The Little Girl from China

Preface

Last May (2010) I have visited China in a tour. The trip included many places and counties during 21 wonderful days. China is a great place (territorial) and a place of great people. I was very impressed by the many faces of the Chinese people as well of the site views which are very unique. I was touched by the Chinese kids which looked to me so nice and beautiful. I saw kids from rich families, mid class families and poor families. The most touching portraits were from the poor kids who are living in the villages. When I say "poor" I don't mean that they are living in total poverty, but just to compare to those kids of the higher class kids (mainly towns).

The kids in the towns are playing with modern toys while the village kids are playing with simple toys and outside in their neighborhood yards.

I was lucky to shot over 3000 photos during my visit to China. Just imagine how much time it takes to digest all photos. What is amazing is the fact when I shot the photo I had no time to think deeply about what I really shot. There is very little time to think about the meaning of every photo shot since the tour must go on. I had a feeling that some of my photos are very artistic and expresses a deeper meaning than just a photo. But that deep interpretation of the photos can be done only after returning home and digesting the whole visit.

I sent a few photos of a little girl from China (Goizhou county) to a dear friend "Manggis" and asked what can be interpreted of those photos. After a day or two I received a very touching reaction from Manggis". I got the approval from "Manggis" to post the article.

Before moving to Manggis writing I would like to share with you a few photos of that little girl. At the end of this posting I'm sharing with you some other photos of other Chinese kids.

The Little Girl from China (photo: Hanan Leshnovolsky)

(photo: Hanan Leshnovolsky)

(photo: Hanan Leshnovolsky)

(photo: Hanan Leshnovolsky)

The girl's parents. Her mother is medically dissabled and her father works hard using a buffalo in the field (photo: Hanan Leshnovolsky)

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The Little Girl from China

By: Manggis, August-21-2010

Thank you for sending me this lovely picture. It is indeed an inspiring gaze and full of meaning that compelled me (or anyone) to guess what is that she was thinking.

No, I do not have a picture of myself at this age, if you suspect that I may look like her at the same age. One of my daughters does indeed resemble her. The only picture in my possession was when I was a baby, a happy baby sitting on the pushed chair. But according to my mother, this was the one and only time I was laughing when placed in the pushed chair, and for this they managed to take one precious snap shot. At other times, I refused the push chair completely.

Other than that, I do not posses any other picture before the age of 7, i.e. when school began. At the age of 7, there was a picture of me with my class taken at the end of the year, and subsequently, almost every year thereafter, there will be at least one picture of me from the school collection.

I do not know the exact reason why photographs were lacking in my household; perhaps my parents were poor and did not have any camera or maybe they just did not to preserve any childhood memory of their children, being uneducated and too busy with their daily chores. Although, relatively speaking I had a deprived childhood, i.e. compare to children these days, but Alhamdullilah, I was never hungry, unlike those children from the war zones like Palestine and Iraq that we frequently saw in the news. Above all, there was peace in my country, I never face war in my lifetime and hope peace and stability continue.

I was never hungry and there was always food on the table. But I have to get involved with the family business from the time I can remember in my childhood days. Before breakfast, I must sweep the floor of the external corridor, watered the plants and sometimes fed the farm animals. Then, there was always, time to help grandmother’s business, from cleaning the duck eggs for her telor pindang (a special curry flavoured eggs, similar to Chinese herbal eggs cooked for 3 days), to peeling off the skin of onions, garlic, or prawns skin (all in kilograms), or simply weighing and packing the end products of this little family run cottage industry. The products ranged from dodol, lempuk, koleh kacang.... and sometimes traditional freshly grounded curry mixture (home made). My family has always been involved business venture; none of my family members (at that time) was taking salaries. Somehow, I do not regret this harsh childhood environment.

According to the western value, they may have used me as a child labour but I learned enormously from those experiences. I have to clean the eggs 3 times, first with soapy water to clean off the dung remains, then twice with clean water, and then check one by one against a light bulb searching for rotten eggs, which must be removed otherwise this would spoil the whole stock of some 300 eggs each time my grandmother prepared, out of her monthly output of over 1000 eggs. My illiterate grandmother never had lesson in quality control but she was very prodigious about cleanliness and quality. She always delivered the best products to her long list of customers that span around an area of over 10km from our house; she paddled to their houses almost every day. Sometimes I followed her and knew she actually allowed her customers to pay later with no interest.

