Tomichan Matheikal's blog

In one of his Odes, the Roman poet Horace portrays Maecenas, Roman statesman, as wondering what the Chinese were up to.  Horace lived in the first century BCE.  He was exaggerating when he wrote that; he was trying to please his patron by depicting him as someone whose concerns extended far and wide.  But, with hindsight today, we can say that Horace’s line was not sheer hollow flattery. Some 200 years before Horace, Shih Huang-ti, who was called – or called himself –  ‘the First Emperor of China,’ employed 700,000 labourers to build the humungous Great Wall of China by linking the many existing fortifications.  He also constructed a huge network of roads and canals paving the material foundations of a great civilisation. Shih Huang-ti was a barbarian conqueror, however.  He was illiterate and was despised by his literate subjects.  His dynasty failed eventually.  His renown became equivocal.  But the Great Wall caused him to be r...

China is at its usual games once again with India.  I have written so much about that country earlier that I don’t feel like saying anything more.  So let me only give two relevant links here from my earlier writing. The Chinese Dragon on the Move In this blog written more than 2 years ago, I argued that China had betrayed India a number of times in the past.  Right from 1962 when India lost Aksai Chin up to now when a part of Laddakh is being swallowed up, China has stabbed India from the back.  I have given a brief history of those backstabs in the above-mentioned post. Imperialism – Made in China In this Sep 2009 post, I argued that China was practising a new kind of imperialism – based on economic domination.  I took examples from Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.  I also wrote: “In accordance with the String of Pearls doctrine, China has already encircled India technically by forging military ties with Sri Lanka and persu...

Book Review Title:    Red Poppies : An epic saga of old Tibet           Author:  Alai Translated from Chinese by Howard Goldblatt & Sylvia Li-chun Lin Publisher: Penguin, 2002 Pages: 416 “Yes, all I wanted was to be a chieftain; I’d never given any serious thought to what I wanted to do.  So I tried hard to imagine what I’d get by becoming a chieftain.  Silver?  Women?  Vast territory?  Numerous servants?  I had all those without even trying.  Power?  Yes, power.  But it wasn’t as if I didn’t have any now.  Besides, power could get me only more silver, more women, vaster territory, and more servants.  Which was to say, being chieftain didn’t mean much to me.  But strangely, I still wanted it.” One of the biggest paradoxes of human life is that a lot of effort is expended on a lot of enterprises which really don’t make our life any better....