Peasant Movement Institute

Another week swallowed up by work; the leisurely blog on Monday AM over coffee is looking less like a staple and more like a luxury. Memo to self: must work less.










Actually summer - note blue sky - finally kicked in on Monday & Tuesday, 32 by about 10 am with humidity in the Queensland zone. On Wednesday the humidity got to 100% and it's been raining since. It's not such a bad climate if you can remember your umbrella and live near a subway station.
Although, speaking of climate, I've never seen anything quite this nasty growing on a tree in Australia. It's a very hairy growth (in fact two very hairy growths). I bet it's got something to do with perpetual humidity over 80%. I suppose it could be an orchid.




Still and all, I managed a very pleasant Sunday, kicked off with brunch with Simpson (one of the school managers) & his wife who are off for a 2 week visit to Australia soon. I couldn't persuade them not to see Canberra - they have the typical misconception that the capital of a country should be a place of significance. Then I caught up with the Peasant Movement Institute. Excellent name in my view, but for obscure reasons it causes the locals to snicker. Unfortunately, as I start to think about the possible reasons for its ludicrosity (<== copyright me) , I'm losing my intial warmth. Still, whatever it's called, it's an interesting place. It was Zhou En Lai's anniversary ( I forget which) so admission was free. I'm guessing it was a touch grimmer back in the 1920's than it is now - I doubt there were so many trees in the middle of - effectively a paramilitary - a training centre in its heyday in the 1920's. I am a sucker for revolutionary history; I'm pleased to report that I am not the only one left in the country, although it's fair to say there aren't many of us. Maybe another dozen people passed though the place in the 2 hours that I was there.

Amongst the many things I didn't know were that Mao Ze Dong was the director here at one stage. In fact I jumped about a yard in the air (at moments of stress we revert to the measures of our childhood) when I found he was still here, along with wife #1 and children. It is my firm contention that there should be a warning sign if a museum contains random waxworks.


It is in fact due to Mao that the PMI is so well preserved, rather than vice versa.

Curiously, the PMI was set up by the KMT (actually that would be GMD according to the modern romanisation) for the communists to run - somethiong to keep them out of trouble?. I diimly knew that the KMT were Marxist/Socialist in at least notional origin, but setting up a special institution for the communists to train people to incite peasant/farmer insurrections seems like a pretty desparate throw of the dice for a ruling political party. They (the KMT) must have seriously lacked confidence that they would be able to enact agricultural reform via the rule of law. Bet if they had their time again they would go with plan B, although the KMT turned out to be so rubbish anyway that it was probably not the one fatal tactical error.





It looks to have been a pretty tough place. The beds look pretty good compared to the mess hall & lecture hall. Modelled on a 19th century British boarding school, do you think?






The wall (it's quite long) of photographs of murdered/executed/shot alumni is emotion-provoking. This one is wearing a fox (the unduly artistic photograph rather obscures it) which strikes me as a faintly odd accessory for a nascent revolutionary. Still, dead at 26 is pretty serious punishment for crimes against fashion.

She was not alone, most of the them were dead before they were 27, typically within 2 or 3 years of graduating. Like Martyr's Park, it's hard to avoid wondering how I would have responded to those times in this place. Indeed, how would the university left of the 70's have responded? Would the overt reality and urgency of the possibility of revolution have attracted more or repelled? I have no idea. There doesn't seem much point speculating, the case can be made either way. Certainly China was able to produce an extraordinary number of people committed to political action - I don't think the subsequent fate of the ideology is particularly germane - and people able to sustain that commitment over a lengthy period of time. Mao, and Zhou, and many others were in Guangzhou in 1926. It wasn't until 1949 that they were proved right. I think I managed to remain pretty passionate about bridge for 15 years, but no-one was firing bullets at me to encourage me to stop.

Another episode in my continuing struggle to take a decent photograph of myself. Note improvements, not appearing strangled by camera case this time. Still coming to grips with how to wear a T-shirt. May one day remember to straighten my head