Bowen: Save your energy for the fight against Einon!
Hugh: There is no fight against Einon.
Bowen: ...I'm going to start one.
-Dragonheart, 1996
So, yeah. It occurs to me that even after 9 blog entries (4 of which could actually get me arrested in this country), I have yet to even write an "introduce yourself" entry. And so, here it is.
My name is Patriam Reminisci, a teacher, an ex-soldier, and an ex-cop. No, that's not my real name, but since the blog I am writing is illegal in the country I live in, that will have to suffice. It's Latin, and translates into "Remember your Homeland." As for my homeland, I'm American. My wife and stepdaughter are citizens of the Philippines, and my son is a dual citizen. I love the Philippines. It's an absolutely amazing country. I am a firm supporter of the Philippine cause in their resistance against China's illegal annexation of the West Philippine Sea, and I affirm that China's construction of artificial islands there for military bases (as well as the Chinese Coast Guard's brutality toward Filipino fishermen in those waters) is an absolute outrage and the world has got to stop looking the other way and shrugging about China's crimes... and that's where my life gets really complicated. You see...
I live and work in Beijing. And under China's brutal laws, saying any of this in public is grounds for me to disappear into a Chinese political prison for the rest of my life.
Now, among China's expat community (as well as Western Sinologists) there are two basic camps: panda-huggers (those who adore China) and dragonslayers (those who are opposed to China). If you haven't figured out which one I am from the last paragraph, the title, and the picture, then my guess is you are a graduate of Beijing's Public School system. I am absolutely, ten thousand and five hundred percent unrepentant, unhesitant, unequivocal, unremorseful dragonslayer who eats live baby pandas for breakfast.
...Okay so I don't actually eat baby pandas, but you get the point.
It wasn't always that way. When I first landed in China back in 2012, China was a pretty exciting place. It wasn't exactly what you'd call a free country, but it was inching in that direction. For instance, criticizing the government was still technically illegal, but as long as you did it in English (which no one in the country speaks) on Facebook (which no one in the country can access), the authorities didn't really care. And if you DID get called out on it, they would basically sit you in an office and waste a day of your life by sternly waving their finger at you and then send you on your way. Essentially, you were free to do mostly as you pleased as long as you were not hurting anyone, robbing anyone, or making enough noise to be an actual threat to the all-important status quo (especially the CCP's oligarchial rule).
And then, he came along: Xi Jinpeng. And everything changed, almost overnight. And the world seems content to sit by while a dictator with delusions of Godhood tyrannizes not only his own country but every country he touches. Somebody has got to fight his rhetoric, call attention to what he is doing, and reveal his lies. But so far, there isn't a resistance against him.
Well, guess what. There is now.
That's why I am on Steemit. That's what my blog is about. It's a massive eye on China, from the inside. Political issues concerning China's aggression, historical lessons about why China does what they do, cultural studies about the literature that drives their thinking... all things Chinese are herein exposed to a microscope and light. True, there will be a handful of personal entries unrelated to that. They'll be about my travels through Asia, maybe one or two about teaching. But for the most part, until the totalitarian Xi regime is reined in, my entries are nothing more and nothing less than one man's all-out assault on Xi Jinpeng, and on the monster he has transformed China into, and I am writing it all from a computer in Xi's own citadel of Beijing.
I am a dragonslayer, living in the dragon's den.
This blog is my story, and my sword.
"Thy banner, dear to all our hearts, it's sun and stars alight.
Oh, never shall it's shining fields be dimmed by tyrant's might."
-Lupang Hinirang (Philippine National Anthem), English translation
"Then conquer, we must when our cause is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is Our Trust!' "
-The Defense of Fort McHenry (source of the U.S. National Anthem), verse 3