The American Bicyclist at Large and His Adventure in China

Bob starts his month-long bike trip across America today – what an interesting thing to do on July 4^th! I wish I could go with him but I was never much of an athlete.

He is using the same Trek bike he traveled with in China almost exactly 22 years ago. In July 1987, Bob had ridden it across China – from Harbin to Chongqing – to fulfill a date with me. It took him three weeks in the wind, rain and sun, during the night sleeping on the roadside in his tiny tent and green sleeping bag. He was probably the first foreigner to do such a bike trip alone in China. He had taken tons of interesting slides along the way; too bad I have no way to digitize them.

Bob told me later he often wondered if the Chinese roads were built as a punishment to bicyclists, but at least a bike had the advantage of easily negotiating its way through the unbelievable mass of human powered traffic; a car would not have been much faster than his bike. No cars: an unusual thing about China.

His goal had been to take an ambitious bicycle trip to Tibet. Instead, he found himself on the way to Chongqing, to meet a Chinese woman he fell in love with.

He sent me a letter whenever he ran into a post office. At some point he gave me an estimated arrival date, July 21. He was amazingly on schedule until the second last day, when he was arrested in a rural town a few hundred kilometers outside of Chongqing.

About noon on July 21^nd, he was stopped by a policeman in a green uniform, whose motorcycle was parked by the roadside and who said to the bearded foreigner in Chinese, “You are under arrest,” or something to that effect.

It was out of the blue. Bob, the “American bicyclist at large” – as he referred to himself then – immediately recalled a sign he had seen somewhere outside Beijing, “Foreigners Not Allowed Beyond This Point,” in both Chinese and English. But this was the Sichuan Province, about two thousand kilometers from Beijing, and he hadn’t seen any such sign around. Nor had he seen any sensitive construction like a military camp or prison. The only curious thing was that he heard people speaking in Shanghai dialect, which he recognized from having lived and taught in Shanghai for nearly a year. He was not aware of the migration of many defense factories from Shanghai to Sichuan in the 1960s, preparing for the Third World War that Chairman Mao predicted would soon be started by the American imperialists.

In China, unlike other parts of the world Bob had ridden through, he was almost always part of an entourage. With so many people riding bikes there were always a few who would keep pace with him, curious about him and his foreign bicycle. Sometimes they would talk, but as often as not they would just stare. Still, they were not unfriendly and at times he felt like he was simply part of the landscape. With a helmet on his head and bushy beard covering his lower face, however, it was not a challenge for the policeman to pick him out of the crowd. Still, Bob was calm; after a year, no longer could anything be thought too strange, for this was China.

Getting back on his bike Bob followed the police motorcycle to a dusty branch of road leading to a town building. In a second floor room two officers talked to Bob in Chinese, their manner a strange mix of friendliness and official business, leaking curiosity at times. They asked for his passport, and they asked why he was in this area where foreigners were not allowed (which he had no idea). After about an hour, when Bob’s crude Chinese could not address their questions satisfactorily, they fetched a local English teacher. The teacher, who it turned out had never seen a foreigner in his thirty-odd years of life, apparently was delighted to see a real English speaker in town. He tried to help both sides with his basic English. The interrogation went on for a prolonged time, whether because the teacher caused more linguistic confusion, or the confusion led the officers into better humor, Bob did not know. In the end, the officers required merely a fine and a confession.

“One hundred yuan for trespassing in a prohibited area. Two hundred yuan for unauthorized use of a vehicle,” the police told Bob. Whether this was truly a prohibited area, they did not say. The total was more than several months of the local English teacher’s salary. Bob paid the fine, then scribbled on a lined piece of paper, inserting as many words as he could to fill the page, to show that he took the confession as seriously as the Chinese. The following is his "confession," which he reconstructed for me afterward:

It is apparent to me now that my appearance in an area of the countryside where I encountered the constabulary was cause for some concern. Though I was unaware of any interdiction relative to myself in that specific area it is beyond a doubt true that I was indeed there. This said, it seems appropriate that I pen my name to this document in recognition of the fact that this is indeed what is expected of me. Therefore I am doing so now. Though the device by which my humble bicycle has become a vehicle whose legality is in question remains a deep mystery to me, it seems best to accept circumstances as they have presented themselves. In the future I will endeavor to avoid any such encounters and heartily refrain from any flagrant presentation of my own existence in any location at which it might be deemed offensive, inappropriate or otherwise outside the scope of day to day affairs.

Signed, this 21^st day of July, 1987

The local English teacher orally translated Bob’s confession to the officers, stammering here and there. The officers looked satisfied. They told Bob that he must wait in the town’s hotel until the next morning to catch a train to Chongqing, as he was not allowed to travel by bike in this area. Could he walk around town by foot? Bob asked. Yes, that would be okay, said one of the policeman, with unexpected friendliness.

The English teacher volunteered to escort the American to the hotel. Then he disappeared. An hour or so later he reappeared. A bit timidly, he asked if Bob would like to teach an English class in his school. The surprised Bob said yes.

In a two-story clay building, a typical low-key town school, about twenty students sat behind their desks in a well-disciplined manner. Boys stared at the big-bearded foreigner and girls giggled softly. “Good afternoon,” Bob said.

The kids imitated him in neat unison; their teacher smiled proudly. The curiosity and seriousness of the children made Bob temporarily forget his arrest. He taught the class some simple English vocabulary for half an hour with much enjoyment.

Before Bob left, with a nod from the teacher, a boy presented a triangular red scarf to him with both hands. Such a red scarf was the mark of Young Pioneers, Bob knew, the official children’s organization in Communist China. Despite any political connotation of the scarf, this gesture of honor from the innocent elementary school kids was in such ironic contrast to Bob’s unexplained “criminal” arrest, he was both touched and frustrated.

He had no way to warn me about his delay. There was no such a thing as cell phone at the time. There was not even a land line in my house.

~

I worried all day when Bob did not show up as scheduled. Then I stayed awake through most of the night, finally drifting into dreamland near morning. I slept in, only to awake to loud shouts from downstairs: “A foreigner is looking for Xujun! An old foreigner!”

Old foreigner? Bob was only twenty-eight. It must be his beard!

I put on my jeans and shirt in a fluster, grabbed a hairbrush and ran downstairs while combing my waist-length hair. Outside my apartment building, on the sidewalk, under the hot Chongqing sun I saw six-foot-tall Bob, in his red McGill University T-shirt, standing in a circle of onlookers five-feet or shorter. Those townsmen of mine were silent; their gazes unmistakably fixed on the foreigner’s face. Bob, his wide forehead blackened by sweat and dust, appeared quite baffled by this silent spotlight of so many human eyes. His one hand held the loaded Trek bike with a helmet hanging on its handlebar, and the other held a small notebook, in which I had written down my address in Chinese for him a month and a half before in Shanghai. He looked at this person and that in amusement, making inquiries in both English and crude Chinese: “What? Shenmo?” He tried to move in one direction then another; the crowd retreated and advanced with him like an unbreakable giant rubber band.

It was not a novel scene to me. Although the largest industrial city in southwest China, and in the 1940s China’s wartime capital bustling with American and British diplomats, since 1949 Chongqing had rarely seen foreign tourists. When I was an undergraduate student in Chongqing University in early 1980s, one day on the street I ran into an American professor who worked for the Sichuan Foreign Language College. It was the first time I had seen a white man with my own eyes instead of on a screen. At that time I was extremely tired of the mandatory politics class in school, and I had the sudden impulse to know if American universities had similar classes. The American man was buying a roll of high-quality toilet paper, the kind we ordinary Chinese regarded as a luxury, from a small grocery store on the side of a main street near the Liberation Monument. I heard him speaking fluent Chinese to the store clerk. I approached him and asked my question. “Yes,” he said. “Of course American universities have politics classes.” We were both speaking Chinese, but he looked baffled. His answer and expression confused me and I wanted to probe further. Just then, I noticed that the two of us were surrounded by a large crowd of onlookers, so large that they blocked traffic on the street. Embarrassed by the hundreds of eyes staring at me, I ran out without saying good-bye to the professor. Not until many years later, when I became a graduate student at MIT, did I realize how ignorant my question was. It’s not that American universities did not offer classes on politics. The difference was that to take the class or not was your own choice, not a mandatory imposition on daily life.

Now, once again I faced a band of staring humans, and my steps halted. I hesitated to step into a trap, to identify myself with the tall foreigner. But Bob had already seen me. He waved, smiling warmly and irresistibly. I squeezed into the ring.

“How should I greet your townsfolk?” he asked me in English.

Seeing the foreign man talking to a Chinese woman, the crowd became lively. A young man taunted, “Yang guizi!” and laughter ensued. Some touched Bob’s bike – few rode bikes in hilly Chongqing. I said nothing and led him out of the encirclement. The crowd reluctantly opened a breach to let us go.

I still remember that morning vividly after 22 years.

"i find English is really useful"

A few days ago, someone in China wrote me:

I am a chinese university student.when i seached some information about tiananmen suqare event,I found your webside,as you know that our government block all the information about this event,we know nothing about it and i just want to know what happen 20 years ago.

The message was anonymous. At first I wondered whether it was really from a student wanting to know the truth, or someone in an official position was trying to probe for my personal information. In any case I replied, telling him/her to ask his/her parents about the event, while referring him/her to Philip Cunningham's book Tiananmen Moon. I also asked why he/she was interested in learning about "6.4". And here is the reply (posted with permission):

You ask me why I interested in learning about this, it might be a long long reason, and i don't know how to express myself well because of my poor English, but i will try.

Tienanmen Square Massacre happened 20 years ago, our history book and our teachers never never talk about it, when we asked what is 64 event, they never answered, I aways want to know what happened and why it happened, our TV, newspaper, even our websites never mention it. Our government block all the information about this event, this event become a political taboo in China, people seem have forgot it, especially our 80s. I am major in international relationships, democracy, human rights, freedom, equity, we talk about it everyday, however, they are dreams nowadays in China.

It's undisputed that so many problems exist in China's society. Chinese's government attempt to control our minds. I hate ideological education, I hate malfeasance, I hate our education system. I aways comfort myself that China is a developing county, we should give time to Communist Party and believe that tomorrow is another day. but our Community Party seems against the current .they doing something very disgusted, such as blocking all the opponent voices and swearwords about government.

I have collected a lot of helpful information about Tienanmen square event with Google.COM but not Google.cn. I know what happened now. it's not until now that i find English is really useful.

The website you gave me is unable to visit in China, how pathetic! thank you very much for your reply, forgive my poor English and i will try my best to learn it well.

I've heard that the young generation of Chinese, the so-called "post-80" and "post-90," were very ignorant about the recent history, which is quite worrisome. Even after some of those who have come to study abroad and learned about "6.4," their blind nationalism make them view the massacre as necessary. It is a comfort that there are still young people in China who care about the truth, and study hard a foreign language for this purpose.

The Elapsing Moon – A Trip to Tibet

by Maple Xu

(Note: this is my traveling sister Maple's latest log. To read more of her fascinating stories go to the "travel log" category. – Xujun)

[in translation]

Tibet's ambience this year is quite apprehensive. The shadow from last March's riots remains; to the central and local governments, each bush or tree looks like an enemy soldier. They basically don't welcome individual tourists. For safety considerations, I made an exception to my usual practice and joined a tourist group.

Lhasa's street, May 2009

This is the third time I’ve entered Tibet. The first time, in June 1992, I took the train from Chengdu to Xining, then a bus through Tsinghai Lake, Tanggula Mountains, Hoh Xil, Yuzhu Peak to arrive at Lhasa, then a truck from Lhasa to Shigatse and Zhangmu, and finally a small military postal plane (with only 4-5 seats) to return to Sichuan.

The second time was October 2003, in a car with friends. We entered Tibet from Yunnan's Gaoligong Mountains. Along the way were huge roadblocks caused by landslides, and muddy pitfalls that had formed under year-long rains and the grinding of heavy trucks; the road couldn't be called a road. As such, what remains in my memory is not scenery and place names, but nervous worries on when our delicate car made for urban use would become stranded, in a place with no cell phone signals.

This third trip, in May 2009, is the result of a sudden fantasy: I wanted to ride on the new high-speed train from Shanghai to Lhasa, to enjoy the sights of the Tsinghai-Tibet Plateau in the pressurized train-car that prevents both ultraviolet exposure and altitude sickness.

~

Lhasa's first day gives me a strange feeling. On the streets it is not only tourists that are sparse, Tibetans are also hard to come by. When you occasionally run into one or two, they shy away, and avoid any photo-taking. Instead, soldiers are everywhere, like every three or five steps there is a checkpoint. They are fully armed, with submachine guns and iron shields in their hands. Even the insides of the Jokhang Temple and the Potala Palace are full of armed guards. Foreigners must get permission from the local police before going in. Which places are open for visiting and which are not are all at the local police's mercy, otherwise guns can be fired at any time. It is a bit frightening but also a bit exciting. (I'm surprised that our tour guide, a 28-year-old Tibetan named Phurbu I'll describe in detail in the next log, tells me in a private conversation that the presence of the soldiers actually makes him feel safer.)

I don't dare to focus my camera on soldiers or the locals, so I take pictures of the scenery.But the originally narrow, grassless dirt road harmonious with the Potala Palace has been replaced by a clean, wide cement thoroughfare lined with green trees, red flowers and heavy car traffic. It is no longer suitable for Tibetans dressed in Han-style clothes to reach the Jokhang Temple (Dazhao Shi) in the traditional manner by making body-length kowtows all the way. Modern iron fences disharmoniously surround age-old temples; the bold and unstrained Tibetan dogs that used to run around on the streets freely can no longer be seen. Local residents are well behaved, their polite but vigilant eye-expressions replacing honest and simple smiles. All in all, now Lhasa can be called a modern and civilized city, yet an unnamed loss fills my heart.

The Lhasa without the thick smell of smoking pine and burning incense, the Lhasa without pious believers in dusty Tibetan robes who kowtow and pray along the way, the Lhasa without people leisurely sitting on the ground and looking at tourists with friendly smiles, the Lhasa that has lost its original look, how does it distinguish itself from Chongqing or Shanghai or any other tourist city?

Another thing that surprises me is the large amount of white waste, results of quick food supplies for tourists. Neither the Tibetans nor the local government seem to care about it. Those white plastic containers, abandoned as freely as one pleases, lie calmly in the holy city's sunlight, at every corner of Lhasa, even the riverside of the beautiful Yarlung Zangbo, becoming the most eye-catching scenery.

The temples are obviously overloaded with tourists that have brought serious damage to the architecture and Buddhist statuary, but the desire for ticket revenue seems only on the rise. In recent years, the involvement of the World Heritage Committee has forced the temples to restrict the number of visitors. However the temples are not short of counter measures. Large-scale price increases are only a small appetizer. On the surface, they limit the number of entering visitors to 200 a batch. But they maximize the number of batches a day by herding the visitors like sheep. In front every Buddha or bone-pagoda is not a lama but a fellow wearing a wide-brim hat, who shouts non-stop "Hurry, move! Don't pause!" And the crowds follow the order obediently as if in a spell; whether you are old or young, whether you are a foreigner or Chinese, you must move with a speed that can't even be called "looking at flowers on a running horse." In less than an hour, you finish a tour that would normally need the better part of day.

Exiting the dim palace and coming outside into the blinding sun, tourists look at each other in blank dismay: "What did you see?" As if suddenly awaking from a dream-walk, they are annoyed at being fooled, but the only thing they can do is to find balance and pleasure in the misfortune of the next batch of visitors.

I guess this is the dilemma that every old city whose main revenue comes from the tourist industry faces. To maintain a historical place and local traits often also means keeping outdated and coarse ecology. Don't Tibetans also wish to live a modern life, to have flush toilets and hot-water showers in their homes? What rights do we have for ourselves to enjoy modern convenience, while requesting others to live in a primitive environment for our entertainment?

Yet I've also heard that in tourist towns of the US West, they paint bathrooms and service areas the same color as the surrounding mountains; I've heard in Rome they’d rather spend hundred times more to maintain the city's old look; I've heard in Yunnan a businessman pulled down every electricity pole in his tourist area and painstakingly hide the power network underground; I've heard in Zhouzhuang, Zhejiang Province, villagers lay in front of steam rollers to stop the construction of a highway across their ancient town.

The Lhasa River, May 2009

~

A few days ago someone was puzzling over why nothing was happening on June 4^th this year. Another one smiled: If you talk about 6.4 with those born in the 80s or 90s, they will ask, What's that? Another kind of currency?

Will there be one day that Chinese become so poor that their only possession is money?

My memory brings me back to the dusk one day over a decade ago. By the limpid Lhasa River, several Tibetan girls were humming and washing clothes. At the end of a flagstone path one or two yellow houses stood with black-and-red window frames, prayer streamers hanging above the roofs. The sky was a clear blue infiltrated with a tint of purple. A breeze sent over a faint smell of smoking pine and the strong fragrance of buttered tea, as well as the acrid odor of burning cow-manure cake. I languidly lay on the meadow until sunset and the moon rose. That wheel of dreamy moon – its quality you could never find in an urban moonlight – is carved into my bone marrow.

That moon has long elapsed behind tall buildings and colorful neon lights. Will it ever return?

(All photos ©2009 Maple Xu)

A Very Moving Review in Asia Times

A surprise brought to me by Google alert –

--------------
BOOK REVIEW
Poignant tales of the Cultural Revolution
Apologies Forthcoming by Xujun Eberlein

Reviewed by Kent Ewing

HONG KONG - First, let us pause and lament all of the vast, untapped talent that tragically goes to waste every hour of every day around the globe. And make that a long, deep and profound pause because the waste, as any observant traveler knows, is truly colossal.

