1. I read Jung Changās memoir of growing up under Maoās Communist Regime. Every bit of information was tightly controlled, especially any sights or descriptions offered to foreign visitors.
Communist venues as so very sensitive to the failure of their system, that they need control the evidence.
When the socialists are in charge, one must believeā¦and agreeā¦.with every lie. Or...at least pretend to.
To survive and thrive, it is best to go even beyond the propaganda.
āIt was a time when telling fantasies to oneself as well as others, and believing them, was practiced to an incredible degree. Peasants moved crops from several plots of land to one plot to show Party officials that they had produced a miracle harvest. Similar āPotemkin fieldsā were shown off to gullibleāor self-blindedā agricultural scientists, reporters, visitors from other regions, and foreigners.ā
Chang, āWild Swans.ā
2. These facts were driven home, poignantly, when a listener called in yesterday, to the Chris Plante Radio Show, and shared a tale reinforcing the sort of thing that government school and the media hide, about the pretense and lies and conditions under which the victims of socialist/communist rule must exist.
The caller, an American, met a Chinese exchange student in graduate school, who lived in Wuhan during the Mao regime. The girlās parents had been sent to a re-education camp, and were never seen again. She lived on a farm during the famine, and, eventually, was sent to America to get a degree. Those who left China in this fashion were closely watched and controlled.
Some years after, both of them keeping in touch, she invited her Chinese friend to visit. She went grocery shopping with her visitor, and when in the store, her friend asked āis today a holiday?ā
āNoā¦.an ordinary day.ā
āDid you call them and tell them youād be bringing me?ā
āNoā¦.why would I, and why would they care?ā
Some time later, hearing how her friend had had to live in Communist China, she understood that the friend believed the American government would change things for foreign visitors to pretend that the country was great and prosperousā¦ā¦as they did in China.
Such was the impact of a fully stocked grocery storeā¦..something unseen under Communist governance.
3. Brought up in Maoās China, she thought America was the same, with pretend-prosperity. She believed that America would set up a Potemkin Supermarket to trick foreigners.
The term āPotemkinā originally referred to fake villages set up by the Bolsheviks to fool foreign visitors into believing that communism work. You donāt know about this if you were a victim of government schoolā¦..essentially āPotemkin schooling.ā
4. Potemkin village
āIn politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction whose sole purpose is to provide an external faƧade to a country which is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better, although statistics and charts would state otherwise.ā
Wikipedia
Communist venues as so very sensitive to the failure of their system, that they need control the evidence.
When the socialists are in charge, one must believeā¦and agreeā¦.with every lie. Or...at least pretend to.
To survive and thrive, it is best to go even beyond the propaganda.
āIt was a time when telling fantasies to oneself as well as others, and believing them, was practiced to an incredible degree. Peasants moved crops from several plots of land to one plot to show Party officials that they had produced a miracle harvest. Similar āPotemkin fieldsā were shown off to gullibleāor self-blindedā agricultural scientists, reporters, visitors from other regions, and foreigners.ā
Chang, āWild Swans.ā
2. These facts were driven home, poignantly, when a listener called in yesterday, to the Chris Plante Radio Show, and shared a tale reinforcing the sort of thing that government school and the media hide, about the pretense and lies and conditions under which the victims of socialist/communist rule must exist.
The caller, an American, met a Chinese exchange student in graduate school, who lived in Wuhan during the Mao regime. The girlās parents had been sent to a re-education camp, and were never seen again. She lived on a farm during the famine, and, eventually, was sent to America to get a degree. Those who left China in this fashion were closely watched and controlled.
Some years after, both of them keeping in touch, she invited her Chinese friend to visit. She went grocery shopping with her visitor, and when in the store, her friend asked āis today a holiday?ā
āNoā¦.an ordinary day.ā
āDid you call them and tell them youād be bringing me?ā
āNoā¦.why would I, and why would they care?ā
Some time later, hearing how her friend had had to live in Communist China, she understood that the friend believed the American government would change things for foreign visitors to pretend that the country was great and prosperousā¦ā¦as they did in China.
Such was the impact of a fully stocked grocery storeā¦..something unseen under Communist governance.
3. Brought up in Maoās China, she thought America was the same, with pretend-prosperity. She believed that America would set up a Potemkin Supermarket to trick foreigners.
The term āPotemkinā originally referred to fake villages set up by the Bolsheviks to fool foreign visitors into believing that communism work. You donāt know about this if you were a victim of government schoolā¦..essentially āPotemkin schooling.ā
4. Potemkin village
āIn politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction whose sole purpose is to provide an external faƧade to a country which is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better, although statistics and charts would state otherwise.ā
Wikipedia
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