 I'd like to welcome everyone to our event, Peace Activists Report Back from China. I am very, very honored to share this panel with Julie Tong, former judge and co-founder of Pivot to Peace, a very, very important anti-war organization, as well as Michael Wong, the co-coordinator of Veterans for Peace China Working Group. Both Michael and Julie are amazing members of our team at China is not our enemy and have lots of insight and a wealth of experience that they give to help us really shine a light on the problems and the issues facing war and peace when it comes to China and the United States, how it affects Asian Americans, the impact it has on people in the Asia Pacific region and the impact it has on people in China. Recently, President Xi Jinping and Joe Biden actually had a summit in San Francisco and they, you know, reached some consensus, although there was some escalation as well, but we had some progress when it came to the increase of direct flights to China, which allows more Americans to go to China and see what it's actually like and to find out what exactly is happening in the country. And Julie and Michael did just that recently going on a several weeks long trip to the People's Republic of China. I'm so glad to be joined by both Julie and Michael. Thanks, both of you. Thank you, Kayo. It's such a pleasure to be here. Whenever I'm on CoPing's program, I feel like I'm with family. Thank you. Yes, thank you very much. I'm very glad to be here. Thank you. Absolutely. Well, I'd like us to just kind of talk about the main kind of reasons you decided to go to China, what you saw, and, you know, also what are the key takeaways from your visit to China. I want to first show a map of the places that you visited over your time. I wanted to include some more of the cities that you traveled to, but here you can see a map of southeastern China, as well as some of the provinces and cities and autonomous regions that both of you visited. So yeah, I want to take it away and kind of share your journey and your itinerary. Kayo, what a beautiful map you put out. I just love it. I love the pink background and the pink colors over the city that we visited. It is so cold pink. Yeah, that map shows the journey that we took, but we actually took different journeys. And we're just vacationing, relaxing, you know, lay back. And then in the last two weeks, I was joined up with Michael and his entourage, and we'll get a chance to talk about the purpose of that visit and what we did with the group. But I visited the cities that you identified, the provinces that you identified here. But the reason why I went back when to China is because it's such excitement for me. It's my culture, you know, my language, and all the things that happen in China are so exciting. And if we don't go back, Chinese or non-Chinese, it will be such a loss. And having been born in Hong Kong and raised there, I visited for a long time after I left Hong Kong in 1967, I didn't care to go back at all. And in fact, I don't think I went back for like 10 years until at some point I decided, well, I just go back and take a look, you know, and even then it was not with a whole lot of emotional attachment. I'm beginning to become more passionate about Hong Kong and China. And maybe because I've learned so much more, having lived in America, having been away and comparing my experience in both countries, I get to really value and appreciate China and Hong Kong even more. I visited Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Finland, Yangshuo in Hainan Island, Shanghai, Hongzhou. And you can see that I went from the tip, you know, of China all the way to, as you said, the northeastern part. Each city is different and distinguished from the other by geography, by landscape, culture and dialect spoken. But they can all communicate with each other with one common language, and that is the Pudonghua and Mandarin, and they all read the same writing. But the more important common aspect that I have learned from the people in China is that they have something that we don't have, or not at least by the same degree, and the safety, and safety and efficiency. I want to just go, can I just go into a little bit of that, or should I just give it back to you, Keo, at this time? Well, yeah, I'd love to. Okay, I'll continue on with it then. On the safety issue, you know, it's a country that you don't have to, everywhere you go, and I've been to eight cities. And it was not like I was led by tour guides, you know, who only show me certain part of China that is safe and shielded me from violence or whatever. I went everywhere on my own with friends in China and relatives in China. In 2019, I lived in China for about two weeks at my relatives' home. When everywhere went to markets back at least, everywhere that she went, I followed her. And it's all the same. It is safe. And for that, I think that it is something that we can learn from China, learn about how they run their system. San Francisco is one of the three cities that suffered the most during the pandemic from anti-Asian hate. So you can understand how relaxed I am instantly when I was in China, where I didn't have to worry about that. First of all, and also robbing me. All those things are just gone. I don't worry about people carrying guns because they don't allow guns in China. And people were extremely friendly. And so I looked up some of the crime rates in China, and I found out that China, for example, the homicide rate is about one-tenth of the global average. And in the last two decades, China has really cleaned up the country, and there are about 80% down from two decades ago. And during the same period, robbery also fell by 97% and assault by 40%. And in terms of the violent crime rates, and