Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

As protestors on the streets of Hong Kong continued their street battles with the police to demand the withdrawal of a controversial extradition bill, there have been some extraordinarily cynical comments about the ongoing events and their limited impact on the forcefulness of the Chinese government. The gist of the cynics' argument is that the protests are only likely to halt the inevitable passing of the bill by a few years, as the Chinese government and its puppet-like representatives in Hong Kong back off temporarily, only to move forward again more discreetly and in another form, under new leadership.

Hong Kong is burning, once again. After hundreds of thousands of yellow umbrellas accompanied protesters seeking greater rights inundated the city in 2014, the city is once again on lockdown, as some say more than one million people came out to protest the proposed bills allowing criminals to be extradited to the Chinese mainland. As businesses close down in support of the protests and 1 in 7 of the city's residents taking to the streets to demand the resignation of the Chief Executive Carrie Lam, the city seems to be at its political crossroads.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings that marked the beginning of the end for the Axis powers in World War II. As one of the Allied powers, China undoubtedly celebrates this occasion in its own muted ways. The sacrifice of more than 150,000 soldiers who landed on the murderous beaches of northern France was the first step in ending the more than a decade of warfare China was fighting, largely by itself, against Japan on the other side of the world. D-Day, for China, is the necessary precursor to the end of the war celebrations, of which is certainly goes all out for every year.

"Make America Great" and the "China Dream" are both toxic concepts. As the US and China slug it out in a trade war that is shaking up the way the entire world does business, the defining slogans of Trump and Xi are putting on a nationalistic, patriotic spin on blatantly prioritizing the interests of their own countries, citizens, and businesses. The success of the slogans has made the trade war not just about economic logic; it is now a battle of emotions, glory, and perceptions of national greatness, summed up in neat little shorthands that hide how international exchanges are being sacrificed.

On one of the major downtown boulevards of Tashkent is the Central Asian headquarters of Huawei, the now highly controversial Chinese telecommunication equipment manufacturer. The blue glass-tower, split into an A and a B wing, both emblazoned with giant red flower logo of the firm, are truly conspicuous on the streets of the Uzbek capital dominated by faceless concrete apartment blocks. It is around noon, and Uzbek employees, company IDs hanging from their necks, stream out of the towers front doors for lunch.

The Uzbek word for "hello" and "thank you" are respectively "salam alaykhum" and "rakhmat," but in part of Tashkent, one will only hear "zdrastvuyte" and "spasiba," their Russian equivalents. Bring a foreigner makes hearing Russian more likely, as it is the "high" language used for communication with foreigners (just like French in Arabic-speaking Morocco), but unlike Morocco, many people in Uzbekistan, even if they are not ethnically Russian, choose to speak among themselves in the high language.

One thing that was great about the Soviet Union is just how much effort the state put in to popularize some of the canons of Western classical arts. From ballet to opera to orchestra, classical arts, within the limited, non-political forms, thrived even in the remotest parts of the USSR, helping to spread their reach and training a cadre of excellent performers, who found ready audiences among the urban elites, who had little alternatives for entertainment.