Hello world readers,

Time past like flying, it comes to the end of our semester that almost like a snap. In the past seven month, we had already read and study numbers of great literatures in our class. However, there weren’t one of them able to trigger such ripples in my mind as Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. As an international student who also studying in the continent of North America, me and Changez shares many similar experiences of living away from home regardless some differences in the setting.

The book immediately caught my interests by its passionate voice(dramatic monologue) and detailed narrative which keep interact with my thoughts. I’m able to find my own “shadows” when the story gradually moving forward, brings out some nearly oblivious memories back to my head. It was hilarious that I felt confuse by the “haunted voice” that the mystery figure Changez sometimes speak to. I couldn’t identify the setting of the scene until I read Peter Morey’s essay and saw the paragraph on the back cover of the novel. However, the story does not wind up in a delightful way, which I thought it might turn into an inspirational story that Changez became a successful financial analyst who working in a global top 500 company in the Wall street. More closer to the end of the story more it struck on my feeling. From the tension between India and Pakistan,and then he being fired by the company, to the nightmare that Erica is missing or possibly suicide and in the end when he have no choice but have to come back to Pakistan and become an Anti-America lecturer.

Although the story isn’t carry on what I expected and my personal life wasn’t severely impact by 9.11 as Changez experienced. However, the story reveals the dilemma situation when he living in America. Changez decide to go back to Pakistan to visit his family during the Christmas but when he arrives at Lahore, he wasn’t satisfied with the living conditions: “I was struck at first by how shabby our house appeared…the electricity had gone that afternoon, giving the place a gloomy air… our furniture appeared dated and in urgent need of reupholster and repair… (Hamid, p.124)” Even the city where I came from wasn’t as bad as over there in Pakistan, but I had similar feeling and discomfort every time I went back. The elevators in my apartment are quite slow and need to maintenance; there are more and more name brand cars on the parking lot of my apartment, compares to the Nissan my parents bought few years ago; lack of parking spaces in the city forcing people take public transit, so as always, I have to go into a subway in rush hour or standing shaky inside the bus full of people; sometimes the north wind bring smoggy weather to my place which got me a sore throat; last but not least, there are people everywhere and it makes me feel annoyed since I had been lived in a small town in Ontario for my entire high school. Me and Changez have found both of our birthplaces become unfamiliar but indeed is because we had changed so much during our adaption of western ethnics and culture. Different people may have different circumstances yet from many individual I had encountered, it is not easy to blend into an entire new society when you’re original from the opposite side of the planet. Despite all the complain I made, deep down in my heart, I’m still loving and feel proud of where I am from. I’d lived in a local host family who are very enthusiastic on volunteer activities and they also makes friends with many newcomers who have various backgrounds. Just like Changez in the story, he often narrative the beauty of Lahore and rich history of Pakistan, I always keen on introduce my city to those who interesting or asking about my background and correct some stereotypes about my country. Come to the close of the story, Changez made a decision to went back to his home. However this may not be the path I have to follow. I feel very lucky by both countries I lives in especially after reading the book and other news on wars recently which I realized how peaceful the society I currently living in. I know how cliche and naive of my realization sounds might like but it does make me feel satisfy.

Note: if you are not familiar with the quote, please read the two paragraphs from page 124.

References:

Picture: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-reluctant-fundamentalist-2013

Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2008. Print.

Morey, Peter. ““The Rules of the Game Have Changed”: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Post‐9/11 Fiction.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing47.2 (2011): 135-46. Routledge. Web.

Hello readers,

Long time no write! It’s been really long time since my last post.

We had classes on the topic of the Iraq War last week and we also read the part of “Redeployment” which is closely related to the war theme. I wasn’t clear about the background for the story at first so the first sentence “We shot dogs” immediately release a disgust feel towards the narrator. As I reading on, the identity of dog is whirling to recognize, it becomes clearer when the protagonist narrating his own pet and blurry when he switch to another scene.

Klay deliberately stitching the story with the identity of dog while narrative some experiences of battlefield through Sergeant Price. I feel the story is very precise and authentic because of  sufficient details given from the Iraq war and the live back to America. In compare to the representation of the Iraq war through America films, the convention war movies are usually very intense in the settings and emphasis on the expression of body actions. In consideration for audience experience, producer often dramatized the plot in order to heroize the protagonist. Moreover, many war theme movie tends to make people feels some level of inspiration and ends in glory. Yet Klay’s work second person narrative is able creating the conversation among readers and narrator which is what film inability to do. 

