Z H E N G ��W A H ' s ��R I B B O N �� P A G E

Have you seen these ribbons somewhere?

Click on them to find out what they mean.

The Red Ribbon

The RED RIBBON is a symbol that we see almost everywhere, you've seen it on the breast pockets of stars during most award ceremonies and you've seen it on the homepages of many people on the web. It is the symbol of "AIDS Awareness".

AIDS is a virus that has claimed the lives of many. It knows no boundaries and strikes at anyone it can reach. It is NOT a gay disease, it affects everyone. However, gay men are considered to be one of the "high-risk" groups because of the nature of sodomy (or anal-sex).

I've once read an article in a magazine that said "... being gay is a sexual state, the gay man (or woman) is concerned ... with sexual acts with a partner of the same sex". I personally don't know how true this is. However, my limited contact with gay men seem to qualify this statement. I did not bring this up as an issue for argument, just as food for thought, before your being "horny" costs you your life, take heed.

A friend of mine once told me "Life is not worth living if you have to live it with AIDS holding your throat". He contracted the deadly virus a year after confiding that. It took two years before he started to show any symtoms. Two months after he died in a car accident in Taiwan. This was a particularly sad episode in my life. I never thought that killer which we joked (yes joked) about could be in someone so close to us. He didn't have to suffer the effects of the diesease, but he died just the same. We still talk about him, and AIDS in a light manner, but deep in out hearts we all mourn this loss.

This little ribbon means alot to me, and it should mean alot to you too ... gay or not. The next time you see someone selling little red ribbons, stop and dig deep ...

The Blue Ribbon

The BLUE RIBBON is a symbol that recently (maybe not so recent) "invaded" our surfing pleasures. We see it on hompages with black backgrounds and pages after pages of warnings. Yeah yeah, I'm talking about pages with sexual contents (I'm being really honest here). This is the symbol for "Freedom of Speech".

I personally feel that censorship on the World Wide Web is nigh impossible, but heck, I support "Freedom of Speech" on the net anyhow. If you've ever searched the web (and I know you have) with any of the many search engines available, you would have realised that these search engines don't just return what you are looking for, they return heaps of links to other stuff. I was making a search for something as innocent as "bear" ;) one day and I was presented with heaps of links from the interesting to the incredible!

As much as we advocate "Freedon of Speech", we should also recognise that there are children as young as 7 or 8 having access to this multitude of information we affectionately call the WWW. Have a care, children should be innocent :).

The Orange Ribbon

Now this one I don't expect everybody to know. As I personally haven't seen this on the web anywhere I reckon it is either very recent or only accepted in the region I'm in (Tasmania). The ORANGE RIBBON was adopted where I am as a symbol for "Asian Awareness" (probably due to the Pauline Hanson thingy, if you follow Australian politics). Being a Chinese in a "foreign" land, I immediately identified myself with this little icon.

I'm talking generally about discrimination (racism, sexism, whatever you want to call it) of a person because he/she generally doesn't "belong" to a select group. I have suffered abuse, both verbal and physical, since the time I have been in Tasmania. Children from the age of 10 to 50 (I think their intelligence qualifies them) have participated in almost "ritual" taunting of asian (or more accurately, overseas students). I've had beer bottles thrown my way, kids on bikes ride pass and spit on me ... in other words I've had "the works".

Still I participated in giving talks in schools where these very children go for their education, smiled at them when I cross the street and generally tried to be nice. Because, I have friends. In the university, around my neighbourhood and even in the local supermarket. These are people who are within that select group in which I'm "trespassing", and these are people who are nice.

We live in a world that tries to seperate one race from another, one skin colour from the next, one language ... you get the idea. This is an inevitable and almost natural phenomenon. I believe it is not my place to correct the system, but I believe that if the people in each of these groups were to be more tolerant and appreciative (hey, I pay for my damned education here) of "trespassers", we could all be such beautiful people.

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