In her dodol production (dodolis a special traditional cake made from glutinous rice, coconut milk and coconut sugar), the best in town, often I helped to grate the coconut using special grater, in those days this is how you get coconut milk. Although, not involved in making it directly, since it was made in a big wok (or cauldron) of more than one metre in diameter; it was a tough job even for man because the dodol is very viscous to manipulate. I had tried to stir dodol mixture; I could not even move the stirring rod more than half an inch. At this point, my grandfather would chased me away so as not to disturb him else I would spoil the whole batch of dodol and also it might be dangerous for me since, the stirring rod was as tall as I was at that time.

Instead I helped in the dodol packing production line. After the dodol was prepared, it will be set in a big oval pan for a few days, before it is ready to be cut, weighed and wrapped. All these were my task performed together with my grandmother. Of course, I help her with the weighing scale, since she did not really know how to operate and zero the scale from time to time. Of course, apart from I like being close to my grandmother, this early training has made me very sensitive to numbers, weight and measures; all of which are useful in my later profession.

Being in a deprived environment is not necessarily bad, especially when endowed with good values from parents, grandparents, uncles, aunties, brothers and sisters in a large extended family. Even though, most of them are illiterate, uneducated or less educated, they were mostly very kind, generous, honest and good-hearted. As I attended my daily chores, I learnt and absorbed those values from them and am ever so thankful. My sensitivity and compassion toward the plight of the Palestinian people must have come from this sort of nurturing environment full of compassion and ehsan. I can feel their pain; I can feel them anxious when the bomb being dropped or when their houses being demolished. I cannot imagine if my house being gunned and ramped down and what more, if I am only a little girl amidst the violence, which I do not understand. I do not know the politics behind the violence; which sides is right and which side is wrong, all I can see and feel is the violence, the bloody violence.

I never see a war in my whole life, not even seen a live protest or demonstration. The closest I get to see a soldier when I was a child were those marine/armies from the Naval Base in Singapore. At that time, it was just after the war and we still had British/European armies around very much like in Iraq now. I felt intimidated when trucks full of these armies passed by my village that I ran home to my grandmother telling her about the white men (orang putih) and their guns. These were peace time armies unlike those IDFs that guard the checkpoints or the borders who must have been or appear to be more fierce and ferocious to a little child like me, I would definitely shudder and cry or even faint for my inner self is very fragile (lemah semangat). I just cannot imagine how to face a soldier with guns, bombs and sophisticated killing machine. Even at my age now, an army dressed in full uniform with his riffle or machine gun pointing to the sky looked formidable to me, when I saw him at the Singapore Tuas checkpoint recently.

I recalled taking a limousine taxi service to Heathrow airport several years ago; when the limousine driver told me he used to work in Singapore Naval Base for the British force. He was holding a high ranking position and recalled the good time he had in a big house on top of a hill with several household maids, gardener and a driver and his eventual good fortune for being able to travel around the world on boat cruise. During the ride, we chatted happily recalling various memorable places and spots and local interests since apparently his house was not too far away from mine, but silently, I wondered if he was one of those armies who used to frighten me before. But of course, I was not afraid of him then since our situations were very different.

At school, I work hard because I know this was the only way to improve myself and my family. My family did not expect much from me, since they themselves do not know anything else other than their food business. My mother can only see me becoming a teacher at most or else join the family food business. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, pilots etc... , are professions totally unheard and unknown to our family. I never dreamt to become any of these professions. But my parents told me to study hard and do not become like them, in their simple language. Because of their illiteracy, I usually helped them to read letters, especially official letters, or filling in form, or help them to negotiate with many official processes. All these, helped me to develop my leadership skills and self-confident when faced with the outside world.