Once you are finished contemplating this immense desert of aspiration and aptitude, however, remember to give some small thanks to those who manage to spot and bring to light at least a modicum of what otherwise would have been lost - and I am not referring to drawn-out cultural carnivals such as American Idol or any of its many offshoots outside the United States. Continue to read >>

The Fall of Lady Liberty and Chai Ling's Revenge

Years ago when I first saw the documentary "The Gate of Heavenly Peace" at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, my impression of Chai Ling was mixed. From what the former student leader said in her controversial interview (available in both Chinese and English) with an American journalist, it was certainly appalling that she expected the deaths of many fellow students to serve the 1989 movement's purposes. On the other hand, she looked genuinely grief-stricken by the prospect of bloodshed, and I couldn't help but feel sympathy toward her as well. After all, she was only 23 years old, a young woman who had grown up in China's "revolutionary heroism" culture. In such a culture, there's nothing out of place with what she expressed, that only the blood of innocent people can awake and enlighten more people. It is from a Western perspective that such an idea is simply unacceptable.

What I'm saying is, more of the blame should be placed on the revolutionary education she grew up with, rather than her naivety of believing in it. Who was not once young and naïve? I happen to also think Wang Dan has a point that no matter what Chai Ling had said, she did stay in the Square with other students until the last minute, and her action was more important than her words. (For the record, "The Gate of Heavenly Peace" also truthfully reported this fact.)

Reading excerpts of the newly published Tiananmen Moon (h/t The China Beat) by Philip Cunningham, the very journalist who interviewed Chai Ling 20 years ago, made me feel that Chai Ling might have been more innocent than some have thought. Although her idea of using bloodshed to arouse people was hardly a moral one, she appeared to be sincere and serious about the student movement and was indignant toward some other selfish power-thirsty student leaders. As such, I'd like to believe the young Chai Ling twenty years ago was a humanly imperfect idealist, as young activists are. If she sometimes took herself too importantly, it was largely because of the situation: being young and the leader of a mass movement can carry anyone away.

Today Chai Ling has become an American businesswoman. She is 43 years old, certainly no longer naïve, and apparently has done well financially. Now with the wealth she has gained in the democracy of America, she starts a new fight, only this time her target is not a totalitarian government but a critical part of democracy: an independent, nonprofit film maker who dared to express criticism toward both the Chinese government, and some student leaders, however slight of the latter.

Whatever legal reasons Chai Ling has been deploying, "defamation" or "infringing trademark," the drunkard's heart is not in the cup: the real nature of Chai Ling's lawsuit against Long Bow the firm maker seems more personal, as many internet articles have pointed out. From a societal point of view, this lawsuit is a big regression in Chai Ling's political ideal. From a personal point of view, her motivation is explicable yet the action is totally unwise.

If it is excusable that Chai Ling didn't have a concrete idea of democracy when she was leading that democracy movement two decades ago, shouldn't one expect her to have gained a lot more understanding now, after living in the West for all these years? Or so I'd thought.

It might be helpful to reflect here on a historical case that bears some remarkable similarity: the so-called Times v. Sullivan case in the 1960s, on which the Supreme Court's decision "revolutionized libel law in America." Here's a description of the case from the US supreme court media website:

"Decided together with Abernathy v. Sullivan, this case concerns a full-page ad in the New York Times which alleged that the arrest of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. for perjury in Alabama was part of a campaign to destroy King's efforts to integrate public facilities and encourage blacks to vote. L. B. Sullivan, the Montgomery city commissioner, filed a libel action against the newspaper and four black ministers who were listed as endorsers of the ad, claiming that the allegations against the Montgomery police defamed him personally. Under Alabama law, Sullivan did not have to prove that he had been harmed; and a defense claiming that the ad was truthful was unavailable since the ad contained factual errors. Sullivan won a $500,000 judgment."

At the time, the NY Times was having financial problems, and being charged with this astronomical amount of money put it in the danger of bankruptcy. The paper appealed to the Supreme Court, and "the Court believed it was important for the survival of democracy in the United States that the press be allowed to aggressively report on public matters without excessive fear of being sued for libel." [1] The charge was dismissed. Because of the Supreme Court's wise decision, today we still have the NY Times to read.

Note that this Court decision was made in 1964, and helped establish the precedence to protect the press from similar liability lawsuits. Now it is 45 years later. If Chai Ling had any idea about the meaning of First Amendment, or the meaning of a free press, would she have sued Long Bow? On the societal level, surely she doesn't wish American democracy go backward to what it was before 1964? On the personal level, did she ever worry about others' suspicions of her motives?

In any case, it is certainly another mistake Chai Ling is making, hurting both others and herself, but this time it can no longer be explained away by innocence. How on earth could a woman as smart as she is think she could re-glorify her name through such a lawsuit? From what I can see, Long Bow's on-line appeal has gained extensive support from American academics, the English media, and internet readers (including me), while the appeal written by Chai Ling's ex-husband in her name collected a few signatures hardly reaching beyond the circle of old comrades, some of whom managed to be vague. For example Wang Juntao says in a straddle-the-fence way that he's friends with both sides and he understands and supports both. Go figure.

I wonder if Chai Ling really doesn't see the reality that, while she has succeeded in financially hurting Long Bow, an accompanying consequence is a further deterioration of her own name. And, does anyone notice that her language against Long Bow sound awfully familiar? In 1989, the then-government of China named the student movement a "counter-revolutionary riot," one of the worst crimes at the time. Of course, no one (except some soldiers) believed it. Now Chai Ling calls Long Bow the Communist sympathizer, one of the most hated names in America. Does she really think people with their own eyes and minds would buy that accusation? As an example, this is how the New Yorker commented:

"For the record, to anyone with knowledge of the film, the notion that it is sympathetic to the Chinese government is laughable. But, whatever happens with the suit, it’s hard to imagine a more acute measure of how far the student movement has faded into memory."

In this way Chai Ling not only does disservice to herself but also to the overseas Chinese democracy movement, damage that her million-dollar pledge won’t repair.

But what makes a once brave democracy fighter sink so low as to use the same means of propaganda she had suffered under to attack her foes now? I'm really puzzled. This is the final stroke that manages to erase whatever sympathy I had for her. In the end, her loss might be bigger than Long Bow's. I'm not talking about money.

----------

[1] The Evolution of American Investigative Journalism by James L.Aucoin

Who Knows Hummer? How about Tengzhong?

Yesterday, my sister Maple sent me an email from Shanghai,saying the news that a Sichuan private enterprise is purchasing Hummer sparked a huge reaction in China, even students in her art class kept commenting on it. "'America is finished,'said one. 'That [Sichuan] enterprise surely will produce a Hummer brand steam roller,' said another. et cetera. I don't know what Hummer's status is in the mind of Americans; in China it represents the life style of the highest-level bourgeoisie. It seems that, to car lovers, owning a Hummer is like owning the entire world."

I had seen the Hummer news, but it was my sister's email that got me really interested in the deal. Even though it is not a done one yet (it still awaits government approval, and the government doesn't sound happy about it), people in China seem to be very excited. One reason is that the Sichuan enterprise named Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. is an "obscure China firm," as WSJ calls it (I couldn't read the complete article because I'm not a subscriber). Given the competitive attitude between Chinese and Americans, an obscure China firm dares to acquire a big American (though bankrupt) brand, it is kind of newsworthy. But what more is in it beyond emotion? Here are some things I found on the Chinese internet:

Where did Tengzhong get the money to purchase Hummer? China.com says part of it was from Morgan Stanley. Behind Tengzhong is the 12-year-old Huatong Investment Ltd., China.com says. In early 2008 Morgan Stanley helped Huatong to finance its IPO by purchasing under 20% of its stock, paying US$80 million and issuing $200 million in bonds; that's a total of $280 million.

The report seems to imply that the provincial government of Sichuan supports the deal, but not the central government: "A relevant government official disclosed that, a Sichuan province leader once orally mentioned the Hummer acquisition business to a relevant committee of the Party central, but got a rejection on the spot." The reasons? "The government encourages our enterprises to acquire or merge with foreign enterprises that make parts, but not enterprises that manufacture entire cars. This is based on the consideration of cost and future operation issues."

According to the report, Tengzhong will spend $1 billion on this project, of which 0.55 billion goes to Hummer, and the remaining 0.45 billion will be used in building a new assembly line in Chengdu.

Reactions on the internet are varied. Here are a few views:

From cd.qq.com: For a long time, China's automobile industry has been under constraints of Western countries' big brands. Now Tengzgong dares to acquire a big brand, no matter what the result, it shows private enterprises is are leading the revitalization of Chinese automobile industry.

Sina.com reruns a Chinanews.com report that says the registered capital of Tengzhong is only 300 million RMB (about US$ 44 million), and some people suspect this whole thing is hype.

A skeptical report from xinhua.net raises the question whether this is a two-man show played by Tengzhong and Hummer.

Nanfang Daily reports that a Sina.com poll shows over 50% out of 70,000 netizens think this a lose-money deal. Another report calls it "a snake swallowing an elephant."

Another Reader's Vertigo

Note: In response to the post "The Vertigo of Foreign-born Chinese," reader aliaeb left the following thought-provoking comment. I'm posting it in its own right because cultural identity is such an important issue, across cultures and worth further discussion. – Xujun

-------------------------

aliaeb said...

By now, this is an old discussion, but I've only just gotten to it. American politics and post-colonial orientalism set aside (these are topics I might not be very good at discussing), I find the issue of cultural/national identity an utterly confounding, endlessly engaging one. As the inconclusive questions posed at the end of Drifting Leaf's letter imply, there is no answer to the "who am I" of a migrating world citizen born of immigrants. Consider, for one, the excellent and inconclusive novels written by so many Chinese authors who now live abroad or in exile in Paris, Berlin, London and the United States (高行健,趙振開,馬建,哈金). These authors all explore issues of cultural identity, memory and loss, but none say anything affirmative with regard to these issues. I myself am an American with a very mixed European background (which is very typical, right?). I think I've failed, however, at fully identifying with any one cultural heritage, including that of American nationalism. I have studied Chinese language, history and culture for a quarter of my life now, and live abroad in Taiwan with no definite plans to return home. Additionally, my partner is from Hong Kong, and I feel very strongly inclined to start speaking Cantonese in addition to Mandarin. I worry, though, about who I will become. My partner doesn't celebrate any holidays, and I worry about my future children being bereft of either a Christmas or a Chinese New Year. If they are born in Hong Kong, will they be Chinese? Will I be called an expatriate or an immigrant? Are our Children destined to be even more confused than we are with regard to their identities? These are important questions to ask, as world citizens are growing ever more mobile, and our understandings of ourselves ever more complex. I apologize for leaving such a long comment so late in the game, but these are questions I ask myself every single day, and it was a relief and a strange satisfaction to read such a thoughtful letter by someone dealing with the same confusion.

Do I Still Love China?

Last week, Singapore reader Drifting Leaf asked how I see myself. If you read her letter, you will see this question was about cultural identity. She says:

When I see old CCTV/HK/Taiwan TV programs, it brings me back to my childhood. I’m not sure how far I should identify with or support China though. I love classical Chinese culture but the present China/government has quite a negative image.

And:

When we watched the 2008 Olympics, we were uncertain whether we should feel proud of China or not because we are foreign citizens and am not sure if we can lay claim to Chineseness. I believe you still love China despite all its political problems.

Her questions took me through some soul-searching. I moved to the US as an adult and I've been living here for 21 years; my American-born daughter has turned 20 this year. I'm used to the way of life in New England: to pull weeds and plant flowers in the summer garden, or to have five months of winter solitude in a snow-besieged colonial house. Looking back, I seldom thought of the question "What am I?" except that when I visited China in recent years I often felt like a foreigner. Occasionally I had to provide information on my ethnic background ("American Chinese" or "Asian American") when filling out forms, however I don't consider ethnic background the same thing as cultural identity.

In short, I've never really suffered the anxiety of identity loss. Drifting Leaf's questions made me wonder why.

A couple of weeks ago during a library presentation on my book, someone in the audience asked if I'd like to move back to China. Without thinking I replied, "No, my home is here now."

So, what role does Chinese culture play in my daily life in America then? Perhaps the answer lies in a corner of my garden (and yes, that's where my blog hearder comes from):

This is what my husband and I call our "Chinese wall." After we moved to our current home in the summer of 1998, the two of us spent three years of summer weekends building this garden wall with our own hands. Its style was modeled from the gardens of Sichuan, and the patterns of the reticulated windows were taken from the Ming Dynasty garden book <园冶>, which I found in a bookstore in Boston's Chinatown. The inscribed characters on the maroon wooden board above the moon gate are "思蜀", meaning "long for Shu," where "Shu" is the ancient name for Sichuan.

Readers who are familiar with the Three Kingdoms period (220-280 AD) might be able to see this inscription makes a reverse use of the classical allusion "乐不思蜀" – "here is too enjoyable to long for Shu." After the Shu Kingdom was conquered by Wei, the brainless last King of Shu, Liu Chan, was taken to Wei Kingdom's capital Luoyang. During a banquet with Shu dancers performing, all the captured Shu officials began to weep, only Liu Chan giggled as usual. The King of Wei asked him, "Don't you long for Shu?" "Here is so enjoyable, I don't long for Shu," Liu Chan replied. Thus, "too enjoyable to long for Shu" became an adage admonishing those forgetting their roots.

The inscription in my garden, however, is not an admonishment. It simply reflects my sentiment: whenever I see a Sichuan style garden, I'm emotional – thus the painstaking effort at building the garden wall shown above with the moon gate and the inscribed board. I had never gardened in China, yet in New England I became a diligent gardener. This emotional reaction is rooted in my upbringing in Sichuan, not much different from Drifting Leaf's nostalgic sentiment when she sees traditional Chinese programs on TV.

I'm also fond of Japanese and English gardens, and have tried to make a corner with each style in my yard. However I long for "Shu" more than anything else, and only that part of the garden has sentimental value, thus deeper meaning, to me.

This is to say, the cultural elements from one's upbringing are always there, in the chemistry of your blood, no matter which corner of the world you land in, no matter what you call yourself. That, to me, is cultural identity. It is quite independent from political stance or nationality, as my friend Chiew-Siah pointed out.

I can't help but mention again Ha Jin's latest book, "A Free Life," which is regarded as the author's most autobiographic novel. Anyone who has read it can't possibly miss the protagonist's (thus likely the author's) grudge against China and laud for America, which was why such a boring book was – quite amusingly – hailed by a NYT book reviewer as "a serious [American] patriotic novel" badly needed at a time of Americans' serious protests against the invasion of Iraq.

Ha Jin's book actually provides a good example of "乐不思蜀" – "here is too enjoyable to long for Shu." Its political attitude is not really a surprise given that Ha Jin left China shortly after its most painful time, and his departure to the New World has fixed that old impression in a freeze-frame. Apparently he has been unable to update his view of China as the country updates itself. Despite the political grudge that confused the author, who in turn was confusing politics and cultural identity in his novel, as a realistic writer Ha Jin, perhaps involuntarily, illustrated the independence of the two: while the protagonist is determined to cut ties with anything Chinese, he involuntarily thinks in a Chinese way and applies the traditional Chinese value system in handling business, family and relationships.

Here is another little interlude: recently a library invited several of us to talk about our books. Among the speakers, another woman and I were Chinese. The order of speech was by last name alphabetically; as such I was the first to speak. In introducing my background, I mentioned how all schools were closed and books burned during the Cultural Revolution. When it was the turn for the other Chinese woman, who was originally from Hong Kong, she talked about the Chinese tradition of respecting teachers and books. "Even in mainland China, the CCP only chose the most diligent students as its members," she said. I sort of expected her to acknowledge the practice in the Cultural Revolution as an exception, but she didn't touch anything like that. I wondered if the two of us, each presenting a different aspect of China, had confused the audience. As if she had read my mind, when we were all finished and about to leave, she said to me out of the blue, "You have to talk positive to young readers." Her book was a young-adult novel. Though disagreeing, I nodded understanding.

One could say both she and I share a cultural identity: the Chinese culture. But she had her upbringing in Hong Kong. I'm pretty sure that, had she also experienced the Cultural Revolution, she would have talked quite differently that night. This is to say, the culture one identifies with is more closely related to personal experiences than ethnicity.

Now, do I still love China despite all its political problems? This depends on what one means by the term "China." When I think of China, what comes to mind are familiar shade of trees, fragrance of flowers, shape of landscape, smell of Sichuan cuisine, peculiar expressions of the Chinese language and intimate faces of relatives and friends. Those, I love. I care. Thinking of them makes me emotional. Thus, China is not an abstract concept to me.

This is also to say, I no longer have an abstract love of China, especially when the name means the state. And that's okay with me. When I was a child, we were taught from the first grade on to "Love the Party, love the people, love the motherland," as if the three were one thing. I had taken the concept of the three abstract and unconditional "loves" as granted, until the Cultural Revolution and my "insert" into the countryside disillusioned me and made me realize how those abstract concepts compromised individuals. In the early 1980s, there was a popular saying among those who were actively seeking migration abroad: "I love the motherland, but the motherland does not love me." (This background might also help to understand the grudge in Ha Jin's aforementioned novel.) I suspect Drifting Leaf's situation now is quite similar to those people's then.

Since my youth in the countryside I've grown averse to abstract political concepts. Having lived in two opposite countries has taught me many things, one of which is it's often less wrong to go for the particular rather than the abstract. The world is being destroyed by abstract concepts and exclusive ideologies. But this is the topic of another long post so I won't keep ranting here, but I, too, would like to cite the Beijing Olympics as an example: I enjoyed very much watching the Olympics, not because it lifted China's international image, but because the performance was superb. On the other hand, I still hold the opinion that the huge government spending on the Games could have found a better use in improving conditions for the Chinese population still in poverty.

So, unlike many "angry youths," I don't unconditionally advocate nationalism, though it had also once been my position in my youth, and I still respect the many great nationalists in China's history. But I will not let nationalism stand in the way of my issuing a critical opinion as a honest writer.

