today i watched a documentary about Dr. Sun Yat-sun, the revolutionary leader who overthrew the corrupted Qing Dynasty.

this documentary started with the opium war telling us how England, for its own benefits, sold opium to china and was making lots and lots of money. (see photo no. 2 showing how opium was weighed and traded in china)

 At one time, more than 70% of chinese people in a few counties were addicted to opium, lots of families were broken and even beggars also smoked opium (see no. 4 cartoon picture attached).  

 When china decided to stop and reject the import of opium, England forced its way by war. With the corruption, greed and selfishness of the emperors and their subordinates, the Qing dynasty had become very weak  and was unable to stand against foreign armies, giving a chance to England, France, etc. to claim their rights to take over lands in china, and the rights to import opium freely into china.

it really made me very angry to see all the unequal terms in the treaty of nanking, see one condition  and link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nanking

The Qing government was obliged to pay the British government six million silver dollars for the opium that had been confiscated by Lin Zexu in 1839 (Article IV), 3 million dollars in compensation for debts that the Hong merchants in Canton owed British merchants (Article V), and a further 12 million dollars in war reparations for the cost of the war (VI). The total sum of 21 million dollars was to be paid in installments over three years and the Qing government would be charged an annual interest rate of 5 percent for the money that was not paid in a timely manner (Article VII).

while being angry, i started to reflect on what i have learned from our buddhist philosophy: the environment is just a reflection of our own self: the Qing emperors and officials only cared about their own indulgence in pleasure and greed, and would not take action to strengthen their country,  thus became incredibly fragile giving chances to (or maybe unknowingly attracted)  invaders to attack and win.

SGI President Ikeda teaches us to learn,  to better and improve ourselves everyday in all aspects, if we have courage, are strong and have confidence (this comes with my buddhist practice), we are less liable to be attacked