd never thought about how these things would work for anyone other than me until I heard Kathy's remarks on this recent episode of Don't Understand Podcast. I knew right away: it's time, it's time to pass on these drift bottles, these torches, these memories. This is my responsibility, passed on to me by the young man who rode his bicycle to Tiananmen Square 33 years ago.

Where to start? Let me tell you a few of my epiphanies over the past ten years.

one

First epiphany: I am one of a handful of reactionaries or rebels, and I belong to the political minority in China in every sense.

The first half of the sentence is the language the CCP uses to vilify us, but it is easier for the Chinese to understand; the second half is the correct statement, but no one has said it yet. If you have some knowledge of LGBT people, chances are you will understand what I mean by political minorities.

Before I had this epiphany, the pain that often tormented me was not understanding why people who were supposed to be of my own kind treated me as a different kind. Then I realized that even in the countries with the most political freedom right now, there are very few people who feel pain because of injustices that they don’t suffer and see with their own eyes. Fewer people speak out against injustice, and even fewer take action.

You may feel that China is different, because the Chinese government's intervention and monitoring of people's lives is far more rigorous than that of other countries in the same era, because the governments of other countries either do not have the financial resources and technology to implement such tactics across the country, or they may It has been strongly resisted by a sound legal system, authoritative media, intellectual elites, conservative forces and even some capital giants. Don't forget, however, that due to China's large population, even if the proportion is low, the absolute number of political minorities in China is still a large number.

So, don’t feel pain because we are few, few people are not the source of our pain, it is the inability to be seen, heard, and accepted like most people. People like us have been in the minority since the time of Socrates and Lao Tzu, but people like us will not disappear completely in any era or anywhere, because this is the natural law of human society: people want to think, people want truth. Just as no kind of cleansing can exterminate sexual minorities in humanity, so no kind of brainwashing can exterminate political minorities in humanity.

two

The second epiphany: all the people you are afraid of are afraid of you; all the threats you are afraid of are also afraid of the people who are afraid of you.

As a political minority in China, why should everyone you fear so actively oppose you, admonish you, threaten you or even report you? Even if a significant number of them don't know you well, or don't even know you at all?

because they are afraid of you. The reasons for their fear are complex, but well understood:

Some people know that the sentence "the emperor has no clothes" is true, and they are afraid that the emperor's guards will hurt the child who tells the truth. The guards may not be there, hear or care, but they feel they should protect the child and remind the child. Deep down in their hearts, they were also afraid that because of this sentence, the order they were familiar with would be overturned, so they instinctively wanted to protect it. Because even if there are problems with the order, this is the life that I am most used to, and it is best to keep everything unchanged.

Some people think that the phrase "the emperor has no clothes" is too impolite and disrespectful to the emperor. The emperor should always be respectful, even if he has no clothes on. Wearing or not wearing clothes does not affect the emperor's ability to be emperor, but if you say no disrespectful words, it will greatly affect the subject's ability to be a subject. Everyone should be a good subject, this is our responsibility - you see, even they understand my duty. It's like they think that the people outside are all frogs and have been brainwashed. Yes, they, like you, believe they are good young men. Deep down, they are afraid that you are right, which proves them wrong.

Some people see that the person who says "the emperor has no clothes" is going to be unlucky. If you push this unlucky bastard yourself, the people around you won't say anything; even if someone will say something, you can confidently push back: patriotism and innocence! Looking at it again, this guy is better than himself, so what else is there to say, let's scold! They are afraid of being attacked by the target, so they only dare to form in groups and mix in the crowd. After all, given the opportunity to bring a person to trial without consequence in the name of justice, too many people can't resist the temptation of such extraordinary stimuli—beware, it's something even political minorities might do.

Some people are afraid that the masses will believe that "the emperor has no clothes" and do everything possible to save face for the emperor. They felt that "the emperor did not wear clothes" should be defined as a good thing, or simply redefine "wearing clothes". After all, this thing was done by the emperor, so it can be defined as a good thing. However, whether the emperor wants to announce to his subjects that he has no clothes, the emperor can only decide. The subjects knew that at this time they should not be the first to say it, that would be arrogance. Only this one who opened his mouth has suspicious intentions, either to show that he is smarter than others, or to rebel. Since it is a person with suspicious intentions, what he said is naturally untrustworthy. Of course, there is no need for everyone to see it, and it should be deleted; the speaker himself should at least be reprimanded.