these are statistics from the court that they handled in 2021, 49,000 violent crimes. And the violent crime rate is equivalent to 3.47 violent crimes for every one of the 1,000 people living in China. Now, I know I read about the stats and then I also read some more. China is always lying about everything. You know, these crime rates don't trust them. It's all fake. Well, you know, I was in China, I feel absolutely safe. So there is a correlation with how I felt, what the experiences of China are essentially, these statistics. I don't have any way of verifying these statistics, but the fact that we were so safe in China, and there were individuals in China who live in China, and there's some dispute with me, you know, there's something about this. When I talk about safety, they all said, yeah, safety is our greatest asset here. They couldn't deny that. So the homeless people were treated very well. I saw three homeless people in the in the 86 weeks out there, and there was two in Hong Kong and one in Guangzhou. They were treated well. I mean, nobody were afraid of them. They were just left alone. And in Hong Kong, in one instance, a homeless man came into the restaurant and I was having breakfast with my sister. And he asked to buy some white porridge just for me. The restaurant took his money and gave him some white porridge and he said, thank you, and he left. So the homeless people were sort of integrated into the community quite well. And in another instance in Hong Kong, when I at very, very late at night, I left. I was walking back to the hotel and I got little lost and I saw a man. And so I just asked him, I said, oh, could you give me the direction and he gave me the direction very clearly and I thank him. And I turned around and he was living in a camper. So that was the second person I met. Otherwise, and the third person, the homeless person I met in Guangzhou was a woman, older woman who was standing there in the middle of a touristy area. And I saw her and just sat down right next to her and continued that conversation. I really think there's so much respect for human beings in China. People that I met very compassionate about people. And it's a very changed society for many years when I was there when they were fighting poverty when people were poor. They were fighting poverty for 850 million people. You really can see a stark difference in people's attitude about for towards themselves and towards others. They're more relaxed, especially the young people. They're very confident in who they are. They love their country. And I am just so proud of these young people who are growing up in peace times. And they all really appreciate what they have. China has not invaded any country for the last 75 years. It's not starting wars. And they might have been engaged in two disputes, I think with India over border issues and there's border skirmishes. And they also have had, they fought in Vietnam and Korea to protect the sovereignty of the country. Coming from a very war-mongering country like America, it's a very different field. How people treat you, how people respect you. And I would say that for everywhere that I went, in particular the villages, the areas that I went to were even kinder. Those people would just open up their house for you, invite you into their house, pour you a cup of tea with no issues at all. So my trip was very worth it. And the second thing that I really appreciate being in China was the use of digital currency. Everyone in China had a mobile phone where they can use to pay for anything that they want to purchase. I'm reading up a menu and installing a credit card into the WeChat that I have. And I was a little nervous. I didn't know whether it would work. I took it to China bank. I was taking some of my purchases using my iPhone. But the 30%, for some reason it didn't work. I suspect it was the Wi-Fi or maybe my U.S. provider didn't exactly click with the China system. But it was such a nice thing. My cousin was in Guangzhou, who stayed with me during the entire time that I was in Guangzhou. She told me one of the reasons why she loved it, not just because of the efficiency. But the fact that you don't have to touch the money. She said, money is so dirty, I don't want to touch it. And here we just use our iPhone to pay for everything. So the digital currency was another real, real good experience. And I didn't see any sign of poverty anywhere. I do see poor people. There's no question. Because in China, there's a lot of people. Very difficult labor jobs. I see it in the mornings and noontime and in the evening. Thousands of young men and women riding their motorcycles delivering food. And they were very hard. Very industrious people. They were really, really hard. And they pride themselves. And they don't want it any other way. They hate being idle. They think it is a disgrace to themselves and to the family. Folks like that. But the majority of the people are proud and they just really want to work hard. And they strive for a better society. And the main thing that they know that they have to do that. They understand the issues of the U.S. China. They are very up to par on all the things that are going on. And they can tell you more than what you want to know. And that's why they felt they have to work even harder to make themselves self-sufficient. And they do not want to take on peace. So I think I would at this time give it back to you, Kale. I've said a lot and I don't want to take up too much time from Michael either. Not at all. I feel like you said a lot of very interesting things that people often, you know, probably don't consider when thinking about topics like poverty alleviation or, you know, the digital economy that exists in China. And that seems like such