Is it enough to describe Naipaul's book "Our Universal Civilization" as "Travel Notes"? It is indeed what Naipaul saw, heard, thought and felt in 20 countries in thirty years. But it is also a world as vast and profound as a vast ocean of political civilization layout interpretation: from the poor corner of Third World to the center of the empire.
In this journey to different worlds, Naipaul witnessed the world in conflict and violent turmoil; it was also in this comparison that allowed the author to re-examine the various differences and misunderstandings in such a world, and analyze the real dilemma of different national political systems and ideology . In the prologue, he said, "The articles in this collection are an important part of my life... In those days, I often accepted commissions. In order to start a journey of writing, I had to record all kinds of places. It may be both a challenge and an extension for my ability. This is a wonderful experience, and readers of this book can take it as a memorial of that era to examine it."
Authorized by the publishing house, The Paper Private Geographic Excerpt from the chapter "The New King of Congo: Monbot and Africa Nihilism ", which observes the bubbles and virtual images after Congo escaped from the colonial rule of Belgium .
"Our universal civilization"; V.S.Nepal / by Mavida, Zhai Pengxiao / translated; Nanhai Publishing Company ·New Classic Culture; 2022-8
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At the railway station of Kinshasa , the monument has been beyond recognition, but the relief slogan on granite has been left behind. The railway paved from the Atlantic Ocean to Kinshasa, carrying another steam transport running outside the torrent, which was opened in the Congo. The monument was erected in 1948 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the railway's opening.
But this railway is now mainly used for freight. This small suburban-style station still has a "Kinsha Sadong" sign, but now few passengers will arrive here by train, walk out of the platform, and step into the two-way boulevard built on the south bank of the Congo River, and enter the glory of the former empire. Inside the island roundabout outside the station, the statue of King Albert I has been moved away. Through the old postcard that is still on sale, we can know that the king in the statue is wearing a uniform, a sunshade helmet and a sword; the copper nameplate on the side of the statue's base has also been knocked off, leaving only a little decoration above the nameplate, which looks like a banana leaf; the floodlight has also been smashed, the wire device has been pulled out, and it has rusted; the entire monument is left with two tall brick pillars, as if standing at the end of the abandoned Congolese version of the Asparagus.
In the station hall, the frame of the schedule has been deformed, and the inside is empty, and the glass inside the metal frame is gone. However, in the yard of the station, walking through an open door that was unattended, a real wreckage appeared before my eyes: the first locomotive running on the Congo Railway, produced in 1893. It stands on a smooth piece of sand and gravel, surrounded by croton , and next to it are two trekking cannabis . The locomotive is small and exquisite, designed for narrow-gauge railways. The body is equipped with a low and light boiler and a high chimney. The carriage is open and looks ancient; the entire locomotive still looks complete. The front of the car is marked "No. 1", and the vortex decoration is engraved with the famous font size of Belgium's industrial expansion in the 19th century: John Cochriel-Serland Co., Ltd.
In Kinshasa, not many people know about this locomotive. It survived, perhaps because like many Belgian relics, it was already a waste - like the half-collapse forklift discarded on the warehouse platform; like another forklift that was more thoroughly looted in the yard of the railway station, the rusty fork teeth seemed to be about to rot, fell into dust, like two metal teeth; like the single-wheel lawn mower, thrown into the park outside the railway station, which was already deserted, some places were trampled to reveal the soil, and the rest were covered with weeds.This lawn mower has now become the property of a little boy. He noticed a stranger being spying on it, so he came up to claim his rights to the machine. He skillfully drove the lawn mower, raising dust all the way, and rusty blades whirred.
Today's Kinshasa
Nowadays visitors come to Kinshasa from Engili Airport, which is a few miles east of the city. Zaire is not a place for tourists to relax and visit—there are too much official and unofficial interference—those who come here are usually doing business, and if he is a black man in national costume, he must be a member of a delegation that came to the conference, and now there are many conferences held in Zaire. A highway extends from the airport, passing through huge yellow and green billboards written in French and English with Mobuto's quotes, passing through the Congo River (the slums of the indigenous city are on the south bank), passing through the villa built by Belgians in green gardens, and coming to the city and InterContinental Hotel . The other direction is a quiet six-lane highway, about twenty or thirty miles leading to the "Presidential Territory" in the town of Nasir.
Nasil is like a resort, decorated very glitteringly, but it has already revealed traces of decay. Visitors with prominent identities stay and hold meetings here, and a considerable number of party members can also taste the luxury here. Muhammad Ali trained here last year. In January this year, North Korean acrobats and United Nations people stayed here. There are air-conditioned bungalows, extremely spacious meeting rooms, luxurious lounges and swimming pools. There is also a demonstration farm managed by Chinese people here. Nasir, with the style of the new president, is one of many official luxury buildings. Those luxurious buildings are the chief's courtyards, which have emerged in the increasingly declining capital in recent years, establishing the president's power and Africa's excellence in one fell swoop. In the newly built palace to host the heads of state, the bathtub is gilded—the person who revealed the inside information to me was from another African country, where he lived.
