Sunday, April 24, 2011

Tượng Khổng Tử biến mất khỏi Thiên An Môn


Theo các bản tin của hãng thông tấn Reuters, hãng AP và báo New York Times ngày thứ bảy 23-4-2011 thì tượng Khổng Tử đã bị dời đi khỏi quảng trường Thiên An Môn vào đêm thứ năm 21-4-2011




Tượng Khổng Tử biến mất khỏi Thiên An Môn

Tượng Khổng Tử trước đây
Chỗ pho tượng cũ nay quây vách xanh

Theo các bản tin của hãng thông tấn Reuters, hãng AP và báo New York Times ngày thứ bảy 23-4-2011 thì tượng Khổng Tử đã bị dời đi khỏi quảng trường Thiên An Môn vào đêm thứ năm 21-4-2011. Hiện nay tại chỗ pho tượng thì không còn nhìn thấy tượng và bệ pho tượng được quây kín bằng các tấm vách xanh . Chính quyền không chính thức loan báo lý do tại sao . Theo bản tin của hãng AP, thì trên mạng sina.com có bản tin nói rằng một nhân viên của viện bảo tàng tại Thiên An Môn nói rằng tượng Khổng Tử được dời vào một khu vườn  bên trong . Pho tượng này chỉ được tạm thời đặt bên ngoài trong khi khu vườn đang được làm . Khi có người gọi điện thoại cho viện bảo tàng thì cô nữ nhân viên trả lời là không có tin tức gì về pho tượng và hẹn hãy gọi điện thoại vào thứ hai tới để biết thêm tin tức .

Nhưng nói rằng pho tượng Khổng Tử chỉ được đặt tạm thời ở quảng trường trong khi chờ đợi khu vườn bên trong việc bảo tàng sửa soạn thì cũng không có lý vì thời gian trưng bày ở Thiên An Môn chỉ có ba tháng thì tại sao lại mất công xây bệ để đặt tượng trong ba tháng để rồi lại rời đi .

Việc pho tượng bị dời đi, dù mới hai, ba ngày đã gây nên bàn tán sôi nổi trên các diễn đàn mạng tại Trung Quốc . Theo bản tin của AP, trên trang mạng maoflag.net, một trang cổ vũ cho việc tôn thờ Mao, đả kích việc đi theo kinh tế thị trường, đã hoan hô việc dời tượng Khổng Tử đi và cho rằng chính quyền đã phải nhượng bộ ý kiến của nhân dân . Trên trang mạng này, một người ký tên “Leftist” (Thiên Tả) viết: “Quẳng Khổng Tử xuống biển! Lời của Mao chủ tịch đáng được kính yêu vì Mao chủ tịch quan tâm đến mọi giới chứ không phải chỉ riêng giới quí tộc”.

Dù tượng Khổng Tử không bị dẹp hoàn toàn mà chỉ được đem trưng bày nơi khác thì việc dời pho tượng này khỏi một vị trí trang trọng là ở giữa quảng trường Thiên An Môn, ngang hàng với Mao Trạch Đông cũng là dấu hiệu chính quyền Trung Quốc không muốn tư tưởng Khổng Tử có vai trò quan trọng hơn tư tưởng của đảng Cộng Sản Trung Quốc và không muốn cho người dân nhìn vào pho tượng nằm tại Thiên An Môn nghĩ rằng đảng Cộng Sản Trung Quốc đã vất bỏ tư tưởng Mác xít và tư tưởng Mao để đi theo tư tưởng Khổng Tử .

Nói cho cùng, việc dời tượng nói lên là giữa một nhà đạo đức luôn luôn đề cao thuyết chính danh là Khổng Tử và Mao Trạch Đông, một chính trị gia luôn luôn làm các việc gian tà, bất chính, họ không được quyền nhìn mặt nhau, không được quyền đặt ngang hàng nhau. Hiện nay thì lãnh tụ bất chính danh Mao vẫn còn được đặt cao hơn ông thầy chính danh Khổng Tử.