an awesome set of cities. I want to kind of come back to what you did on the trail that you set for yourself. But Michael, I want to kind of pivot to you. Can you kind of take us through some of, you know, your experience? You know, you started in Hong Kong. Is that right? Yes. Why don't you show the pictures that I sent you? Let's see. Actually, this is part of Hong Kong. It's a park. And it's run by a Buddhist association. And it's very interesting because you can see the difference between the old traditional culture in the park, you know, the buildings, the pond. And then you see the high rise buildings in the background and you see the mountains behind them. So that's how when you visit China, you see the blend of the ancient and the modern together. Why don't we go to the next picture? Okay. Well, we're going to the next picture. I want to mention a little incident about safety that actually happened in America. Julie was talking about how safe China is. I had a friend that is originally from China and she went back and spent several months in China and then came back to the United States just recently. First thing she did, she's walking down the street holding her phone in her hand and somebody grabs it and runs off of it, steals her phone. Because what happened was she got so used to being safe in China. She forgot her old American habits of protecting yourself when you're here. So this picture is the harbor in Hong Kong. You can see the buildings and the mountains in the background. That junk that's very nicely decorated that you see in front of you. That's actually an advertisement for a bank. This is like traditional culture combined with modern advertising. Can we go to the next picture? Yes. Can you see it? Yes, there's just a junk that I was talking about. Let's go to the next picture after that. Sorry, my allergy is acting up. So this is a little fishing village, Tai Oh. Sorry, let's get back to the fishing village. There's some kind of delay. Is the fishing village on your screen now, Michael? No, there's the Hangzhou. Yeah, okay, this is it. Good, good. So anyway, this is an old fishing village. It's become a tourist attraction in addition to doing fishing. We took a little boat tour around it and you can see the old buildings. And when you talk about poverty in China, what China has done is they've eliminated extreme poverty. Back in the old days, people lived out in the countryside. There was no central heating, no electricity, no running water. And they had ancient wood stoves that they used. Everything was ancient technology. What they've done is they've lifted people out of that extreme poverty. Their next step is to deal with what they call moderate poverty. This is what you see here. You see these old buildings that people are living in. They have electricity. They have running water. They have heat. They have the modern conveniences. People walking around with cell phones. They have computers and all that, but they're still living in old housing. Some of these places, they're housed, but they're small. And so this is the next step in China's evolution that the government wants to work on is to bring everybody from, they've gotten everybody out of extreme poverty. Now the next step is to get everybody out of moderate poverty. But as you can see, it's a process. And they're making progress on that. Okay, let's go. Yeah, this is good. So this is the Guangzhou high-speed rail train station. And it really struck me because this was the first time that I'd been back to Guangzhou, which is the capital of Guangdong province. Guangdong province is where most of the Chinese people came from in the old days. During the gold rush and up until probably the 1960s, most Chinese came from small villages in Guangdong province. And at that time, China was very poor. It was being chopped up into colonies by the western colonial powers of America among them. And, you know, people, sorry. People live very dangerous lives in a war-torn environment. The life expectancy, the average was 38 at that time. And I realized my family came from Guangdong province from a small village a hundred years ago, a century ago. My grandparents came. The third generation Chinese-American, my grandparents, were born and raised during the Qing Dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China. And to go back now, this is the first time that any member of my family has ever been back to Guangdong province where our ancestors came from. And to walk, to arrive there and walk into this modern train station. I mean, you just look at it. It's more modern than the train station that we have in San Francisco, you know? And to see the progress that China has made, that was a very emotional moment for me to realize that, you know, after a hundred years, a member of my family finally came back and this is what China looks like today. So let's go to the next picture. Okay. So this is a boat ride up the Pearl River. And you can see the modern buildings. You know, if you were to take a ride through San Francisco, I mean, this, you wouldn't see this kind of view. Okay, this is actually skipping ahead. This is Shanghai. And this is a view from my hotel. And you can see in the foreground the old colonial era buildings that were built by the Europeans during the colonial period. And then in the background, you can see the high-rise buildings that have been built in the modern period in China. So that gives you some idea of, you know, the old and the new. Okay, this goes back to Guangzhou again. Okay. Go ahead. You had a question? No, there's an unfortunate lag. So I'm trying to keep up as well. Are you seeing the Guangzhou skyline on your screen? No, we're looking at Shanghai now. But why don't we just stay here? This is