Gajo Petrovic Prophesies Wukan

Posted on December 23, 2011 by

1. Marx identifies private property as the basis of peoples’ alienation from human nature.

2. China adopts Marxism as its ruling ideology.

3. China adopts partial capitalism under Deng.

4. In 1979, the philosophy of Yugoslavian Marxist humanist Gajo Petrovic becomes directly transplanted into Chinese intellectual rhetoric and sees great popularity. The alienist faction of Mao reformers quote Petrovic for having said, “The de-alienation of economic life also requires the abolition of state property.” (Jing Wang, High Culture Fever, page 13).

5. The alienist faction fails for internal reasons.

6. Wukan.

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The Crucial Question about China’s Rise to Power

Posted on December 19, 2011 by

For Americans: You have to pick between two scenarios.
1. America is no longer a world power, but the other countries are mostly democratic with stable legal systems that ensure the carrying out of each consitution’s human rights principals.

2. The world remains as it is right now, with America forever the strongest country (perhaps with a late-90′s economy). Everywhere else is what it is.

For Chinese: You have to pick between two scenarios
中国人：请您选择下列一项选项
1. China becomes the strongest power in the world, but loses most of its culture to Westernization.
1. 中国变成世界上最伟大的国家，可是为了西方化而失去了所谓“中国文化”。

2. Chinese culture remains forever intact and preserved, but China is weak in the world scheme.
2. 中国文化永远保留下去，可是中国是个较弱的国家。

Key question: What does China have to offer the world if it became the greatest power?
关键问题：如果中国变成世界上最强烈的国家，它的强大会给世界带来什么贡献？

I have never before heard a question that more clearly illuminates the ideological conflict between China and the “Western world. ” I was part of a discussion of about ten Chinese students in their twenties and thirties, and three Americans. This was the question posed to the class: What does China have to offer the world?

The responses included:

Diversity (more Chinese people in the world)
A peaceful rise to power
China’s experience (meaning China’s “experience” in itself is an inherent contribution to worldwide improvement)
Confucian values of self-reflection, obedience to order, and perfection
A legal system that is situational (i.e. suing Dunkin’ Donuts for its coffee being too hot would probably be too ridiculous get off the ground)

None of these answers actually speak to the question of what values China has that are distinctly different and applicable to the modern world. Diversity is not a value in this sense. A peaceful rise to power is not a value; nor is it original, distinct, or really that peaceful, if you consider how many minority groups suffer in China on account of its economic rise. Confucian values have potential, but the discussion group wavered on if Confucian values still exist in modern Chinese society. As for the legal system, well, we’ve all seen what can happen when a society does not have a unanimous moral code or constitution on which to base its decisions.

Thinking in this way helps illuminate the Chinese manner of using nationalism and economics to explain things in a way that Westerners might not. For instance, Chinese media representations of the US in Libya uses the rhetoric of imperialism, invasion, and bullying. CCTV was swift to cite Western politicians who said, “Libya is its own country and should therefore be able to decide its own future for itself” – thus inherently bolstering China’s own claim to ultimate sovereignty and independence (sovereignty and independence of values, in my opinion). Whereas in America, we would say that Qaddafi was an evil dictator, America has a responsibility to defend democracy and human rights, and sure there are a lot of other factors and America has a sometimes embarrassing tendency to be a moral policeman, but that’s the basic tenet.

The discussion ended with no conclusion on what China has to offer the world other than ease of consumerism. It is exactly this point that Professor Adam Webb damns in his enlightening book, Beyond the Global Culture War, saying that China has sold out its traditional values to modern consumerism (in his defense, which I must explain, otherwise he’ll raise an eyebrow at the last sentence, China’s consumerism was not the point of his book, it was just one of hundreds of examples).

I invite all interested people to read his book, which goes far beyond China and the US and the modern era. I also invite any and all comments on the issue of China’s potential worldwide contribution in the valuable and ideological sense.

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International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong 2011

Posted on December 15, 2011 by

This news is a bit outdated now, but it has been a crazy month. And it started with a five-day poetry conference in Kowloon.

