Peter J. Herz

pjherz@siu.edu

>Dear Massimo Lensi

My apologies for my snide inquiry earlier. I'm old enough to remember

American college campuses back in the days when "humanistic" radicals would

break your glasses or worse for saying anything critical about Mao Zedong.

Standing up for the Tibetans also cost me a grade in Modern Chinese History,

so whenever I see the word "radical", I get a little suspicious.

Can't say that many of the banners on your web page attract me, but thanks

for your communication, and I wish you the best of success in letting the

world know about the plight of Tibet. You may also wish to call attention

to what's going on in Eastern Turkistan and other minority areas of China.

You may be interested to know that when I served as U.S. Vice Consul in

Guangzhou, I visited the Lian Nan Yao Autonomous County in NW Guangdong. I

discovered that one reason the minorities cling to their traditional costume

is that tailoring and embroidering homespun doesn't cost a couple months'

income, as a manufactured garment would. I also heard the Han deputy county

magistrate describe the Yao as "primitives" for keeping livestock in their

houses--so I pointed out to him that the classical Chinese ideograph for

"home" had a pig under a roof, and hizzoner took it in good grace.

I asked about the status of the cult of the dog ancestor (Pan Hu) among the

Yao. Hizzoner indignantly said that before liberation, the Han called the

Yao "dogs", wrote the character with the dog radical, but now it is written

with the human radical, etc. The real answer to my question came when the

Han Hizzoner invited me to a special treat at a Han restaurant--braised dog

with turnips. The Hans and I ate with gusto, but I noticed that the Yao

secuirty man and driver in the deputy magaistrate's party sat in funereal

stillness while the rest of us ate their totem animal. Gratifying to see

that we Americans aren't the only folks who know how to put a minority in

its place.

Ciao.

Peter J. Herz

pjherz@siu.edu