The emperor himself was afraid not only of the sentence "the emperor had no clothes", but also of the person who spoke it, and most afraid of the person who knew it was the truth. If everyone said this sentence as if it was nothing, they would not be able to sit on the dragon chair. But there are many people who know this is the truth, even the four types of people just listed are no exception. Because even in the period when "liars are common", people will not tell lies to themselves, and they are more or less aware of the fact that "the emperor has no clothes". Even if the emperor wants to tell a lie to himself and tell himself that everyone doesn't know, it is very difficult. He can only deceive himself by trying to prevent people from saying this: no one speaks, no one knows.

There is another type of people who also heard the phrase "the emperor has no clothes" abroad, and couldn't help but burst into anger or burst into tears. They are actually angry for themselves and cry for themselves. Because they are very painful in foreign countries. They know they will be treated as discriminators as soon as they reveal their own ideas that are right in their country of origin. They know very well how their own country treats political minorities, and they think they know how foreign countries treat discriminators. They are really scared to death. So when someone said to foreigners that "the emperor has no clothes", and the foreigners gave a thumbs up, they almost fainted: Why can you tell your truth, and I can't speak my truth? They still don’t dare to say what they say, they only dare to try to prevent you from saying what you say, so that it is “fair” and in line with our country’s tradition of not talking about state affairs; after all, although we are not abroad, we are still Chinese what!

Objectively speaking, political minorities suffer only one fear, while all of the above suffer from two fears: the fear of someone breaking the established order to bring about change and the fear that the established order oppresses them.

Threatening your emperor also threatens them, and all their love for the emperor - if anything - comes from fear of the emperor. Any iron fist that can hit you can also hit them. Because "loyalty is not absolute, it is absolute disloyalty", except the emperor himself, no one can logically prove that he is absolutely loyal to the emperor. The emperor himself, as a single husband and a loner, is always in fear, because no one is absolutely loyal to him, but he has something that everyone wants to take away.

On the other hand, especially in foreign countries, the normal existence of democracy, freedom, logic, and law that are not a threat to you is very scary to them, because they are always worried about exposing that they do not understand or agree with all of this. Words and deeds have to bow their heads to admit their mistakes and even pay the price. Ironically, the pain of self-censorship and repression they feel at this time is the same as that experienced by political minorities in China; The experience I finally got abroad is the same.

Furthermore, even in China, as long as a discriminator likes any kind of foreign cultural product, he/she will be afraid that the person or thing he/she likes will "collapse" because of "humiliating China". This is not a kind of mental torture. ?

Many of them can't understand what's going on, but political minorities can.

Kathy, even if you're alone, even if you always feel small and empty and powerless, even if your body is still inside the walls, you're in a much better position than the person you're afraid of and everything you're afraid of. No matter what bondage and fear you suffer, they have more bondage and fear than you.

Whether you treat them as enemies or as fellow citizens, the decision is yours; but they must "wait for notice" from the invisible hand that manipulates their minds to decide the same thing. Congratulations, the moment you realize that your mind is free, you have acquired a spiritual wealth that can never be taken away by others. This spiritual wealth is your backing against feelings of insignificance, emptiness and powerlessness because you achieve financial freedom in the spiritual world.

three

Epiphany 3: Revolution is not a movement of the majority, and the revolution may not be dead.

It is said that normally only 1% to 8% of the population of a country will participate in a revolution , another claim that as long as 3.5% of the people participate in protests can ensure a major political change , in any case, this number is more than the political education we received when we were children The claims mentioned in are much smaller.

The people who may participate in the revolutionary protests are not necessarily as few as we think. For example, when WeChat blocked 600,000 accounts for Peng Zaizhou, a warrior of the Sitong Bridge, it means that 600,000 people participated in the protest in the form of "forwarding", and the number of people who knew that they could not send it was far more than that; for example, these two A book introducing psychological counseling sold 3 million copies in 2018, which means that 3 million people are seriously worried about their psychological state. These people may only need a reminder to find that this is fundamentally related to the political environment.

Of course, we can’t help but feel that the situation in China is special because, as I mentioned before, we have some of the strictest blockades and controls in the world online and offline, making sure that no one can organize and express their thoughts.

