Chinese Embassy Bombing
The Monday morning following the Chinese embassy bombing Bob Charlick and I were sitting around talking about events oveer the past few days when my phone rang. It was the Foreign Affairs Office of Suzhou University.
"Would you mind talking to Suzhou TV about the bombing?" they asked.
"Uhm, when?" I replied.
"Right now. The camera crew is here," they said. Typical Chinese scheduling.
So Bob and I complied. Aware that both President Clinton and the U.S. Ambassador, James Sasser, had issued apologies that weren't being reported in the Chinese media, I quickly jumped on the Internet and pulled a copy off the U.S. Embassy website while Bob was being interviewed. When my turn came, I voiced my shock,
sorrow and regret over the incident. Then I read Sasser's apology on camera. I gave a copy to the reporter in the hopes that they would translate it and report it when they ran our interviews.
That evening, a friend called to tell me she had seen me on the Suzhou Evening News. "How'd I do?" I asked.
"Hao Kan!" she replied.
When I asked her whether they had shown Sasser's apology, though, she told me they had not. The Chinese media would not report the apologies issued by Clinton, NATO, and Sasser until the following evening.
On the other hand, I found the apologies offered at that point (and still) were insufficient.
See RAGE! at Cultural Evolution for further stories on the aftermath of that tragedy.
