Wow, it is hot outside. It has cracked 90 a couple times in the past few days.
I love it.
There are a million reasons I love warm weather in Wyoming, not the least of which is I don’t like bitter cold and winter road conditions. I am reveling being outside doing yardwork where I work up a sweat.
Not many times do I get to sweat in winter.
Warm weather also reminds me the 4th of July is around the corner. It is definitely one of my favorite celebrations. The day has been my favorite since I was a little tyke back in Houston. My folks let me mess around with sparklers and that was a big deal to a six-year-old. We even set off some small fire crackers back then.
When we moved to the D.C. area, there were restrictions on some fireworks, but it didn’t really matter because, as often as not, my family went the Washington Mall and watched the fireworks.
That is a pretty good fireworks show, especially for America.
I have to admit, the end of Chinese New Year in Shanghai back in 2012 changed my perspective on fireworks. The fireworks in Shanghai lasted almost 12 hours. There was so much white ash in the air, it looked like it was snowing. This was all over this city of 25 million.
Fireworks in China are on a more massive scale than what we do in America, I love celebrating 4th of July in every way possible. Fireworks, music, picnics and special ceremonies are all part of celebrating this excellent country’s birthday.
It will be even better now COVID is starting to be less of a problem, especially compared to last year.
I am thankful we are getting past a tough time in our country’s history and it feels right to be a little happier this year than last.
Celebrating our democracy this 4th is going to be top on my list. Sadly I watch a place I used to live and enjoy, turn into a state that tolerates no dissent from any citizen. China really wasn’t like that, when I lived there.
My first job I worked at was this one large expat restaurant t on a lake in Suzhou, about an hour west of Shanghai by train. This city of 8 million is known as the Venice of China. It was another place I got used to seeing spectacular fireworks all the time. Every weekend, both Friday and Saturday, brilliant fireworks would be set off over this lake. The staff of the restaurant had about 50 folk, all Chinese but myself, including the manager who had brought me on board, who was also American. He was a buddy who wanted me to shape up their bar.
I have to say, whether it sounds conceited or not; the staff loved me and in turn I loved them. My Chinese got way better and I learned about the individual dreams and goals of many of the workers around me. A lot of my biases I had about Mainland Chinese evaporated as I got to know them as individuals. It was a great job where I learned quite a lot.
That job actually opened up doors for me throughout China working in the liquor import business. For about five years plus, I met incredible Chinese people who owned distribution companies, restaurants and nightclubs. It was magical time because I watched China becoming more and more modern, and more international. There was almost an air of the government accepting human rights.
At this time, I was also blasting off to Hong Kong about once a month to visit my friend Darby Doll (Buck and Ardyce Hoem’s grandson for you Valley dwellers). It had amazing restaurants and it was so damn Western in so many ways, especially its freedoms allowed to citizens.
It was fun to visit.
China, while I lived there, was becoming amazingly capitalistic and communism almost seemed to be taking a backseat. No one was ever espousing Communist ideology at me. I worked for a man in the communist party, but we never talked politics. I never felt the urge because I didn’t really feel I was in a communist country. But I was very wrong.
I departed China just as President Xi came into serious power. I watched him destroy a main rival just before I left. The intrigue involved in the demise of this one politician would make a good movie.
Xi didn’t stop with that guy. Although Xi was educated in the United States and comes off sometimes as a cultured individual, the man believes in total power.
He has not been shy about getting it from inside the communist party or in other places. Hong Kong comes to mind to me today, just because I recently read all editors were arrested from this pro-democracy newspaper based in Hong Kong.
There are so many freedoms being lost in this once dynamic free city, this column do not have the room.
I have been going to Hong Kong before it was handed over in 1997 from the British. It has always been a fantastic, lively place, British Asia if you please. Many worried the Chinese would not honor their commitment to let Hong Kong be a special entity in greater China.
The Chinese government did honor the agreement for the most part for many years. Although it was a little unnerving seeing Chinese soldiers walking down the street with their AK47s, really nothing changed in how Hong Kong did business. The place still had newspapers that were free of censorship and often were critical of Chinese government policy.
About two years ago, this all changed. People are getting arrested for criticizing the government in a way that never happened before. Plus, on another front, the Chinese military started getting more aggressive in their flyovers of Taiwan. Taiwan is another democratic place I have lived that is in danger by China.
Xi has decided to make China a world power and he is doing it. He stands for no internal rebuke of his policies and if you don’t agree with him, you better not be living in a place he can get his hands on you. He is almost trying develop a cult-like following with the people.
So sad and not the least scary.
This is what occurs when you let an almost absolute leader have few checks and balances. When critics are silenced and people can’t speak any opposition without alienation, bad things happen.
China is living proof with their strongman Xi.
The Chinese people I met were so good to me for the most part, and it is hard to believe, I probably can’t speak comfortably with them any longer about the world. Before, I would hear criticism occasionally about the government from Chinese with whom I interacted. I know that wouldn’t happen now.
China was never a democracy, but Hong Kong was for the most part and that can’t be said any longer. China’s Xi is trying to snuff it out.
Because I see how fragile freedom can be, the 4th of July will to be celebrated strongly in my mind this year. I am so grateful we are a democratic country. Although many people are on opposite sides of opinion, for the most part, we can voice our differences without fear of reprisal.
I don’t think I ever appreciated how lucky we are to live in such free country until this year as I have watched China roll over Hong Kong. Are we a nation of no problems? Of course we have issues. Some of them are major, but we aren’t put in jail for giving honest opinions.
I hope never to see that day happen.
Celebrating this year, I will find myself at Medicine Bow Town Park. The fireworks show might not be the longest I have ever seen but to me–as I take in what a great place I live; Carbon County; Wyoming; America–the show will be spectacular.
Reader Comments(0)