In my trip to France, I bought another book on Tin Tin. It is a book about the stamps of Tin Tin issued in France, and gives a lot of background information of these stamps. (Since it is a “collector edition”, the store owner sold this 19.80€ book at 30€.)
I remember walking by such a store when I visited Paris 5 years ago. That time, I wondered from the Notre Dame with Ray Cai.
The Tin Tin store was close to St. Germain Ave. It is just beside the METRO station called “Cluny, La Sarbonne.” In addition to this one, there is a store called Album that also sells Tin Tin souvenirs.
On the first page of the book, there is a quote by Herge:
Du plus en plus, je m’attache a connaitre et a comprendre, a rompre des barrieres, au propre comme au figure. Si je me suis mis a vioyager (enfin~), ce n’est pas seulement pure voir de nouveaux paysages, pas suelement pour me documenter, mais pour decouvrir d’autres modes de vie, d’autres facons de penser; en somme, pour elargir ma vision du monde.
— Herge, 1971
Here is my translation:
Increasingly, I establish a knowing and understanding. When I am traveling, I would not merely see new landscapes, nor would I just keep documenting. Rather, I’d uncover other lifestyles, other ways of thinking, overall, to broaden my vision of the world.
Owing to the Tibet situation, the French president suggested banning Beijing Olympics. I’m very upset with this move. Not just me, a lot of Chinese people are deeply hurt. Some people started to boycott Carrifour, a French chain store.
To me, both actions (banning olympics and boycotting carrifour) show irresponsibility.
Olympics is known to be a world event that brings hope and peace to people. In ancient Greece, even two countries at war would stop fighting during the Olympics. It is very mean to use Olympics as a political vehicle to add pressure to the hosting country. Besides, Tibet issue is more complicated. Many people, including the French president, know little about the history of Tibet, and would really not qualify to take a public position on it.
Now for Carrifour boycott. The chain store has nothing to do with the president’s position. Boycotting the store does not do any help to improve the situation.
Before the trip, even Jade felt that we should not go, in light of the tension between China and France. Part of the reason is due to the irresponsible statements by the French president, and part of the reason is due to the negative attitude of the French consulate in HK (more about this in Jade’s blog).
I decided to go because I believe that misunderstandings can be resolved when people can know more about each other. Human beings are very foolish throughout history. They fight with their neighbors, then they fight the near-by town, then another country. If some day life forms from other planets visit us, we would be fighting them for sure. Few people stopped and thought about why and for what we are fighting. The answer is clear for politicians, they fight for their power, and for their ambition to control things, and the ambition to show they have things in control. For ordinary people, there is really no such need to fight.
We went to Quimper, Bretagne for the wedding of our friends Grace and Benoit. I was deeply impressed by the buildings and landscapes. I was equally impressed by the friendship showed by the people in Quimper.
In the wedding, as the legal witness for Grace of the marriage, I made the following statement, it is very close in spirit to Herge’s view on traveling.
If human beings really evolved from monkeys, then the French people and the Chinese people are definitely from two very different groups of monkeys. Indeed, we look so different, and there are so many things radically different in the two countries. It is easily imaginable what difficulties this couple have to overcome to stand together today. It is naturally difficult because we tend to be nervous when we meet people who are different. Owing to their overcoming the nervousness, we could all get together to celebrate their getting together. How do you overcome the nervousness? Just like the couple, you learn more about each other. Then you resolve the misunderstandings. Despite the many differences between French people and Chinese people, we have many things in common: we all love eating, the French word cuisine has a Chinese equivalence. We all love football. When French people say “tres bien”, Chinese people say “tai bang le”, they sound similar and mean the same thing. We all love freedom. We all love our own countries.
In this trip, we went to the wonderful church for the ceremony, and stayed in such a wonderful historical mansion. I can only use the word “wonderful” to describe this trip here. But more wonderful than the wonderfulness of this trip is the happy couple finding each other and finding the true love. The trip to France made me to love the French people more and more. The more I know this country, it becomes more lovable. What I hope here is that our French friends can visit us more in the future, and hope you can feel the same. Now you have the couple to visit and so many of us from China as new friends.
Looking for theoretical support?
The BPS Research Digest, reports on a study on forgiveness from the University of Sussex and the New School for Social Research. The study examines how groups which have committed atrocious acts against one another come to break the cycle of resentment and forgive.
[The researchers] surveyed 180 Bosnian Muslims about their attitudes towards Bosnian Serbs in the wake of the earlier conflict. They found that Bosnian Muslims who had more Serb friends and who identified more with a sense of being “Bosnian,” rather than “Bosnian Muslim” or “Bosniak,” also tended to show more empathy for Serbs as a group, to be more trusting of Serbs, and to see Serbs as more varied — all of which predicted greater levels of forgiveness and more positive attitudes towards the Serbs.
This pattern is consistent with what’s known as the “contact hypothesis” in social psychology, which states that more high quality contact between groups promotes intergroup reconciliation.