It was my first time to Hong Kong. The adrenaline rush of being in a new city – Hong Kong of all places – clashed with my swirling ignorance about the place. The trip started (after 8 hours of travel) with me wandering around Chinese University’s campus, following e-mail directions from a stranger who told me that I had been put up in a dorm at Chinese University by a friend of a friend of a friend. I was carrying the weight of an under-thought Master’s thesis to a conference of literary big-shots. Also, it took me an hour to find a drink of water (can I drink from the faucet? Where is the nearest Seven-Eleven? Which subway stop?).

Being in a new city feels like a constant upstream battle. I had not realized how comfortable I had gotten in my Nanjing water well until I got to Shenzhen and had to follow the funny-looking pinyin to guess where the border-check was. Hey, expats thrive on that stuff.

Leo Ou-fan Lee, Tian Yuan, Xi Chuan, Bei Dao, Liang Wendao. What a line-up. Bei Dao, incase you don’t know, is considered by many to be the most accomplished poet of the Democracy Movement (a Misty poet, but I prefer identifying him with the DM, albeit that is also limiting). He was exiled after the Tiananmen Massacre, not because he was a participant (he was actually lecturing in Europe at the time), but because his poems had appeared on banners and in songs. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is now a professor of Chinese literature at Chinese University in Hong Kong. He is also the focus of my Master’s thesis.

Bei Dao was a gracious host even to the lowly graduate student of shallow poetry appreciation. I approached him at one poetry reading to schedule a meeting, and he patted the seat next to him. We chatted at unpretentious ease up until Regis Bonvicino (Brazil) got onstage, at which point I actually felt no need to give him space. He radiated kindness. You don’t often hear that about people. China lost a great man when they exiled him for, um, inspiring the youth…with his poetry.

Image

Liang Wendao was of course a celebrity appearance among celebrities, and I made sure to attend his panel, “Chinese Poetry: Negotiating Dilemma.” Most of the speakers resisted taking the bait of bemoaning poetry’s relative unpopularity in China. They instead talked about the relative [in-]significance of online-speak (网络语言 – it only involves a certain demographic; which I think means that it will become a classist dialect of sorts), the anxiety of being a colonial subject (that was actually Vivek Narayanan of India), and poetry being a sort of lifestyle. I wasn’t crazy about Kunming poet Yu Jian’s claim that English does not carry the poetic weight that Chinese characters inherently do, especially given that he does not know English (it just smacked a little too much of Chinese exceptionalism. And I let him know.). Mr. Liang finished his panel with “我们不懂诗的时候，我们【这个时代的人】都怪作者。”(“When we don’t understand poetry nowadays, we blame the writer.”) Speaking of charisma, by the way, Mr. Liang is a bubbling charisma fountain. Afterwards, my bus passed him as he was leaving campus for a smoke (in Hong Kong you can’t smoke on campus!). We made eye contact and both burst out laughing. Pretty cute.

I left the conference with a new poet and friend Xi Chuan (link different than previous one). Like Bei Dao, he is completely comfortable being genuinely kind. His poetry stood out among the recitations, his understated attitude all but testifying to the latent passion of his words. You can read a few of his poems here. I have his friend and translator Lucas Klein to thank for having introduced us, and also for having told me about the conference in the first place.

I finished the weekend writing a thesis prospectus in my Chungking Mansion matchbox. It was so wonderfully reminscent of Gordon Matthews.

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A Disheartening Statement Regarding the Yueyue Incident

Posted on November 12, 2011 by

Assuming the reader of this blog minimally follows China news, it would be redundant of me to summarize the Yueyue incident of late October. So I’ll get right to the part where a Chinese classmate said that this was an isolated incident that does not reflect a societal trend:

“This incident happened in Shenzhen, where most people are migrant workers. The pressure on migrant workers is so great, and their wages are so low, that it is understandable why none of them saved this girl. If this had happened anywhere else, it would not have been like this.”

It’s almost so ignorant that I should perhaps not have dignified it with lambasting. The most correct part of that statement is that the incident occured in Shenzhen, which it didn’t. But lambast I did; I didn’t even let her finish her statement before saying, “You live in China. You are a Chinese person. You know that’s not true!”

And here I continue. A few months ago I posted on China’s 公共意识 (civic engagement) issues. Dumping one’s refuse into the Huai River, while detestable, is not such an immediate and obvious act of disregard for another’s well-being as having walked by a dying two-year-old. And were this incident fully explicable via the Peng Yu case, I would have less to say. I must disagree, however, with the writer of that China Daily article just cited (I knew I was getting myself into trouble sourcing from China Daily); that is, the reason no one will help a dying person is not solely because of the Peng Yu case. Peng Yu, after all, did knock over the old woman, as a recording of the 110 call he placed later revealed (one of the state’s better-kept secrets; they found this recording expos facto, but wanted the case dead and buried).

