CHINA - thousands leave virtual flowers and incense at dead pilot's memorial site

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Hong Kong imail

Mourners click on to pilot's memorial

CHINESE Internet users poured out their grief over the death of pilot Wang Wei at an online memorial site yesterday, with thousands of mourners sending him virtual bouquets and burning virtual incense. The site, www.netor.com, registered more than 17,000 page views for Wang's Chinese-language page by yesterday afternoon, a day after the page was created. Wang ranked No12 on the most-mourned list, trailing popular Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng Lijun, who died in the early 1990s. But he seemed poised to surpass Teng, who had about 18,000 page views, and had already exceeded the online popularity of late premier Zhou Enlai, whose site had about 13,800 page views. Beijing has accorded the 33-year-old pilot the status of a revolutionary martyr, saying he died ``a glorious death'', after calling off a 14-day search for him. Wang's Jian-8 jet fighter crashed into the sea after colliding with a United States spy plane on a surveillance mission off the coast of Hainan on April 1. ``You are the pride of the Chinese nation,'' one online writer wrote, while others dedicated virtual songs, tulips and penned poetry in his honour. It remains to be seen whether Wang's popularity on the funeral website will surpass that of the most-mourned, Lu Youqing, a Shanghai cancer patient whose online diary before his death touched the hearts of many. But Lu died in early December and mourners have had more time to eulogise him than Wang. His site enjoyed more than 93,000 page views.

President Jiang Zemin conferred the title ``Protector of the Sea and Sky'' on Wang yesterday and urged the military to learn from the pilot's exemplary actions during the April 1 incident, the official Xinhua News Agency said. ``He was resolute and daring, cool and calm, heroic and indomitable, and with his life he composed a stirring song of victory for patriotism and revolutionary heroism,'' Xinhua said, quoting a decree from the Central Military Commission, which Mr Jiang heads. ``Wang Wei's heroic deeds are the most moving, most real and most inspiring to us,'' the military's main newspaper, the Liberation Army Daily, said yesterday. Xinhua reported that Communist Party officials and villagers in Wang's hometown of Huzhou, a small town in the eastern province of Zhejiang, were determined to learn from Wang's ``patriotic spirit'' and to turn ``tragedy into strength''.

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2001

Answers

This is really a classic opportunity to witness how a government, any government, including our own, can set the people up with a false image of what is going on. They create a fraudulent scenario about some mishap and after the media fully supports that, and the people fully accept that, it becomes part of "true" history from then on. If the lie is large enough, and if it is accepted by the majority, it will become a virtual reality for the nation.

No matter what is said now by outsiders, the Chinese people will continue to believe that their fighter pilot was a true hero, rather than a risk-taking, hot-shot, bozo. They will not be able to understand that their stupid pilot miscalculated his flight path and ran into the propellers of the US plane, cutting his own plane in half and sealing his own death. And that he had a habid of such dumb behavior and came close to killing himself previously, numerous times.

Just keep this whole matter in mind as you watch it all unfold because our own government is just a guilty of extraordinary lies when it suits their purpose. I don't think we are lying about any of the material facts in this particular situation, but there have been plenty of lies about other things in the past, lies that sometimes got us involved in wars that killed thousands of our servicemen.

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2001


Yup, I agree with everything you said, Gordon.

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2001

I believe you are correct, Gordon.

As to the Chinese version, I will quote another online poster.

'drivel'

heh heh

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2001


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