Suzhou City, China  Instead of writing about the ancient classical gardens and charming Venice-like canals of this beautiful city, which once awed Italian traveler Marco Polo in the 13th century, or about Suzhou City’s awe-inspiring high-tech industrial zones, I couldn’t shake off my feelings of disbelief, sadness and anger at the recent senseless killings by a troubled Korean youth at Virginia Tech University.
I apologize for having to discuss this sad topic on a Sunday, but I believe we can draw some lessons, catharsis and glimmers of hope from even the darkest of human tragedies.
For someone who has just finished a short course at Peking University in the suburbs of majestic Beijing City, and who will forever fondly remember the enjoyable times of becoming a student again, it saddens me that such a tragedy has befallen another university and its 25,000 students half way around the globe. Schools should be exempt from the violence, horrors and cynicism of the outside world. Young people shouldn’t be dragged into these awful realities.
Here are some lessons I think we can learn from the Virginia Tech tragedy, in order to stop similar future occurrences from happening again, as much as humanly possible.
Nothing can justify murder and suicide; both are morally unconscionable. However, shouldn’t society as a whole, the institutions of family, and school, mass media, pop culture and others re-examine their possible complicity or their glaring shortcomings in alienating and morally confusing the youth of our modern age?
Singaporean statesman Lee Kuan Yew was correct when he bewailed the moral permissiveness and over-emphasis on individual rights of Western societies to the detriment of moral discipline and the rights of the whole society. Lee advocates traditional Confucian values as an antidote to Western moral permissiveness, and I believe Christian values can also provide a similar sense of moral anchor versus the angst of youth.
I still remember J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, which is about a troubled youth struggling with growing up and his railing against the "phoniness" of adults, educators and the world. Are we listening to kids and youngsters enough? Are we giving them the old-fashioned discipline and moral guidance that they need? Are we helping them make the bewildering adjustments to growing up in a cynical and troubled world with their ideals and hope intact?
• Ban gun ownership.
I couldn’t understand how the world’s only remaining superpower, the US of A, could be so utterly clueless on the issue of gun control, and have the most lenient gun ownership regulations in the Western world. For the sake of civilization and the defense of true democracy, I urge political leaders of America to enact strict gun control laws after the Virginia Tech tragedy, which involved a Korean student who owned two firearms.
One of the reasons I enjoy traveling as a tourist exploring continental China, which is bigger in population and culturally more diverse than the whole of Europe and North America together, is because it is such a safe society where even the policemen do not carry guns.
I was saddened when a Singaporean tourist at a five-star hotel here commented that the Philippines is a beautiful tropical paradise, but he was troubled when he remember seeing security guards outside a hamburger fast-food outlet carrying heavy firearms. I challenge all our senatorial and congressional candidates to pass laws banning private ownership of firearms. If we ban private ownership of firearms, I believe we can better eliminate private armies, gangsters or other potential troublemakers from misusing firearms.
• Trust in God.
I’m not a religious person, but instead of questioning where was God when the Virginia Tech tragedy happened, this shocking crisis should bring us closer to trust our Creator and to the Author of life.
It is a coincidence that this past weekend was Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day in the US. It was also a coincidence that I’m now on a tour of Eastern China’s Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, having just passed by Nanjing City where Japanese imperial forces committed the barbaric Nanjing Massacre exactly 70 years ago. The Nanjing Massacre Museum is presently under renovation. It will be expanded to 20 times its present size and will reopen in December to become "the world’s largest museum of its kind dedicated to world peace." Instead of destroying our faith, we should search for spiritual strength and hope for a better future in the worst tragedies.
I couldn’t forget a male classmate at Peking University who is now in the East China tour with our group of young international entrepreneurs, when he said he was crying as he watched the TV news accounts of the grieving parents of the Virginia Tech tragedy.
Where was God when the Nazis massacred six million Jews in the Holocaust, when the Japanese military massacred 300,000 civilians in Nanjing in the six weeks of their failed attempt to crush China’s resistance, when the confused Korean kid massacred 32 innocent students and teachers at Virginia Tech University? People of faith say that God was there in the Nazi gas chambers cradling the dying or in random acts of kindness amid horrific barbarism, that He was also there in Nanjing through many miracles of survival and in the countless acts of heroism amid unspeakable cruelty.
A. Barton Hinkel in the Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote that Allied military forces liberating Jewish prisoners in Nazi death camps one day found a scrap of paper with a prayer scribbled on it. I believe this prayer by a Holocaust survivor should comfort all of us who suffer whatever hardships, are embittered by injustices or pained by rancor in our hearts:
"Lord, remember not only the men of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted upon us. Remember rather the fruits we have brought, thanks to this suffering: our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart that has grown out of this. And when they come to judgment, let all the fruits we have borne be their forgiveness."