No, this is a grave issue. I could write all day, re-hash the civic-mindedness post, add religious polemic to the mix, but the bottom line is, the inability to think critically is almost as despicable as the inability to take responsibility for one’s mistakes. That the driver drove off is disgusting, but I can accept that he was avoiding a certain fate. Those who passed by are, in my opinion, even worse. But the most despicable of all is embodied in the attitude that “this was an isolated event, not representative of Chinese society.”

This was also the initial reaction of Long Yingtai, a Taiwanese woman who wrote on a similiar issue in the 1980′s in 《中国人，你为什么不生气？》. What frightens me most about this connection is that it is timeless. I don’t really buy into platitudes about society continually getting better, people continuing becoming more civilized – or even the other way around, that people care less and less about others. An issue such as this needs a Tipping Point, and the Peng Yu case was the Tipping Point’s nadir.

I have nothing intellectual to say about this, albeit I tried with my classmate. It’s not necessarily very cool to admit to inspiration via raw emotion, but I’ll go out on a limb. Right now, I truly admire a certain Western-Prize-Obtaining-Who-is-in-Jail-for-Eleven-Years (I’m still not blocked in China!) for many reasons, and at this moment in particular, his optimism is … 很特殊.

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Green Anhui’s Zhou Xiang speaks on “Warriors of Qiugang” and NGOs in China

Posted on September 8, 2011 by

So get this.

Warriors of Qiugang documented the Chinese NGO Green Anhui and their journey to save the people of Qiugang from evil factories. In the end they win, people go home happy, and Warriors gets an Oscar nominee. AND I get to interview the founder of Green Anhui, Zhou Xiang. Check it out!!

Though I’ll just tell you my favorite part: civic engagement in China, of course.

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Dai Mythology, Part Two

Posted on August 15, 2011 by

Here is translation number two, sourced from a post on Baidu by Teacher Jia Xianhua. I will here mention that my translation is geared more for non-Chinese-speaking English/American readers. So the goal is ease of read, while also maintaining the original characteristics. #translationproblems

A very very long time ago, there was an evil demon king who was embodied with magical powers. If he fell into the water, he would not drift away; if he fell into the water, he could not be burned; the knife could not do bad to him; the bayonet could not enter him; the arrow could not pierce him. His extraordinary powers exceeded that of regular people, and because of it he was terribly arrogant. He ceaselessly domineered, committing all kinds of evil. At that time, heaven had 16 layers, and he became the ruler of the dominant layer. He oppressed and looted the people, leaving no misdeed uncommitted. He already had six beautiful wives, but if a family were to have a beautiful daughter, he would steal her away as his wife. One time, he saw amongst the people a princess named Nan Zongbu [Dumpling Cloth Nan], more beautiful than all six of his wives, and so he stole her as well, making her his seventh wife.

One year in the sixth month [presumably summer], while the people were celebrating the New Year, the Magic King wished to impress Nan Zongbu with a New Year’s party.* So he convened his magic ministry, and had a grand feast replete with revelry. After three rounds of drinks, the officers and ministers had drunk themselves into imbecility. Nan Zongbu seized the opportunity to announce to the King, “My Honorable King, your magic has no bounds, your morals are more worthy than gold. With your prestige, you can certainly conquer all of Heaven, Hell, Humankind, and become the king of all three realms.” The King listened and was very pleased with himself. He reflected for a moment, and then turned to the wife he loved** and said: “I certainly can conquer all three of those worlds, my weakness is known to no one. Nan Zongbu continued to inquire, “The king has such [great] power, how can he possibly have a weakness?” The King softly replied, “It’s just that I fear people pulling up head by the hair and reigning me in at my throat, for this is the weakest part of my body. You can maybe usually notice it a bit.” Nan Zongbu feigned surprise and pressed more questions, “Such a powerful king, how can he fear hair?” The King replied, “Although I do not have much hair, it can be used to carve my neck and break it, and I cannot live after that.”