fine. Wait, wait. This is the night time skyline, right? Yeah, this is Guangzhou. This is the Pearl River, the boat ride up the Pearl River. Right. Yeah, so it's very beautiful. It's very modern. There's some older sections in each of these cities. You know, with each of these cities, you see modern sections and then you see older sections. So there's a lot of land and kind of diversity of, of scenes anywhere in China that you go. Okay. Yeah, let's go to go ahead to the next one. Absolutely. Is this, so I, this is Hongzhou, I believe. Is that right? Yes, that's correct. And then the next one in Shanghai. Yeah, there were two pictures in Hongzhou. One was the train station and then this one. Oh, okay. So you skipped a couple of pages ahead. That's fine. So, you know, back when the commoners first came to power in 1949, one of the things that they did was they made people equal. And that means, you know, there were very rich people that lost their properties. Whoops. You're going too fast. Let's go back. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The apologies. It should be back on the screen now. Is that correct? No, go what went back one, one more back. Okay. Okay. So back in the, in the, when the commoners first came to power, you know, they made everybody equal, which means a lot of very, very rich people lost, you know, their properties. This is one of those properties. This is a small, small estate. I think this is in Shanghai. It's either Shanghai or. The next city that we visited, but. This is just as one small view of his whole estate. It's. It's many acres of big. It's just as you see, very classical Chinese, very beautiful. And basically it's been made into a park. Kind of a park museum. It's a museum of. For, for Chinese now that anybody can go there and enjoy it. And so, and also it shows the contrast between the rich and the poor in ancient China. So this is that, that's what this is. And that's the ancient architecture that you can see that's very beautiful. Okay. Let's go on to the next picture. By the way, I wanted to ask, like, when you were traveling, especially when you were going, you know, Shanghai and Hongzhou and places like that. Did you get like a, you know, understanding of what was it, the class dynamics of a lot of these cities. You know, in the areas that you visited. Say the question again. What was the class dynamic of the cities that you visited in the class dynamic. Yes. You know, we saw people interacting quite freely. The class dynamic. Sorry. Class dynamic didn't stand out strongly. And in my observation. You know, when we were in that small fishing village, you could definitely see the difference between the Chinese tourists who are all well dressed and some of the Chinese fishermen and working people who were, you know, wearing work clothes, basically. But they, they interacted freely. They certainly could all speak the same language. I didn't notice like, you know, any snobbery or anything like that. And then in the, when we went elsewhere like here, this is the water city. I'm trying to remember the name of it. I think Julie can tell me. She was there actually. This is still, this is Hongzhou. Yeah. Yeah. So, so anyway, yeah, people interacted very freely. Sorry. Hang on. Maybe Julie can talk about this picture. Yeah. What I would like to do is to address your question about the class dynamics as a very big question. Because China had been very, very poor for the longest time. And the wealth had always been concentrated in a small group. And, and, and it is still like that in a little, in some ways. All right. It is not entirely or equal. But I can say that everybody has food and that's important for China. And a lot, I know a lot of Americans that what everybody's food and that's important. Well, you know, we take that for granted. But I know that I can, I still talk to people today. People might eat during, during, during the fifties and during the sixties in China. And also there's a difference between those who live in the farm and in the villages and those who live in the big cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou. There, there, there are, and there are the owners maybe or the corporations or they work in high tech companies. There is a difference. But, and I think that's what China is trying to do now is to lift up everybody. And they've already lifted up like three, four hundred thousand, three, three, four hundred millions of people into a very solid middle class. Yes. Similar enjoyment as the Western people do in, in the Western countries. But there are still many of them who are still very poor. They work very hard labor. They carry bricks. They carry big, long pipes. And they do so much labor work. And, and China is also divided into first line city, second line city. So the first, first line cities are Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing. The second line cities are cities like Guilin, Hongzhou. And the third tier, I guess the first, first, second and third tier cities are like Shanxi and where they are still very poor. But everybody still, they have food to eat. They have a roof over their head. They have good medical services. And, and, and that's where the difference is when you live and the degree of luxury that you have. And, and China is driving to make that equal and bring back, bring up the rest of the, of the Chinese citizens. And that's why they're working so hard. And that's why China wants peace. If they're at war, they cannot lift the rest of people up to a standard that we in the West can enjoy and, and that a large group of Chinese now do enjoy. And they really wanted to provide that for the country. And, and I think that the people know what the leadership should happen. And many of them said, we don't