Play Fair

you don't go into someone's house and start criticising everything you see, do you?

in my opinion, the western media has been doing exactly just that. no, actually, they are worse than that, because they have been picking on China for as long as the Olympic preparations started. it seems that China can do nothing right! they sneer at the architecture of the Nest and are morally offended by the amount spent. when the date drew nearer, soothsayers looked hopefully into the skies and pronounced the air pollution unmanageable.

sports commentators hint at homeground advantage, in case China wins more gold medals than the US. this is grossly unfair, and undermines the backbreaking (sometimes literally) effort that the sportsmen put in. the media struck gold when reports of lipsynching and voiceover surfaced. more reason to fault China's meticulous preparations. someone wrote to the press and commented that the opening ceremony was technically perfect but 'soulless'. what, if i may ask, would the writer define 'soul' as? it seems like an excuse for criticising, when there was nothing left to be dissatisfied about.

don't get me wrong. as a chinese singaporean, i don't even see myself as an overseas Chinese, so there is no nationalist outrage in this entry. i just feel that people have been very unfair to earnestness of the effort put in. come on, tibet or not, give credit where credit is due. besides, i can't help wondering, of all the western activists defending tibetan rights, how many have actually visited the place and made the effort to understand the situation?

it seems ironic to me that human rights is preached with such stridency and sense of superiority.