Not All Chinese Are Gutless

My dad is a professional hobbyist. This aspect of his personality benefitted me hugely growing up as I got to participate in whatever had captured his fancy. Fishing, building construction, tennis, stamp collecting (I passed on that one), table tennis, dancing and so on. But for as long as I've known him, his love for the written word, politics and history has remained constant.

Dad contributes regularly to an online Chinese poetry site based in Macau. Recently he posted a poem in tribute to ths year's Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiabo who is currently imprisoned in China for his non-violent struggle for human rights. Dad called today to tell me that he had been criticised and accused online as being an anti-revolutionary for what he wrote in his poem.

Liu Xiabo

I warned him to be careful on his trip to China at the end of the year. I said maybe his phone was bugged as we spoke. After all, he was a counter-revolutionary now!

Here is the poem below. It loses a lot in English translation, rather like comparing an ice sculpture with a lego house but you'll get the gist:

In Praise of the Liu Xiabo - Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Praise, for you have gone to prison with courage.
Not all Chinese are gutless.
You refused to go into exile
although now you are in such a fatal enterprise.
Heaven and earth tremble beneath your dignity
while the termites put on their show.
In the chill of the morning,
I behold your withering statue
as the rising current, rages on.

Personally I think he shoud re-title it - Not All Chinese are Termites