But China is still a country, the Chinese government is still a government, the Chinese Communist Party is still a ruling party, Xi Jinping is still a dictator, and the Chinese are still human beings. The country, government, ruling party, dictator, and even human beings are all entities that exist widely and objectively in this world. They have been studied in depth by people of insight in various eras and countries. Where there is text, it can be found more or less.

Reading books and articles about such basic concepts and typical examples can give confidence. This confidence does not lie in being able to accurately predict the future or carry out actions clearly, but in the fulfillment of mastering knowledge and summarizing laws.

Maybe the revolution won't break out, maybe the revolution won't break out in the way we imagined, maybe we can't wait for the revolution to break out, maybe the revolution break out is a huge disaster, but in any case, because China has a suspicious, ignorant and incompetent person The dictator, because the ruling history of the CCP is a history of the suffering of the people, except for a short system downtime in the middle, which has saved a small number of people, most Chinese people will inevitably experience more than once in their lives due to political reasons. huge disaster. Later historians are likely to think that revolutions are not the most terrifying compared to these endless and unexpected disasters.

I'm not advocating revolution, just like I'm not advocating a recession in China, or global warming. Does anyone else need to advocate for these things to happen? They are almost a historical inevitability; just as most Chinese subconsciously do not regard the CCP as a political party, but regard it as a historical inevitability, as not being It is called the ruler of the unity of the state and religion of God.

Now that we, the political minority, have woken up in a wrecked iron house, we should have the courage to admit to ourselves that disaster is just around the corner. Fear can't prevent disaster, action can improve the probability of surviving disaster.

How to act? In the face of the inevitable disaster, if there is a choice, the history of civilization and patriotism should be one of the better ones.

Four

The fourth epiphany: It is precisely because of the inability to forget Chinese that the history of civilization can be patriotic.

I will be forever grateful for the non-Han Kathy who made me aware of the concept of patriotism in the history of civilization, which made me realize that no matter where I am, what I do, which language I use more, as long as I keep my eyes on China, In Chinese, I am with China in the sense of the history of civilization. I am in China.

No matter how viewers feel, as long as they are still observing, they can find that China in the sense of civilization history is about to die out in China in the general sense. If one still cares about the survival of China in the history of civilization, one can no longer stick to just keeping Chinese civilization within China.

This is because civilizations are similar to ecosystems, and each cultural niche exists for a reason, and if critical cultural niches are severely disrupted, civilizations are also seriously threatened, and may even be completely destroyed.

It is no exaggeration to say that there has been a serious cultural niche vacuum in Chinese civilization. Our losses include but are not limited to:

Intellectuals who have the ability and space to supervise public opinion;

In-depth news reports with complete news elements;

Human rights lawyers defending persons accused of thought crimes;

Virtuous elders who are fair and convincing in traditional communities;

Stable mutual aid and self-organized public welfare groups in emerging communities;

Publicly publish books on contemporary history with unlimited public dissemination;

Academic institutions or popular science platforms with academic backgrounds;

Universal search engine;

A universal online encyclopedia;

A universal social platform around the world;

...

Are these losses really happening? When you can't see this on TV, you can't buy it in a bookstore, you can't find it on the first page of a search engine -- almost forgot, we don't even have a cross-platform search engine -- no matter what How many people with relevant titles are swaggering or struggling to survive, and yes, our losses do happen.

What do these losses mean?

We only know that someone somewhere has encountered something. The person involved and the person who sent the news may be credible or not, they may be able to speak out, or they may not. It's not clear who can ask, and the announcement in white letters on a blue background can't make it clear. We don't even know where we can remember it clearly so that people in the future can find it and be on guard.

After most of the hot events happened, we do not know the true identities and demands of the parties involved, the specific causes and results of the incidents, which individuals and organizations were involved, whether the incidents were isolated or continuous, whether there were reliable witnesses, and who would be responsible for the incidents. Responsible, what is the result of the treatment, whether there are difficulties that need professional help or explanation, what are the effects after the event, and whether long-term follow-up is required.

At the time of most hot events, people who realize that they have encountered an accident but have not yet reached the step of looking for the police or ambulance do not have a professional person or organization in their minds that they can turn to for consultation in the first place. Probably the closest way to ask for help is to post online, and the people who answer you are likely to be netizens and Internet celebrities, rather than real-name professionals in specific disciplines.

