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What guests from West mean in East

By OP Rana (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-22 07:45

Beijing's air quality is the worst in the world. The pollution can kill a normal human being even in 17 days. All Olympics' venues, including the architectural marvel the Bird's Nest, are virtual death traps. Even the water in the Water Cube is poisonous. It will suffocate swimmers to death. Let alone setting new records, athletes will find it impossible to even breathe in Beijing.

These are but some of the examples of what the Western media has served its readers and viewers in the run-up to and even during the Beijing Games.

We were even treated to an abrasive spectacle of a couple of athletes walking in the Beijing airport terminal with ridiculous-looking masks on even before stepping out into the Beijing air. Perhaps, gas masks would have served their purpose better.

The Games enters its 15th day today. Going by what the anti-China propaganda machine has preached, many athletes and journalists should have fallen like ninepins by now. There should have been pandemonium in Beijing. Life itself should have been at stake. But what have we seen instead?

The Games is still three days away from closing (including today). There are still a couple of dozens of gold, silver and bronze medals up for grabs and some more world and Olympic records to be broken.

Though no one can predict how many more records would be broken, we know how many have already been consigned to the flame of the Olympic torch. Till yesterday evening, 37 world records had tumbled and one equaled. Olympic records have taken a bigger battering: 48 broken and two emulated.

Let's get into some classification, especially in speed and stamina events in which air and water play a vital role. Four world and five Olympic records have been broken in athletics. Swimming (in that "poisonous" water) has produced 21 world records (seven by that phenomenon called Michael Phelps alone) and a staggering 27 Olympic records. Maybe the charge against Beijing now would be that its water is too thin and its air (despite the haze, which the West reads as "pollution") artificially altered to suit record breakers.

The problem lies in the difference of perspectives of the East and the West. But again the problem is some people refuse to accept facts, hence their perspectives are pre-conceived. No matter what an experiment yields, they will not budge from what they have conceived as the result. Call it mindset, if you will. It's this mindset that prompts the West to do what it does, and the East to behave as it has always been doing for centuries, if not millenniums.

In the East, the guest is god. A host will go to any length to please him. At the dinner table, the host will fill the guest's plate and glass even before they're empty - even if that means going hungry himself. It is for the guest to understand that he is not supposed to clean his plate, for that would mean the host has not treated (rather fed) him properly.

This in short is the mindset of the East. This is the mindset that once prompted an Arab to welcome his father's killer into his house, serve him the best food for dinner, offer him the best bed for a comfortable night's sleep and present him one of his best steeds in the morning because he is lost in the desert and the nearest human settlement is miles away. But the Arab has to avenge his father's death, too, but not before telling his guest the truth. But then he gives the guest a couple of hours of lead before the chase would begin.

It's break the Arab's heart, for he knows full well it would be impossible to catch his father's killer. But he has no choice. He cannot even as much as talk harshly to his guest, let alone harm him.

The Oriental man has always been at the receiving end (literally and metaphorically), not because he does not have a choice, but precisely because that is his choice. And Chinese people are the essence of the East. They have been around for more than 5,000 years and understand eveything, but they will continue welcoming guests and are proud of the choice they've made.

E-mail: oprana@hotmail.com

(China Daily 08/22/2008 page10)