Before I end this piece, let me say a few more words about the style of my garden. Isn't a Chinese garden wall absurd, or 不伦不类, as a companion to a New England Colonial house? Coincidentally, I find answers from a book I'm reading titled Has Man a Future? The book is a transcript of conversations between "The Last Confucian" Liang Shuming and Chicago University professor Guy Alitto. In the Foreword written by Prof. Alitto, he mentions that when he interviewed Mr. Liang in 1980, Liang often talked with assent about Buddhism and Daoism, and also praised Christianity and some parts of Marxism. At first Alitto found it hard to understand: how could one be a Confucian and Buddhist at the same time? How can one identify with both Christianity and Marxism? Eventually he realized that, to be able to fuse many seemly conflicting thought schools, is a distinctive characteristic of traditional Chinese intellectuals. An excellent observation.

Cultural Identity: Perspective from a Malaysian Chinese

Note: Chiew-Siah Tei, the author of Little Hut of Leaping Fishes, is a Malaysian Chinese living in Scotland. We met and became friends during Hong Kong's Literary Festival in March. The following is her response to Drifting Leaf's letter regarding the issue of cultural identity, see yesterday's post "The Vertigo of Foreign-born Chinese." Comments are welcome. (And thank you, Chiew-Siah!) – Xujun

Dear Xujun,

I read your Singaporean reader's letter with much thoughts. Confusion of one's identity is a common issue among persons who live outside their cultural roots, be they Chinese, South Asians, Africans and the like, especially for those who are not first-generations. History has determined our fates. It is impossible to go back in time and amend, but there's time to understand, and with that to accept the unchangeable facts. By acceptance, I don't mean we should defy our cultural roots, but recognise and inherit the culture, while at the same time, acknowledge the country we were born and grew up in to be our homes.

As a fourth-generation Chinese from Malaysia, I can understand how she (I'm under the impression that that's a lady) feels. I myself was once confused, too. After all these years, I've come to realise that, over my adolescent years, I had never doubted my identity as a Malaysian and Chinese, and that I was part of the multi-cultural society, and Malaysia was my home. Here in Malaysia we have a unique Malaysian Chinese culture, which I embrace. Some might say the language, the cultural practices, the food, etc, are no longer authentic, but then, this is the authentic Malaysian Chinese culture! My confusion, however, came later during my university years and after entering society, when I became aware of the racial inequalities, and even became a victim of the unjust policies. It's the politics and the politicians that have confused us, not the country or the culture, and that is part of the reasons of your reader's confusion, as she mentioned of her disappointment at the Singaporean leader.

Today, here in Scotland, I can loudly declare that I am Malaysian; there's no doubt about it. I follow news from home and am closely in touch with friends in Malaysia who are fighting against political and social injustice, giving them support as much as I can, as well as trying to do my part through my writing. This way, I don't feel detached from the country - I would if I were to moan and completely alienate myself from it. I see Scotland is the place I work in, where I can acquire certain degree of freedom, which I will be never be able to enjoy in my own country.

Your reader has no reason not to be proud of the cultural displays at the opening of the Beijing Olympics - in fact I was in tears watching the ceremony. I, like her, a Chinese, recognise our root culture that was once, and still is, a splendour.

My thoughts might be quite different from most people, but I think after all these years, I have grown to see things more clearer. I hope your reader will be clear of her doubts. Accept and understand, these are the two things I wish to stress. In fact, writing my first book has helped me to understand the history and learned to accept it.

Regards,
Chiew-Siah

The Vertigo of Foreign-born Chinese

Note: Yesterday I received a letter from a Singapore reader, who raised an important question about the sense of cultural identity for foreign-born Chinese. Her description of Singapore also surprised me a bit. I'm posting the letter below with permission. Whether you've had similar experiences (as a foreign-born member of some culture) or not, please feel free to chip in for a discussion. We'd love to hear your take on the issue. – Xujun

------------------------------------

Hello, Ms. Eberlein,

I read the post about “China’s image abroad, a preschooler’s perspective” and was shocked by it. However, I am not sure if I should be concerned by China’s image abroad or not. I have very mixed and contradictory feelings about the country.

When I am overseas I am sometimes mistaken for a Chinese national but I am actually Singaporean Chinese. My family migrated to Singapore sometime in the earlier half of the 20^th century during one of the most turbulent periods of China’s history. I believe that my grandparents probably thought of themselves as Chinese, not Singaporeans but later developments in the mainland made it impossible to return. My parents and I are born in Singapore. Unlike the rest of my family, I have never been to China.

Reading your entries, I feel that you still care very much about your homeland though you are an American citizen. May I know how you see yourself? For overseas Chinese whose family did not undergo the Communist period and is unfamiliar with life under the CCP, mainland China is quite incomprehensible. Singapore is not a Chinese country but it does have a 华人社会 of its own because over 75% of the population is of Chinese descent. However, with the influence of British colonialism and other local cultures, the local Chinese culture has evolved quite differently from say, Hong Kong which is 90+% Chinese. We use English in our daily lives, are very westernized and are quite weak in our command of Chinese. Most of us are from Southern China and speak southern dialects at home (my parents cannot understand each other because they speak different dialects so they speak mostly putonghua).

The government has banned all Chinese regional languages in the mass media in the hope of encouraging us to speak putonghua for business purposes. Since there was a lot of regional rivalry between different groups of Chinese in the past, this does have an effect of uniting the local Chinese community but I feel we are slowly losing our identities.

When I was growing up in 80s Singapore, the country was becoming a first world country and there was a sense of optimism and hope in the air. I literally witnessed tall buildings going up and I feel that there was a real sense of togetherness in those days amongst all Singaporeans. Since we were a brand new nation with a heterogeneous population composed of immigrants, the government tried very hard in schools to instill a sense of national identity. I believe that a Singaporean identity would have coalesced naturally but as I grew older, I realize that government policies have consistently led to its erosion.

I feel totally alienated from Singapore nowadays and so do many Singaporeans. As you may know, Singapore has a one-party rule system. As an ordinary Singaporean, I have no say in the way Singapore is run. The wealth gap is growing, we have no labor laws that protect employees and no social safety net. The people who run this country are paid high salaries but the economy is going down the drain. As a result stress levels are ever-increasing and growing numbers of Singaporeans are migrating. Singapore society is becoming increasingly more fragmented and true Singaporean culture is allowed no room to grow.

As such, I’m considering migrating overseas.

If I do succeed in becoming say, a New Zealand citizen, what should I call myself? A Singaporean New Zealander, Chinese New Zealander or just plain New Zealander??? Although I have never been to China, I’m quite attached to Chinese culture/customs (I can read/write Mandarin though not very well) but China itself will be quite alien to me if I go there. I can see myself going there to visit my ancestral hometowns or for travel but not actually working/living there. So my links to my ancestral land are quite problematic yet I am unwilling to let go of my Chinese identity totally for nostalgic reasons because I was brought up celebrating Chinese festivals and customs and they are a part of me. When I see old CCTV/HK/Taiwan TV programs, it brings me back to my childhood. I’m not sure how far I should identify with or support China though. I love classical Chinese culture but the present China/government has quite a negative image.

So what am I? Someone totally adrift without any homeland, roots or culture? If I do go to a new country as an adult, I think I am too old to ever assimilate totally. Especially since I am a visible minority who looks Chinese.

Sorry for such a long letter but I liked your blog entries and can see that you are a thoughtful and intelligent person and wanted to hear your opinion about foreign-born Chinese. I am too embarrassed to discuss this with my best friend though she is aware that I hope to migrate. I have talked to many foreign-born Chinese from all over the world and a lot of us are quite confused about our identities. When we watched the 2008 Olympics, we were uncertain whether we should feel proud of China or not because we are foreign citizens and am not sure if we can lay claim to Chineseness. I believe you still love China despite all its political problems.

Drifting leaf

------------------------------------

Postscript: After reading the letter, I asked about Singapore's political censorship. Drifting Leaf answered:

"In Singapore, there are 3 big taboos: race, religion and politics that no one dares to talk about.

"The internet in Singapore is also censored somewhat but not as comprehensively and severely as in China.

"Local political humor site. The website is run by a Singaporean couple who migrated to New York.

http://www.talkingcock.com/html/index.php

"Singapore has gotten into rows with China a couple of times by the way. Once, it was over our unofficial diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Plus, we are too close to the US.

http://asianfanatics.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=40996&mode=linear

http://www.talkingcock.com/html/article.php?sid=1536 "

Tibet Photos

During the May holiday period two weeks ago, my traveling sister Maple took the train to Tibet for the first time. She has written many fascinating travelogs, some of which I've translated and posted on this space. You can find them in the "travel log" category. While I'm waiting for her new piece, let me share a few beautiful photos she took.

Namjagbarwa Peak, the 15th highest peak in the world

Yarlung Zangbo River, the highest major river in the world

A Tibetan boy

Jokhang Temple ((Dazhao Si)

The Potala Palace

(All photos by Maple Xu, ©Copyright 2009, Maple Xu)

Book Review: Global Shanghai, 1850-2010

Global Shanghai, 1850-2010
by Jeffrey Wasserstrom

BlogCritics, book review by Xujun Eberlein, published: May 08, 2009

1.

Shanghai is not just a city; it is a breathing creature with multiple spirits – depending on who's talking about it. Under the classy pen of Wang Anyi, one of the foremost novelists in contemporary China, Shanghai with its mundane gossipy longtang ("an immerse blanket of darkness") possesses the soft Yin of a refined female. In the Chinese textbooks I grew up reading, on the other hand, Shanghai appears to have the vigorous Yang of a revolutionary male, charging valiantly at the frontline against imperialism and feudalism. As if those images are not contrast enough, now Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor of history and China specialist, describes another Shanghai through Westerners' eyes in his informative and thought-provoking new book, Global Shanghai, 1850-2010.

Unusual for a historical discourse, the book takes the structure of a photo album, collecting snapshots every quarter century over a period of 160 years. Such a structure has the benefit of tracing a clear, though rough, contour of the city's trajectory. The focus is on Shanghai's early "globalization" (long before this term was created) and current re-globalization, that is, how Shanghai became a cosmopolitan city and where it is going as one.

A cosmopolitan city – what a celebrated label! Surely neither the Chinese nor Westerners have any objection against it. Yet within its historical connotation lies the water-and-fire contradiction in the ways different sides view and feel about it. Even today, reflecting on this history risks bringing out hasty jingoism from all sorts of people. Given the existence of such divergent perspectives, it is Wasserstrom's unswerving and non-judgmental treatment of the subject that interests me the most about the book.

The disparity begins with Shanghai's birth as an urban center. China's official view is that this occurred in 1291, while Westerners think of it as 1843 – the year the city opened to foreign trade. That's a gap of 552 years, not a trivial one, yet each view has its own basis as Wasserstrom eloquently presents. It is, again, more a perspective gap than a technical one, and the foreigners' view certainly goes with the definition of a "cosmopolitan city."

Starting from there, Shanghai's globalization history is full of large and small conflicts, at times bloody, and viewed differently by various parties. Was Shanghai's transforming into an international "treaty port" in November 1843 a national humiliation (a consequence of China's failure in the Opium war), or a turning point toward commercial prosperity and the advancement of civilization? In 1875, was the killing of a British interpreter named Margary by local Chinese in Yunnan a heroic anti-imperialist action as assessed in Chinese publications, or a senseless murder resulting from xenophobia, as viewed by the "Shanghailanders" (Britons and Americans residing in Shanghai)? In 1900, did the Boxer Rebels' siege of the foreign legations in Beijing cause significant setback in Shanghai's technological development? In 1925, was the blood-shedding May 30^th movement – strikes and demonstrations against foreign-run factories in Shanghai – a national struggle, or an isolated assertion of rights by the local citizens? And what can be said about the leading roles of cosmopolitan nationalists, foreign-educated Chinese who were anything but parochial or xenophobic, in that movement? Was the 1950 the dawn "from a nightmare of oppression" as Song Qingling put it, or a beginning point for the "multiple Shanghais collapsing into a solitary entity" as memoirist Lynn Pan experienced?

(Before going further into the later chapters, I must clarify that the above questions are not addressed by the author directly. Instead, taking an interesting stance, the author sides with neither the Chinese nor the Westerners. In other words, he displays more interest in factual accounts rather than interpretations. He lays out facts and different perspectives, and teases out interesting details, while leaving the conclusions to the reader. As such, another reader might see a totally different set of questions raised.)

Thus globalization, as shown in Shanghai's early history, is not a harmless concept or process. It is a struggle between different sets of interests. Had Shanghai not been located by both the South China Sea and the Yangtze River, convenient for transportation into, and out of, China, it would not have attracted the foreign businessmen as early as the 1840s. Globalization at that time was about capitalist expansion and colonialism. The invasive nature of it inevitably resulted in the local people's resistance, thus the constant clashes.

Every coin has two sides. Globalization, then as now, isn't purely evil either. I was surprised to learn from this book that Shen Pao, one of the oldest and most prominent Chinese newspapers, was created by a Briton in 1872. The paper's historical significance is summarized in Baidu.com (the leading Chinese search engine for websites and a cultural discussion forum) as: "In Shen Pao's 78 years of history, it recorded from late Qing Dynasty through ROC all sorts of political, military, economic, cultural and societal information, whose very high historical value resulted in the name 'the encyclopedia of modern history." Furthermore, "Shen Pao's layout was divided into sections of news, commentary, art and ads, which laid out the foundation for the 4-section base structure of modern Chinese newspapers."

Another significant thing brought in by the early globalization was Western architecture. While the old Shanghailanders are long gone, their architecture remains. In fact today it is often cited by foreign residents that, one major attraction of Shanghai is the many old buildings designed by the Britons, French, Americans, etc. Together (and in contrast) with the traditional Chinese longtang, Shanghai is a modern city that preserves an enjoyable diversity in style and "the texture of daily life" (as journalist James Fellows put it), a feature making Shanghai distinct from, say, modern Beijing.

2.

A major problem with globalization is that it forces the uniform development from the "advanced" economy's point of view, regardless the hugely varying conditions and cultures in the so-called "backward" nations and places. Ironically though, in Shanghai's case it was the de-globalization that was to deprive Shanghai of much of its diversity.

As we read on in Global Shanghai, Wasserstrom's chapters for 1950 and 1975 depicted a history more familiar to my generation of Chinese. The foreigners were driven out in early 1950s. Here, the Chinese were supposed to feel elated, having been librated from imperialist oppression. While the latter part was true (as China became a closed country for more than two decades), people also experienced the gradual singularization of the once multiple Shanghais. The uniformity reached its extreme in late 1960s when "All mountains and rivers are a vast red," as a then-slogan read. During the Cultural Revolution, Shanghai again played a leading role: it was the first to set up the "Revolutionary Committee" that replaced the city government, and it became the nation's adjunct political center.

“The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.” So goes the opening of the Chinese classic Three Kingdoms. After President Nixon's visit in 1972, Shanghai was one of the first cities in China that allowed Western tourists. Gradually China reopened to the outside world, and here comes the re-globalization. In the area east of the Huangpu river, Pudong is now built up in a modernized, futuristic style, with its famous high-speed meglev being the envy of other developing countries. Meanwhile, Puxi, west of the Huangpu, keeps its traditional charm. Shanghai is divided: old Shanghai residents love Puxi nostalgically, and Chinese newcomers with no connection to Shanghai's past prefer Pudong. When I visited Shanghai this February, I was amazed by how dissimilar the two sides look. Yet they co-exist in peace, their differences adding only the attractiveness of diversity.

Still, Shanghai's change is not without irony, and Wasserstrom borrows a line from a book about post-socialist Budapest to describe this aptly: "The boredom of the socialist cities is gone, but so is their safety." No period is perfect.

Meanwhile, foreigners swarm in. According to the Chinese Wikipedia, at the end of 1843, the year Shanghai was established as a treaty port, there were only 25 foreign residents – English missionaries and businessmen registered with the British Consulate. Now the number has exceeded 100,000, the largest among all Chinese cities. A 2004 statistic shows that Americans made up 13.4% of the foreign workforce in Shanghai. In internet discussions, many foreigners even enthusiastically joined the once Chinese-patented oral fight, "Is Shanghai better or is Beijing?"

But Chinese media and academic publications still grumble about how few foreigners there are. It's only 0.67% of Shanghai's total population, too much lower than the 5% world average of big cities, they say. They might have a point, since "Shanghai's natural destiny is to be a global city." The Shanghai government has explicitly stated that, during the 11^th "Five-Year Plan" (2006-2010), enhancing international competence is the city's main development line. One hundred and sixty six years after the treaty port opened, globalization is no longer a foreign imposition; it has become the Chinese government's own pursuit.

On the other hand, a writer friend and Shanghai native views that as only the city leaders' pursuit of official career achievements, for which the common residents feel little relevance. "Shanghai's internalization has been a natural process because of its geography, and it does not have much to do with any local man-made effort," the friend said. From 1843 to 2009, Shanghai has opened, closed, reopened and is poised to embrace the outside. Wasserstrom’s book, by chronicling this evolution, shows Shanghai in its natural light, from which I again see Shanghai as a living, breathing, sometimes bruised, creature.

More about the Chongqing Temple Predicament

Additional details have emerged since my previous post titled "The Predicament of a Buddhist Temple in Chongqing."

It turns out that the people the blogging monk accused of beating him up on April 21st were three officials sent by Chongqing city government to resolve the conflict between the developer and the temple. A report by Southern Metropolitan Weekly titled "Chongqing Hot Spring Temple: Scramble between Commerce and Religion" gives the leading official's name as Yu Baiyan, a director of the Chongqing Committee for Ethnic and Religious Affairs (a department of the city government). Yu claimed that the monk, with monastic name Dingrong, made rude remarks first, then a scuffle occurred. Both men declared injuries.

Interestingly, ten days before the scuffle, it was the same official Yu who told Singapore's Zaobao his version of the real reason for the temple's protest. According to Yu, because the managing abbot, Zhenggang, had a long history of contention with the Beibei district government, the latter wanted to remove Zhenggang from his position. That was what really upset the monks. It was ridiculous to call it a case of the government colluding with a developer, Yu said.

