Health matters

By Zhang xin 

Reader question:

In this headline – Buffett: Bank woes are ‘poetic justice’ – what does "poetic justice" mean?

My comments:

Let’s read the story first. It is as follows:

TORONTO (Reuters, February 7, 2008) – The woes in the US financial sector are "poetic justice" for bankers who designed and sold complex investments that have since gone sour, billionaire investor Warren Buffett said on Wednesday.

The head of the Berkshire Hathaway Inc group of companies also played down worries about a credit crunch by saying that recent interest rate cuts mean low-cost funds are readily available… Buffett, one of the world’s wealthiest people, appeared to see irony in the fact that many of the banks who marketed complex investments which have now crashed are bearing much of the fallout.

"It’s sort of a little poetic justice, in that the people that brewed this toxic Kool-Aid found themselves drinking a lot of it in the end," he said.

…

Got the picture?

Now, definitions. First, justice. Justice in the ordinary sense means eye-for-eye, tooth-for-tooth revenge or punishment. In the court of justice, for example, when the judge sentences a murderer to death, we say it’s justice being served.

Poetic justice, on the other hand, is the sort of karmic view of events by the artist. Or simply, it is justice in literature – in which good conduct is usually rewarded with good while evil is rewarded with evil. In The Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, for example, every good character in every tale is always rewarded (with good) in the end, no matter how tortuous the path. This ability, or tendency, or freedom of the writer to interpret events this way is called poetic license, which, by the way, merits a column in its own right.

Anyways, the idea of poetic justice originates from Aristotle’s Poetics, in which the Greek philosopher explains is view that poetry should be superior to history in that it show what should occur (what’s morally right to have happened) instead of merely what does occur (what actually happened).

In short, what Buffet was saying was this: Those maverick bankers who had created an environment that led to the sub-prime loan crisis are now forced to drink their own poison. They are being punished for their own crime, figuratively speaking, of course. They deserve it. It serves them right.

Or still in other words, what goes round comes round.

By Liu Shinan

Thousands of Chinese rallied over the weekend in Paris, London and Los Angeles, protesting some Western media organizations’ distortion of facts in Tibet and their hostile attitudes to China’s hosting of the Olympic Games. During the protests, many Chinese students, especially girls, wept.

They wept because they felt aggrieved. The hostile feelings about China they witnessed in those Western countries recently hurt their national pride. It hurt their love of their country, which is also the host country for the Games. They were too young to be indifferent to their emotions.

The Chinese youths went to the Western countries with the purpose of learning advanced science and technologies and with their admiration for Western culture.

These people in their 20s were born in the years after China began to open itself to the outside world. Since their childhood, they have grown a strong interest in everything Western - from KFC to Christmas tree, from Hollywood to Harry Potter. And they developed an admiration for such concepts as liberty, equality and universal fraternity that they believed originated in the West.

After they had lived there for a certain period of time, however, they began to realize that the "fraternity" is not universal. Because of various reasons, they often suffered from misunderstanding, which sometimes turned into discrimination. Though they were pampered children at home, they swallowed the misunderstandings and even the insults and tried to adapt themselves to the local culture.

When riots and violence erupted in Tibet last month, they learned the facts from their relatives back at home. But they were shocked at the biased reports about the event in the Western media. It was so obvious that it was the rioters who killed innocent people, burnt shops and destroyed public utilities; but the Western media subjectively alleged that the Chinese government "suppressed peaceful protests".

The Chinese youths in Western countries could not understand why the Western media distorted the facts so blatantly.

Then, when the British, French and US media merrily focused their cameras on Tibetan separatists’ attempts to disrupt the Olympic torch relay, the Chinese youths were completely disappointed with what they once thought were fair and honest Western media. And the frequent calls from Western politicians for boycotting the Beijing Olympic Games convinced the Chinese youths that hostile elements in Western countries would never be happy about a China that is growing stronger and more influential.

These youths, and their peers back in China, are what is dubbed "post-1980s" in analyses on the generation gap. They were generally thought to be self-centered, afraid of hardships and uncaring about the fate of the nation. Their parents and teachers worried greatly about China’s future,skeptical of these kids’ sense of responsibility to the nation.

The strong patriotic feelings they demonstrated in their fight against Western biases and for the protection of the Olympic torch relay should put their parents’ hearts at ease.

They are drawing lessons from what they have seen and experienced. What they learned in the past few weeks far exceeded what their teachers had taught them in many years. They are maturing in the face of setbacks and discriminations.

In this sense, we have reasons to be grateful to those Western media organizations for their "turn black into white" variety of journalism, to those Western politicians with their innate prejudices against China; and to those, like CNN’s Jack Cafferty, who went to great lengths to vilify China.

E-mail: liushinan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/23/2008 page8)

By Raymond Zhou

Before the smoke and dust surrounding the South China tiger photos taken in Shaanxi province settled, someone claimed to have successfully photographed the big cat - widely believed to be extinct in China - in Hunan province. This time, unlike the still images from Shaanxi, it was a 20-second video clip with a very mobile animal.

Shortly afterwards, the local authorities, after an investigation, revealed that the whole thing was a hoax. It turned out that a television reporter had conspired with a circus manager to execute the better-than-Shaanxi idea. The circus has a Northeastern tiger. The two moved it to a patch of woods where they shot the clip. You have to admit that it was a giant leap up in the echelon of make-believe from the previous poster blowup - at least that’s what most people believe it to be.

And unlike the Shaanxi authorities whose investigations are still on, the Hunan leaders were decisive. Yes, it was a fake even though this one involved a genuine tiger.

But there are similarities as well. In both cases, some local experts were quick to confirm the authenticity of the tiger!

The most brilliant bon mot came up during the investigation. A developer of local tourism who was found to have masterminded the ruse, nonchalantly justified the hoax. He told reporters that tourism is all about make-believe. "Now that you guys have killed the tiger concept, we’ll have to create new ones, maybe the South China leopard."

He went on to argue that the local county is mountainous, unfit for farming. Tourism is a way out of poverty. County officials have designated it as a strategy to "feed and enliven" the people. "Tourism needs capital. But it needs creativity even more. The tiger could have been a spark."

Before I could laugh him off as insane, I walked down the memory lane to think of all the places I had visited. In one place near an old town in Yunnan, I - and a group of tourism scholars - were led to a mountainside with many totem poles that looked like 3,000 years old. We were told of the ancient civilizations that once flourished there.

Honestly, we were impressed. The whole place had some primitive power and beauty. Then, I turned to the Australian professor in our group: "Forgive my ignorance, but I’ve never heard of this place. It looks at least as impressive as Stonehenge."

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