Despite my harsh criticizes of American movie productions on war, there are one exception that just come out from my mind which is the 2014 movie called “American Sniper”(based on the memoir). The movie is based on true story of Chris Kyle, who was the most deadliest sniper, with 255 kills during the Iraq War. It shares many similarities with the “Redeployment” and the connection between two literatures help me understand the each other more thoroughly. For instance, both characters are facing the choice of kill or not kill during the moments when they are pause and ponder while aiming at the targets. In the movie, Chris first two killings are a woman and a child with grenades. He hesitate when he had killed the women and the boy keep walking toward American troops. However Chris eventually pull the trigger and then he reveal a unspeakable emotion on his face. It is identical similar to when Price and his crew discover the insurgent hide under the filthy well, his conscience prevent him from shooting and also make him felt sad about the poor enemy which is comparable later on during the execution of his own dog, Vicar.

Four deployments to Iraq caused Chris experience significant PTSD symptoms when he back home. There many scenes in the movie indicates that Chris lost his temper very easily and try to solve problems with force. Notably both of them begin distant from their lovers and pull back from daily life after they back from the front. Perhaps, the stories are not only tend to direct our finding for the actual identity of dog but also questioning who is grieve-able？ Soldiers and enemies lost their lives on the battlefield yet for the veterans the war experiences had impede their intimate relations with families, the love one and last but no least, the injured souls that needs to be heal. Therefore, in this case, all lives involved in fightings for “justice” whether the enemies or the troops should be given grieve and understanding.

Sources:

The New York Time: “A Wave of Military Memoirs With You-Are-There Appeal ” by Julie Bosman

Hello readers,

Our poetry unit had came to a conclusion today, and we spent our past four classes looking at poems that regard to September 11th attack. Although I did briefly study poetry in the high school class and even had chances to write a few poems. But I never encounter any poems which focus to express on a national memory or traumatic event. In this unit, I gained insight about how this “obscure” type of literature which once was prevalent to convey the collective memories of the traumatic event. Two genres we focused on are lyric and language poetry, but today I want to discuss with you about my personal understanding on Juliana Spahr’s “This Connection of Everyone with Lungs”.

The collection starts with a repetitive, overlay structure of poems that insist the idea of that the space between everyone is connected with air by breathing into our lungs which create a linkage among every human beings on the planet. My first perception of the poem is like when academicism artists encounter Monet first Impressionism artwork “Sunrise” in 19th century. The poems of Spahr really deliver a sense of blurriness and meaningless just like critiques from conventional artists on Monet artworks are dim in color and lack of finely details. However, when I notice this endless poem is actually dedicate “scheme” by the author in order to let its readers generate a resonance, I begin to amazed that poetry can have such mystical power to keep its readers in the same “frequency” of thoughts.

Rest of the works are also featured by repetitive structure and many sentences are applied the with juxtaposition between one object and another. Most interestedly, the subjects that Spahr put together usually don’t have any logically connection. There are many examples such as sleeping, the bed, the birds singing outside in the morning, the sound of planes fly over, ships put off from ports. Those trivial matters in our daily lives indicates a peaceful and comfort situations that many Americans are favored by. However, the another half of the combinations (juxtaposition) usually aren’t things that make us feel delightful. I felt overwhelming by the poems because it’s like a series of breaking news that play on TV, many of them are flash in screens and a second later nobody can remembered. Perhaps, the author try to increase the sensitivity especially American to being aware of incidents happened in rest of the world. Therefore, I can now argue it is purposeful to apply huge amount of juxtapositions in poetry which tends to form a sharper contrast between two detach objects in order to express author’s point of view.

Although, we now realized how lucky we are living in one of the best pieces of continents on Earth. But I don’t think this is the final level of thinking that Spahr wants us to achieve. In the book, she intended or I should say successfully control our breathing in the beginning, but in different angle I sense helplessness when she try to interrupt or alter the things happened far away in other areas of the planet. It reflects contemporary poets are currently feeling “out of alternative” in global situations which means they aren’t powerful as many politics leaders who able to bring changes in societies. Coincidently, it is very similar to ancient Chinese poets who often express helplessness about bad governance of authorities. So, the questions that Spahr asking is clear: as a normal citizens how can we maintain harmony with each others while take actions on the foreign conflicts? Do we have the responsibility to help the individuals that are suffering in the flames of war? On other hands, is it the contributions made upon world peace represent the spirit of a “Global Citizen? Feel free to share with me about your idea also comment on my analysis on Spahr’s poems.