Yu spoke with absolute confidence that he was on the right side. However, he doesn't even have a common netizen's brain. On many websites, readers have been asking "Why should a religious position be appointed by the government?" Right on. If China were still in the Mao era, that would be a wrong question to ask. But 30 years into Reform and Opening, people are expecting more freedom and rights everywhere in the society.

So, whatever the real reasons were behind the Hot Spring Temple's protest, the case has already raised another important issue (in addition to the religious property rights I mentioned in the previous post): the legitimacy of the government's role in controlling religious affairs. If this issue is not resolved, more conflicts will surely ensue. The unenlightened Yu aside, it is time for the Chinese government to adjust its religious policy.

In the current situation, religious personnel are like a daughter-in-law with no husband but having multiple bossy (and sometimes even abusive) mothers-in-law: there's the Committee for Ethnic and Religious Affairs from the government line (市政府民宗委); there's the United Front Work Department from the Party line (市委统战部); there's the Subcommittee for Ethnic and Religious Affairs from the Political Consultative Conference line (政协民宗委); there's also the government-controlled "mass organization" – Buddhist Association (佛协). What a big mess. Do the solitude-seeking monks really need this many mothers-in-law? And, when there is a conflict like this one, none of them help.

Chongqing's Hot Spring Temple isn't the only case of conflict between commercial and spiritual interests. Chinese media reported that on March 20, monks of the famous Famen Temple (法门寺) in Shaanxi Province pushed down a wall built by the developer of a commercial scenic area. The construction named "Famen Cultural Scenic Area" is another government project utilizing important religious cites as attractions for tourists. Once built, the gate ticket price will increase from 25 yuan to 180 yuan, unaffordable by a working class family.

The monks of the Famen Temple said they never liked the idea of being walled into a commercial tourist area that charges high price tickets to visitors, but under the government's coordination, they reluctantly agreed for the temple to be included in the "unified management" of the project. "It was already a big compromise," the managing abbot said. Now that the developer pushed further to have the wall block the temple's driveway, the monks could tolerate it no more. After the wall was toppled by the angry monks, the government mediated and the developer agreed not to rebuild that part of the wall.

Chongqing's Hot Spring Temple will face a similar problem after the luxury spa center opens to the public. The high-priced tickets will certainly diminish the temple's religious activities.

Yesterday I read on monk Dingrong's blog that the government has rejected their proposal to separate the temple from the spa area with a wall. However when I tried to revisit today the monk's blog has been removed. Dingrong (in the picture above) was reportedly a policeman before he became a monk four years ago.

~

I called a friend in Chongqing last week discussing the Hot Spring Temple case. The friend is an intelligent academic who served as a committee member in the Political Consultative Conference (政协) last term. I asked him if there was a way to have 政协 discuss the issues of religious property rights and personnel appointments. He said (with a slightly cynical tone), "You live so far away, and you want to uphold justice here? I admire you for that, but I don't think there's much that can be done."

He told me during his five-year term, he was one of the few committee members who would speak their own minds. For this he became unwelcome in the committee. Before each committee meeting, the leaders in his work unit would forewarn him not to be so disagreeable. Most members are there for the social status. Though 政协 is supposed to be an advisory body to the Party and government, and should consist of different political parties and organizations as well as independent members, today's 政协 members are mostly government officials at various levels. It is now unlikely for a person who doesn't have any administrative position to become a 政协 member. This reminded me what a doctor friend (who I cited in the post titled "What Kind of Country is China Today?") said, "In the local Political Consultative Conference (政协), there may be one third of us [from other parties] and two thirds CCP members, so when taking votes they always win."

My academic friend added that there used to be a time when most 政协 members were knowledgeable professionals from all sorts of fields, and they had sharp minds and fresh ideas. I asked when that was, and he said it was before the June 4^th massacre of 1989. "After the Cultural Revolution, those people had seen the future for China to go on a different political path, so they enthusiastically participated in the Political Consultative Conference. But they lost hope after June 4^th and were gone."

Good Translation is Hard to Find

The China Beat posted a funny Chinese poem with an excellent English translation by David Moser. I especially loved how the rhymes were done, all the while successfully retaining the poem's original humor. In other words, little has been lost in the translation.

An Interview

Aimee Barnes runs an interview with me today. Her blog is quite interesting, especially the interviews with various professionals.

The Predicament of a Buddhist Temple in Chongqing

I have been occupied by several other commitments in the past two weeks, including teaching a fiction workshop for the New Hampshire Writers Day. As such I haven't posted much or kept up with current China news. (I even briefly toyed with the idea of taking refuge from the China-blog world: being an independent blogger is such a lonely business, for she pleases neither lovers nor haters of China.)

Yesterday, however, a blogger friend sent me a link to a post in CDT titled "Thousand Year Old Temple to be Demolished, Luxury ‘Bathhouse’ to Take its Place." Upon reading it, I could no longer sit steadily minding my own business. The Hot Spring Temple, 1586 years old, is located in my birth town, Beibei, a suburban district of Chongqing, and in my childhood that temple and the north hot spring were my family's regular weekend retreat.

I began to search my Chongqing contact list, needing to do something to help stop the commercial developer from demolishing this historical treasure. But I still had questions. What exactly is going on? Who owns the property rights of the Buddhist temple? What is the government's position on this?

From the Chinese blog post translated by CDT, it is unclear what exactly is happening, other than the fact that the monks and local worshippers are very angry at, and frustrated by, the developer's activity around the temple. Though the word 毁 – "destroy" – is used in the post, no demolition plan is mentioned.

Following a link provided by the Chinese post, I found a blog written by an abbot of the Hot Spring Temple, in which he complained about the media's dismissive attitude toward their appeals for help. (One strange thing is that the blog uses a propaganda image of Lei Feng as its header. There must be some reason for this but for now I don't have time to research that.)

In his April 25 (yesterday) post, the abbot blogger said he received a call from Chongqing's government-run "Buddhist Association" ordering him to stop leading Buddhist demonstrations in Beibei's streets, which he said he had not done. Clearly, the government is not on the monks' side.

But a big crowd of the Chinese netizens are; the monks' appeal has been circulated and echoed on major web portals. Probably because of the internet anger, some reporters did take notice. China Economic Times (run by the Development Research Center of the State Council) published a report Friday, which is linked to by the abbot's blog. The report cited arguments from both the developer's and the temple's sides.

The developer, Yunnan's 柏联集团, was actually found and appointed by the Beibei district government, and they signed an agreement to build a giant spa center surrounding the Hot Spring Temple, using the hot spring and the temple as attractions for the spa business. The developer felt wrongly accused of "destroying" the ancient temple. "A vast cursing voice on the internet, we've been treated too unfairly!" A company executive cried to the reporters. He said he couldn't understand, "[The project] should be beneficial and a big promotion for both sides, why do things have to be like this?"

From the monks' perspective, however, a modern spa center encircling the temple breaks the tranquil Buddhist environment and atmosphere, and the massive view of exposed bathers is unacceptable to worshippers. To date, the chaotic construction activities have already damaged some cultural relics and interrupted the temple's religious affairs. Since the construction began, worshipers have been prohibited from entering the temple, the joss sticks and candles stopped burning.

In negotiation, the temple has proposed that the developer builds a wall around the temple's property, in order to block the unsightly entertainment scene in the spa and leave the temple in peace. The managing abbot also wanted to block vehicles from passing through the temple. However the developer rejected those ideas, threatening to withdraw the investment if the temple insists on its position.

The report mentions that the blogger abbot was beaten up by a mob last week and suffered many injuries. But it does not say who the mobs were and how the beating happened.

The report also answers my question about the temple's property rights: It still belongs to a government agency. Even though urban residents in China now enjoy property rights to 70 years, nothing has changed with regard to religious properties. We are talking about the officially legal religions in China, one of which is Buddhism.

Though it turns out that the CDT post has an inaccurate title and it's not a demolition case, I felt little relief. It appears to me this is another serious clash between cultural and commercial interests, and clashes like this have been happening in China frequently ever since the economic reform began. The Beibei district government and the developer see only the commercial benefits the spa project would bring, and have no regard for the cultural significance of maintaining the temple's non-commercial environment. I am not a practicing Buddhist, but I have tremendous respect for Buddhism. I applaud the monks' courage to fight commercialization; their stance is especially commendable given that many temples I have visited in China in recent years have already been willingly commercialized, worshiping money instead of Buddha.

A small comfort brought by the report is that an official from Chongqing's city government has rejected the developer's notion to take over the management of the temple and make it part of their spa business. However, for a more thorough resolution, it may be time for the government to return the property rights to the temple as they had been before 1949.

I will continue to watch the case and report back developments as I can. Meanwhile, dear readers, if you have connections in Chongqing, please do something to help the Hot Spring Temple 温泉寺.

The First Issue of Terracotta Typewriter Published

Take a look at the inaugural issue of Terracotta Typewriter – not particularly because it includes an essay of mine, but because it is an English language literary journal with Chinese characteristics. The magazine (in PDF format) is published by Matthew Lubin, who has lived in China as a teacher and editor. As far as I know, it is the only literary magazine of its kind. Enjoy the poems and prose.

Readers' comments

Apparently my blog is blocked in China again, and readers who reside in China had trouble posting comments. Two readers have sent their comments through email on some recent topics, and I'm posting these for them here:

1. hsknotes commented on "What Kind of Country is China Today?":

You may want to look at some work on 'authoritarian deliberation', or as I prefer to refer to it as, 'deliberative authoritarianism' “审议权威主义”.

as you know, 审议 is just one of the ways of expressing 'deliberation', so you might want to search a few of the others as well.

Rebecca McKinnon gave a long talk on the internet in china where she touched on this, but the idea is not hers. A quick search on the internet can get you to many of the main source, and watching Rebecca's talk may be interesting.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheons/2009/02/mackinnon

2. Paul Armstrong-Taylor commented on "Blog Rally to Help the Boston Globe":

Newspapers need to figure out what they can do better than anyone else - TV or other websites. The problem is they try to be all things to all people, and, in any field, there are other places people can get better, more focused information, analysis or whatever.

Take sport: you can go to ESPN (website or TV) for general information; you can go to somewhere like Baseball Prospectus for statistical analysis of baseball; you can go to Sons of Sam Horn for interactive discussion of the Red Sox.

It is simply not possible for one publication to compete with all these sources - and others in news, politics, opinion, business, etc. I think newspapers as we think of them - generalist publications - can not survive. They need to focus on one area where they have an advantage and become the best source for that area. Maybe the WSJ is one example of how to do that - focusing on business.

One area I would like to see newspaper focus on is investigative journalism - trying to uncover the truth when there maybe some who do not want the truth exposed. Generally I think the US media does a poor job of this. Political reporting often consists of: Democrat said X, Republican said Y with no effort to determine the truth and or whether one or both were lying.

I think some effort to use their media access to report the truth not only would improve the knowledge of Americans (compare knowledge about the case for Iraqi WMD prior to the war in the UK and US), but would also providing a compelling reason to buy a newspaper.

The Rise of Political Confucianism in Contemporary China

(Note: In June 2008, The China Beat published my commentary "China: Democracy, or Confucianism?", which helped to draw wide attention to Jiang Qing (蒋庆)'s research on Political Confucianism. I learned last week that, an international conference titled "The Origins and Development of Social and Political Reflection in East and West" was held at Uppsala University, Sweden, and Prof. Wang Rui-Chang from Humanities School of the Capital University of Business and Economics, Beijing presented a paper to explain Political Confucianism more clearly. I'm posting an excerpt of Prof. Wang's presentation with his permission. – Xujun)

The Rise of Political Confucianism in Contemporary China

by Wang Rui-Chang

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Abstract: Political Confucianism is a newly emerged school of thought addressing political and social reform in Mainland China. It challenges the current prevalent democratic movement, both inside and outside of China, which proposes governance with legitimacy wholly resting on the ballot. Instead, Political Confucianism advocates the wisdom of “centrality and harmony” contained in Confucianism, especially the Confucian tradition of Gongyang School that flourished in the Han and late Qing dynasties in China. It is aimed at revitalizing Confucianism and reconstructing the politics of the Kingly Way in the modern global context. The present paper is meant to give as clear as possibly a presentation of Political Confucianism to current, especially Western, scholars for critical evaluation.

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Background of the Rise of Political Confucianism

Probably anyone who cares about China may have not failed to notice that China is witnessing a revival of Confucianism and traditional culture: more and more scholars come to talk about “national studies”(guoxue); university teachers giving lectures on national television channels become “star scholars” overnight; classics recital classes for children are sprouting up in many parts of the country; thousands of books on Confucianism or traditional culture are piled high and sold well in book stores every day; attending “national studies training class” hosted by the prestigious universities has come to be a fashion for businessmen, civil servants or other part of the more fortunate and affluent part of the population; even the state leaders, as the Canadian political science scholar Daniel A. Bell put it, have also “rediscovered Confucianism."

In 2005, Fang Keli (1938- ), chairman of the Society of the History of Chinese Philosophy, observed:

"Since the May 4th Movement, the New Confucianism movement in modern China has undergone three generations of Confucian scholars and three stages of development. I think, with the 2004 Confucian Conference in Guiyang Yangming Academy ( also known as Summit Conservatism Conference ) as the starting point, the whole New Confucianism movement has now entered on its forth stage, i.e. a stage on which Mainland China Confucians represented by Jiang Qing, Sheng Hong, Kang Xiaoguang, and Chen Ming play the leading role."

In a sense, New Confucianism is a new Neo-Confucianism, a modern version of the Neo-Confucianism as represented by Cheng Hao (1032-1085), Cheng Yi (1033-1107), Zhu Xi (1130-1209), Lu Xiangshan (1139-1193) and Wang Yangming (1472-1529) from Song to Ming Dynasties.

As to the question of politics and social development, the New Confucians unanimously hold the position that China’s traditional political system and the political ideas embodied therein are out of date, and modernization with democracy and science as its true meanings is destined to be China’s political and social future. They argued that although democracy as well as science has been created and developed by westerners in western history, it is rather a “universal instrument” regardless of East or West. Furthermore, democracy, they hold, is actually the inner demand of the logic of Chinese cultural development, it is an instrument by which the ancient sages’ ideal of “making the world under haven impartial and common to all” (tian-xia-wei-gong) could eventually be fulfilled. As the most creative and influential New Confucianism exponent Mou Zongsan put it:

"Modernization takes its origin in the West. However, once it occurs, it is no indigenous product confined to particular countries; as far as it is truth, it is universal. Therefore, every nation must admit it. To put in our old Chinese words, we call it 'the Way of Kingliness', or 'Storing the world in the world itself (letting people themselves rather than emperors decide their own destiny).' To put it in new words, it is 'an open society' or 'democratic politics.' This is a common ideal. For these reasons, although democratic politics originated from the West, we should also realize it according to the requirements of our own inner life."

The New Confucianism flourishing in Taiwan and Hong Kong has exerted strong and durable influence on Mainland China’s intellectual circles since the state of conflict across the Taiwan Strait was lessened and cultural exchange between the two sides became possible when Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978, and at the same time the New Confucian masters have attracted many sincere followers in the Mainland, some of whom are now quite prominent scholars. But in a strict sense, by “Mainland China New Confucianism” we don’t mean the scholarship of this group of followers who just repeat the thoughts of their masters, but the thought of another group of scholars who, though in a more or less degree influenced by the oversea New Confucianism, are more creative in their thought and have gone on a quite different way from their oversea forerunners. In short, the Mainland New Confucianism is not the simple photocopy of the Oversea New Confucianism.

It should also be pointed out that Mainland China New Confucianism is a newly emerged school of thought that is still in its maturing process, and the major scholars under this name actually develop their own thought with no intentional cooperation and they often fail to agree on many issues.

Political Confucianism, on which the present paper is focused, is developed by Jiang Qing, the leading scholar of Mainland China New Confucianism.

The Main Arguments of Political Confucianism

1) Division of “Self-cultivation Confucianism” and “Political Confucianism”

“Self-cultivation Confucianism” and “Political Confucianism” are a pair of terms first coined by Mr. Jiang Qing to denote the two traditions Jiang himself recognized in Confucianism after Confucius. The two traditions are contrasted with each other in many respects: firstly the former is created out of “existential concern," or “concern of life salvation," while the latter is out of “institutional concern,” or “concern of political legitimacy” ; secondly, holding human nature as innately good, the former approaches the issue of elevating human mind and human nature almost wholly by means of self-cultivation, thus moral improvement being none other than restoring one’s humanity a prior, political and social environment being of little relevance, while the latter, taking a realistic point of view of human nature and deeming it is empirically bad, holds that rituals, institutions and penalties are critically important in improving human nature or keeping men or women from moral degeneration; thirdly, the former is aimed at purifying personal life to become a sage or saint while the latter is directed to the construction of a desirable and stable political system and the betterment of society. In a word, Self-cultivation Confucianism is, by its nature, oriented to the inner life of moral idealism while Political Confucianism is oriented to the outer political structure of social realism.

These two traditions, Jiang argued, are all handed down from Confucius and are equally important. Yet unfortunately, after the Han Dynasty this Political Confucianism of Gongyang Studies was entirely neglected and was buried in complete oblivion, so much so that nowadays scholars equate the teachings of the Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism and the modern oversea New Confucianism with the authentic Confucianism.

2) Theory of Three-Dimensional Political Legitimacy

The central theory of Political Confucianism as advocated by Jiang Qing is the doctrine of political legitimacy. He argues that “political legitimacy” is the foundation of, and the prerequisite to, all political system, political process, political activities and tactics, without which everything political loses its meaning and value.

For Jiang, to be fully legitimate, a political power or regime must simultaneously meet three conditions: 1), it must be at one with, or sanctioned by, the holy, transcendental Tao as expressed or implied in the Confucian Scriptures, and as interpreted by the prestigious Confucian Scholars; 2), it must not deviate from the mainstream of the national cultural heritage and break the historical continuity of the nationality; 3), it must comply with the will or endorsement of the common people.

