From 1930s England through the Kennedy and Nixon years in the U.S., to display an umbrella was to allege political softness, says Edward H. Miller, an academic at Boston’s Northeastern University. “If you are compromising, you are umbrella man.”
“It seems the umbrella is used for the opposite purpose (in Hong Kong),” Mr. Miller said in an interview with China Real Time. “It’s a symbol of strength, a symbol of defiance.”
When photos spread over the weekend of Hong Kong protesters unfurling umbrellas to protect against tear gas shot by local police, their protest movement earned the moniker “Umbrella Revolution.”
9 comments:
This is too easy.
Those protesters better hope their umbrellas are tank proof, too.
I think it went that wearing a sword got to be frowned upon in polite European society and its replacement was the walking stick that could be something of a weapon if need be. Makes sense that the unfurled umbrella would be one more step away.
Maybe in some Asian cultures the umbrella was traditionally associated with nobility in the same sense that having a suntan marked you as a laborer, low status. So maybe waiving an umbrella is like a soldier having his photo taken with his feet up on the desk of the recently deposed dictator.
Just guessing, here.
An umbrella would be useful for a downpour such as just now passed.
Such drama! And right before the rain stops the whole sky lights up and I know, just know we are somebody's rainbow, if I raced to the roof I would see one.
And the whole time I was thinking the high wind that kicks up bodes poorly for my plan that is formulating for the terrace.
As for the plan, regarding plants, my realization is just stop messing around. For each container buy one or two 1-3 gallon tall center piece plants, six or so 4-5 inch pot bushy or trailing edge plants, and a dozen or so bushy or trailing side plants. Think of each container in those terms and mix Flowers with vegetables and herbs, using flowers in support of vegetable's shortcomings.
High wind could topple the containers.
Know what's weird? One of my failures is a chile plant, rather easy to grow. Three of them in separate containers with other various other plants from separate chile seeds. They did well then behaved as if being attacked by aphids or some mysterious unseen chile caterpillar, a chilepitter that denuded them of leaves. And then as stems, as the heat of summer passed, filled out again with new leafage, flowering all along the way but never forming chiles.
That plant just now got wind-whipped like you wouldn't believe and yet stands sturdy as a bonsai.
And now all is quiet and the plants that remain are soaking up the last rays of the sun.
The Chinese version of, "We goin' upside yo head".
The Chi-communists keep doing what neo-fascist democrats would love to do here. shut down social media when it speaks out against the government.
or blame is on the Koch brothers.
is = it.
weee!
I read Theodore White's book on his experience in China during the war. He had studied Chinese at Harvard and knew all about the place. He thought the Red Chinese were pure and honest and that the Nationalists were corrupt and fascist. Maybe, maybe not. But Taiwan, under the Nationalists, evolved into a democracy--the first in China's four-thousand year history--and has a higher standard of living than many European countries. I think the long arc of history has undermined many of the arguments advanced by White and the liberals of that era. It seems that they were also wrong about colonialism or, at least, the former Crown Colony of Hong Kong.......If colonialism is so debilitating and Communism is so liberating, why are the people in the streets.
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