3/07/2010

The badge of pride and pedigree

The princelings of China are emerging everywhere, and very successful. Their pedigree background is a badge of honour and also a badge to a smoother path to material success. It gives hint to an age old culture when princes and royal ties were equated with power and status. This is a big contrast to the days of communism when poverty and peasant background were brandished as a badge, as a true red communist. And in the days of the flower people of the 60s, rich kids rejected their affluent trappings to smoke pots and donned filthy and tattered clothes, living in the parks, as the way of life. Rejection of society and wealth was the in thing. Scions of the rich left their homes and families to look poor and smelly. This reminds me of a confrontation between the Soviet leader Khruschev and China's Zhou En Lai. Khruschev came from humble and peasant background and was very proud of it. His badge of pride and pedigree. Zhou En Lai's background was from the gentry and landlord class. And both became communist leaders. Khruschev used to sneer at Zhou En Lai for his rich background and proclaimed to everyone that his was of poverty and peasantry. We were both communist, but from different classes. Zhou En Lai agreed, yes we were both communist, I was rich and you were poor. And we have both betrayed our class. And they toasted to that.

4 comments:

Wally Buffet said...

Zhou En Lai, much admired and respected, more so than Lao Mao.

It takes a greater man to betray his gentry class than a peasant aspiring to be genteel.

Khruschev blinked and backed down in the Bay of Pigs Cuban standoff. He responded as a peasant would, as it reminded him of the time when his feudal lords talked down to him. Chou Eng Lai would have shown JFK the finger and tell the American to f@#k himself.Both legends, but miles apart in substance.

Anonymous said...

I think there are plenty of khruschevs in SIN and not many Chous to look up to.

Anonymous said...

If we keep electing more Khruschevs to represent us, how can we have any Chous to look up to?

Anonymous said...

To be able to humble oneself is something our self glorifying and forever boasting leaders can ever achieve.