The hindrances of hiding:

A play review on Herlyn Alegre’s Imbisibol

Myna Herra

We all have something to hide—may it be a long-kept family secret, or a love letter from an old fling. But for four Filipinos living in modern-day Tokyo, it is the fact that they are illegal settlers in a foreign land.

The play opens with a Filipino woman (who became a Japanese citizen after marrying her Japanese husband), Linda, scurrying about inside her home—leafing through letters she received for the tenants she keeps in her building. Later, two of her Filipino friends (who are illegal settlers, changing jobs and locations to avoid being deported by the immigration office) come to visit her and they sit and have a happy lunch together. That is, until one of her tenants—another Filipino named Rodel, comes in and declares that he had just killed a man.

It’s a wonderfully written play—opening with a calm atmosphere, then shifting into a happy one in the middle—then drastically changing into a tense, thrilling one during the climax. It ends the way it started, calm—yet the atmosphere of tension still remains.

Though it is a work of fiction, it is sadly happening everywhere—not just with Filipinos but with other people as well, applying in different jobs just to avoid deportation. It’s more of a slice of life—peppered with the elements of Drama.

Imbisibol (Invisible) was first shown at the 9^th Virgin Labfest—a festival of untried and unstaged plays at the Cultural Center of the Philippines on June 26, 2013.

Img source: http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/files/2013/06/t0622totel-labfest_feat3_1.jpg

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Water Pollution in China

 Weirong Han

Several hundred years ago, a Chinese poet wrote ”the fish are swimming in the clouds while the birds are flying in the river.” One may wonder how the fish can swim in the clouds. Is something wrong with the poet? Actually, what the poet wanted to explain was that the river was so clean that one could see the clouds (reflection) in it. However, just looking around today, one may wonder whether such a beautiful scenery would ever again be possible. Sadly, the answer may be in the negative.   

After the industrial revolution, many factories, like the spread of wild grass after the first rain in spring, rose all across China. No one then could imagine these factories, which initially aimed to provide people with a better life, would ultimately harm them. In Shangba, a city in the southern region of Guangdong Province, had a footwear factory pollute the river with huge amounts of heavy metals and poisonous chemicals. As a result, the river, which was once so clean that on could see all the way to the bottom, is now the startling color of orange. One villager said that “It was really a nightmare: all the fishes, even those poor ducks and chickens that drank water from the polluted river died. If you put your leg into that river, you will get rashes and a terrible itch.” Several villagers died from cancer due to polluted water, and the small village has come to be called ”the cancer village.”

In 2013, Shanghai awoke to find thousands of dead pigs floating in the river due to the feeders’ unethical disposal of carcasses. Although obviously horrible, this is not that awful in comparison to industrial water pollution. Further, in January 2013, some factories leaked benzene into one of the main sources of water for Shanghai: the Huangpujiang River. As a result, more than 20 people were hospitalized. Later that year, a Zhejinag businessman named Jin, after his sister died of water pollution, offered RMB 200,000 ($32,000) to any local environmental official who would swim across the dirty river where Jin used to swim as a little boy. Until now, no one claimed the reward.

Due to these polluting factories, more than half of the country’s entire surface water has become polluted, and a quarter of the whole surface water is not safe even for industrial use. And sadly, 90% of all ground water is polluted due to the overuse of fertilizer.

Indeed, China has many people, and it is certainly difficult to provide each individual with a good life. However, this should not be the one concern of the government in allowing factories to be built indiscriminately. Further, the government should certainly be much more vigilant in going after polluting factories and cleaning up the polluted environment.

In recent years, the government has started to pay increasing attention to polluted villages and polluting factories, spending RMB 2 trillion ($330 billion) to tackle industrial water in 2013. But this is not enough. What the country really needs includes stricter laws on industrial water discharge and chemical fertilizer use and greater awareness among the public on the severity of environmental problems facing China.

More people are beginning to believe that a better life does not necessarily mean having more money. Therefore, the Chinese government should focus on achieving a good balance between financial benefits and a healthy environment.

In this way, future generations may hopefully have another opportunity to see the birds flying in deep in the river.           

Compromise can avoid conflicts and ensure stability within the country. There have been many compromises in American political history, and these compromises have played a major role in the development of the United States. For example, the Great Compromise, the Three-Fifths Compromise and the Commerce Compromise.

The Great Compromise was appointed during the 1787 Constitutional Convention. There was a contradiction between the large population states and the small population states. Each state wanted the policy which benefit its own in the constitution. Therefore, the large population states required a population-based representation of the Congress. Small population states hoped that each state has equality votes.  The great compromise combined two plans and it decided to set up two houses to safeguard the interests of both parties. One of them was the Senate, every state has equal representatives in the Senate. The other one was the House of Representatives, which is based on the population from state, so each state has different numbers of representatives in the House of Representatives.

The Three-Fifths compromise was appointed because the conflict over slavery between the southern states and the northern states. Because the southern states have a large number of slaves, the southern states required slaves to be counted as part of the population representatives, but not be counted as tax populations. The northern states have a small population, so they demanded that slaves should be counted as part of the tax population, but not counted as population representatives. In order to solve the problem, the three-fifths compromise was proposed. This compromise decided that every five slaves were counted as three people involved in the population representatives, also every five slaves were counted as three people to pay taxes to the nation.

Commerce compromise was also one of the important compromises. Commerce compromise was raised because of the dissatisfaction of the North and South states in business development. The northern states were dominated by industrialized, while the southern states were dominated by agriculture. The northern states produced a lot of goods, but the southern states import goods from the British, which causes the goods produced in the north could not be sold. The northern states required the government to impose import tariffs to ensure that the South purchases goods manufactured in the North, and also tariffs on export raw materials. The South did not agree to an increase in tariffs on export raw materials which harms their interests. According to the ideas of both parties, the compromise proposed to tariff only on imports from foreign countries, but did not tariff on exports from the United States.

I agree with the use of compromise. Under these situations, if no compromise is made, it will undermine the unity and stability within the states. In order to keep the country united, a compromise must be reached. Just as the great compromise, the Great Compromise ensured the continuance of the Constitutional Convention and the unity of states. The three-fifths compromise stopped the dispute between the large population states and the small population states on slave computing. And the Commerce Compromise, the representatives of the North and the South reached a compromise and promoted solidarity among the states.

R. Liu