Appreciate your time with my thoughts.

Reference:

Spahr, Juliana. This Connection of Everyone with Lungs: Poems. Berkeley: U of California, 2005. Print.

Hello, everyone,

I feel like the time was elapse fast that is again for me to take on our class blogger.（You might never seen my previous blogs because I wasn’t in this class last term). In the past week, we had gone through the work “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect” by Judith Butler, which sounds like a philosophical script when I tried to digest words from it. However, some of our classmates went back to our first week of reading on Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and comes out with some new perspective on the terrorist attack.

I believe every bloggers in our class have done a great job in each of your blog, but I didn’t have time to read through them one by one. First blog that draw my interest is Kennedy who comments on Butler’s question which ask for what does it means to be human? He then answer the question with a cosmopolitan view which I strongly agree that humanity is despite the border of nation-state, who don’t come from the same background doesn’t mean we can deny the fact he also a human. Through Butler’s lens, Kennedy also identified some actions the American government took that reveal the hypocrisy under the mask of freedom from their constitution. By also discuss on Butler, in Isaiah’s journal he takes a deeper look on the concept of “dehumanize” which basically claimed when you feeling threaten by someone, you will not perceive he as a human being . He  exemplified with the event of Holocaust, which is when Nazi Germany seems the genocide of Jewish as an statistic. This example, let me recall my history teacher while I was in high school once quotes a (in)famous sentence by Joseph Stalin, “The death of one men is a tragedy, but the death of millions is a statistic ”. When I rethinking this “dehumanizing” phrase, is kind of true when it applies to many historical artificial atrocities which reveals the brutal and cold-blooded (political/military) figures just like Stalin himself.

Two another people I had looked at are focusing on the novel “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. One query arouse since I finished the novel is why the story doesn’t seems much relevance with 9/11 attack, and some of us do debate on their blogs. Erin argues that the experience of Oskar does not engage with public mourning after the attack happened. He is upset on his American identity because he discover more footages and facts from foreign websites them the domestic television channel. It suggests that many American media had modify the images that will eventually go to public views in order to promote the value of American exceptionalism and formed the wave of Islamophobia. Coming next, In Inneke’s blog, instead of dig down to the historical trauma of 9/11, she compares the movie played in 2012 with the actual novel. I felt similarly when I was watching that touching movie although it abandoned much of the grandparents part.However it does shown me the visual contexts that I couldn’t form by only reading the words which improve my understanding when I browsed the book later on.

In the end, I want to say that I had receive many unique insights about both the novel and Butler’s opaque essay after read all of the intellectual talks you made. During this blog posts, I saw lots of opinions that are resonate to me and hopefully I will see more amazing thinkings that will compelling me to read and comment in future.

Hello everybody,

It’s been two weeks since the second semester began, hopefully everyone had a wonderful Christmas break. We already read the first literature in our class about the 9.11 attack, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, a touching story of a nine-year old boy name Oskar hold on a key from his father who tragically died in the Twin tower. Oskar called 9.11 “the worst day” which have a tremendous impact on his family and left trauma in his heart. Although the book partially narrative about the life in Manhattan and the terrorist attack. However, the novel also involves two other significant characters which are Oskar Grandparents who both came from Dresden, Germany and had experienced the airstrikes by the Allies towards the end of the WII.

Two historical tragic events mentioned in the book give Oskar and his grandfather, Thomas Sr. a serious aftermath effect in both mental and physical aspects. Today, I want to only focus on one the one of three attack sites on morning of September 11^th, 2001, the World Trade Center, the main targets that was taken down by hijackers

.

Regardless many records that the Twin towers broke in world architectures realm or how much fame gained from the travellers came from all over the world. It was an important symbol inside many New Yorkers’ minds while also represent the economic prosperity of the United States. Although, I never able to visit this great modern architecture, but through my grandfather’s photos which he took during a business trip to the American in 80’s, I was able to see it’s “true colors” in young age. After I living in Canada, I had been to New York few times and went to the National September 11 Memorial twice within two years. (Pictures in this blog are actually took by myself when I was there.) The memorial has a museum and two fountains build at exact where the towers were. It truly surprises me when I read the novel that Oskar questioning about the skyscrapers for living people is building upwards. He thought are there buildings extend underground for people who pass away and can elevators will take them down to the under world? Fountains in the memorial are construct follow a very close idea, they are black and going very deep to the ground. The names of the victims are carved in the edge of two square fountains. Visitors who like me look at the words and put their hands on it while occasionally I saw roses and flower stab on some names. The water coming under the names flow down the black wall and into a hole in the middle which no one can see its ends. I pause when I reading Oskar’s questioning, my minds had gone into a completely silence and my thoughts are totally stopped by the two entire black fountains.