mind working as hard as we do because we know our country is progressing. We're doing good things. And look, and they'll brag about their IT system, you know, they're, they're far away phones and they have these things now. And we're going to get more. And that's why China do not want war. And all these ridiculous comments about China is being aggressive. China wants to go to war. No, China and the Chinese people absolutely do not want war. We are the ones who want war. We are the one because you have to be number one. And we have to be the hegemony. In order to be that hegemony and number one, we will go to war. And today I just read that there was some kind of aircraft that fell, that dropped in, in a, in a, in a southeastern, southwestern part of Japan. And there's American military aircraft. This is 16 times. Got into accident. I think one person died in five, five military, American military. They could not found him. They're probably dead. Why, what are they doing over there? Come on. Chinese people over here in America, flying aircrafts and, and drowning the planes and, and Chinese people dying because of that. But we have a lot of Americans dying right now because they are in the military and they're fighting for a very war-mongering country who is now trying to kick up a war in, in Taiwan. And they know it. They don't want it. And the leaders keep trying to push back, hold up. And a lot of the Chinese people are complaining and say, why are the policies so weak and, you know, just kind of proof that we are powerful too. No, you know, patience restraint is what they practice. And it's true that they said that the Chinese, they practice Tai Chi, you know, Tai Chi is a very slow moving exercise. You push, you pull, and then you use that kind of brown circle energy to create the possibility of yourself. And also not push the enemy to a very extreme. But American, they do boxing, bang, bang, bang. You know, all they want is just punch, you know, and then do a punch the person and, and have a win for all. So that's the difference from what I see having lived in America for so long and went back to China and talk to the people. You might know what they're thinking. I mean, they have so many things that we don't have that they can be proud of. Michael was talking about the high speed rail. China has 206,100 miles of high speed rail that anywhere you live in China, you can take the subway and you can hop on the subway for hours. We cannot do that here with the biplane tickets, okay, to fly to Los Angeles. And in China, within that distance, they could be there in an hour, you know, two hours, because the railways of their, their trains can go as fast as 186 to 217, 17 miles per hour. In the United States, we have one passenger that goes 375 miles and that is in Orlando, okay. And they can go up to, I think, 100 miles per hour. But why are we spending our money in infrastructure on everything else and, you know, supplying arms to Ukraine and that war that they're fighting? And why are we spending money right here in San Francisco or in America? It is a shame and it is really not fair to us consumers and people are just not complaining enough. It's a shame to complain and people will be taking the issue onto the streets. A lot of people say that Chinese people are not complaining and they're because it's authoritarian and this and that. But did you know that almost every day there's a protest going on in China about something in locality? There could be two people protesting or five people protesting and these public officials are scared to death whenever the citizens are worried. I met one of the lady who gave me a foot massage. I was talking to her. She moved from the village into the city because she was able to rent out her farmland and collect a small amount of money. And now she can get a higher paid job by renting a place where she can do massage with her and her family lives in the back. And so I was testing her. I was pushing her button and I said, okay, you said you're so free. And she was telling me how proud she is. What are you going to do if you have a complaint about what's happening to you in your district? And she said there's a place down in the road from where we live. And there's a big sign that says complain. And I can file a complaint. And they're in big trouble. They're in big trouble. They're in big trouble. Then I said, well, I said, what if you have a problem with presidency Jinping? What are you going to do? You cannot go up to him and complain. And then he's not going to be down there. He's going to be in big trouble. I want to thank him if I see him. I want to tell him how much I appreciate what he's doing for the country. I said, oh, sorry, you know, okay. I'm not going to fight her on that. So this is how the Chinese people feel. About 90% of the Chinese people really love their government. I don't know what's the percentage of our country who appreciates our government. I don't think it's that high. I think it's also at high speed rail. It's so efficient. First of all, you have to be there 20 minutes before the train, you know, takes off. So about 20 minutes before the point of time then you have to line up. Okay. And then when you got there, people lined up or whatever number of people the train can allow. And then within like five, 10 minutes, and what is gone? Because they have this ID card and all they have to do is slip it in and bomb. They're gone and they're gone. Now, foreigners like ourselves, we have a different, different track system because we don't have those Chinese identity cards. So it was fast because unfortunately there are just not too many tourists in China right now. I saw only two Americans in the eight weeks that I was there. I saw three homeless