Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Buddha and Mao

Having told you Maya’s reaction to the Jesus portrait, I have to tell a portrait story about Zoe, too.

Before we left for China to adopt Maya, we spent time looking through my old pictures from Beijing and China travel books. Zoe was intrigued by the portrait of Mao that hangs above Tiananmen Square – probably because we saw it in practically every guidebook. So by the time we were headed for Tiananmen Square, she was fired up to see the portrait of Mao.

So fired up, in fact, that she kept up a running conversation about it as we walked toward it, and soon the conversation degenerated into a song with lyrics something like, “I wanna see Mao, Mao, Mao-ey, Mao-ey, Mao. . . .” I was beginning to wonder if we’d get arrested for disrespect or heresy or something!

Then as we passed under the Mao portrait into the Forbidden City, Zoe says, “Mao was a nice man, wasn’t he?” I hemmed and hawed and answered, “Well, some people think he was nice and some people think he wasn’t.” Zoe looked at me gimlet-eyed and said adamantly, “Well, I say he’s NICE.” Ooooookay!

There are some nutty conspiracy theorists out there who decry Americans adopting babies from China, because they believe they’ve all been implanted with microchips that the Chinese will use to “activate” this stealth army when the kids reach adulthood. For just a nanosecond there, I had to wonder . . . . [Not really, but can you imagine what one of those whack jobs would have thought if they’d heard 4-year-old Zoe singing Mao’s praises?!!]

2 comments:

Jeff and Madeline said...

Madeline doesn't know too much about Mao yet, but I did visit his tomb while in Beijing; I am sure the time will be coming soon.
She does know a lot about Buddha statues though and really loves them.

RamblingMother said...

Her chip must have tripped early. I have to laugh out loud at that, as my Glenys would say.

Beverly