Year of the Rat

A new year is a time for reflexion and resolutions. The pictures of the crush of Chinese waiting for Godot's trains which are never coming so that they can journey back to home towns and villages, or from towns and villages to see family settled in larger cities, have been flashed on the television and printed daily in the world press. Patiently and not so patiently these hundreds of thousands stand in rain and snow and in sub zero temperatures nuturing the hope that they will find the warmth of friends and family as the Year of the Rat begins on its eve on 6 February 2008.
18Brumaire doesn't believe in reading the tripes of a cow, and is far away from the oracle at Delphi, so it did the next best thing, it consulted a shaman who had long ago set up shop in the neighbourhood. The shaman sat and hummed to himself as we asked him to read the future in this the year of the Rat. He demurred saying that the fog of confusion is hovering over China, yet he did see much nervousness among the Chinese Communist technocrats who are ruling with a tight leash China's future. Was this divine retribution, we asked, because Deng Xiao Ping had read too closely Milton Friedman thereby setting China on the rapid road to capitalism, a booming economy, and a recreation of a class society where the rich enjoyed life and the poor in the hinterlands struggled earnestly to eke out a bare existence? The shaman remained silent. Was the CCP's nervousness the reason Hu Jin tao has gone twice to Shanghai to calm the restiveness of those packed like sardines waiting for trains that are never coming? Is rising inflation, the spike in food prices, the heavy stones of runaway capitalist growth weighing more and more on the disinherited, on the wretched of the earth which the Chinese sing of when they intone 'L'internationale'? Was that the reason the Party marshalled soldiers to bring aid and comfort? The little that they can? And did the Party throw up hands in despair that they knew nothing of the severe toll of the weather in the countryside? Have they become like the emperors of old so distant and cyncial about the billions of Chinese lives they hold in the balance? Are they paralysed by the impotence of the powerful who see no way out of this crisis? Are they equally troubled that older reflexes the current crisis arouses, see the Party's weak response is a rebuke from the heavans, and that these very heavens are withdrawing from them the mandate of power? The shaman smiled, but remained silent. Is the year of the Rat, regardless of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, ushering in 7 fallow years? Is it the harbinger of the a weakening of the CCP's hold on China? 18Brumaire's handphone rang incessently; it was an urgent call, and off we went without any answers...