Before most hot events happened, people could only trust atomized individuals, no villagers, no neighbors, no believers, no long-standing non-governmental mutual aid or public welfare organizations. At least no one saves people, probably only cats and dogs. Even the latter, there are few stable, long-term and large-scale legal organizations. Because all non-governmental organizations that need to be stable, long-term, and large-scale need to be registered, but they are not allowed to register.

Most of the hot events have probably happened in other countries, but we don't know how they did it, although professional, popular, comprehensive, and free public information is on the Internet and on the Internet.

If this continues, we will soon not have to worry about hot events, because with the improvement of the audit level, even the occasional hot events will soon be invisible.

Because of the vacuum in these cultural niches, in China, the only social connections for adults who have left school are the government, work unit, and family. In most other countries, adults who leave school can still rely on the community, relying on various unofficial non-profit civic organizations.

Even those who think that their social relationships are in the virtual world, with netizens and group friends, as long as the Internet age is long enough, most of them have already experienced the feeling of losing some of them. After all, even the patient groups and forums of terminally ill patients may be disbanded. Under the whole world, there is no other than the king land, the bit world, and no exception.

The disappearance of the cultural niche is of course not because the people don't need it, but because the party doesn't need it. Some of them are not even the target of the party's efforts to destroy, but the party does not mind paying a price in the journey. Just because the party is afraid of all other organizations that can unite people's hearts and dilute the authority of justice and the right to interpret truth.

If it is said that this loss is irreversible, and that the history of civilization in China is beyond salvation, then it is not enough. Because as long as there is a need, people will reinvent generation after generation of things that will satisfy the demand.

For example, as a political minority, the June 4th generation did not have the opportunity to convey their political demands to the post-80s generation; the post-80s generation even had few representatives who formed clear political demands; however, kathy, 90s like you Even after the 2000s, it still independently produced a political appeal similar to that of its predecessors - a democratic and free China.

Why can the same political demands appear repeatedly without being passed on? Because there is always a small group of people in the human race occupying a cultural niche where injustice is questioned, no matter whether there is a political legacy left to them by their predecessors, people will think about it, and people want the truth.

In fact, in the overseas Chinese community, the reason why those cultural niches that disappeared in China have not reappeared is precisely because people are not desperate enough and have no awareness to protect the history of civilization; The more people there are, the more likely it is that the history of civilization in China will be preserved or reinvented in overseas Chinese communities. This is also in line with the truth that "despair is false, just like hope".

It is true that there are a lot of things that cannot be taken away that can only be left in or destroyed in China in the general sense. However, how much can be saved depends on how much you can save. The China in your own thoughts, memories, and records is also a branch and leaf in the history of civilization in China. . This branch and leaf is not a dead thing, it has life, will grow, and has the opportunity to regenerate its roots and sprout, and then form a new cultural ecosystem with thousands of companions. Whether the new system is called China or not, it is the spiritual successor of China in the history of civilization.

For Kathy outside the wall, as long as you want, all your life is a brand new Chinese life. If a precedent is needed, as a group, Jews can go to China for thousands of years and keep their spiritual homeland; as an individual, three generations of Japanese Americans in the United States can also become spiritual Chinese. Get used to the freedom you have now, and I only wish you the vitality of your soul.

As for Kathy in the wall, as long as you want, as long as the day of checking the diary has not arrived, you can still think and record. With the door closed, you are still in the China you identify with. Even if one day, you have to go to a place against your intentions, or lose your safe place, you still have the freedom of mind, I wish you all the best.

five

Kathy, I've said all I can, and I have a lot more to say. My only self-censorship is to prevent new blocking words from being added to the wall, and try not to mention the names of people and things that have deeply affected me, hoping that some of them will continue to survive in the wall. I also want to tell you what I have done over the years to practice my beliefs, what price I have paid, and what valuable experience I have gained; but at this time I can only say to you, if in reality Passing by, I'm the silent majority around you who has absolutely no interest in politics and only likes superficial entertainment.

I don't want this statement to make you relax your vigilance and put unnecessary trust in some people; I just want you to know that it is also possible that thousands of people who seem to live vulgar lives are actually hiding in the closet political minority in the . He/she may only care about self-help, or may be secretly helping others. Humanity seems incurable, but someone can save it.

Hope to see you outside the closet one day.

Kathy