Compare to my experience, a Palestinian child’s, must be different. If they only live in violence, hatred and instability, who do you expect of them to become when they grew up. I cannot imagine the tragedy in Palestine have been prolonged for nearly 4 generations. The enormous frustration, anger, hatred all culminate to the aggressive action they are now forced to take. How come the cleverest people on earth, cannot solve this simple human relationship problem? Or do they not want to solve this problem for some other hidden reason. This point is always playing on my mind.

Back to the girl from china that inspires me to write this short note, I guess her story is not different from mine. She probably comes from a remote village in China with some deprivation, but may be not to the extent I experienced, since I guess she must be a dotting and only one child in her family. But being a girl may be a disadvantage to her, since Chinese usually prefers a male off-spring. It is known that Chinese give away their female off-springs. If she is one of these unfortunate ones, could it be her intense gaze represents a sense of longing in search of her real family. Your guess is as good as mine. But nevertheless, her gaze touches anyone heart. It is also unthinkable in the present time, that her family does not have a camera to take her picture. But just in case, this is the case, then wouldn’t it be a tragedy, this single beautiful shot is kept away from her possession. I beg you to find ways and means to send this picture to her. If she is like me, she will definitely appreciate your kind gesture. Some Chinese people who read this blog may help you to find ways to contact her. I hope you give reference to the location or village of her dwelling, to narrow down the search.

Somehow, Chinese culture that suppresses women is not highlighted compare to that in Islam. Not many know about Chinese girls who were given away, but this was a common phenomenon in my country during the depression after the war, that you can see many Malay girls were actually born Chinese. No human right movement protests the abortion of female fetus in China presently that leads to its lopsided gender distribution (1.14 male: female) in favour of male of more than 10% compare to that for the rest of the world (1.05 male:female) according to the CIA factbook. In the very old and traditional Chinese culture, a girl is not wanted and considered to be a burden to the family. They are not part of the family since they do not carry the family name after being given away for marriage. Actually, most old world cultures including European’s, disfavoured females and consider females to be a liability that when she get married, a dowry was paid to the man as a form a compensation. This is still practised widely in India even now. India is another country that show uncommon ratio of 1.12male/female. In these two big population countries, below the age of 15, there was more girls’ mortality suggesting a further oppression of baby girls. In other parts of the world (Thailand and Mexico for examples) female oppression takes a different form, in the worst case these young girls are forced to prostitution to earn themselves a living for themselves and for those who look after them. Female infanticide was known in the Arab culture, but Islamic teaching suppressed this horrible practice since 1500 years ago. Only in Islam, a girl receives a dowry when she gets married. A dowry in Islam is a token; it can be as little as the man (husband) teaching one verse of the Al-Quran to the girl, or it can be any material amount affordable to the man. Likewise the Jewish culture also honours their females. Evidently from CIA factbook, the Israeli gender distribution ratio is normal and healthy. This is indeed praiseworthy and exemplary.

Could it be that the gazing eyes (of this mystery girl from China) which you had captured and photographed symbolizes a silent sadness of female oppression the world never discussed.

Actually, I experience a similar story when I was a teenager. It was on a hot afternoon when I was waiting for a bus next to a rubbish dump, a car passed me and stopped. A European man and woman (probably his wife) came down to ask permission to take my picture. I allowed them and since I knew how to speak English by that time, I asked them where they were from. They told me they were from Germany. Likewise, I hope any German who reads this will help me track that old unique photograph (a girl with her umbrella by the rubbish dump) nearly 40 years ago!

I dedicate this writing to the mystery girl from china and all the Palestinian children. I openly ask the Israeli government to restore peace and stability in this region for the sake of these children and their future. May be this is what that sort gaze means, a plea from the unwanted half of humanity.

Ynet News: I Shall Not Hate

Palestinian doctor who lost three daughters in Gaza war writes of hope, faith in humanity despite pain

Ali Waked Published: 08.17.10, 16:02 / Israel News

Mourning through writing. "The wound and the pain have not disappeared, but suffering is part of the process of forgiveness. Not forgiveness for Israelis, but first and foremost for myself, in order to shake off the hatred and the rage and hope for a better path," Dr. Izeldeen Abuelaish told Ynet.