The first condition is of the divine foundation of a political power, which can be symbolized by Heaven; the second is of historical foundation of a political power, being symbolized by Earth, since national culture and civilization are closely connected with particular regions on the earth; and the third is of the human or secular foundation of a political power, symbolized by Human. This is the so-called “the three dimensions of political legitimacy of the politics of the Kingly Way”, a political idea rooted in traditional Chinese political culture.

The dimension of legitimacy of human will and desire sounds easy to be understood by modern people, especially by Westerners, for it seems similar to the democratic idea that government is legitimate to the extent that it derives from people’s support. But Jiang warns over and over again that this democratic dimension of legitimacy should not have superiority over the other two dimensions. A political system is legitimate if and only if all three dimensions of legitimacy are properly balanced, with no one dimension being superior to the others. Jiang argued, it is the ancient Chinese “middle and harmonious” way of thinking, anchored deeply in the Book of Changes and the Spring and Autumn Annals, that makes this non-linear, tridimensional understanding of political legitimacy possible.

The dimension of historical continuity of nationality is the most disputable one of the three, but Jiang insists that this dimension is indispensible. He cited Edmund Burke’s view to support his stance. As we know, in Burke’s eyes, state is an organic body, politics is the outcome of historical evolution, and thus social heritage, or even prejudices, should be taken with respect. Burke said: “To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds and wild incantations they may regenerate the paternal constitutions and renovate their father’s life.” For Jiang Qing, if the state was comparable to a father, then the legitimacy of historical continuity would be comparable to a father’s life blood, which cannot be neglected when considering establishing a political system.

This theory of three-dimensional political legitimacy is meant on the one hand to recognize, and on the one hand to circumscribe, the unbridled selfish human desire, whether of a collective nature or an individual nature, and by this way to create a better pattern of political system for China as well as for the world. For these reasons, Jiang asserts that human history, in a proper sense, has by no means “ended” as Fukuyama claims. On the contrary, it urgently waits to be re-created to avoid the“vital defect”in modern democratic politics.

3) Proposition of Tri-Cameral Legislature

To translate this theory of three-dimensional political legitimacy into realities, Jiang proposes to establish a tri-cameral legislature, with each house representing one dimension of legitimacy.

The House of Profound Confucians (Tong Ru Yuan) represents the legitimacy of the sacred Way, the House of National Continuity (Guo Ti Yuan) represents the legitimacy of cultural heritage and tradition, and the House of Plebeians (Shu Min Yuan) represents the legitimacy of the common people’s will and desire.

The particular way of choosing the members of each house of the legislature, and the mechanisms of check and balance among the three houses, are quite complex and are still under elaboration. Of this I can only give a very brief hint. The members of the House of Profound Confucians are chosen by nomination and appointment by non-governmental Confucian organizations and official Confucian institutions; the members of the House of National Continuity should be representatives of religions (including Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, and Christianity) and descendants of great sages and historical figures. The members of the Plebian House are chosen by elections and functional constituencies. According to Jiang’ s latest opinion in An Explanation of The Diagram of the Kingly Way, The Position of the House of Profound Confucians is the highest, the Plebian House is the lowest, and the House of National Continuity is positioned in between. Bills of great importance must be passed simultaneously by all three. If a bill is passed by all of the three Houses, it is a perfect law. If not, it may be delayed, suspended or vetoed. By dint of this device of tri-cameral legislature the theory of tri-dimensional legitimacy is hoped to be embodied.

4) Restoration of Confucian Religion as the State Religion

Jiang’s Political Confucianism is closely connected with his views about the Religion of Confucianism. For Jiang Confucianism is not merely a theory, not simply a system of abstract ideas, it is a great religion embedded in Chinese civilization, being comparable to Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. In ancient China, Confucianism played a role of state religion. To re-establish China’s political system, Confucianism as a religion is indispensible; it should again be restored as the state religion of China. He writes:

"As a state religion, Confucianism has defined the nature of Chinese civilization, molded the cultural identity of Chinese nation, and shaped the axiological consensus and spiritual convictions of the Chinese people.

In history Confucian religion has performed three functions: first, it provided political legitimacy for Chinese government by laying a transcendental and sacred foundation for politics; second, it provided ethical norms to regulate the social conduct of the Chinese people on the basis of rites; third, it provided religious faith for the people on the basis of transcendental and sacred values as interpreted by the Confucian sages. These three functions are not obsolete in the contemporary world. "

Jiang insists that, being faced with all-round challenges from the West, China must restore Confucian religion in all respects and at all levels. To put in his own words: “It is a task of top priority.”

To be sure, Jiang is against the prevalent idea of total separation of sate and religion, but he takes care not to go so far as to tighten state and religion strictly together as was the case in Middle Ages, or in Tsarist era Russia. But still his proposal to enshrine Confucianism as a state religion is deeply unpopular in China’s intellectual circles, even by some scholars otherwise sympathetic to Confucianism. For example, one of China’s top Confucianism scholars and professor of philosophy at Beijing University Chen Lai, welcomes the new departure in Political Confucianism research conducted by Jiang. In fact, he has helped to have Political Confucianism published. Still, he shook head at the idea that does not separate state and church apart. Their main worry is that other thoughts may be treated as heresies and suffer persecution once Confucianism is set up as state religion. To this Jiang answers:

"In the UK, the Anglican Church, the state religion established by the unwritten English common law, boasts of its privileges; in Northern Europe, the Lutheran church, as the state religion, also boasts of its privileges, In modern Greece, the Eastern Orthodox Church, as the state religion established by the Greek constitution, has its privileges as a rule. But all these countries remain the so-called liberal democratic countries. By the same token, to restore Confucianism as the privileged state religion by no means means spiritual persecution, it only means a certain consensus and unity of the Chinese national spirit and mind. No worry is necessary.”

In fact, the history of China also shows that such worry or fear is groundless.

(Wang Rui-Chang, penname Miwan. Some of his writings in Chinese can be found on http://www.confucius2000.com/writer/miwan.htm)

Blog Rally to Help the Boston Globe

We have all read recently about the threat of possible closure faced by the Boston Globe. A number of Boston-based bloggers who care about the continued existence of the Globe have banded together in conducting a blog rally. We are simultaneously posting this paragraph to solicit your ideas of steps the Globe could take to improve its financial picture.

We view the Globe as an important community resource, and we think that lots of people in the region agree and might have creative ideas that might help in this situation. So, here's your chance. Please don't write with nasty comments and sarcasm: Use this forum for thoughtful and interesting steps you would recommend to the management that would improve readership, enhance the Globe's community presence, and make money. Who knows, someone here might come up with an idea that will work, or at least help. Thank you.

Conflict and Clashes are the Natural Social Norm

by Sun Liping, Professor of Sociology at Tsinghua University

(Note: About a month ago I translated an essay from Prof. Sun titled "The Biggest Threat Is not Social Unrest but Societal Breakdown." His rational and perceptive view attracted wide interest from readers, and that post was linked by many influential websites, including WSJ's China Journal and Danwei.org. For further discussion, I here translate another, more recent article from Prof. Sun. Note his none-confrontational language in treating a confrontational subject, which makes his arguments much easier to consider by different sides. Just one little quibble from me: he makes the US sound too perfect. :-) – Xujun)

[In translation]

Looking back at the mass incidents over the recent few years, one can find a fluctuating curve: Before 2005 it trended upward, was down a bit in 2006 and 2007, and rose again in 2008. What can we make of these trends?

Faced with the same facts, different judgments lead to different paths. For example during the global economic crisis of the 1930s, the situation in the US was the most severe, with very sharp and prominent social conflict. However the Roosevelt administration carried out a series of changes and saved America's democracy and prosperity. Under the same economic crisis however, German, Italy and Japan turned to fascism.

A system needs an easy spirit

The first problem that needs to be resolved is how to view and position social conflict; this is a more important issue than social conflict itself.

A system is not a dead thing; it too has a thinking process, but it is different from that of an individual. Something that everyone understands in everyday life might not be comprehendible by the system. For example during the Cultural Revolution, when a person accidentally broke Chairman Mao's statue, everyone knew he was just being careless, but the system did not have the vocabulary for "accidental behavior." You broke Chairman Mao's statue, you must receive punishment.

Several years ago a serious mass incident occurred in Sichuan. The cause was a simple one: the construction of a power station occupied some farmland, and the conflicting interests evolved into a mass incident. At the beginning, the local government viewed the incident as a farmers' armed riot, and treated it rigidly, which intensified the conflict. Later the central government re-evaluated the incident and gave farmers compensation, thus easily resolving the conflict. This shows that how the system views social conflict is very important.

There exist various conflicts and clashes in society, such as political, ideological, religious, and cultural ones. But the majority are conflict of interest. This actually is a most rational kind of conflict, but our positioning is often problematic. We are accustomed to political, ideological viewpoints, therefore when treating conflict the government is excessively tense and often overreacts.

A system is like a person, and it can be overcautious. Think about it: if it is all-day heavy-hearted, miserable, tense and unsmiling, how can it solve problems well? A system needs an easy spirit. This expression came from football commentary: Watching Chinese playing football, sometimes an early loss can lead to a final win, but leading first will surely cause a final failure. Why? Because the team becomes overcautious. When facing social conflict, we need also to have a normal mentality, an easy spirit. The "easiness" comes from accurate positioning. Only when positioned accurately, can problems be properly solved.

A system needs more self-confidence when facing social conflict

The biggest achievement in the 30 years of reform and opening-up is the establishment of a market economy. Whether a market economy is a "good" one, I think there are three measures: first, whether the system itself is healthy and complete; second, whether there is a good judicial basis; third, whether there is a supporting mechanism to balance interests. The third point is especially important.

Fundamentally, in a society different classes, groups and individuals should have a balanced capacity to fight for their own interests; their rights should be equal. In the past, China used an economic model of redistribution, for example the state designated a person's salary as level one or level two, so there were no fights between people. A market economy is different; people have to fight for their interests by themselves.

During the 1930s recession in the United States, a new policy of the Roosevelt administration was to have unions play a role, thus establishing an interest balancing mechanism, which effectively solved the labor relations problem, and alleviated various conflicts. After that, the entire social situation had a fundamental transformation.

However we should note one point: it is not that, once an interest balancing mechanism is in place, the poor can become the rich, the powerless can become the powerful. An interest balancing mechanism is only a basic condition for a "good market economy." China's reality is that a market economy is established, but an interest balancing mechanism has yet to be.

Take the example of mass incidents, the majority of them are rightful expression of interest. It's like when children run into unsolvable problems, they cry to call their parents' attention. There must be a mechanism to let people express their demands. In this situation, we should have a new understanding of social conflict.

First, social conflict and clashes are part of social normalization. To depend on strict guardianship and the elimination of problems at their embryonic stage is not going to work any more. The government needs to gradually adjust to a society with conflict and clashes.

Second, don't always regard social conflict and clashes as negative factors. On a certain level they also play a positive role. One is as a safety valve: through demonstration etc, people's discontent and stress get released, thus avoiding a direct impact on social stability. Another is as a means to problem discovery. For example when migrant workers wages were held in arrears, at the worst time the unpaid amount reached 100 billion nation-wide. Why in the end did the Premier have to demand the wages for migrant workers be paid? If demonstrations were regarded normal, and migrant workers were able to walk on the streets and talk about their demands at an earlier stage, the situation might not have evolved to such a severe level. When there is no mechanism to uncover problems, the government is not able to keep abreast of developments and to respond, and problems will accumulate to an irresolvable level until mass incidents break out.

Third, we need to form a new concept: the distinction between a good system and a bad one, or a good society and a bad one, is not whether there are conflict and clashes. Rather it should be (1) whether the system or society has the capacity to contain conflict, and how big that capacity is; (2) whether it can institutionalize a mechanism to resolve conflict. A good social system is self-confident when facing social conflict. Otherwise it's seized with panic when conflict is still at an embryonic stage.

In the United States, millions demonstrated on the streets to object to the war on Iraq. Did anyone think American society unstable? No. Then why, when a few dozen migrant workers demand unpaid wages on the streets, does the Chinese government act as if it is being attacked by a giant enemy? This shows a lack of self-confidence.

"Rigid stability thinking" needs to be abandoned

If we analogize social conflict to water, then there are no worries in the US, because the water there is running in a channel. Which direction it runs to, where it makes turns, where it's swift, where it's slow, all are predictable. But in China there is not a channel; when water comes, no one knows where it will run to, thus the only defense is to build dams everywhere. For this, the only solution is to build a channel, that is, to establish rules and procedures, to enhance institutional construction.

At the beginning of 2008, the China Eastern Airline's pilot strike was a typical "flood disaster," in the end there was no winner: the pilots had a heavy loss, their professional integrity was in doubt; the airline also had a heavy loss, tickets were forced to be discounted as was its reputation.

As a matter of fact, pilot strikes are common in other countries, but there are rules and procedures – pilots must first negotiate with the airline; if agreement is not reached, pilots submit a strike petition to the union; after a voting process that passes the petition, then the strike can begin. That is, there is a procedure for strikes. In this sense, China doesn't have such a thing as "strike." What the Eastern Airline's pilots did was called "stop flying," and what the taxi drivers did was called "stop driving."

If the legitimacy of strikes is not acknowledged, then there will be no way to regulate them, and no way to set up a resolution method. Today the Eastern Airline's strike is still unsolved, because no one knows who led the strike, thus there is no way to talk.

Why so far are we still unable to set up institutionalized solution methods and interest balancing mechanism under a market economy? Because we are held back by one thing: the "rigid stability thinking." The debate on the "Labor Contract Law" is a good example. The contact protects labor interest, and presses for the interest balancing mechanism, that much is agreed to. But the enterprises are all bitterly complaining about this law. Is this simply because of the selfishness of the capitalists? No, the fundamental problem is: this law is an attempt to use government-set regulations to replace equality in the game between interest bodies.

In fact, under a market economy, the government only needs to manage three things: one, set and hold a baseline; two, set up and guard game rules; three, adjust or mediate when the game reaches a deadlock. The agenda for the negotiation is set by the sides. However, our present situation is that the government is most afraid to let the sides talk among themselves, fearing the talk would hurt social stability. "Stop talking, I've set the agenda for you." The government always keeps its hand on the market economy.

In the decades before reform, we always overrated the situation of class struggle. Now, some officials overrate the nature of mass incidents, and this forms the "rigid stability thinking." But did stability overpower corruption or counterfeiting? No. In the end, it is our ability to express rightful interest that is overpowered.

Bottom line: one of the tools used by some vested interest groups is to distort the concept of "stability." In addition, some scholars think the social crisis is very serious, possibly able to cause big unrest, but that is a baseless worry. Using a normal mentality to factually judge and position the present social conflict and clashes, and solve them using an institutionalized approach, that is the real way out.

Tibet Questions

The new Chinese holiday "Serf Emancipation Day in Tibet," celebrated on Saturday, got some very interesting discussion on Peking Duck, a blog I like very much. As usual, the comments there include opinions from different sides. Personally I agree with those who feel such a new holiday is a laughable propaganda scheme. Sometimes I do wonder why the Chinese government could be so smart at one time, while be so stupid other times. What is the point, and what benefit does it bring to the Chinese government, to publicly label the Dalai Lama the "chief representative of Tibetan serfdom" right now? Equally unwise was Premier Wen Jiabao claiming that "the Dalai Lama was a political exile rather than a religious figure," because in fact he is both. Whatever the Dalai Lama really is, the high-level public attacks bring the Chinese government lots of disadvantages and zero advantages.

When I was in Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago, the hotel delivered a local English newspaper every morning, and I remember reading a report written by a British journalist. Around the anniversary of last year's Tibet riot, the reporter interviewed many residents in Lhasa, both Hans and Tibetans. One Tibetan, who acknowledged the improvement in his material life, felt "very disappointed" by the Chinese government's continuing attacks against the Dalai Lama. I think that is a very telling testimony, and the government should listen to voices like that. There is material life and there is spiritual life; the latter might forsake the former but the former can't replace the latter.

Recently I had exchanges with a friend in China, an educated Han woman who lived in Lhasa for ten years as a volunteer teacher after graduating from university. Her opinion on the Tibet issues can be summarized roughly as follows:

1. Tibetans in Tibet still worship the Dalai Lama in their hearts. This is the faith blended in their blood, and passed from generation to generation. It is something that can't be eliminated no matter what you do (so why even try?).
2. Among the so-called "emancipated serfs," there is a small group of them who actually possess the "right to speak," and they are Tibet's new noblemen. This interest group of Tibetans would never want to hand over their power, therefore they support the CCP. Though they are a small portion from the serf class, they are a quite powerful and dependable force for the CCP.
3. As a whole, the Tibetan race includes both noblemen and serfs. You can't say only serfs are Tibetan people, and claim the noblemen are not. It is wrong to impose the "class struggle" ideology on another race, to arouse part of the race to oppose another part of it.
4. An early mistake the CCP made in its Tibet policy was not to stick to the "Peaceful Liberation Agreement" signed in 1951. Even though it was a treaty signed under duress, the Agreement did promise not to perform "democratic reform," that is, to keep the status quo of the noblemen, or the monks. However in 1959 the "democratic reform" started anyway, which resulted in the Dalai Lama's exile. This becomes the appendicitis that regularly acts up, and will continue to do so for a long time, painful to both sides.
5. The Tibetan race is a very unique race. Now it is surrounded, permeated and assimilated by outside races, and especially because the Party leaders never knew how to respect others, the Tibetan race's uniqueness is gradually vanishing. The current unrest is largely the race's reaction to its own crisis.
   
   

I think my friend's opinion is quite insightful. There is one thing though: I'm not sure if she's aware of the CIA's deep involvement in the 1959's Tibetan uprising. The official starting date of the "democratic reform" in Tibet is given as March 28, 1959 (exactly 50 years ago yesterday), while the Dalai Lama departed on March 17 with the help of the CIA. According to the above link, the CIA's involvement actually began in 1956, with the purpose of

"supporting the Tibetans as part of a global anti-Communist campaign. If nothing else, their resistance would be one more way to create a ‘running sore for the reds,’ as one CIA man put it, even though at the top levels of the U.S. administration there was no pretense of commitment to Tibetan independence."