and two Americans. Okay. I don't know what that means, but the Americans were there because their friends there or their family was working in China. And the tourism, they really need tourism in China. So people who are in this program, if you want to go anywhere, you know, go to China, help them out a little bit. The people love to see Americans. They love to see Americans. They just want to get more with us. They don't like our policies that ban them and sanction them and do not allow them to buy chips for their machinery and electronics and do not allow Americans to invest in America and invest in a list for no reason at all. They love Americans. And when they meet Americans, they would say, oh, tell us about America and this and that. And they really wanted to be friendly to us. And they always said that the tourists are the most Americans. They open, they always ask us questions and they give good tips and say, oh, oh, that's good. And I'm talking about the tour guides. At ordinary restaurants, they refuse to take tips. The second half of our trip was to Anjane Museum. And what we did there was to, we were officially invited by the Anjane Museum to participate in this program called Internal Testimony. The program is a AI-powered virtual program where you can actually talk and have a conversation with a comfort woman survivor. And we spent five years working on that project. We partnered up with Anjane Museum and also the Shoal Foundation at USC and also a Korean American community, the Kim Foundation. It was a five-year endeavor. It's a lot of work. And we spent two weeks or maybe just one week taping a comfort woman survivor, Pang Nainai, and asked her like 500 questions and all the questions were recorded so that when you put it on screen and you turn on the machine you have a conversation with her. For example, you can ask her, how are you? And she'll say, I'm fine, of course, in Chinese, but we are going to put subtitles there in English. Or we can say that, Kayo, can you scroll down to the last picture? The last where it shows. The last picture. Yeah. No, not this one. The last, go to the last bottom. Yeah. Go to the, one more, one more. This is an engine. No, you don't have the picture. No, you don't have the pictures. Recording in progress. The picture shows this screen. Kayo added some other pictures to his. I only have these pictures. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. This is the comfort woman's station. Yeah, that's the comfort women's station. Yeah, maybe you can talk about the pictures as I show them and then you can go ahead with the rest of your explanation. Yeah. This was built in 2015 in December. And it's really interesting because this is an actual comfort woman, a comfort station, during World War II. And later on after Japan, the Japanese soldiers left, they, it was just left there as a building. I don't know what they did with it. And later on, they discovered it was a comfort station where they actually had a Korean comfort women's survivor. Came to Nanjing, looked at the station and said, yes, this is a station I was in prison in. I was invited this year and she waited out and her name is, I think, pop something. I'm sorry about the full name. But it was restored and into a museum and opened to the public in 2015. Interestingly, that is the same month and the same day that we got approval from the San Francisco border supervisors to build the San Francisco comfort women memorial. And we've been in contact with this museum. And the last year, we also had a miniature comfort women memorial, San Francisco comfort women memorial donated to them. And so the purpose of our trip was to officially open up the mention of the San Francisco program so that people can come in and engage in a virtual conversation with a comfort women survivor and also to appreciate the San Francisco comfort women memorial without being here in San Francisco. And we had a wonderful time there. Judge Linden Singh and I were at the delegation and we also have Jennifer Chan who is the president of Nanjing Redress Coalition and Michael Wong came with us. And Phyllis Kim you see in the middle there. She is a Korean American woman. She's the head of the book. She's also a member of the executive committee. The other lady with her is a Korean interpreter. They even provide a Korean interpreter for Phyllis. And the lady on the left. The lady on the right I mean. And then Judge Singh is on the left. Right. And the pictures of all the women who I think they were the ones who stayed in that comfort women station. Or maybe they were just the comfort women. I'm not so sure. So that's why we were there. And this is the little miniature statue that we donated to the museum. It's a very small museum. There are more artifacts and things to fill the museum. And also because Japan when they left China burned and destroyed most of the memorabilia that we could have and burned up documents burned just evidence of the comfort women stations. Whatever they have they put up there. And I was very proud that we were able to present that little memorial to them. And actually we hide. There's another statue behind me and Lilene standing there. And that is Hapsun Kim. She's the first woman survivor to come out with a story of the comfort women. She's the first to tell the story. And so we honored her with her own statue. The young ladies were standing there on the pedestal. She was when she was that age. And the average age of the comfort women victims were like 15 years old. Some were as young as nine years old. And it is a very tragic story. Women were confined. You see the barracks behind you with the little windows. They were confined in those rooms. They each have a little tiny room. And they were all one single