Church Fascination

I’ve always been quite fascinated by Christian churches.
The kind of grandeur one can be mesmerized by through the beauty that makes such a place so holy and so serene. You read into the details of a church, from the beautifully colored window panels to the carved and painted walls and ceilings. You breathe in this presence where religion, history and art meets. One can argue that any other religious monuments such as the Angkor Wat or the Al-Masjid al-Haram are as beautiful but I have to say they don’t share the same kind of embodiment Christian churches do.

Think of a place you can sit in, and wonder why, wonder how and wonder who is the maker behind such a magnificent building and still enjoy this peace of mind with absolute silence. This is how I feel when I sit in a Church, it feels almost like maybe, maybe…there is a God out there. Or maybe not.

  

There is no bias to any religions whatsoever, I am as fascinated and curious about Christianity as I am with Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, the Ancient Greek religion and so on. All architectures are beautiful in their own way, but it’s the beauty of the churches that takes it’s number 1 place in my architectural, emotional, visual, whatever-ual preferences.

Quality over Quantity

I was scouring through the internet today to find out what’s been happening throughout China during the past month, this is so that I am in tune with the society of the country I’m currently living and working in and ofcourse it’s part of my job. Here are some of the sites I usually go to: Chinasmack, Ministry of Tofu, Baidu Beat, Sina Society.

When I started visiting these sites a year ago, I was fascinated by the news that gets updated daily on these sites, not because I’m a new comer – I have been here for almost 12 years – but because they were seriously bizarre, both good and bad. It then became a monthly habit of mine to soak up some China happenings and again get fascinated by it.

However, as I scour through these news today, I am for the first time overwhelmed by all of it. Here’s a list of stories that I read up on today:

Protest over forced demolition, suicide attempted
Protest over forced demolition, self-immolation attempted
Protest over low salary, suicide attempted
Forced marriage, suicide attempted
Sex abuse on the street
Sex abuse in school
Kids having sex in classrooms
the list goes on, you get the idea.

Each article gets an average of at least half a million views and up to thousands of comments online and the only reason why conversations are so heated over these articles is because they’re tragic. These conversations become a form of resentment towards government, towards society and towards one another. There is so much hate, so much sadness and so much negativity driving the minds and emotions of 1.3billion Chinese people.

And the bigger question is, as the quantity of such issues continue to rise, does it damage the quality of China’s civilization? While the internet is a great channel to liberate China from media suppression, it is slowly polluting the minds of the people. Perhaps media suppression is what China needs after all.