“There will be new schools and there will be new homes!”

5.27.2010

During the early stage of the Cultural Revolution in China, all cities across the country often showed the film produced by the former Soviet Union: “Lenin in 1918”. In the film there is a scene that has “Iron Felix” Dzerzhinsky with an girl he adopted. Lenin comforted her by saying, “Yes, there will be bread and there will be milk.”

When Hu Jintao visited Yushu, the earthquake disaster area, and comforted the earthquake victims, he did something similar. He wrote on a blackboard in a damaged school, “Yes, there will be new schools and there will be new homes.”

Yet for years under Lenin's reign, people saw neither bread nor milk. Only in the middle of the 20th century, because of a new short-term economic policy, could one see bread and milk for sale in the market. However when cooperatives were implemented during Lenin’s rule, the bread and milk were gone. They did not reappear in the markets until 1953, after the death of Stalin when Khrushchev became the first Party secretary. After Khrushchev held meetings concerning agriculture and animal husbandry and recognized the principles of material interests, the shortages of bread and milk were totally resolved. But that was 40 years after the October revolution of the Soviet Union.

These days in China we have bread, genetically modified rice, and milk, however due to shoddy construction methods, the schools collapsed during the earthquakes. Just as the earthquake victims from Wenchuan, Sichuan got their new homes and schools, the Yushu earthquake came. There are over 2000 counties in China. No one knows for sure how many shoddy houses and school buildings there are. Where will the next earthquake be? Will the next group of victims get new homes and schools too? I posted my idea for the only way to ensure the safety of all middle and elementary schoolchildren in China on the web: Move the people from all the government buildings to the worst school buildings. Of course such a suggestion will never be heeded. I believe that Hu Jintao will continue to write, “Yes, there will be new schools and there will be new homes.”