After Nan Zongbu heard this, she inwardly made up her mind. She continued to fill the King’s cup until the feast had broken up, and then supported him to his bed for a deep sleep. At this time, she carefully pulled up one strand of the King’s hair, while he still had not woken, and carved his neck with it. The King’s neck immediately fell to the floor, the top of his head dripping with blood, each drop turning into a flame. Fire roaring, its greatness and speed threatened to extend into the people’s kingdom. At this time, Nan Zongbu hastened to hug the head, and the great flame on the ground immediately burnt out. But as soon as the head was placed down, the fire again started up. And so, the other six wives also hurried over, and they took turns hugging the King’s head, and thus the fire was never started again.

Afterwards, Nan Zongbu returned to the people, but her whole body was covered in blood. To wash the blood off her, people one after another splashed her with water. The blood was finally washed off, and Nan Zongbu finally lived with fortune amongst the people. After Nan Zongbu died, in order to remember her, people every year on the New Year splash one another with water, using clean water to wash the dirt off each other, welcoming an auspicious New Year.

*The literal translation is that “in order to wish [her] a Happy New Year, he convened the ministry and had a party of feasting and drinking.” A little liberty taken.
**爱妻

My initial reaction to the story has been that it has some obvious common elements with mythology from elsewhere. Any of the children stories I heard as a kid, or Bible tales, or Greek myths, all display a conflict of definite good and evil. Was relative morality truly a bi-product of 20th-century modernism? I’d be impressed, as I am currently impressed with peoples’ conviction that there was once a definite good and evil.

That the King was evil because of his misdeeds, presumably his misdeeds toward his subjects, also gives clues. “Evil” was not necessarily about intention or inner moral conviction, but about the way your deeds played out in real life. Especially as a King, the ultimate evil he can do is be arrogant and domineer all day. I wonder what the ancient Dai storytellers would say about today’s politicians.

The role of Nan Zongbu is classic: beautiful young woman proves to be arrogant type-A male’s weakness. Male foolishly trusts her (or rather, underestimates her); in the end, she saves everybody. The story reminds me vividly of Judith and Holofernes, whose depiction by Caravaggio was my 19th-birthday present (it was my favorite painting at the time, which my dad was more than happy to get it for me, thinking it would scare off other guys). Basically, Holofernes is an arrogant and domineering dufus who requests the company of Judith, the most beautiful girl in the village. She cuts off his head in bed as the nurse-maid collects the blood. After burning down her house, what did he expect?

An evil king is a common motif is ancient mythology, and I suppose that is because a king is capable of the greatest amount of evil. This set-up also allows room for the heroine to sacrifice on behalf of many; perhaps the greatest good one can do. Here is where a Sino-Western comparative literary analysis of the role of the hero/heroine in ancient mythologies would be interesting. I am not qualified for that.

Finally, the ancient Dai people were wary of magicians. Good thing JK Rowling was born when she was.

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Dai Mythology, Part One

Posted on August 15, 2011 by

Dai Festival of Water Splashing

Dai culture recently piqued my interest, and thus I have undertaken a small translation project. The Water-Splashing Festival is the annual must-see event for China travellers (though it may be noted that I went to Xishuangbanna a week prior, and had a lovely time without the company of hordes of tourists).  Asia Harvest, a Christian proselytizing group, made a short movie about the festival and shares their version of the festival’s roots.

And so I’ve undertaken a project to translate different versions of the story, just for fun. The first installment is a short translation of the legend of the Water-Splashing Festival, sourced from a Chinese government informational website. Here is the first installment:

Xishuangbanna Daizu mythology: In ancient times, there was an evil king whose misdeeds were numerous. The people despised him, and conceived multiple plans to kill him, none of which succeeded. The king’s neck was his Achille’s heel, for only there could he be killed.

Seven sisters took advantage of the king in his deep sleep, pulling up his head and forcefully cutting him at the neck, sending his head rolling. But as soon as his head rolled onto the ground, it suddenly burst into flames. One sister grabbed the head and hugged it, and the flames immediately were extinguished. To avoid a big fire, she and her six sisters took turns hugging the head, switching every year. Every year when they were switching off, the people splashed water on the girl, rinsing her body of the head’s filth, washing away her year of arduous labor, and praying for a new year without disaster or hardship. From this old story came the new Water-Splashing Festival.

Translated by Hannah Lincoln 2011

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