Thank you so much for your comments. I want to express my sincere appreciation for your grandfather’s contributions to the rebuilding of China during the difficult years of the first half of the 20th century, and for his ultimate sacrifice from Japan’s bombing in Yunnan.
Your grandfather Y.Y. Wong and my father King Tow might have known each other since they were both students at MIT and lived in the Boston/Cambridge area, although your grandfather was a few years earlier than my father. My father was in Civil Engineering and graduated from MIT in 1930. Their paths might also have crossed while they were working in China, since your grandfather was an architect and my father was a civil engineer.
Don Tow
]]>My grandfather Y.Y. Wong was injured during the May 4th bombing of Baoshan and killed while hospitalized during a subsequent bombing raid.
He was an MIT-educated architect from Guangzhou and Hong Kong who was in Yunnan at the time helping the Chinese government to construct airstrips and other military installations.
]]>Also, I love the ways you write. You provide a reference for everything you say so that readers know where they come from.
]]>George,
Yes, the cotton industry in Xinjiang has become highly mechanized, and it has been going on for many years. This means that it is even more remarkable that the Chinese government has been able to keep all these people employed with other jobs and continue to improve their standard of living.
Thanks.
Don
]]>Christina,
Thank you very much for your personal observations from many visits to Xinjiang. It is really a sad reflection of our times when so much fabricated and false news are created and repeatedly spread so that that becomes the impression of ordinary people because that is what they hear and read everyday.
Don
]]>I have witnessed tremendous improvement there and people are happy. I freely mixed with different ethnicities and visited mosques. Several years ago in a train there I came across a group of well-contented “Han” people from coastal areas returning home after working on cotton fields. They said they came there seasonally due to attractive wages. In addition, soon after Xianjiang Uigher terrorist attacks not many years ago, I entered it again after my tour to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. I saw security tightened even when I entered a public garden. I saw groups of police/soldiers back to back defending each other when scrutinizing attacks from terrorists. With their helmets on under strong summer sunshine, I could not imagine how they could overcome such unbearable heat. To show my appreciation of their admirable effort in protecting public safety, I went to a police office. I said that I am a Chinese American asking for its help to buy watermelons for police/soldiers as my humble token of gratitude. However, it told me to go to a different office, & then to another one. Finally I was not able to do what I wanted due to a shortage of time. Thus my question is will other countries tolerate any terrorist attacks to harm ordinary citizens and should these countries take appropriate measures to safeguard common people from such harm?
]]>Charles, excellent suggestion about putting those section titles in quotes with a question mark. This has been done. Regarding adding the comment about innocence until proven guilty, I decided not to add that, because the evidence presented is so inadequate and often wrong, I don’t even want to suggest that the accusations may be true.
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