Dr. Abuelaish lost his three daughters in an IDF shelling during Operation Cast Lead and recently published a book, "I Shall Not Hate."

In the book, Abuelaish shares his life story and the worldview of someone who remains, after and despite it all, a peace seeker.

Still believes in hope, humanity (Photo: Roee Gazit)

"What pushed me to write is faith in God and intellect. Everything that happens was and is written by God. My faith as a Muslim that 'everything is from above' helped me overcome the hardships and emotional scars."

The idea to write came to him before the tragedy. He wanted to write a memoir about being a Palestinian doctor working in Israel, where he saved lives. According to Abuelaish, faith is a positive thing, and not only in the most difficult times. "Faith is something very strong. Even if a person believes in a rock, in anything," he said.

The Gaza doctor, who worked in Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv, says his work as a doctor helped him with the writing process: "Being a doctor is a job that is all about hope. How you help a patient, improve his condition, save his life, and even how you draw conclusions from treatment that didn't succeed so that next time the treatment won't end with death – all of this helped me in writing the book."

Abuelaish said that his goal in writing the book is to shout, "In life, don't count on things that can change. Power can change. Today, you are strong like Israel, tomorrow you are weak. Rely only on what is basic and permanent. In other words, the humanity in all of us. The tolerance, the capacity for forgiveness and the desire for a better life," he said.


'Violence is manmade'

At this time, Dr. Abuelaish lives in Canada, where he first published his book. Since being published about three months ago, the book is among the best-sellers in the country, reaching the top of the list for a few weeks.

"The responses to the book are unending and are very positive, good and inspiring. Thank God, the book is going well and is helping to expose the Palestinian distress to the world, and particularly that the use of weapons and force cannot bring security or solve problems in the long term," he said. "Force can only help one side and for a limited amount of time. Thus, we must think of other ways of coping."

When Dr. Abuelaish speaks of Palestinian suffering, he mainly means the distress of Gaza's residents. Being the peace advocate that he is, Abuelaish warns against the situation in the Gaza Strip and its consequences.

"I have never seen Gaza in such state. A million and a half people in an intolerable situation, without hope, as no one in the world even looks in their direction. The Gazans are pushed into difficult situations, so no one should come to them afterwards with gripes of why they did things one way and not another. Whoever complains should come first and ask himself what he did to change the situation," he says.

A prominent theme in the book is change. "Many people, including those in my close circle, wondered how I could write these things after what I had been through. They asked about the meaning of the conciliatory tone. I tell them that the wound and the pain still exist. The feeling that you are angry and going to explode still exists, but I say that we must take action to change things and not base ourselves on rage and despair."

"We are in a tense region, but tension and violence is manmade, and not an act of God," the doctor says. "They are not a tsunami or a flood that cannot be changed, but things that can be confronted if we believe that nothing is impossible."

Ynet News: Soccer camp makes peace look feasible

Kids from Jenin meet Jewish, Arab-Israeli children for week of summer camp and tough questions

Boaz Fyler Published: 08.12.10, 08:19 / Israel Activism


In the spirit of the recently concluded Soccer World Cup, 80 Palestinian, Arab-Israeli, and Jewish children graduated from a summer camp recently in which they learned coexistence through the popular sport.

The camp was part of a year-long program called Barkai-Jenin, held by the Maccabim Association. The children in the program, 40 of whom reside in Jenin and 40 of whom reside in Kibbutz Barkai, meet once every two months to share conversations and games. In honor of the World Cup a week-long soccer camp was held.

Kids take a break on the field (Photo: Roee Gazit)

As part of the program, many of the Jenin children visited the seashore for the first time in their lives, when counselors took them to a Caesarea beach. While attending the camp they slept at the Jewish children's homes – another first.

Haytam Ayish, who runs the Modern Language Center of Jenin, recounted some of their experiences. "One of the children, who was a guest at his Jewish friend's house, slept in his sister's room, a soldier who remained at the base for the weekend," he said.

"When she called home to wish her family Shabbat Shalom, it was a little strange for her to hear that while she was in Gaza, a boy from Jenin was sleeping in her bed."


