OPINION> Brendan John Worrell
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OPINION> Brendan John Worrell
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People to people - thirty years from now
By Brendan J. Worrell (Chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-11-03 16:40 Weird is the word for the weekend that passed.
Standing at the podium addressing attendees at the Australia China Council's 30th Anniversary here in Beijing Saturday evening, Professor John Fitzgerald spoke of the release of a diplomatic dispatch that had been declassified after three decades. Written by a then young Australian diplomat, it spoke of the potentialities for Australia's economy if China were to follow a similar growth trajectory as was then being experienced by Japan, somewhere around an annual 10% GDP rise. At the time it was ridiculed by those in Canberra and quietly shelved to the archives.
The speaker then called upon the prospective minds to write up a similar visionary appraisal of just where this relationship was heading and where it may be another 30 years later. He concluded by mentioning that he first came to China decades ago and that since this time the contacts, relationships and friends he had made, remained stable and life affirming to this day. This last point got to me as I thought of all my Chinese friends and how I hoped we could remain that way long into the future. At my table to the left sat a Chinese journalist of the Hui ethinic group who had studied cultural heritage in Australia. She'd just returned from a trip to Iran where she said the locals were amicable and anything but the alleged axis of evil. Next to her Professor Emeritus, Colin Mackerras, who first lived in China back in 1964, modestly stated that he had written a book about China's ethnic minority groups - I later discovered he'd written or co-edited more than twenty publications about China! It was intriguing for the Chinese at our table to listen to a foreigner discuss his research on a little known Tu ethnic group. To my right was a young Hainan man, also a journalist, who I discovered happened to be a good friend of one of my old colleagues here at the China Daily. Myself, having lived on his island for several years, quickly found points of interest and shared passion as we traced our footsteps back to the tropics. Here in the capital summer has left us and now its time for the human condition to warm us. The people to people connections, which the speaker had commented on, were being played out like a symphony. So next morning I made my way out to the 11th International Conference on Australian Studies in China and was to sit through a series of papers presented by Chinese scholars analyzing the intricacies of my country and its relationship with China. At times they seemed to know more about my country than I did. Today over 100 000 Chinese study in Australia, our largest international study group. I was overwhelmed particularly when a Professor Wang Yewang presented a paper titled, "Australia's best known song and its Chinese translations". To hear "Waltzing Matilda", a fabled folk song about an Australian migrant worker who steals a sheep, being discussed here in Beijing on a Sunday morning and then to be sung in Chinese was surreal. Then later at lunch, I sat next to an Australian who revealed how decades earlier he used to listen in on a two-wave receiver to Radio Peking. This seeming fascination we have for each other's culture is evident. I hope it remains, thrives and gets fed by our leaders and teachers. Ideally it gets deeper with time. What emerges is Chinese coming to Australia, only to be surprised at all the Chinese one finds in Sydney. Yet it also sees westerner's coming to China, only to be witness to all the KFCs and 7-11's sprouting. It all get's back to that question, where will we be 30 years from now. Hopefully it is closer, better understood and respected, around a round table on equal terms, laughing and listening, loving life the way it should be - the attitude no longer "with us or against us" - just simply - "in it together as one". Contact the author: brendanjohnworrell@hotmail.com |