bed. And they were all day. They had breakfast, lunch, and dinner there. And all they do was to serve the Japanese soldiers sexually as slaves. And one comfort woman wrote in her memoir that when the soldiers had their arms on their feet because they were lined up like hundreds of them. She would serve sometimes 30 to 40 a day. Their fatality rate is very, very short. And they died within like maybe two, three years of imprisonment if that long. And 9% of them perish in confinement. And you can imagine the treatment that they have. You know, I'm very proud of what China is doing because China is remembering history, commemorating it. In fact, China designated one day, which is December 13th as the, I think it's and also they also commemorate the comfort women also. Okay, Michael, I've spoken too much. I think it's Okay. Yeah. So that statue is a miniature of the statue that we built in San Francisco to honor the comfort women of World War II. And then this is a scene at the end of, you know, a lot of the different people that were involved, that were leaders of different organizations in the movement. And Michael, how many of these people did you, you know, know going before you went to China? Are these most sweet folks you met while you were there? I know four of the people in this picture on the far right is Phyllis Kim, who's in Los Angeles and she's the leader of the Korean movement for the comfort women there. And then there's a man who I don't know. There's Lillian Sing, a retired judge that works, Lillian and Julie work very closely together on the comfort women issue and on a lot of issues, you know, over time in the Chinese community. To the left, Julie wearing the light green t-shirt that's Jennifer Chung. She's also very involved in the comfort women movement here in San Francisco. And then the other two people I don't know Julie, maybe you can identify the three people that I don't know. Yeah, I know them because we've worked with them for years. I know the guy very well the guy who's standing next to Jennifer Lillian. He is actually a student candidate and he works for the Comfort Women Museum and he worked with us very, very closely. His name is Darasi and the person next to him is also one of the people that I don't know about there. The person next to Phyllis in between Phyllis and Lillian is the chief curator of the Comfort Women Museum and we've communicated with him. We knew who he was but I also get to meet him and Darasi for the first time at this trip. So it was be wonderful to look at someone and we finally get to meet with them. It was like old friends finally seeing each other and we know how each other's habits are just together but it's just wonderful. Yeah. I just love the idea of people being able to do this especially since now we all are this event right now where this panel is kind of co-sponsored by a bunch of different peace groups from pivot to peace and veterans for peace to try to work in group and chop collective. This is something that almost anyone can do especially now that there's more direct fights there's a little bit easier access to visas to go and see. Also I like what you said earlier Julie about the way China's commemorating its history and the suffering that Chinese people experience in the 20th century when it came to colonization and I think it kind of serves as a prescient reminder of why people there understand the gravity of war and why it's it is not something that is to be taken lightly it's not like a cavalier issue it's something that really affects people's survival, human security the vulnerable and the marginalized and before we kind of close out the hour and ask both of you what based on your travels to China what experience and I guess advice would you give to people or would you share with people who care about reaching a peaceful future where China and the United States are not at the brink of war I think the first thing is that people need to educate themselves about what these situations really are and if you just read the mainstream U.S. or western or allied news you get a really skilled picture there's a lot of half truths and there's a lot of even outright lies you know so you really need to look at news media not just from the American or allied western sources but if you go to if we're challenging any country I would suggest that people search or news media from the country that's being targeted read their side of the story you know the U.S. frequently says for example that China or Xi Jinping is threatening to invade Taiwan that's really a distortion of what they actually say China has not changed its position in 50 years which is that they want eventual peaceful reunification with Taiwan no timeframe named and war would only be a consideration if Taiwan were to declare independence so China has not changed its position but you wouldn't know that by listening to the American mainstream what you need to do is actually go to the Chinese media and they have English and look at for example CGTN CGTN frequently will show you the actual foreign foreign affairs office statements and you actually see the foreign minister or Xi Jinping or other high officials making statements about Taiwan you can see what they actually say you can listen to the voice of the translator you can hear it firsthand same thing with Chinese media you know you can go on YouTube you can see Americans who live in China posting videos about their life in China and you can see what it's actually like you don't have to take America's mainstream media word for it or American officials word for it or anonymous security intelligence sources or this kind of thing go to the mainstream go to the media of the country that's being targeted whether it's China whether it's