'Kids still have mental flexibility'

Ibrahim Abu-Mokh, who serves as a camp counselor, said the children had to struggle at first to find a common language. "Soccer is a universal language," he said. "At first they spoke in signs, or one would score a goal and another would call his name and say, 'Kifak'. That's how friendships started."

As time went on, the children learned to accept each other, he said, recounting a story about a Jewish boy who thought at first that one of the Palestinian children had an explosive device under his shirt. On another occasion, a Palestinian boy wanted his Jewish friends to promise none of them would join the IDF and shoot him.

Eventually the children learned how to deal with their fears, and became friends, the counselors say. Now they keep in touch through e-mails and Facebook.

Ori Winitzer, who founded the Soccer for Peace organization that funds the camp, says it prompted the idea for a year-long program. Winitzer, a New Yorker whose family left Israel when he was a young child, says he had become frustrated by the situation in the country.

"I wanted to do something optimistic and hopeful," he says. "We chose children because they haven't yet undergone a process of incitement, and still retain mental flexibility. Soccer contains more than language, or an allegory for peace. Soccer is the way these children actually make peace – peace that overflows from the field into their personal lives."

On one of the sunny camp days, the children watched a documentary on the life of peace activist Ismail Khatib. His son, 12-year old Ahmed, was killed by IDF troops who thought he was a terrorist because he was playing with a toy gun.

Khatib decided to donate his son's organs to six Israeli children. "As a man who lost his son, I know that the only way to protect our children is to make peace," he said.

We need to walk hand in hand, Jews, Muslims, Bedouin, and Christians, to do something for life, for the children, and to stay away from war and destruction."

Ynet News: 'Non-citizens' treated poorly in Arab countries

Problem of foreign migrants' status far more severe in Arab states than in Israel, but much less publicized. Arab families where one parent is a foreigner speak to Ynet about hardships, discrimination

Roee Nahmias Published: 08.11.10, 12:52 / Israel News


The status of migrant workers and their children is a problematic issue not only in Israel, but in neighboring Arab countries as well.

In at least eight Arab countries, particularly in the Persian Gulf but in Syria too, when a citizen weds a foreign man, their children are not considered citizens and do not have the right to own property. In some of these countries, these children cannot even inherit their mothers' estate, in accordance with a law that forbids foreigners from owning property or real estate.

Looking for a loophole (archives) Photo: AP

Suhaila el-Awaji, a businesswoman in Bahrain, married a German man and gave birth to four children. Under local law, she has to apply for stay permits for her children every two years. In addition, her children will not be able to inherit her estate when she passes away.

The "foreign" children also need special permits to travel abroad. Their stay permits expire at the age of 18, but el-Awaji plans to give her eldest son a job in one of her companies once he reaches that age in order to take advantage of a loophole in the law, which grants stay permits to adult workers.

But el-Awaji is considered lucky. Many families facing the same predicament do not have the same options. The Abed el-Aziz family is just one example. Forty-five years ago the head of the family, a Saudi man, married a woman from Bahrain. Yet despite living in Bahrain for many years, he has yet to obtain citizenship. The couple's children are not considered citizens either.

'Ticking bomb'

The problem is even more severe in the United Arab Emirates. "A local woman cannot marry a foreigner. If she does she is punished, forbidden to work or study and is not entitled to medical insurance. She cannot even travel abroad," according to a man who immigrated to the UAE from an Arab country and lives there with a local woman.

"This is a widespread phenomenon that affects some 50,000 women, but the issue rarely makes headlines because protests against it are banned," he tells Ynet. "Many local women married Palestinians from east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, and if they (men) obtain citizenship they will no longer care about the whole Palestinian, Fatah and Hamas issue.

"The local authorities simply do not want local women to marry foreigners, and they have deported a large number of Palestinians. It is forbidden to discuss the issue. There is a kind of 'censorship'," he says.

The status of foreigners residing in Saudi Arabia is not better. An Iraqi man who immigrated to the country without proper documentation married a local woman, who gave birth to their child in 2005. Shortly after the child's birth, the man traveled to Iraq, but was unable to return to Saudi Arabia because he had been placed on a "black list" of those who entered the kingdom illegally.