Tượng Khổng Tử lúc mới khai mạc


Du khách kính cẩn cúi đầu chào Đức Khổng Tử

Chỗ đặt tượng Khổng Tử cũ
Ảnh chụp ngày 23-4-2011, tấm vách xanh đã gỡ bỏ, bức tượng được dọn sạch sẽ






Tượng Khổng Tử được dời vào khu vườn bên trong viện bảo tàng, với khoảng không gian hẹp hơn, kém trang trọng hơn để ngoài quảng trường




Phụ lục:
Bản tin của hãng thông tấn Reuters
Controversial Confucius statue vanishes from Tiananmen
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/22/us-china-conficius-idUSTRE73L0Y420110422
BEIJING | Fri Apr 22, 2011 5:13am EDT
BEIJING (Reuters Life!) – A large statue of ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius, controversially erected outside a Communist Party museum in central Beijing, has quietly been removed from its plinth following an online uproar about its location.
The 9.5-meter (30 foot), 17-tonne statue had pride of place in front of the north gate of the recently renovated National Museum Of China, just off Tiananmen Square and not far from the gaze of Chairman Mao’s famous portrait over the Forbidden City.
Some Chinese had complained that it was insulting of the Communist Party to so honor Confucius, having vilified him during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s and never apologized for it.
 Others said the Party had no right to appropriate Confucius and his ideals. Some even said venerating Confucius smacked of the kind of superstition the Communist revolution was supposed to have banished.
The statue, erected in January, has now disappeared and the site surrounded by blue hoardings.
The museum is not saying why the stern-faced carving has gone — numerous calls seeking comment went unanswered — but the move has sparked heated debate online, some joking that Confucius had been banished for lacking a Beijing residence permit.
“Maybe Confucius has been taken away by police for suspected economic crimes?” wrote “criminal” on sina.com.cn’s popular microblog, in possible reference to a probe into detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.
“Is it because he is not a Communist Party member?” wondered “Yongtandiao MT.”
But the website maoflag.net, a popular forum for old-school fans of the Communist Party, celebrated Confucius’s removal, showing a picture on its front page of the statue with the character “demolish” superimposed on top.
“The statue of the slave-owning sorcerer Confucius has been driven from Tiananmen Square!” crowed “Jiangxi Li Jianjun.”
Museum director Lu Zhangshen had told local media last month that as an important global cultural figure, and a Chinese one at that, Confucius deserved his spot.
“Please do not link the Confucius statue with politics. It has nothing to do with politics,” Lu was quoted as saying.
Once denounced as feudalistic by fervent Communist Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution in Mao-era China, Confucius’s 2,500-year-old ideas of filial piety and respect for education have made a comeback in China since the 1990s — as both a celebration of traditional Chinese culture, and a message of obedience to those in power.
The party has even co-opted him in its bid to soften the country’s image abroad. China began setting up “Confucius Institutes” in 2004 to teach Chinese language and culture and they are now in more than 80 countries.
(Reporting by Sally Huang, Zhou Xin, Sui-Lee Wee and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Ron Popeski)
Bản tin của hãng thông tấn AP
Beijing’s Confucius statue mysteriously removed
AP – In this Jan. 12, 2011 file photo, Chinese paramilitary policemen stand guard in front of a sculpture …
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press – Sat Apr 23, 6:29 am ET
BEIJING – The mysterious removal of a statue of Confucius opposite Beijing’s Tiananmen Square sparked an online flurry of speculation Saturday by Chinese looking for an explanation. One report says the monument was simply moved inside a nearby museum.
The statue of the 2,500-year-old sage was unveiled just three months ago in the Communist government’s most visible endorsement yet of a cultural icon it had once reviled.
On Saturday, it was missing from the pavement on the north side of the recently reopened National Museum of China, with no notice as to where or why it had gone.
Online forums were abuzz with speculation as to its fate. The news portal sina.com quoted a museum staffer saying it had been moved inside to a new sculpture garden. The staffer, who wasn’t identified by name, said the statue had been displayed outdoors while the garden was being completed.
Museum officials would not comment and told The Associated Press that no tickets were available Saturday to go inside and check. A woman who answered the phone at the office responsible for the district encompassing Tiananmen Square said she had no information on the statue and told reporters to call back Monday.
The 31-foot (9.5-meter) bronze sculpture of a robed Confucius had sat just northeast of Tiananmen Square roughly facing a massive portrait of Mao Zedong, founder of China’s Communist regime, hanging from famed Tiananmen Gate at the entrance to the Forbidden City.
Confucius was at the center of Chinese civilization for nearly two millennia but was widely denigrated by Mao, who railed constantly against traditional culture and what he called “feudal thinking.”
Thirty-five years after Mao’s death, the statue’s appearance was seen as proof of Confucius’ rehabilitation as an underlying ideology for a society that has largely discarded communist ideology, even as it retains the one-party Leninist political system.