In other words, the CIA used the Tibetans for America's own political agenda. My question is, without the CIA's supply of weapons and trainers, its support, agitation, and mobilization, would the bloody fights in 1959 have happened? And if they hadn't happened, and the Dalai Lama hadn't gone into exile, would the "democratic reform" have come as fast and thoroughly? IMO, in any part of the world, armed conflicts based on ideological stances rarely have benign consequences. Not to make excuses for the problems in the Chinese government's Tibet policy, still I think there certainly is a foreign policy lesson that the US government could learn here. To say the least, the CIA was 帮倒忙 for the Tibetans.

Another interesting thing is how a Reuters article reports on the issues of Tibet's serfdom system and its termination. The article is actually pretty good, but it seems to take a spectator's position that "husband has husband's reasons, and wife has wife's." As my friend pointed out, the Tibetan people are made up of various classes, so there will always be some unhappy with the serfdom system, and others unhappy without it. A curious question is, suppose Tibet's serfdom system were still intact today, who would get the blame from the West on human rights issues, Beijing or the Dalai Lama? What I'm saying is, the Tibet issue is a really complex one and any propaganda, either Beijing's or the TGIE's, is not going to shed light on it. I think the Reuters article actually shows an improvement in the Western media's attitude by recognizing such complexity.

My friend also told me that a Han Chinese journalist, who worked in Lhasa's Radio Station for many years, wrote a long letter to Beijing making very thoughtful suggestions about policy changes on Tibet. But the letter fell on a deaf ear. I wish I could locate that letter, but it doesn't look hopeful.

A Run Away Student and Good Old Teachers

(Continued from yesterday's topic)

One weekend in Chongqing, I told Doggy I was going to see the tomb of Bamanzi (more about that in a future post), and asked if he knew who Bamanzi was. "I know," he said, "an ancient man who cut off his own head." I was totally surprised because many Chongqing people are not aware of the Bamanzi story, or his partial burial in their own city. I also had the impression that Doggy's generation of young people were very ignorant about history. It turned out he learned about Bamanzi from his best friend, the boy who had run away from the abusive teacher and the mother who often asked the teacher to punish him. "He's a history lover," Doggy told me about his friend.

Thus I got interested in that boy's story, and Doggy let me talk to him once on his cell phone (they call or text-message each other frequently). The following is our conversation.

Me: I heard you are good at history.

Doggy's friend: I'm a member of the "Spring and Autumn Society."

Me: What's that?

Doggy's friend: A group of students who are interested in learning about history in their spare time.

Me: In your middle school?

Doggy's friend: Yes.

(Such an interest group was a surprise to me, given how heavily the students were burdened by the school's over-loaded class schedule.)

Me: Who organized it?

Doggy's friend: A retired history teacher. He's really good! He tells us interesting stories instead of forcing us to learn. It’s impossible not to fall in love with history when you listen to him talk.

Me: How old is he?

Doggy's friend: In his 70s maybe? But he's sick now. He has to stay home. Our "Spring and Autumn Society" is not active any more.

Me: Surely there are other history teachers in school who could help you out?

Doggy's friend: They don't care. They care only about exams and grades.

Me: What kind of activities did your "Spring and Autumn Society" have?

Doggy's friend: In weekends, we went to visit historical sites in the city. We also read books about them and had discussions.

Me: Wow, that would be a lot of places! Chongqing has three thousand years of urban history.

Doggy's friend: Yes, I think we've visited nearly all by now.

Me: Including Bamanzi's tomb.

Doggy's friend: Yes.

Me: What other subjects are you good at?

Doggy's friend: I like physics.

Me: (again surprised) Why do you like physics?

Doggy's friend: I didn't at first. In school the physics teacher could not explain anything clearly to us and the class was very boring. I got bad grades in the first semester. My grandfather is a retired physics teacher. He began to teach me at home. With his teaching, every physics concept became so clear and interesting! I soon fell in love with the subject.

Me: Lucky you to have a grandfather like that. What other subjects do you love?

Doggy's friend: Hmm…I think that's it.

Me: How interesting – the subjects you actually loved were all taught by retired old teachers. They are the generation of my teachers.

Doggy's friend: Yes.

Me: So, what do you think of the current generation of teachers in your school?

Doggy's friend: I don't like them. You probably have heard from Doggy about our head teacher. You can't learn with teachers like that.

Me: Well, she might be an isolated case.

Doggy's friend: I don't think so. I've been growing up with corporal punishment since primary school.

Me: Do you like to talk about it?

Doggy's friend: Hmm…not really. (Pause.) It's the humiliation that's the worst, you know? (Pause again.) Aunty, could I ask you a question? You are from America, I think you are more open minded than my parents.

Me: I don't know about that …What question is it then?

Doggy's friend (with a hint of flame): Since we know how bad the education system is, why should we put up with it?

(I remembered what Doggy had told me, that this boy had run away from home once, and attempted to a second time. I didn't know what was in his mind now.)

Me: Well… How old are you?

Doggy's friend: 15. Same as Doggy.

Me: Do you think a 15-year-old can contend with an entire system?

Doggy's friend: …No.

Me: Then why waste your energy on useless efforts? The best you can do now is to accumulate knowledge. Then maybe when you grow up you'll have enough knowledge and strength to make changes. You are a boy who has thoughts and ideas. Maybe you'll take leadership in a field when you grow up, who knows?

(He didn't argue, but I didn't know if he was convinced.)

Doggy's friend: American schools are better than China's, right?

Me: In some aspects, yes, but they have their problems.

This conversation reminded me one instant with my own daughter, born and raised in the US. In the early years of her elementary school, she used to be fond of mathematics and did well. ( That's so like me, I had thought.) So when in the 6^th grade she got a C in math, I was very surprised. It turned out that, for three times, she had forgotten to turn in her homework, and homework counted for more than half of the final grade. Despite her good exam scores, she got a C. Unfamiliar with the American school system, I wrote an email to her math teacher asking why, when a student forgot to turn in homework three times, her parents were never informed. I had thought that was a very reasonable question. But the teacher got mad. It was not his responsibility to inform the parents, the teacher wrote back, in a very unhappy tone. After that incident, my daughter became miserable in math class because she felt the teacher began to treat her rather coldly. She soon fell out of love with math. She has hated math ever since. What an unintended mistake a mother can make by asking a teacher a question! But at least that teacher wasn't abusive.

Questionable Teachers and Bewildered Parents

I've been meaning to write this post for quite some time, but had put it off for other seemingly more "urgent" topics and activities. Now two events made me feel this topic's own urgency: First, one of the most popular questions asked, and the very first answered by President Obama during his unprecedented on-line town hall meeting yesterday was about education. Second, I just got some frustrating news in an email from my older sister about her son, my hip-hop nephew.

My 15-year-old nephew, nicknamed Doggy, is in his final semester of middle school in Chongqing. During my visit last month, I had several chats with him. Below is a conversation from my notes.

My nephew Doggy, who loves street dance

Doggy: I don't really know a lot about America, but I feel American education must be better than ours.

Me: Better in what sense?

Doggy: At least it won't all be about coping with exams.

Me: You mean all your school does is to teach you how to deal with exams?

Doggy: Yes! Do you want to see our class schedule?

(The following is his daily class schedule this semester:

Monday - Thursday:
5 morning classes from 8 am – 12:10 pm;
3 afternoon classes from 2:30 – 4:50 pm;
evening class from 5:50 – 8:30 pm with only one 15-min. recess

Friday
5 classes from 8 am – 12:10 pm (same as other weekdays);
3 classes from 2:00 – 4:30 pm;
30 minute exercise;
evening class from 6 – 8:30 pm

That's over 12 hours a day in school, five days a week. This over-loaded schedule is aimed at achieving a higher fraction of winners for the forthcoming high school admission exam. How merciful that the school gives the students 10 minutes off the evening class on Friday. On weekends, most of the students are also forced by their parents into fee-charging after-school lessons.)

Doggy: Tuesday is the worst day: Four English classes in a row in the morning, and two math classes in a row in the afternoon.

Me: Don't the teachers worry that students can't digest that much? Four classes in a row for one subject is ridiculous.

Doggy: The English teacher is our Dean, he has the power to do whatever he pleases. The math teacher is the head teacher for my class, she loves to play spy games. She hides behind the window glass and peeps, then suddenly pushes the door open. Or she pretends to walk away but suddenly turns around. Hey, the trick often works! She can usually catch several students talking.

Me: What does she do to those students?

Doggy: Punish them.

Me: Does she teach well though?

Doggy: She teaches okay, I guess.

Me: Do you like math?

Doggy: I hate math the most.

Me: Why?

Doggy: Because the teacher hates me.

Me: How does she hate you?

Doggy: The way she stares at me is as if I'd killed eighteen generations of her ancestors. When I bring a bottle of ice tea to school, she says it's alcohol. I ask her to smell it, it's not alcohol. She seizes it anyway to drink herself.

Me: Then don't bring ice tea to school.

Doggy's mother: That's what I said.

Doggy: Once I was a few minutes late for class, the teacher made me stand through the entire afternoon. I had to take course notes in standing up, it was really hard. I stood through the entire afternoon and thought that was it. But the next morning, she ordered me to stand again, through the entire day!

Me: Well, if this is true, you should tell the principal. Corporal punishment in school is illegal even in China.

Doggy: (precociously) What a naive idea to tell the principal. You don't know how dark China's schools are! My teacher will only make my life more miserable.

Do you want to hear something funny though? Once, the teacher ordered a girl in our class to stand outside the door for no reason. She said the girl was allowed to come in to sit down only if she got her father to accompany her to class. The girl stood for an hour, and couldn't bear it any more, so she called her father on her cell phone. To her surprise, her father told her to ignore the teacher and simply go in and sit down, "See what she can do to you!" So that was what the girl did. The teacher shouted at her, "Who let you come in and sit down?" "My father," the girl replied. The teacher was very angry but couldn't do anything (laugh).

Me: Well, I guess you could do the same then.

Doggy: No, because my mom doesn't help me! She always says the teacher does this for a reason.

Doggy's mother: (sigh) But what else could I say? I can't encourage him to fight his teacher.

Doggy: My best friend's mother is worse. She calls the teacher often and tells her, "Don't hesitate to beat up my son if he doesn't behave! Teach him a lesson anytime like you would teach your own child!" So my friend got corporal punishment the most often. Once he couldn't bear it any longer and ran away from home. His parents were very scared. After they found him, he made his mother promise not to call the teacher again to punish him.

Me: Did she promise?

Doggy: Yes. But she didn't stop calling the teacher until my friend threatened to run away again. And the teacher didn't stop punishing him. She just got into the habit of corporal punishment, and that was how we lived through the first two years of our middle school.

Me: Is it because you and your friend like street dance that the teacher doesn't like you?

Doggy: My friend doesn't dance. He has a bad leg.

Doggy's mother: Actually that boy has very good grades. A smart boy. It seems the boys were treated badly because we parents did not get the teacher's hint early.

Me: What hint?

Doggy: To give her expensive gifts. She likes that. When she was getting married, she repeatedly reminded the whole class her wedding date and asked us to tell our parents. On the wedding day, more than half of my classmates and their parents went, every family bringing gifts or a red envelope [of cash].

Me: Did you go?

Doggy: No, my friend and I didn't go. All the girls did. Some of the boys too.

Doggy's mother: That's another reason why his teacher doesn't like him. It is my fault too. Once, the teacher called me to meet with her in a hospital to talk about Doggy. It was weird, why meet in a hospital? It turned out her mother-in-law was hospitalized, but it wasn't a big deal disease or something. I realized only afterward that she wanted me to bring nutritious stuff for her mother-in-law.

Me: Did you?

Doggy: My mom didn't that time. But she did give my teacher money during my second year, and it bought me peace for one semester.

Me (to my sister): Is this true?

Doggy's mother: Yes. Then I didn't have money to give her the following semester, so everything started all over again.

Me: I can't believe this.

Doggy's mother: It's actually quite common in today's schools.

Doggy: The teacher has been a little better this semester. She didn't punish us as often.

Me: Why?

Doggy: I don't know, maybe because she's married and had a baby? Maybe because we have grown up and might actually take revenge on her?

* * *

Postscript: It wasn't like this in my own school time, in the 1970s. The worst thing a middle school teacher did to me was ask me to write an essay so that he could recommend it for some sort of writing contest. Instead, he took that essay and said it was written by his daughter and got a job or something for her. In my high school the teachers worked really hard to teach us science and literature instead of political propaganda, especially my math teacher, who risked denunciation to give me advance math lessons in his apartment after school. I know I have written about China's morality crisis, and I am sure not all teachers are like this, but I still want to ask, What's wrong with this generation of teachers?

(More about teachers tomorrow)

Deadly Violence in Chongqing

Two shocking news alerts arrived in my inbox this morning:

1. Chinese soldier guarding army camp shot dead in Chongqing, reported in LAT

3/25 - So far the Chinese newspapers have kept quiet on this incident. A search on Chongqing's official news site www.online.cq.cn, as well as the popular web portal qbar.qq.com/chongqing returned few links. However one can find more reports in the foriegn media. Singapore's Zaobao.com, for example, quotes Chongqing's mayor Wang Hongju today saying that the government has found clues to solve the case.

I've received email responses from relatives in Chongqing -- their attitude is "it's no big deal," just an individual, isolated crime that could happen anywhere.

3/24 - More updates here.

3/22 - Updates: according to Chinese reports, the army unit in question is an automobile regiment, responsible for transporting supplies to Chinese military stationed in Tibet. Muzi.com quotes a witness that, on the evening of the attack, a car arrived at the regiment's gate. When a sentry went to check the car, he was shot twice at the temple and killed right away. Another sentry was also shot and hurt. There were two dark-skinned people in the car; they took the soldier's submachine gun and drove away. Attacks on soldiers are extremely rare in China.

2. Qinghai rioters arrested for attacking police station, reported on CNN

I will contact people in Chongqing and search the Chinese internet to find out more.

Shanghai International Literary Festival Live Blogging

Shanghai's international literary festival does an impressive live blogging, which provides real time transcripts of author talks and audience interaction. I found several of the China-related conversations quite interesting:

James Fallows: "People in the U.S. would generally like to think, 'well is China good or is it bad?' and the answer is of course that, like the U.S. it is good and it is bad. You have to embrace the good and work on the bad."

Stella Dong: "In Shanghai the taxi drivers come out and put your luggage in the back of the trunk. They want to do what you want and help you out. In Beijing, people argue with you and you're treated, well, there's this certain attitude like, make me do it. "

Jeff Wasserstrom: "There are so many differences and rivalries between Shanghai and Beijing. When I told people I was writing about important student movements like the May Fourth movement, they said 'but that happened in Beijing!' But I point out that although the protests started in Beijing, they peaked in Shanghai."

Jen Lin-Liu: "Nevermind that I clearly informed the administration of this information. 'Miss Lin is a Chinese-American writer and she wants to spread propaganda to the Chinese people...unsurprisingly, they thought I was retarded.'"

A Literary Weekend in Hong Kong

On Saturday and Sunday, I participated in two panels at the Hong Kong Literary Festival, and very much enjoyed meeting the talented writers Chiew-Siah Tei (author of Little Hut of Leaping Fishes), Neel Chowdhury (author of The Inheritors), Nam Le (author of The Boat), and Rana Dasgupta (author of Solo). I bought their books and really look forward to reading them.

One panel was titled "Dislocated Voices" and moderated by Sue Gourlay, who manages the Man Asian Literary Prize. The other was "The Year of the Short Story," moderated by Chris Wood, editor of Asia Literary Review (which published my personal essay "Lost Letters" in December 2007).

Nearly all participants in the two panels had recently had their first fiction book published, with the exception of Rana, who is enjoying his second book. Our panels were anything but dull, mainly because we argued about, instead of agreeing on, things. :-)

A question raised from the audience during the first panel discussion was whether our fiction should help push just causes in the author's native land. My viewpoint was "no," because the definition of whether a cause is just or not changes over time. If you want your fiction to have lasting life, to be read even ten, twenty, or fifty years later, you certainly should avoid carrying any immediate political agenda. I believe fiction should transcend any ideology, and it should let characters rather than the author speak. As I see it, the ultimate goal of fiction is to explore human nature. To issue the author's own political opinions, write nonfiction instead.

This discussion reminded me an old Chinese novelist, father of a writer friend. In my youth, when my first short story was published just after the end of the Cultural Revolution, there was no monetary payment, instead I got a notebook and a three-volume novel as an award. That novel was about China's rural communization in the 1950s. The novelist, and his main characters, wholeheartedly believed in the communization movement. He was a well-known author and the book was well-written. I remember a reading of the novel in a funny local dialect that was broadcast by radio stations all over Sichuan province. People loved it, and the novel became very popular for a while. I loved it too, not just because the author's daughter, a young writer like me at the time, had become my friend, but also because his writing was witty and fun to read, his characters vivid. It was only years later that we learned what disaster the communization movement had brought on Chinese farmers. Now no one reads that novel any more. It can no longer even be found in libraries. The novelist stopped writing novels. Instead he spends all his time researching the ancient Chinese classic A Dream of Red Mansions (红楼梦).

My "no political agenda" view, of course, is not shared by every writer; probably more would disagree than agree. A counter argument given by another panelist was the novel 1984. That novel certainly carries a strong political agenda, and it is still read by many today. (I have to say that was a very good argument.) But 1984 also makes fun of human nature, and that part really transcends the ideological message. It is an exceptional novel in that regard.

