View from a drone of 300 community members gathered in the shape of a heart at the Rotary Club of Los Alamos fundraiser for the people of Ukraine April 16, 2022 at Overlook in White Rock. Drone photo by Cpl. Sheldon Simpson/LAPD
By ZHEN HUANG
Los Alamos
When I heard some officials at the White House press conference said, “China has at no point condemned Russia’s invasion to Ukraine”, I recalled what Anna Louise Strong said:
“Better to light a candle than to condemn the darkness”.
Strong was an American Journalist who is highly respected in China. She lived in Moscow for nearly 30 years and initiated and helped organize the first English newspaper in the U.S.S.R, the Moscow Daily News. She was arrested, jailed, and deported by the U.S.S.R as an “American spy” in 1949. When she was back to her home country U.S.A, she lived through the darkest anti-Communist McCarthy era. At the age of 72, when she was finally cleared by the FBI, she decided to go back to China and make China her permanent home. She lived in Beijing for the rest of her life. Why did she make such an extraordinary decision?
“This is not a criticism of any other country, neither the U.S.A. nor the U.S.S.R. But I think the Chinese know better than anyone the way for man. I want to learn and write.” She once explained to her friends who didn’t understand her decision.
Having lived in China and made her first hand observations, she learnt a lot and wrote a lot about how she felt about the country, the people, and China’s future. In her “Letter from China”, she wrote,
“Can I explain why I wanted to stay forever? There were no luxuries and few comforts. There were people with keen minds, deep thoughts and a world view.”
She wrote, “The keen minds and deep thoughts were operating now for a nation that held one-fourth of mankind… There was still the worldwide view. People came from a hundred nations to Peking and were received as equal partners in man’s struggle to advance. They still held that victory depended not on the power of weapons but on awakening the consciousness of man.”
Clearly, in order to take a stance of “Light a candle rather than condemn the darkness”, you need “keen minds”, “deep thoughts”, and “a world view”. Sixty years ago, American Journalist Strong discovered that Chinese People have the capabilities to Light a Candle. Unfortunately, many nowadays American officials could not or don’t want to acknowledge it because they still carry the minds, thoughts, and views inherited from the McCarthy era.
With respect to China’s future, Strong also wrote, “Their confidence was not expressed in any boast that ‘the Communists will win’. It was ‘the Chinese people will win and the Communists will lead as long as they serve the people’…”
Note that the “win” Strong talked about is not a win for any “Power”, be it “Communists” or whatever-nists, but a win for the People.
As to the Russia-Ukraine conflicts, from the perspective of Strong, “Light a candle rather than condemn the darkness”, means to achieve a “win” for the People, both the Ukraine People and the Russian People.
Light a Candle, will help the Ukraine People to drive away the darkness of the decade long military conflicts between brothers so that they could have their blue skies and golden wheat fields back, as well as will help the Russian People to drive away the darkness that shadowed their everyday life by all kinds of sanctions imposed to even innocent little animals to clear up the overwhelmed hostile atmosphere.
Condemn the Darkness, using missiles and tanks, or any “power of weapons”, as we have seen, had never driven away the darkness but only added more darkness to the scorched landscapes of Ukraine and the shadowed atmosphere of Russia, in both material and spiritual sense.
You might wonder, how has China lit up a Candle in order to drive away the darkness?
If you could understand what Strong talked about, “awakening the consciousness of man”, you would know how to “Light a Candle”.
In Chinese mainstream media, we have seen lit-up “Candles”, that is, headlines highlighting those events and moments that would reduce the hostility towards escalated conflicts and promote progress towards Peace. Just to give some examples of such lit-up “Candles”.
The Chinese Phoenix TV captured a moment during the first Peace Talk between Ukraine and Russia back in March 2022. It was used by the Phoenix TV as the opening episode of its everyday live report from Ukraine for a while. It shows the details about how the Ukraine delegates and the Russian delegates shaked hands with their brotherhood gesture and spirit. The episode of the moment touched my heart and enhanced my hopes for reconciliation of the Russian People and the Ukrainian People.
I have also seen such lit-up “Candles” when I read the news report about Russia donating 500,000 metric tons of grain to the poorest countries during a period from November 2022 to February 2023; when I read the news report about the Russian chemicals company Uralchem-Uralkali last year donated 260,000 tons of fertilizer to African countries to help them to fight against food insecurity; when I read the news report about how the Ukrainian workers and Russian workers worked together to protect the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station; when I read the news report about how the Ukraine officials and Russian officials coordinated in opening up humanitarian passages to evacuate civilians out of the battlefields…
These lit-up “Candles” have brightened our hope for the Skies of Peace. I believe its brightness would be enhanced when more Western mainstream media could do the same. Until then, we can expect to see the blue skies and the golden wheat fields back to Ukraine.
If you still wonder why “China has at no point condemned Russia’s invasion to Ukraine”, check out when both the City of Kyiv and the City of Moscow became the Sisters Cities of Beijing.
If you still wonder, it would be enlightening to read Strong’s classic fables written over a century ago, available at the Library of Congress. You might be able to discover the mystery of how to turn a snowflake into a Candle to light it up…
Acknowledgement: Thanks go to the Rotary Club of Los Alamos and its Los Alamos High School Interact Club.