Due to her husband's status, the mother could not register her son as a Saudi citizen. Furthermore, Saudi authorities ordered to expel the child from the kingdom within 20 days. The mother pleaded with the authorities and managed to extend the baby's stay permit by 18 months.

"This law is neither Arabic nor Islamic," the 26-year-old mother says. "How is it possible that my brother, who is married to a foreign woman who is not even Muslim, has all of the rights while I have none. And why do they want to deport my baby to a war-torn country as though he were a terrorist or a criminal."

The Al-Arabiya television network recently reported that several hundred people who have been denied citizenship in the UAE have asked to obtain citizenship in New Zealand. Some of them have been granted citizenship status, the report said.

Bader el-Nassim proudly shows off his New Zealand passport. "(While in the UAE) I obtained a fake passport and traveled to a neighboring country. From there I flew to New Zealand through Hong Kong. As soon as I landed I turned to the authorities, and, with the help of an interpreter, told them I was a 'non-citizen' and was carrying a fake passport. I was shocked that they didn’t beat me up.

"After just two weeks I was granted permanent residency status and began working for a Palestinian merchant. Later on I opened my own business and married a young Muslim woman who is a citizen of New Zealand. I became a citizen less than three years later," he recalls.

However, many "non-citizens" want to remain in Arab countries. A month-and-a-half ago a columnist for a newspaper in Bahrain suggested sending a petition with a million signatures to the next Arab summit. The Saudi parliament debates the 'non-citizens' issue every now and then, and articles tackling the problem occasionally appear in the UAE press. Activists have also opened Facebook groups supporting reform, but the status of "non citizens" remains problematic, and is considered by many a 'ticking bomb' within Arab society.

Ynet News: United by hate for Israel

Op-ed: Effort to catalogue our enemies needles; they all share anti-Semitic desire to expel us

Hagai Segal Published: 08.06.10, 14:58 / Israel Opinion

An old routine prompts us, after every hostile act at any hostile front, to invest great efforts in resolving the question of responsibility for the attack: Who did it this time?

The smoke was still billowing Monday morning at the bleeding rocket landing sites in the Gulf of Eilat when radio announcers ruled – based on God-knows-what – that the attacks were the work of Global Jihad, rather than some bored Bedouin in the Sinai or the Gaza-based Hamas.

Searching for the rocket that fell in Eilat Photo: Yair Sagi, Yedioth Ahronoth

 
A day later the fire resumed in the north, prompting our defense establishment to immediately point an accusing finger at some newly appointed division commander in the Lebanese army and explain to us that Nasrallah is currently preoccupied with the findings of the Hariri assassination report and has no time for trivialities.
 
 

Clearing trees on the Lebanese border Photo: AFP

 
Simultaneously, we saw the emergence of a fascinating debate on the question of whether Hezbollah is slyly penetrating the Lebanese army, or whether the Lebanese army is growing more radical all by itself.

Meanwhile, the ongoing Qassam attacks targeting the western Negev repeatedly reignite a similar discussion: Was it a Hamas or Islamic Jihad missile? Was it the work of the global al-Qaeda or local terror cells?

Same clenched fist

We are eager to convince ourselves that there is some kind of order and logic in the regional abuse we suffer; we aspire to draft an accurate map of threats, while repressing the rather homogenous makeup of Israel hate in the Middle East.

Yet this is ridiculous. From a military standpoint, it may be important to know exactly who fires at us each time and where he lives. However, in terms of the essence of the issue we can spare ourselves the effort.
 
The despicable people who bombed Eilat and the archenemies who killed the battalion commander on the northern border are merely different fingers in the same clenched fist. All of them hate us equally.
 
As result of propaganda constraints, they adopt different pretexts for their attacks, yet the overwhelming majority among them are driven by an anti-Semitic desire to permanently expel us from our country. They don’t want us in Eilat, or in a northern border community, or in Ashkelon, or in Gush Etzion.

The time has come to accord all of them the same treatment, in order to minimize the chances of them ever celebrating our defeat in a jointly organized party.