In the big pictures, Oskar life change is one of the portrays of the three thousand American family been effect by the terrorist attack. His experience of traumatic event results his symptoms of Autism after the event might be exaggerated by the novel when we compare to 10 years old children. However, the author uses the figure/character as a lens that reveals the “behind the scene” of 9.11, who also suffering other the 2977 death and 6000 injured in a way which the pain of lost families may last for their whole lives. In larger sense, everyone one us are effect by this tragic incident, especially clear on the border security in most of the country. Before the 9.11, the airports security inspection was less concerned for publics. Some airlines were allowing passenger bring on all sort of things which today seems ridiculous and fewer weights restriction were applied on baggage. The frightening of the attack sound the alarms for all governments authorities to pursue a safety condition on their borders and transportation facilities.

Bonjour readers,

Through shows I watched on television, I had a rough idea about the archive. In my mind, I thought the interior of the archive is dark and pack with thick binders and books. However, when we came to the University Archive under the IBLC, I learned about the distinguish features of archives compare to libraries. Also we have deep insight on the author of Obasan, Joy Kogawa through the fonds and artifacts in it.

The Archive admin gave us a brief introduction on basic distinctions between the libraries and archives. In generally, the libraries are occupy with secondary resources like books which commonly gathering and expand on first hand information to create further analysis base on the original documents. These first hand collections are primary resources that compose archives, it can be in the form of letters, draft, newspaper article. On another hands, most of the collections placed in libraries are artificial made. Books and Magazines have nice covers, printed pages and released by publishers which means they can be duplicate for sell purpose. At the same time, the collections in archives are unique and rare of copies. The documents in fonds are collect naturally from readers, authors, press or anything relates to works of the artists. Therefore, every collections are originals then there is no way to find it in other places, just like artworks in museums.

Afterwards, we got a chance to look at the folders from the Kogawa’s fonds. I was amaze about how many files just relate to her works and each folder’s artifacts are differ from another one. The artifacts I looks at included the letters of students response to Kogawa’s children’s book “Naomi on the road”; Oxford University press and other newspaper comments on her children novels; and a thin folder with government officials including prime minister letter about “Obasan”. Most for the artifacts were created in 80’s which present images of the generation and their way of living. As far I know, the “Naomi on the road” is one of the children book that Joy Kogawa wrote. The book depict a girl name Naomi in some degree the portrait of Kogawa herself, during the internment camp in a small valley far away from Vancouver. 

Children response with very cruelly words in the letter to the author and freely express their feeling about story characters. The other folder contained newspaper articles and letter of the Oxford press give me some details of the public response of the book. Kogawa’s work received many positive feedbacks from these reports and being praise for retrieve and restore of the historical tragic for Japanese Canadian during WWII internment. Last but not least, Kogawa had sent her copies of “Obasan” to officials of the time like governor of Ontario, members of monument broad, even the prime minster Pierre sent thanks notes back to her (Trudeau 1981). Aren’t like the “Aunt Emily” who is the activist that always enthuse speak out against government for the compensation of Japanese Canadian. Joy Kogawa use her peaceful discourse via the fictional novel “Obasan”, to reveals a national misstep and let the government confront the situation. The novels written by Kogawa having influences in wide-age range of Canadian by narrate the mistreated of Japanese Canadian in British Columbia during WWII and she wants the society avoid recurrence of similar mistake.

Work cited:

Trudeau, Pierre. Special Letters form P Trudeau, W. DAVIS, Monument Broad. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys Limited. 24 July, 1981. Box 58 File 7. Joy Kogawa fonds. University of British Columbia Library Rare Books and Special Collection, Vancouver Canada.

In the past week, we had been talk on the comic reportage “Safe Area Gorazde” wrote by Joe Sacco. In general, the book is about the tragic stories happened on Bosnian Muslim in the UN designated Enclave, Gorazde, while during the war against Serbian Nationalists from 1992 to 1994. Joe Sacco was in a role of American Journalist, travelled to Gorazde fourth times through the UN “Blue Road” after conditions been stabilized in the town. He interviewed many civilians about the four years battle between Serbian Chetnik and Bosnian government(local Muslim forces). He considers the Bosnian Muslims are genuine victims of the war.

