Qu Yuan (above) is the reason thousands of athletes have been doing battle in dragon boats of late. Qu was a patriot, poet and adviser to the Chu kingdom during the Warring States Period (475BC-221BC), when self-interest and conflict ruled supreme. Fearing for the future of his beloved country, Qu committed suicide by throwing himself into a river. The story goes that fishermen tried to save his body from being gobbled up by fish by slapping the water with their paddles and beating drums to scare them off. Qu was later expropriated by the Communist Party. His patriotism, social idealism and virtue were lauded as symbols in the charge against conservatism and restorative forces, led by Zhou Enlai …
The inaugural premier of the People’s Republic of China held office for almost 30 years. In the first nine he was also the country’s foreign minister, and his earliest diplomatic achievements were with India. In 1950 and 1951, he managed to persuade India to accept China’s occupation of Tibet, thanks to the friendly relationship he contrived with the nation’s first post-independence prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru …
Nehru is widely credited as being the leader of the Indian independence movement that broke the British Empire. Impressively, he managed to create no bad blood during his political struggle. British newspaper The Guardian described him as “manifestly one of the great men of our age”. He was always impeccably dressed and the sherwani long coat, a traditional South Asian garment, is now commonly referred to as the “Nehru jacket”. Nehru’s life has been portrayed countless times in film, including in Gandhi (1982), produced and directed by Richard Attenborough …
With two Oscars, four Baftas, and three Golden Globes to his name, Richard has done his part in giving the Attenborough name cultural clout (one of his two brothers is none other than Sir David, naturalist extraordinaire). Richard had two other siblings, the late German-Jewish refugees Helga and Irene Bejach, who were adopted by the Attenboroughs after their family were killed by the Nazis. In 1988, Richard took part in Freedomfest, a tribute concert for the then incarcerated Nelson Mandela. The 11-hour extravaganza generated US$3.6 million for the cause and boasted a star-studded cast of musicians and film stars, including Hollywood’s hottest new sex symbol, the star of American Gigolo …
Richard Tiffany Gere was born one month and one day before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, a country to which he bears no loyalty. Gere chairs the International Campaign for Tibet, which promotes human rights for Tibetan people, and is outspoken in his criticism of the central government. But Gere has steered clear of Tibet in his films, allowing him to avoid censorship in China. Not so for another Tibet sympathiser, who was slapped with the label “bourgeois liberalist” for his book, Stick Out Your Tongue: Ma Jian …
Ma’s first novella was inspired by his travels in Tibet and the writer is no stranger to the ire of Beijing. Before his novella was published, his paintings had been denounced in the 1983 Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign. Ma was born in Qingdao in 1953, the same year the World Peace Council elected Four Famous Men of World Culture, which included one who had been dead for 2,230 years: Qu Yuan.