Just like that, the remains of Belgium are slowly fading, as dilapidated as the unrecognizable monument. The Elima used half a page to report the fifteen-day visit of the district chief of the Equatorial Province in Beaumongo; however, Stanley, the Congo road pioneer who built a road between Port Matadi and Kinshasa, was pushed off the throne of honor. In the museum, the Belgian director retains a huge iron wheel, which was the wheel of a carriage running on that highway back then, telling the hardships of how many years! But now, Mount Stanley has been changed to Mount Nagalima and has become a Presidential Park. The statue of Stanley overlooking the rapids was also replaced by the tall statue of the Aboriginal Anonymous with a spear in hand. At the Falls Hotel in Kisangani, the town’s former name “Stanley City” remains on some bottles and jars. Broken coffee cups are now used to hold sugar and milk powder, and when these cups are abandoned, the name will disappear together.
Kisangani Catholic Church on the Congo
Belgian remains are being erased, just as Arab remains have been wiped clean. The Arabs were once the Belgian competitor in eastern Congo, and there was also an Arab in the past governors of the Stanley Falls Administration. But who now would associate Congo with the Arab Empire in the nineteenth century? A young Batitra man still remembered that his ancestors had captured slaves for the Arabs, and later the Belgians came and recruited them into the army, so they stood on the side of the Belgians. But that happened a long time ago. This young man is now a college student and focuses on psychology. Like many young people in Zaire, he closely monitors the opportunity to receive scholarships abroad. His girlfriend belonged to another tribe. In the past, the people in that tribe were the targets of slave traders, but now, the story of slave traders makes her feel funny.
The jungle grew rapidly, overwhelming the places where major events and riots occurred.The jungle has buried the Arab-planned towns and planted orchards, just like the fashionable eastern suburbs near Jobo Falls in Stanley City were buried in the turbulent years since independence. The Belgians abandoned their villa. When the Africans came, they first lived in it and then began to remove the things. The hardware, wires, wood, bathtub and washbasin in the villa (both of which can be used to pickle cassava ) were looted, leaving only the bricks and stones on the floor. By 1975, some ruins remained there, which seemed quite old, just like overgrown Pompeii Ancient City appeared in the tropical areas, and the treasures and decorations were gone. Only the ruins of the Venetian Castle Nightclub could make people vaguely imagine the cultural life scenes of the residents back then.
A notorious photo, a black slave watched his daughter's hands and feet cut down by the Belgian plantation owner
Surprisingly, just today, not long after, there are very few traces of Belgium in people's memory. A man in his forties who had lived in the United States for several years told me that his father was born in 1900 and still remembers the rubber tax imposed by the Belgians and the torture of chopping hands. A woman said that her grandfather brought white missionaries to the village to protect the villagers from cruel officials. Ironically, however, the person who tells such a story can be described as "progressives." There are many people under the age of thirty who break out of the jungle and come to Kinshasa and become teachers or administrators who say they have never heard of Belgians from their fathers or ancestors.
A male teacher working in the university said: "The Belgians gave us a regime. Before the Belgians arrived, we had no regime." Another person said that he had only heard from his grandfather about the origin of Bantu people: they wandered south from Lake Chad , crossing the Congo River to a "unmanned" field, only pygmy people lived here, they were a group of "primitive people", all driven into the deep mountains and forests. For many people, the past is blank, and the place where their personal memory begins is the starting point of history. Many people remember the turmoil caused by childhood, school, and then independence in the village. For example, this man from Bantondu Province, he was the son of a "farmer" and the first person to receive education in their village. For him, the New World suddenly came in 1960, when soldiers from the Congolese separatist forces drove into their village. "That was the first time I saw a soldier in my life. I was so scared. There were no officers in those people. They abused women and killed some men. They were looking for white people."
Many social activists called for the removal of the Belgian king of Belgium who once cruelly ruled the Congo from Brussels . The statue of Leopold II . A principal told me that in the colonial era, the history of Congo taught in schools began with the arrival of Portuguese sailors at the end of the fifteenth century, and then jumped to the nineteenth century, talking about missionaries, Arabs and Belgians. And the current African history, as it wrote, returned the Africans to Africa, but this history is equally vague: it only lists a long list of tribe names, plus several great kingdoms. This is the case with Zaire's "Introduction to the History of Black Africa" published last year. The same is true for the official release of "Zaire Finger": completely skipping the Portuguese, missionaries and Arabs, briefly mentioning several African kingdoms that mostly have no time to test, and jumping directly to the establishment of Congo Free State . The narrative tone is plain and average, and the tone when mentioning King Leopold II's absolute power is no different from the power of the ancient African kings. Only when it comes to the independence movement is passion infused into the text.
disappeared in the past. The facts listed in the book are not enough to give people a sense of history. In a place where there are few changes, jungles and rivers overwhelmingly, another past becomes within reach, which can better respond to African confusion and African religious beliefs, which is "the good times our ancestors have lived."