Despite further facts and figures, Joe Sacco unfold his mastered drawing techniques and colloquial languages use in the texts. Figures and scenes creates by Sacco are neatly present according to realism, every frame of pictures seem what actually happened. His drawing particularly focus on the details of people’s faces, to exaggerate their facial expression which successfully enhance readers emotional feelings. In contrast, Satrapi’s Persepolis also achieved similar effect by her “symmetric drawing” on crowds although she insists simplicity in drawing which portray less details on characters. Similar with Satrapi, Sacco also not afraid to display the violence and massacre scenes in the stories. The most impressive example for me is the narrate of the senior, Rasim. He told Sacoo about the story of how he survive through invasion in Gorazde. When Rasim sneak through the second bridge at night, he witnessed Serbs soldiers brutally slaughter Bosnian muslim. He then carefully walk through a ground where spill with blood, like a pond made up by human blood. These scenes shock me the most and I don’t know how much trauma will left in Rasim and other innocent people minds.

Persepolis and Safe Area Gorazde are both done in black and white but from my perspective of arts, I think Sacco did a better job in illustrating the details. Because in order to perform the  horrendous conditions of wars or conflicts, artists are require to re-presenting from aspect of realism, thus more details are given more accuracy to audiences. In addition, I like the way that Sacco organize the story which put readers in a role of witness. For example, he locates direct dialogues into bubble textboxes and his own descriptive sentences into square columns. To emphasis the words, he bold and enlarger the words and written in capital. Beyond these specific methods, most importantly, he divide the book into individual chapters and use first person to narrate the individuals stories. Instead of writing his own perspective towards Bosnian War, in most length of the book, he let his interviewees, Bosnian civilians telling their stores. I also recognize he is working hard on present the true whether by his animated drawing or subjective tales from victims. To maintain the realistic of the images of war, Sacco eliminate revealing his interpretation on subjects. Perhaps that’s why he intended to not drawing his eyes behind the glasses. People always say the eyes are the window of souls/minds. It’s so true that the eyes is crucial to express one’s feeling because it not only reflect the mood of characters but also output certain non-verbal expression. In the end, the book is successfully review the war by individual storytelling and vivid depict of the town. It is heartbreaking and mind blowing to go through the stories. Besides the despair mood throughout the comic, many victims had survive through this catastrophe, it shows both positive and negative sides of human nature.

Reference:

1. “Mehmed-pasa Sokolovic Bridge:A Monument to Genocide.” Visegrad Genocide Memories. 3 Dec. 2009. Web. 12. Nov. 2015.
2. Sacco, Joe. Safe Area Goražde. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2000. Print.

Hello everyone in ASTU,

This week  we were continue discuss about Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis in our class. Instead of reading the comic, we began to read Hillary Chute’s essay who is the literature scholar in the Harvard Society of Fellows. In her essay she starts from the important role that women authors play in the realm of graphic narrative and she argue that they often being ignored by media and public because stereotype of men are usually predominate in comic production.Chute also alter my perspective of the contents of comic which is from Japanese animation to graphic narrative she describes as “hybridity and autobiography, theorizing trauma in the connection to the visual, textuality that takes the body seriously.”(Clute 93).

In Persepolis, the representing of trauma is one of the main theme that Satrapi wants readers to seek at. “Trauma  is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape or natural disaster.” (1) Indeed, there are many portraits of violence, mass death, execution scenes emerge in the story. It reveals that Satrapi is not shy to presenting trauma although through the voice of a little girl. Chute mentions about the ordinary of trauma twice in separate paragraphs. She quotes a interview about Satrapi which express there are so many incidents are relate to violence in nowadays. Rise from individual to government, people are more appealing to “solve”conflict through forces. The consequence is clear now that the act of violent is an vital factors that result in personal trauma. In another hand, as kidnapping, gun shots, car bombs those incidents frequently emerge on news and media, crowds becoming less sensitivity and see as ordinary.

I remember in the elementary school, I sometimes heard about student beat up by secondary school’s bully. In that case peers were generally thought the guy who being beat up was in his bad day and he should’t provoke the student who have relations to gang. Same as the frequent shootings in the States and many of us no longer think as a big due to us, as long as is not happened surround us.