In the second penal on short story writing, the other two authors said their stories were mainly products of imagination, while mine were largely experience-based realism. Now, both imagination and "write what you know" are viable vehicles for creating fiction, and the two certainly are not exclusive. In fact, in every work of fiction, each is embedded in the other. But when I heard the strong words against "write what you know" from the younger men, I was in a teasing mood. Is it because you don't have interesting experiences that you put so much emphasis on pure imagination? I asked them. And we went on for a fun round. I must add here that the other authors are really intelligent young men, and it was exactly because of this I had fun arguing with them. Read their books and you'll see what I mean – they are very good writers. And Chris Wood, a delightful gentle Englishman, was a great moderator. I got a copy of the latest issue of his magazine, the Asia Literary Review, and both the format and content look very attractive.

Much to my added delight, I was told that my book (the Hong Kong edition) sold quite well following the panels. Perhaps readers like argumentative authors. :-)

During the weekend I also met my Hong Kong publisher, who has a fascinating personal history. When he was young, he traveled from England along the Silk Road to Xinjiang, China, and ran out of money. He didn't have any means to make a living there; in the course of searching for a job he accidentally landed in Hong Kong, and has stayed there ever since. I will not leak all his secretes in the hope that one day he will write them down himself. His publishing house, Blacksmith Books, is doing quite well now, and he is planning to open an office in London soon.

I want to end this post by saying I had great fun in Hong Kong. Two decades ago when I moved to the United States from China, I had a short stay in Hong Kong for the first time. I didn't like it very much then, probably because it was so different from the inland cities in China. But this time I truly enjoyed it. It completely made up for the 26 hours of flying from Boston.

My only regret is I missed Prof. Jeffrey Wasserstrom's session "Bloggers: Should They Be Taken Seriously?" (moderated by Rebecca MacKinnon, whose blog I love) on Monday evening. Jeff had very kindly invited me to share the stage with him, however by then my plane tickets were already arranged by the Festival. As I had to leave Hong Kong Monday morning, I missed the great opportunity to meet in person two people I admire. I hope their session went well last night.

Hong Kong Scenes

I'm in Hong Kong for its Literary Festival this weekend. Here is a photo I took from my hotel window:


I've not been in Hong Kong for a long time -- 15 years perhaps? And I'm quite disoriented (it didn't help to arrive at midnight last night). This afternoon I went to have a look outside the hotel (named "the Excelsior") and saw young people jamming streets and stores everywhere. Here's a photo I took at the door of "Ireland's Potato":

I asked a teenager who was eating chips on the sidewalk why so many people waited in line for this one. I thought he would say "because it's cheap," instead he said "好吃" (taste good). I had heard that the global financial crisis hit Hong Kong harder than mainland China, as a result many retail stores were closed. (This morning a reporter who came to interview me also said his magazine, a glossy one, was gone.) So this crowdedness on the streets was a bit unexpected. Was it "少年不知愁滋味" ? Even such a big crisis can't stop today's young people from enjoying shopping and eating out? Later I learned this area is a high-end shopping district (it didn't look like one to me). That could explain it, I guess. A young couple who were eating supper at the same table I sat at said "lots of rich people in this area."

I'll post about the Literary Festival after I return home Monday, and also respond to the comments below the previous post. There's no internet blockage in Hong Kong, but the hotel charges quite expensively for the wireless connection. :-(.

What Kind of Country is China Today?

In previous posts I said that China still has a (somewhat weakened) totalitarian government, but no longer a communist one. A couple of readers then questioned whether China really is still a totalitarian country at all. I think this is an important issue worth further discussion. As Confucius says, "When the name is improper, what is spoken will not be reasonable. When what is spoken is unreasonable, what is acted upon will not succeed." ("名不正则言不顺，言不顺则事不成。")

To start the discussion, here is the Wikipedia definition of totalitarianism:

Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a concept used to describe political systems whereby a state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private life. Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of an official all-embracing ideology and propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that controls the state, personality cults, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics.

When thinking about it according to this definition, an interesting observation emerges: While China still has a political system that is built for all the above totalitarian functions, the party that operates this state apparatus is no longer exercising many of the functions. For example, the tight control over the economy is largely gone in many settings, and the old ideology (communism) is hardly mentioned in propagandas any more. Stupid restrictions on free discussion and criticism still exist, for example the internet blockage and the recent arrest of Liu Xiaobo, but there are also a huge amount of dissenting voices that can be heard on the internet. When it comes to individual life style choices, people are largely left alone. In recent years, there have emerged independent media outlets such as Caijing and the publications of the Southern Media Group. Those things certainly couldn't have happened in Mao's time.

Another thing I found very interesting during my recent trip to China is that a growing number of people choose to join other political parties such as the Zhigong Party, either for political participation or self-protection or both. The background of this is the influence and political status of those so-called democratic parties have been, bit by bit, increasing. I met a senior medical doctor in Chongqing who is a member of the Zhigong Party, and he told me a story about a businessman who was wrongly jailed. Fortunately that man was a ranking member of another one of the democratic parties. With the support and appeals from his party, the man regained his freedom. "You need an organization to back you up if you want to fight injustice. One person does not have enough strength," the doctor told me. "Years ago when I wanted to join the CCP, they didn't want me. Now they want me, but I no longer what them," he added with a smile. All together, the many legal democratic parties in China are still not strong enough to match the CCP's power. "In the local Political Consultative Conference (政协), there may be one third of us and two thirds CCP members, so when taking votes they always win," the doctor told me, but he was also quick to point out the strength of democratic parties was growing. However, it occurs to me effective political reform is needed to really give these democratic parties, and others that should be allowed to emerge, their due status.

Here is something else I found out: the CCP's power is fading at base levels of the government and society. In a public work-unit, there are usually two top officials: the administrative official and the Party official (called "the secretary"). Traditionally, the Party secretary dominated the administrative official (who could be a non-CCP member). Nowadays, this remains true at certain higher levels, for example the county level (regiment level in the military) and above. But at lower levels the administrative official now typically holds more power.

The gradual fading of "personality cults" in China is also significant. People of my generation can vividly remember how such a personality cult reached the peak during the Cultural Revolution. After Mao died, there were still strong propaganda campaigns trying to build personality cults for the succeeding leaders Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin, but each time on a reduced scale. Nowadays, you see very little of these attempts at cult building for the current leader Hu Jintao.

So, why does a one-party government that possesses the totalitarian system machine give up operating much of it? There may be many reasons but one, IMO, is due to the progressive trend of civilization world wide. This certainly includes the Chinese people's wakening to their own rights, ever since the Cultural Revolution ended over three decades ago. Globalization might have brought in many bad things but one good thing – I'll call it information globalization – has made it much harder to control people and information now than before. This is to say, running counter to the progressive civilization trend increasingly damages the legitimacy of the party's leadership. Certainly they continue to do things that seem backward, but the boat is still higher when the water is rising.

There are also signs that the central control is increasingly weakened by internal factions within the CCP as well as the effective dispersion of power to sector and local leaders. A recent example is the "empty the cage for new birds" (腾笼换鸟) case. Last October, the party boss of Guangdong Province, Wang Yang, used this term to demonstrate the idea of having new, capital-intensive industries replace the old, labor- intensive industries in Guangdong. As such he took the current economic crisis that closed many of the factories – what he called the "backward productive force" – as a good opportunity. This idea was viewed by his opponents as a selfish localism aimed at getting rid of the large number of migrant workers in Guangdong. And Wang Yang's idea is not supported by Premier Wen Jiabao, who made a number of speeches to emphasize the importance of supporting small and medium sized private enterprises that provide jobs to migrant workers.

Party factions have always existed in CCP's history, but they were either consealed from the public or publicized in a violent way. Such a conflict between Wang Yang (a local boss) and Wen Jiabao (the nation's Premier) to be made public peacefully would have been unthinkable in the old times. Lately, there is also a sign that Hu Jintao supports Wang Yang, which puts the President and the Premier in somewhat opposite positions. Rumor has it that Wang Yang belonged to Hu Jintao's Youth League faction, while Wen Jiabao is from the State Council clique, so this dispute could be a factional one. Without making a rash judgment on whose arguments make more sense, I must say so far this "cage and bird" debate has been largely rational and non-confrontational from both sides.

To point out the above changes is not to gloss over China's problems such as government corruption, social injustice, and the lack of independent judiciary. Rather, I see a hope here that a peaceful ongoing improvement in these areas might be possible. Given the significant reduction in China's totalitarian function and power, could we say that China now has progressed into a semi-totalitarian country from the Mao era of totalitarian? If this holds, and if this first half of the transformation has been made relatively (but not completely) peacefully, isn't there the possibility that the second half of the transformation, from semi-totalitarian to non-totalitarian, could also be non-violent?

For this I see the increasingly publicized factional disagreement within the CCP as a helpful, and benign, sign. When factions go public, it also points to the hope for possible voting differences within the CCP so that vote of the doctor I spoke of above might really count. That could in turn be the first step toward a more complete democracy.

Of course, there may also be more severe factional conflicts behind the scenes, between the vested interest groups of the "prince party" (太子党) and the unnamed benign force, as the rumor on the street has it. If so, political reform is needed even sooner to prevent something much worse than political backstabbing from happening.

The danger is, the totalitarian state apparatus is still lying there, even if it is semi-inactive. No one can guarantee it will never be activated again by some insane leaders if political reform is not carried out in a timely manner.

(Thanks for reading my tentative thoughts. Rational discussions on the above are welcome and much appreciated.)

Impeccable Disrobing

There's something hilarious in the Pentagon's description of Chinese ships "harassing" a U.S. surveillance (spy?) ship: "Impeccable sprayed its fire hoses at one of the vessels in order to protect itself. The Chinese crewmembers disrobed to their underwear and continued closing to within 25 feet."

Adding to the amusement is that each Chinese language website gives a different translation for the US ship name "Impeccable." To cite just a few:

无畏号

无懈级

無敵號

无瑕号

完美号

Gosh, the realm of name translation to Chinese is surely out of control.

A side note: CNN reports that "there were no stories about the incident in Chinese media." However the website of China's official magazine Global Times has a report that calls Pentagon's protest "hasty" and "fishy," because the news broke at a sensitive period of the two countries' military exchange. It also says the harassment claim uses lame logic, given Impeccable's location. However, the Chinese article does not mention the "disrobe" part of the Pentagon statement. Their loss, no 完美号 humor for them.

Western Ideological vs. Chinese Nationalistic Sentiment

A few years ago, a Chinese American whom I didn't know surprised me with an email, after he read a story I wrote about the Cultural Revolution. The email said,

Most writers from China like to write something negative about China, sort of justifying [why] they left China. When we left Taiwan during the 60's, even though we didn't like the government there, we never wrote/said anything negative at the expense of China (Taiwan). Remember, during the early days of the PRC, China had to do something drastic to rid of the old trash, China would not have enjoyed today's status without doing that.

I sent him a polite brief response, as I thought he had misunderstood my writing. It would be more accurate to say my writing has something to do with negative things about human nature than about a country. In the next email he continued to vent:

I don't like any Chinese writers to write something bad about China especially if they write in English, the problem is most American readers don't have enough knowledge about China, they will misinterpret what they have read and believe this is really what China is like. It is not, compare with China 50 years ago, today's China is a totally different place.

At the time I was taken aback by this. I disagreed with him on not to write anything "bad," but took his opinion as an isolated extreme, as such I didn't reply to his second email.

Since I started blogging over a year ago, the topic of the nationalistic sentiment of overseas Chinese has kept coming back, only then I realized the opinion of the early email contact is not that uncommon. I talked about this sentiment in an earlier post titled "Are Overseas Chinese More Patriotic?"

Now there is a difference between patriotism and nationalism, though not everyone shares the same view of what defines each. One terse, and whimsical, definition I have heard is that "A patriot is willing to fight for her country. A nationalist wants to argue for her country." Using that distinction, I think the term "nationalistic sentiment" more accurately describes what I'm discussing here.

Not very long ago, a cyber friend, a Chinese immigrant of my generation, told me about his uneasiness with his view regarding the CCP. Having grown up in China and moved abroad after college graduation in the early 1980s, he had viewed the first 30 years of the CCP's rule as morally unforgivable. Yet he finds himself increasingly forgiving the CCP now, and couldn't rationally explain this softening to his own satisfaction.

Coincidentally, during my recent visit to China, I met with another friend, an overseas Chinese writer who divides his time between the US and China, and he expressed similar feelings. He is a few years older than me, and, like me, is a member of the historic and misnamed "Class 77" (the first cohort that entered university after the Cultural Revolution, in February 1978). I was telling him about my research in Chongqing regarding the history of one line of the CCP's anti-American propaganda, and his face dropped. He said my research topic had an adverse effect on him and that it was not productive to dwell on such past misinformation. This surprised me a bit because I had known him since college time, during which he was an active participant in student democracy movements. And, in our conversation that lasted for several hours, when we were not addressing the CCP in particular, he presented a clear and penetrating view of China's current problems such as government corruption.

Note those are not isolated cases. I can give you many more examples.

Upon returning to the US, I was joking with Bob that if the Chinese government were smarter, it should send all dissidents overseas instead of putting them in prison, as living the West seems to be more effective in changing views.

Seriously though, I'm more interested in figuring out what caused the strong nationalistic sentiment among overseas Chinese. There have been many discussions on Chinese nationalism in general, for example see the Council on Foreign Relations article here. However, as far as I can tell, nowadays the nationalistic sentiment is even stronger among overseas Chinese. This is especially interesting because many of them are changing their view as cited above.

IMO, there is the external factor and there is the internal factor that causes such strong sentiment, in addition to the general/historical factors cited by others.

The external factor: such sentiment has appeared as a natural balancing force against unbalanced Western media reporting on China. Apparently, the media in the West did not keep up with the changing China and thus stuck with an outdated view of it, and that annoyed many overseas Chinese who are proud of their motherland's progress. Especially in early 2008, during the Olympics torch saga, the one-sided reporting reached its peak. As a consequence the overseas Chinese nationalistic sentiment also reached its peak, as demonstrated in the huge New York rally that no media reported. Around the time, I wrote a few pieces about the need for balanced reporting, see for example "No conversation on BBC" , "Cyber Voices on Tibet - A Search For Balance", and "A Sichuan Family and Tibet’s Future".

More frequently than not, the criticisms on China I heard were not based on historical or present facts, rather they were based on ideological sentiment, often from people who knew little about China except "it's a communist country." There was also a telling anecdote posted on an overseas Chinese website: In San Francisco, on the day of the Olympics torch relay, a Chinese student asked an American student why he came to participate in the Tibet Independence movement, and the answer was "they asked me to."

I have my own reasons to resent communism, and this is based on my experience growing up in China in the 1960s-80s. However, for better or worse, the China of today is no longer the China I grew up in, and many Americans don't see that. To my mind, China is hardly a communist country any more. It still has a (somewhat weakened) totalitarian government, but no longer a communist one.

Ever since the Cultural Revolution, Chinese people have lost their belief in communism. Those who join the party no longer do so to pursue its stated ideals (as my parents did in the 1940s), rather they join in the hope of getting power. In the old days only "the proletariat's vanguard fighters" were permitted to join the party, now it has changed its recruiting policy to be all-inclusive. I learned during my recent trip to China that, nowadays, anyone who applies is admitted to the CCP. As a result many rich entrepreneurs have become party members, to complete the process of combining money with power. The party might now be called a half-breed of several things and capitalism is one of them, but it no longer believes in communism. I doubt its top leaders are still believers either. After all, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao were both Red Guards once and suffered through the chaotic time of the Cultural Revolution. I suspect their stubbornness on maintaining "stability" has something to do with that painful experience. Though the "communist" label continues to be used by the CCP, it seems to me such a label is more for the sake of continuity (="stability") than anything else. As such, when addressing China's problems – and it does have serious problems – attacking communism is like treating lung disease with foot fungus medicine. Worse, such attacks result in aversive effects.

To have rational discourse on China’s issues, the Western media should abandon its outdated ideological stance against "communist China." If anything, China has become a country with no working ideology, and that might also be one of its problems. As a matter of fact, China is no more and no less than a problematic and promising country, and in this regard it is not unlike any other country in the world. Attacks and hatred based on ideological sentiment have become irrelevant and ill-placed.

One good thing that the Beijing Olympics brought was a whole lot of journalists visiting China, and they saw a humanly country with huge variety and diversity in people's behavior and lives. This has certainly helped the Western world's understanding of China, and thus increased rational criticism and decreased irrelevant attacks since the Olympics. Even the obstinate BBC and CNN have shown signs of change now. In other words, the West has begun to treat China factually instead of as a well-defined "communist country." This change should also help to bring down the fever of overseas Chinese's nationalistic sentiment – a return to equilibrium.

[Added: what a coincidence - just saw a post on ESWN today about Western media's misreporting on China.]

The internal factor: many of us overseas Chinese live a far better material life than the average people inside of China, and we are too far away to feel their daily struggles intimately. The center problem of China right now, as many insightful scholars have pointed out, is a bureaucratic power that lacks checks and is not monitored. That is the root of government corruption and people's discontent. Our distant position in overseas might have enlarged the apparent successful image of China's economic reform, but overlooked the lurking danger caused by the lack of political reform. The present trouble with the CCP is that it no long possesses its old ideological strength, but is still uses its backward political structure to hand out power.My latest visit to China has convinced me more than ever that political reform is needed and overdue. The difficult question is how to carry out a peaceful political reform instead of causing another chaotic revolution. No sensible and sane Chinese, except those with their own agendas based on self-interest, want another revolution. As overseas Chinese, we can help to bring about a peaceful reform through rational discourse. Overheated nationalism, like irrelevant ideological attacks, will not help at all. That is to say, while a balanced and updated view from the Western media is called for, we also need to put our nationalistic sentiment in check, so as not to turn a deaf ear to rational criticism or simply rebut it with anger. More on this in future posts as this one is already too long.

The Need for a New English Pronoun

This resonates with me:

There have been at least 18 recent tweets about the fact that English has no grammatically correct substitutes for words like "he," "him," and "his" that do not have a gender implied.

Consider the sentence "Everyone loves his mother." The word "his" may be seen as both sexist and inaccurate, but replacing it with "his or her" seems cumbersome, and "they" is grammatically incorrect.