Already in recent years, Confucius has featured in new books and training courses, as well as in a poorly received state-funded biopic last year starring famed Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-Fat in the title role.
While the statue’s new location could not be verified, Internet users speculated as to whether its removal had been planned all along, or had been prompted by political pressure.
The website maoflag.net favored by hard-core Maoists critical of China’s pro-market leadership, heralded the statue’s removal as a sign of the government giving way to popular sentiment against building up ideological rivals to the foreign leader.
“Dump Confucius into the sea! Mao’s words are loved because he cared for all of the people, not just the elite,” said one comment on the site signed “Leftist.”
Bản tin của báo New York Times
Confucius Statue Vanishes Near Tiananmen Square
April 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/asia/23confucius.html?_r=1
By ANDREW JACOBS
BEIJING — “When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them,” Confucius once said.
Apparently, someone extremely powerful has taken the saying to heart, having decided that a 31-foot bronze statue of the ancient Chinese sage that was unveiled near Tiananmen Square four months ago did not belong on the nation’s most hallowed slice of real estate.
The sudden disappearance of Confucius, which took place under cover of darkness early Thursday morning, has stoked outrage among the philosopher’s descendants, glee among devoted Maoists and much conjecture among analysts who seek to decipher the intricacies of the Chinese leadership’s decisions.
Although there were some reports that the statue had been moved to a less prominent location within the newly expanded National Museum, those who had a hand in bringing Confucius to the ceremonial heart of the capital were of little help Friday. Tian Shanting, a spokesman for the museum, which had unveiled the statue with great fanfare, said he had no idea what had happened. The sculptor, Wu Weishan, declined to comment, as did city officials who have jurisdiction over Tiananmen Square.
A guard standing in front of the empty void that once held the 17-ton likeness of Confucius, his arms folded beneath flowing robes, said he thought it had been moved inside. “All I can tell you is that I came to work in the morning and it was gone,” he said, adding that there were no more museum tickets available for Friday.
The statue’s arrival in January at the museum entrance, cater-corner from the iconic portrait of Mao Zedong, set off a maelstrom of speculation, with many scholars describing it as a seismic step in the Communist Party’s rehabilitation of Confucianism.
In his day, Mao condemned that system of philosophical thought as backward and feudal; during the decade of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards were encouraged to deface Confucian temples and statues. The scholar’s ancestral home was destroyed, and bodies of long-dead descendants were exhumed and publicly displayed.
But that was then. Eager to fill the vacuum left by the fading of Maoist ideology, the party in recent years has been championing Confucianism as a national code of conduct, with special emphasis on tenets like ethical behavior, respect for the elderly, social harmony and obedience to authority. Since 2004, the government has opened more than 300 Confucius Institutes around the world to promote the country’s “soft power.” Last year, one of the most breathlessly hyped state-backed films was “Confucius,” a biopic about the philosopher that starred Chow Yun-Fat, perhaps best known in the West for his role in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” (The film, timed to the Communist Party’s 60th anniversary in power, was a box-office and critical dud.)
Some academics say that placing a mammoth paean to Confucius a stone’s throw from Mao’s mausoleum may have gone too far. Chen Lai, a Confucian studies expert at Tsinghua University, suggested that those in the influential Central Party School who opposed the statue’s placement near the square had been quietly agitating against it.
Kong Weidong, vice secretary of the International Confucius Descendants Reunion Association, who says he is a 75th-generation descendant of the sage, blamed powerful “leftists” for orchestrating the statue’s removal. “If they had a process for putting the statue there, they should have gone through the proper channels to take it away,” he said.
Unrepentant Maoists celebrated the move on Friday. “The witch doctor who has been poisoning people for thousands of years with his slave-master spiritual narcotic has finally been kicked out of Tiananmen Square!” one writer, using the name Jiangxi Li Jianjun, wrote on the Web site Maoflag.net.
For those who have been heartened by the government’s embrace of Confucian values, news of the statue’s removal was devastating. Guo Qijia, a professor at Beijing Normal University who helps run the China Confucius Institute, said that only Confucian teachings could rescue China from what he described as a moral crisis.
“Students come home from school and tell their parents, ‘One of my classmates got run over by a car today — now I have one less person to compete against,’ ” he said. “We have lost our humanity, our kindness and our spirit. Confucianism is our only hope for becoming a great nation.”
Ian Johnson and Yang Xiyun contributed reporting, and Mia Li contributed research.

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