However, Chute and Satrapi both argue the idea of normalize of violence is totally abnormal and in fact I think is a “sickness” exist in our cognition. Individual after attack by others might suffer in physically for temporary, but lead to longer suffer in mentally. Wounds on skin or inside body might be cure by treatments but the negative emotion responses might last in one’s mind for longer. It comes back to the vital theme of Persepolis, trauma，which is one of the significant part of Satrapi experienced in her childhood. She implies if we never forget tragically events，（such as 9/11 which led to a national trauma in America）we are able to prevent violence happened again because we gain awareness of it. We also need to take actions when thread is coming towards ourselves in order to make everybody who living in the community feel more secure.

Work Cited:

• Hillary Chute. “The Texture Of Retracing In Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly: 92-110. Print.
• (1)”Trauma.” Psychology Topic. American Psychological Association, 2015. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.

Jackson Chen

When people having conversation on the topic of national memory, it is usually about some remarkably events happened in the past. The event itself can be delightful to mentions or heartbreaking to think about. However, in the past century, the world was a ground of chaos. We probably gone through the most craziest century in human history. Specifically, the negative incidents such as the Worlds Wars and other regional conflicts were occupy a big portion of the 20th century timeline. The World War Two is the most horrendous event in terms of scale and death. Estimate over 80 million civilians and troops were sacrificed along with trillions dollars of destructions.
In September 2nd, China held parade at Beijing Tiananmen Square for 70 years after the victor of the WWII ———defeat over the Japan Imperialism Invaders. The event had been scheduled and announced for months before,and Chinese government put much of their attentions on the parade than the stock market collapsed. When the news began to talk about it in domestic and globally, a question rose in my mind: why China decided to hold this unprecedented parade in the such timing? Foreigner might think the number of 70 is important in Chinese culture. But from a native Chinese perspective, that is totally a myth. In fact, China had few WWII memorial in the past but they were never done that much advertising compare with 2015 one.
The government were not only well prepared on the parade, they also put their hands on manipulating people perceptions on the invader side. Without any cover up, the State Administration of Radio Film and Television selected to play tremendous amount of War TV series over and over again on mass media such as major television channels, websites even schools. There is only one target on Chinese government mind, Japanese; the purpose of the actions is to raise unnecessary hatred towards Japanese and some people described it as Anti-Japanese Sentiment.
In the speech of opening ceremony, President Xi insisted China is becoming a strong country through the 70 years ruled under the Communist state and will always take a position in the world as the Peace-keeper. Xi also promised to reduce 300,000 soldiers by 2017 to demonstrate the country is rising without any thread to the world. Nevertheless there were 12,000 soldiers, 200 air crafts plus tons of military weapons such as DF-21 missiles are attended in the parade. Not saying is wrong to showing one’s military “muscles” on it’s national parade, but made a loud noise of “check this out, we have so many advance technologies that will protect all citizens from potential invaders” sound suspicious. Depend on views of domestic citizens, it will make them feel a sense of secure for a while. However, the regional tension is rising to a higher level in negative way . Especially China relationships with Japan and countries along the South China sea are not in a good status because of maritime or territory dispute. Parade suppose to brings up peace and deliberate thoughts was going against it’s original intention or I should say sending tread to a specific nation is Chinese government original purpose. More specifically, remove civilians’ sights from domestic issues to forming negative sentiment toward Japanese is what the party’s leader want to achieve and indeed they succeed.
Incontestably, Japanese had done many awful, cold-blooded invasions before and during the World War on innocent citizens around the entire southeast Asia. However, they now became a “scapegoat” which responsible for domestic conflicts in China. In contrast, the Chinese government tactfully remove public focus from national economic downturn and environment/resources crisis to how the nation was badly suffer from Fascism aggressor from Japan. They recognized this parade is suppose to memorize veterans who fought and died in the frontline while learn from lessons of history. Instead, they distort people perspective toward Japanese through news and TV series which is potential spread a message that throw a fist back on Japan is the right solution. Obviously the leaders of Chinese government are not accountable on the society itself when sacrifices environment to achieve the shiny economic growth in the past decades. Meanwhile, the Communist party ignore the facts that is Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist forces made the most effort on defensing Japan invasion.
The World War Two is the most tragical chapter in the modern era, it has aftermath effect on people views on the Axis countries. I believe that many countries other than China had mark the end of World War Two as their national memory. The crucial lesson for the countries which provoked the war is to learn and correct their mistakes they did. In another hand, the countries who suffered from it should forgive and accept apologize from violated side. By this way, countries between countries will bond together and proceed to create harmony societies.

LINKS:

What is China trying to prove with military parade?

China military parade commemorates WW2 victory over Japan

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