They marched on a Thursday afternoon, about a year after I'd moved to Shenzhen, a metropolis on China's southern border.
The Chinese were angered by what their government deemed Japanese encroachment on the uninhabited Diaoyu Islands, located in the East China Sea, around which is a prime location for commercial fishing. Beneath them lie potential oil and gas reserves.
Businesses closed for the day; schools released their students. In riot gear — large helmets, body armour, shields — police lined the streets.
"Protest" is a term that implies opposition, yet here were thousands of furious people clotting the city's arterial streets, chanting and screaming and shaking their fists. One man had attached a pig's face, without the head, to a thick chain, securing its eye sockets and nostrils with large hooks. Another carried an enormous snapping turtle with a shell the size of manhole cover, swinging it by the tail like a pendulum. Reports of Japanese-made cars being overturned appeared on the news.
Strange, I thought, to hold a demonstration against an absent opponent. But that wasn't miring anyone's progress. The police, armed with batons and firearms, seemed apprehensive and high-strung. You couldn't blame them. Frothy waters had evolved into a maelstrom, which would calm only of its own volition. Somewhere, a faceless pig and a widowed turtle could attest to that.
China is a country where people are ruled with an iron fist. Freedom of speech, in so much as it is defined in the Western world, is non-existent. A firewall looms over much of the internet, restricting access to Facebook, Twitter and other potential sources of political incitement. There are blacklists, passport revocations. A veil of corruption and secrecy is draped over many of the country's actions.
To coin a phrase as bizarre as it is apt: lock a dog in a cupboard long enough, and you'll drive it insane. A docile terrier will be reduced to a slavering beast, one possessed by a lunatic rage that might very well be turned upon its master. Knowing this, the Chinese government opted to allow — and perhaps even organise — a protest, one cleverly directed at a common, long-standing enemy.
The march had acted as a steam valve for the country's suppressed citizens. Releasing that steam would allow them to vent emotions that were complex and twisted and locked within a pressurised container — that of the controlling government — which was aching to burst. And burst it had, but the shrapnel was no longer of any danger to its creators.
I thought of that protest last week as I was reading a review for a play called Bang-La-Merd, a one-woman show that was a symbolic cry, plaintive and indignant, against oppression vis-à-vis freedom of speech. The production closed yesterday.
Soldiers recorded each of its performances with video cameras, ostensibly for review by those who lurk within the upper echelons of the junta. As nerve-racking as it must have been for Ornanong Thaisriwong, Bang-La-Merd's director and star, to see these men in the audience, their presence hints at something far more insidious and worrisome.
If the play had been perceived as a serious threat to the junta's power, would the production have been allowed to finish its run? Would Ornanong not have been yanked offstage by a vaudeville hook and escorted to the darkest recesses of a military bunker for so-called "attitude adjustment"?
The junta knew what was occurring at Thong Lor Art Space. They knew, and yet the show went on. Dissent, yes, they'd decided, but dissent of a permissible — and necessary — nature.
Subversive as it may have seemed, Bang-La-Merd was approved content, stamped with a glaring mark that attempted to thwart the production's noble intentions. Supervised defiance, after all, is oxymoronic, and yields results as authentic as Bigfoot. But what's to be done? Shout loud enough and you're silenced by way of force; keep quiet and you're worthless. Find a healthy medium and you're beneficial to those you rail against. The game is as rigged as anything you'll find at any temple fair. Faced with inevitable loss, awareness is the only effective weapon. Understand you're being manipulated, and you can stymie that manipulation.
Maintaining control over anything — a tennis ball as you work the court, your emotions, a nation's people — is often difficult and exhausting. At times it is dangerous. Doing so necessitates outlets for catharsis, but only insofar as those outlets serve to depressurise. Like the Shenzhen protest, Bang-La-Merd was a steam valve, a means by which to stifle a brewing storm.
As the saying goes, a watched pot never boils. Having someone to periodically stir it doesn't seem to hurt, either. Order must be kept, that's the crux of all control.
Faced with the prospect of a crazed cupboard-hound, the junta saw to it that the play's curtain rose each night, leaving Ornanong free to do whatever it was she did (which was, like, somersault around while hooting). People gave voice to their grievances, they grumbled and lamented. They clapped; she bowed. Then everyone went home. And the play closed. And all was as it had been.
This isn't to say what Ornanong did wasn't of importance to Thai people. That remains to be seen. Theatre is ephemeral by nature; it flits away. The messages it sends do not.
Remember that. Pressure's on.
Adam Kohut is a subeditor for the Life section of the Bangkok Post.