I know, I know, I wrote quite enough about the darned Olympics last year, but..... after a long pause, I feel I can now return to the subject occasionally.And I really don't know how I came to omit mentioning this at the time last summer.
I learned from a cab driver that many Beijingers spoke of the official Olympic logo as being a picture "of a man shot in the back.... by the police.... while trying to run away...."
Yes, the red hole in the chest is somewhat unfortunate, and one can readily see where this gory interpretation springs from.... but the elaboration of that image.... ouch! It speaks volumes about the psyche of this nation, I fear, and about its brutal recent history.
3 comments:
"Brutal recent history" ? You should read more about Chinese history.
For example, the first emperor of the Ming dynasty found out one of the prime ministers (Hu) was betraying him. He killed 10 thousand people who were guilty by association. That's an extreme case of course. More common situation would have only sever hundred people, mostly relatives and associates, killed for the crime of one person.
Woefully ignorant about such matters on my own, I have to ask: is that logo a stylized picto-/ideograph representing... The Olympic Spirit? something like that?
Yes, I think the idea was that it was supposed to represent a runner, but in the style of one of the Chinese writing characters. The red colour is supposed to be 'lucky' - rather than bloody!
The hole-in-the-chest thing is unfortunate, and you would have thought the Organizing Committee - or someone - would have foreseen the possibly negative connotations.
Don't quite see your point there, Bill. The fact that China has a long history of repressive government and mass slaughter doesn't have such direct impact on this interpretation of the Olympic image. Here we have modern Chinese - not sneering foreigners - joking that this figure looks like a man being shot.... in the back.... by the police (or the PLA. For Beijingers, you have to suppose that the key reference goes back about 20 years - not 350 years.
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