Nicaragua whether it's Haiti whether it's Iran whatever read both sides of the stories watch their videos and also go to neutral countries like Singapore CNA is one of the mainstream media of Singapore you can go to CNA and see on YouTube and see what they say that would be my suggestion thanks Michael that kind of really corresponds with what we have been doing at the China is not an enemy campaign when it comes to disarming the discourse and really focusing on identifying the ways in which violence and anti-China hate and hate against other countries is kind of invoked in our public discourse and questioning that and putting peace first when we talk about foreign policy and Julie I'd like you to share especially as someone who you've had experience and working in the education system working in the judicial system here in the United States what's your take-aways and what advice would you give to you know peace activists who want a different relationship between China and the US and how they should fight for that First of all let me just say that it really pains me whenever I read that how many percentage of American adults view negatively of China and I think the latest number is like 83% if it pains the US because I know that it should not be that way it could not be that way there's just no reason why people should view China negatively and China has not studied any war with us has not provoked us in any way in trade or anything like that they may have made some mistakes here and there that is so credible these things can be dealt with diplomatically and all the information that and that make people become negative towards China based on ignorance and misinformation and look at the spy balloon they still call it a spy balloon a year later General Mighty maybe less than a year later General Mighty admitted is not a spy balloon he didn't really even say that he could not bring himself to say it but he has no spy apparatus in that balloon so he could not have spied anything so it is not a spy balloon today they still talk about spy balloon so that's a kind of this once you spread the information it's really hard to bring it back I think that we just have to work really hard sometimes I feel like saying oh my god all the work that I'm doing am I making a difference so we have to keep working at it and I urge people who are watching this program you must be an activist in your own rights otherwise you would not be watching this program and if you're just curious you know try to help coping do their work even better and they have an excellent program called China's Not Our Enemy whenever I use these words with my Chinese friends in San Francisco they all love this yes China is not our enemy please please keep working on it so just tell people China is not our enemy and when people you know challenge you just they talk about a spy balloon that's a good example okay how they've been misinformed and how ignorance can engender war war here since the Civil War the January 6th it's not a war it's a one day you know disturbance it's a riot and whatever you want to call it it's not a war but people in China have experienced horrific wars the second world war the war between the Kuomintang and the communists they have experienced war they don't want war so we have not experienced war let's keep it that way then why are we feeling like so nonchalant hey you know let's go to war you know for some other people not for ourselves we want to keep talking and engendering good will and I think we should keep organizing trips to China let them enjoy the Chinese food enjoy the view the beautiful pristine sceneries and the optics of the photography is so important in China and enjoy the humanity of China the people in China are really kind people very open to us exactly I feel like people are just so important in general I mean you know in my limited time in activism and also in my capacity as a journalist I've you know been to China I've been to Cuba when I was in China actually I had the you know ability to speak with someone from North Korea and the common language we spoke was Mandarin and I was able to talk to them in a real kind of conversation which is you know something I never thought I'd be able to do so I think the more we actually have these people the people exchange is the more we realize you know how human security how universal it is and how it's important should be protected and we can't allow ourselves to you know be victims in this propaganda war that seeks to make China or any other country our enemy and Grace just dropped several of our actions and some of some detailed information about some of our members going to China and what they what they saw and what they experienced allow their analysis we really implore you to sign those petitions especially and we have one focusing on telling Biden to ditch the military spending bill he's trying to push through Congress and instead strike a global climate finance deal with China as well as one to stop Congress or tell Congress to stop the hate from the anti-China committee which has been you know criticized by a lot of civil rights groups as increasing hate crimes against the AAPI community in the U.S. and so there's lots of ways you can take action and there's lots of great things we have in the horizon as well where we can stand up and resist the pro-war propaganda that is all too common coming from Washington DC coming from the media and other places and this is such a great forum where we can listen to peace activists like Julie and Michael who we know what they're talking about and have their heart in the right place which is planet and people first so I just like to say thank you so much Michael and Julie. Thank you. Thank you. Bye everyone. Okay, bye-bye.