主题：【原创】我们留美学生在学校里反藏独（下） -- letitbe

实话讲有点空，不是特别organized。不知道语气会不会也重了点。大家有兴趣的话就批两句吧：）其实跟他们吵也没什么意思。通情达理的大多早看出来双方都有一定道理，有成见的人自然会盯住你的小辫子不放。最近兴奋过度，花太多时间在这上面了。大家还是以为中华之崛起而努力工作学习要紧！

I really appreciate you spending the time trying to figure out what is really going on in Tibet and what are the real thoughts of us Chinese scholars and students. Well one thing is for sure: there is no way the one hundred plus people showing up on Monday to protest are all brain-washed. Most of us are from the top universities in China, and for many years we have been easy-going and hard-working colleagues and students with your people here. If we never look fanatic to you, our strong reactions this time would make you wonder whether those separatists are indeed telling the truth, or the whole picture. You may want to stop and listen to us for a while. The opportunity to be heard from. That is all what we asked for.

And trust me the opportunity doesn't come easy. You praised those separatists for giving us equal time to debate. I acknowledge that. Even though we are just students who speak English as second language and gather at the plaza on short notice, while those people are "professionals" in stirring public emotion and have planned for this since a long time ago, it's still nice to have the chance to debate. What you may not know is when they went to UCLA, they learnt from their "mistake" and talked by themselves for hours and only gave our side 5 min for rebuttal. What a clever strategy, taking full advantage of the power of a loudspeaker permit to minimize the exposure time of the opposing party.

Even if we have the equal chance to speak and make our points, the truth could be easily "edited" by the media to show otherwise. I'm sorry if I don't seem to trust the media here too much. Believe me I'm not like this 2 months ago. Given you have paid much attention to this issue, I would not try to bore you with all the fabricated photographs from CNN and many other news stations, since you probably already know this and it's very easy to search. If you have read the report from local news <＃＃＃＃＃>, you may find this sentence "One man even ripped a poster out of the hands of a woman on the opposing side and threw it to the ground before being escorted away by police." That's indeed the truth, except they forgot to mention the attacker is from their side. Maybe the identity is just too hard for them to find out, or there is no news value. In fact, there is a easy way to find out the objectivity of news stations here: as you said, most people here see Dalai as a nice guy. Actually, correct me if I'm wrong: I'm afraid a majority of people here are also very likely to have the impression that Dalai should have Tibet back and China is doing something wrong, even if they actually know pretty much nothing about what has happened or is happening there. So where did they get the fixed opinion?

In the end, I'd like to say a few more words about our seemingly overheated reactions. We love our country, just as your people love yours. Our country has made mistakes in the past, sometimes big ones. However, that won't affect our affection, and certainly won't be excuses to destroy our unity. Sooner or later, we will correct all the missteps. And we are already doing much better, as you have seen with your own eyes. But does everyone here know? As an obviously over-educated man with a special interest on this issue, you also admit you don't know many of China's policies towards minority people. How much do you think other people in this country know? Or rather, how many good things about China has the US media been telling? If we seem to speak alike and avoid talking about problems, that's only because we cherish our opportunity to be heard too much, and don't want to risk our opinion being distorted by the media. With all due respect, I don't doubt that your people have a sincere concern about China's problems, but we know our problems the best, and we are already improving by ourselves. We certainly would like to let people know more about China, and we welcome advice or criticism, as long as they come with a good will (such as yours. thank you for being objective so far). But any separatist behavior won't be tolerated, no matter whether it's due to ill intention, or lack of knowledge. The 100+ people showing up on Monday, they are originally from various places of China and various social backgrounds. There is a reason for them to make the efforts. To me, that reason is to tell others: Chinese people are working hard towards a better future, and we won't allow anyone or anything to sabotage this course. If we can't get heard by speaking, we have to get heard by shouting. I believe that's also how the black people got their long overdue human rights in US.

P.S. talking about being mean, we are just normal people, and some of us can be bad-tempered, so we certainly may overreacte sometimes, in which case we sincerely apologize. However, as far as I know, the only violent scene on Monday is the one described in the above local news, started by a man in the separatist group.