Read the complete CNN report here.

What's your take? What is the word we need and want?

(Interestingly, in written Chinese, there isn't such a gender-neutral pronoun either.)

"The Biggest Threat Is not Social Unrest but Societal Breakdown" (2)

by Sun Liping, Professor of Sociology at Tsinghua University

(Continued from yesterday's post)

[in translation]

8. Society has lost the ability to think long-term. Vested interest groups formed on bureaucratic capitalism pay overly great attention to short term interests; they have neither the ancient emperors' responsibility toward their descendants, nor the nobleman's detachment and transcending spirit. There is a tendency in our society for an exaggeration-syndrome over short-term problems to co-exist with a numbness-syndrome over long-term behavior. For every problem at the moment, each bush and tree looks like an enemy soldier; Problems concerning our descendants and society's long-term development all meet with a blind eye. "Get drunk today when there is still wine" becomes institutionalized behavior. With resource and environmental issues, they drain the lake to catch all the fish. Facing institutional malpractice, they put off whenever they can. The city of Handan went through ten mayors in a decade. The national average for a mayor's term is now 1.7 years. In the first half of each term, the job is to "hold up [the new leadership] onto the horse and accompany them for a distance"; in the second half of the term it is to search for and train the successor. Power and interest before one's eye is everything; there is no time to do real things.

9. Why can't counter-corruption be carried out effectively? This shows how things are weighed from the perspective of vested interests, i.e., which is more frightening, the corruption, or the prospect of appealling to society in order to institute counter-corruption measures? This logic of course holds for a corrupt individual, but when it transforms into an institutional logic, the problem becomes severe. Unfortunately, the above logic is far from non-institutional. Many years of counter-corruption activities basically stop at the point of making a show and killing the chicken to frighten the monkey. When it comes to substantial measures in countering corruption, despite the fact that everyone, top to bottom, knows what is going on, there has never been fundamental progress, let alone an appeal to society to implement measures for counter-corruption.

10. Maintaining vested interests is a tiring job, and our society has placed too much of its energy and resources behind this. To maintain vested interests, freedom of speech must be suppressed. Just think about it, how much energy and resources have been used to suppress those voices? To maintain vested interests, democracy the obstruction must be bypassed using every possible means. Just think about it, how much energy have we wasted on justifying, how many reasons and theories have we made up, in order not to have democracy? To maintain vested interests, we have to suppress the people's rightful expression of interest, as a consequence how many mass incidents have brewed, and how much energy has been spent on resolving those mass incidents? To maintain vested interests, we don't dare to adopt many effective counter-corruption measures used in other countries, and we have to use those clumsy and ineffective campaign-style methods. How much more energy and resources have been wasted with those campaigns? One must know that, to simultaneously realize the two goals of maximizing vested interests and maintaining normal operation of society is a considerably difficult and laborious thing to do. It tires our system, and it tires the management. The psychological burden is heavy from the system to the manager. More importantly, to maintain vested interests, our society needs to pay a deeper and further cost. For instance, why do we have to criticize universal values on a grand scale? Does something in universal values make us lose our temper? To be frank, it is democracy and liberty. Because they threaten vested interests, but to directly criticize democracy and liberty does not sound good, so those in power have to take on universal values. In today's faithless and morally degraded reality, even universal values become the subject of criticism, the consequence is predictable. But for the sake of vested interests, it has to be done.

11. The root cause for societal breakdown is the formation of bureaucratic capitalism. In the past, many viewed power and the free market as two opposite things, now one can see the two things are married in China. This is like two people whom others think it would be impossible to marry are wed. Not only they married, but they live well together. In the past there was this thought that power would be restricted in a market economy; Now it is exactly the emergence of the market that provides power with greater opportunity for its use. The market is the market in which power plays a role, power is the power used in the market. Furthermore, power is traded at a better price in the market. This is the problem we face right now. In 2002 I raised the "broken society" concept (see http://www.blogchina.com/20090210664016.html). Vested interest groups under bureaucratic capitalism can form a divide between "us" and "them." As analyzed above, this divide has created a psychological distance.

12. China's realm of ideology faces the marriage between power and money. Both power and markets need to be regulated, but more importantly the link between the two must be severed. Recently Mr. Mao Yushi proposed to "prohibit the rich from having power, prohibit the powerful from making money," which is the same idea. We must see that the key problem is the marriage between power and money. But the situation in China's current realm of ideology is like this: Presently, power and money the seemly unmarriageable two have made a family and are living well together. Now, a dispute appears between the leftist and the rightist. One says, in the family, the husband is a good husband, the wife is a bad wife. The other says, but the wife is the good one and the husband is bad. The two sides quarrel fiercely, while the married couple are living their sweet life.

13. Due to the wrong way of thinking, all kinds of measures in "maintaining stability" have made it impossible to carry out reforms to help society's health, and the consequence is further exacerbation of societal breakdown. Social unrest can be handled by "maintaining stability," while societal breakdown is much harder to deal with. I recall the time when the former President of Philippines, Estrada, fell because of corruption, one American media outlet commented that the internal wound caused by the country's corruption might need its people to pay the cost for 100 years. When corruption becomes a life style, when corruption becomes an irreproachable value, when corruption becomes a thing that everyone curses yet everyone wants, the entire social life enters a state of metamorphosis. History will prove that, "stability" not only can't prevail over everything, its pursuit can destroy everything. The stiff thinking to have stability prevail over everything will kill any sprouting effort at making our nation healthy.

14. The marriage of power and money and the corruption it causes have fundamentally distorted China's social development process. Last year was the 30th anniversary of China's reform. At such an important moment, people expected a serious summary and in-depth reflection upon the past. Regrettably however, cheap praise and meaningless set-expressions lost the great opportunity. This shows we have lost the ability and courage to face reality, including reform. In fact, as I emphasized in a series of articles in 2005, to some extent reform is becoming a war of property robbery. The consensus on reform has basically fallen through; the drive for reform has been lost. The reason? It is that reform is constrained by the frame of vested interests. Even the really open-minded reformer is unable to get rid of such constraints. In this situation, the mechanism to distort reform has formed. Even a reform with the best motive can have the opposite result.

15. Actually, China's reform is neither as good as some have said, nor as bad as others have said. I never agree to completely attribute the economic development speed and the improvement in people's material life to reform. As long as there are no unusual natural or man-made disasters, the economy will develop as a matter of fact. Some people often compare today's material life with that of 30 years ago, in order to illustrate the success of reform. But in fact, in addition to the fact that normal social development has been driven by technology progress, the decrease of birth rate and average family size is also an important factor. If today's cities, had many families with 3 children, what kind of life would it be? Therefore we can say that reform and opening-up have benefited from family planning, and that reform has benefited from opening-up (which speeds technological progress). This is not to deny reform, but to take a rational attitude toward it. The real meaning of reform is to transform China from a distorted and metamorphic society into a normal society and merge it into the mainstream of human civilization. A market economy is only a limited part of it. And this process is far from complete, in recent years has even been retreating.

16. China's reform has congenital deficiency. Reflecting on its starting point can help us re-think a few issues. China's reform actually did not start from "the verge of collapse of the national economy." The launch of the reform was the result of several forces combined. There was people's desire to improve their economic condition, and there was intellectuals' ideal of changing the status quo, but more importantly there was the demand from those who lost their power in the Cultural Revolution to return to the power center. The latter includes two kinds of people: those who wanted to return to the 17 years before the Cultural Revolution, and those who wanted to borrow the opportunity to advance into a new civilization. In the early 1980s reform was controlled by this part of the people. However, what was in contrast to the situation then was only the absurd years of the Cultural Revolution, therefore the power-holders were full of confidence. This confidence created the enlightened period of the 1980s. However the surface progress concealed the fundamental deficits of the reform, i.e., its lack of a real value target that leads to a new civilization.

17. "Stability" has begun to become a means to maintain the existing structure of vested interests. (The end)

"The Biggest Threat Is not Social Unrest but Societal Breakdown" (1)

by Sun Liping

(Note: I just returned from a month-long visit to China, during which I talked to many people from various social classes – more about that in future posts. One thing that surprised me a bit is that the state of freedom of speech in China is not as bad as I'd expected, despite the notorious internet blockage that prevented me from even viewing my own blog. On the Chinese internet one can read lots of dissenting voices, some admirably rational. The following is my translation of a recent article by Sun Liping, a professor of sociology at Tsinghua University. This article, recommended to me by a writer friend in Shanghai, has been reprinted on many Chinese websites and can be easily googled within China. You can read the Chinese original here. Also note its large readership. – Xujun)

[in translation]

This is a discussion post; its core point is: the biggest threat to China perhaps is not social unrest but societal breakdown. This is a tentative view, therefore this post is in constant revision. Constructive discussion from interested friends is welcome.

1. Are we anxious about the wrong problem? Now people are all concerned with social conflicts and clashes, mass incidents, etc. Those concerns come from the worry about large scale social unrest. But in fact, the biggest threat to China perhaps is not social unrest but societal breakdown.

2. Social unrest means that serious conflicts can threaten the basic structure of the ruling regime and system, while societal breakdown is the cell necrosis of the societal body. With more imagery, unrest is like a healthy body wounded by someone else's attack, while breakdown means one's own organs or cells are having serious problems. Mr. Fei Xiaotong's "social erosion" and Samuel Huntington's "political decay" are two concepts that can deepen our understanding on this, even though neither concept is completely the same as the "societal breakdown" as discussed here. The latter of these two concepts might be closer.

3. The opposite of social unrest is social stability; the opposite of societal breakdown is societal health. Although the two are often related, they should be distinguished. Now the problem is, the misdiagnosis of the former often becomes the obstacle of treating the latter. It's like a cancer patient who needs surgery, but the doctor misdiagnoses the patient as having a heart attack, counter indicating surgery. In fact the patient may not be having a heart attack, or may be having only a mild one. In societal reality, some reforms are needed to prevent societal breakdown, but the concern that the reforms would threaten social stability has pushed them aside, and the consequence of this is that the tendency toward societal breakdown becomes more obvious.

4. In a recent article I repeatedly emphasized that, despite many current social conflicts, some even showing signs of intensifying, the possibility of large scale social unrest is small. I wrote about this 10 years ago. See also a two-page interview in Southern Weekend from last year. In the past decade or so, because we overestimated the factors generating instability, a fixed way of thinking that stability must prevail over everything has been formed. In this fixed way of thinking, "stability" becomes the ultimate negating factor; everything must yield to "stability." As a consequence many things that should be done can't be done. Actually, in 365 days of a year, if there is not this incident there will be that incident. In a country with a population of 1.3 billion, big disasters and small troubles are inevitable. If you take pains to look for instability, you will always find it, not to mention that uncontrolled power is continuously creating "mass incidents" (for example the recent "mass incident" in Guizhou was caused by the government's bizarre idea to stop mass entertainment activities). The key is what mentality we should have in viewing such problems. Any country in the world would have destabilizing incidents like ours, but only we have organizations like "the office for maintaining stability."

5. In recent years, signs of societal breakdown have become more apparent. The core problem is the loss of control over power. During the past 30 years of reform, despite the establishment of a basic framework for a market economy, power remains the backbone of our society. Because societal breakdown first appears as the loss of control over power, corruption is but the surface manifestation. By loss of control over power I mean that power becomes a force unconstrained not only externally, but also internally. Before this, although it lacked external constraints, internal constraints had been relatively effective. The power base is weakening; several years ago we had already heard the saying "commands don’t reach outside of Zhongnanhai [the headquarters of the CCP and China’s Central Government]." Local power and sector power have become unconstrained from above and unmonitored from below, at the same time lacking any check or balance from the left or right. This is to say, state power is fragmented, and officials are unable to work responsibly. To preserve their positions they don't balk at sacrificing system benefits (not to mention societal interest). With this background, corruption has gotten beyond control and become untreatable.

6.This societal breakdown spreads to every aspect of life: unspoken rules prevail, becoming the basis for being an official or even being a person, about which Mr. Wu Si (吴思) has a good analysis; Powerful interest groups are unbridled and the tendency toward an underworld society emerges; Social justice erodes; Lack of professional ethics is common; Society's information system is filled with falsehoods, fake statistical data representing systematic distortions of information. "Village cheats village, county cheats county, cheating all the way to the State Council" is a more solid reality than official statistical data.

7.Sense of social identity and centripetal forces are rapidly lost. The big fire at a CCTV building on the day of the Lantern Festival caused a several tens of billions damage, but there are only gloating voices over the disaster on the internet. No sadness, no grief. The morose delectation expresses an unspeakable pleasure. Some say this shows people's coldness; some say there is no hope for our nation; still some ask, why don't those who gloat think that part of their own property burned in the fire (because the CCTV building is state property)? This makes me recall a big fire in the 1980s' Shenyang, at the time many people stood on the streets crying out. How can this be explained using our national identity? Where is the problem? It lies in whether we identify with the society. Crying over Shenyang's big fire, people felt "our own" buildings had burned. In the CCTV big fire, some said, even if tens of billions of yuan were not burned, they would be eaten anyway. Here the eating and drinking of course means using public money. Others worried how much water would be used to put out the fire when there was a drought going on. Behind those talks is psychological distance, that is, those things are "theirs," not "ours." Psychological distance is reflection of structural distance. (to be continued)

The Cultural Revolution on Wall Street

by Larry Mongoss, guest blogger

I figured I had either heard of, or conceived in my own imagination, every possible way one might think about the current financial crisis. Thus my surprise and delight, while watching Charlie Rose, to hear David Faber of CNBC compare it to China’s Cultural Revolution.

Well, in all fairness to Mr. Faber he didn’t actually mention the Cultural Revolution, and probably would be baffled by the comparison, but he said something that really resonated. For a CNBC special on the financial meltdown called House of Cards he had been talking to many people. Lots were mad, he said, but also said that both the victims on Main Street and the culprits on Wall Street must carry some of the blame for what happened. Without borrowers willing to take on houses beyond their means the bubble would not have been there to pop in the first place. Or more thematically, given the name of the special, the cards would not have been stacked so high.

And that brings me back to the Cultural Revolution. The borrowers and the Wall Street bankers believed in the miracle, that prosperity will yield prosperity. Somewhere in the excitement, common sense went out the door. It is human nature to get caught up in the moment, and this time the factions, instead of fighting amongst themselves, were all pulling together till the cards began to topple.

So if the bankers and the borrowers where different Red Guard factions, then who was Mao? That one is pretty easy, and he is one of the featured speakers in the special. Even today, Alan Greenspan basically says he could not have taken any action to make this adjustment less painful. It is kind of funny to hear him say that. If you ever chewed bubble gum as a kid, and can remember back to that time, you can probably see the bubble forming in front of you. Some of those bubbles were amazing: huge, round, perfect. Others did not look so good: lopsided, weak and just plain ugly. When I saw that things were not working out I would suck the air out, and chew some more. Some of my friends, however, would simply blow hard and force the bubble to pop. Apparently Mr. Greenspan was like them.

Getting past Mao to the Gang of Four is a little bit more of a stretch, but Mr. Bernanke certainly seems like he ought to be included. Then, given Mr. Geitner’s much awaited, and astonishingly underwhelming, announcement of his plans, or lack thereof, I have to add him to the roster. Rounding that out with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Summers seems to make sense, though I wouldn’t care to hazard a guess as to which of them is Jiang Qing. They are, it seems, unhappy allies in this boondoggle we find ourselves in.

Ridiculous and absurd you say? Though that is true, there may actually be something in the comparison beyond what is, hopefully, a bit of comic relief in the face of so much dour news. And that is what happens next.

The end of the Cultural Revolution marked the beginning of China’s emergence as world economic power. A very important ingredient in that spectacular rise has been the development of businesses, activities and really just ways of doing things that simply did not exist before. This has been done in the face of a large and well established bureaucracy that, at first glance, should have doused any attempt of the country to lift itself.

A similar situation exists in America today. Too big to fail is something that people might have said about the Chinese Communist Party, but in America it is banks, car companies and insurers that get the tagline. The number of entrenched interests in America is substantial, and they are guided by very powerful people. So the challenge is similar to that faced by China in the 80s, to keep all that from standing in the way of progress. This is always difficult, but has become much more so as the very existence of many of yesterday’s most powerful institutions is threatened.

Can Barack Obama, through reason and persuasion, accomplish what Deng Xiaoping did through concentrated power? It seems unlikely, but I am ever hopeful. So I will watch the drama on Wall Street and Main Street as well as in Washington unfold with that picture in my mind.

Valentine's Madness in Shanghai

by Maple Xu

(Note: after spending the Spring Festival with our parents in Haikou, my younger sister Maple went back to Shanghai to attend to her artwork, and I came to Chongqing. The following is an email from her after Valentine's Day. – Xujun)

[in translation]

Sister, how did you spend Valentine's Day? Was Chongqing bustling?

Shanghai went mad! No parking available at squares, restaurants or karaokes; to eat out one had to wait in a long line; streets were unbearably jammed by cars.

Strangely, since the financial crisis began, it seems my countrymen's consumption power has been growing intensely. In the past years on Valentine's Day, at most the price of roses went up and Western-style restaurants got more customers. This year, the old and the young all came out to join in the merry-making. Even Chinese-style restaurants had long lines. Movie theaters were explosively filled. Rose prices surged from 2 yuan to 15 yuan a stem; people still grabbed them like a free-lunch, buying 99 stems at a time.

I suspect my countrymen are having the fin-de-siecle anxiety, smashing the pot that has already cracked. Why wait for inflation, why not indulge in flowers and wine now and buy that one-time happiness. But most of my friends think this is because Chinese have bank deposits; in addition, people are irritated by the American financial crisis, so they spend just to show you they can spend.

In this year's Spring Festival Gala, Zhao Benshan (note: a famous skit and sitcom actor) had a stage speech "we are not short of money; give me whatever is good." Now people around me often say "not short of money!"

For Valentine's day, a friend invited me to eat out in a Western-style restaurant. We tried to book a table two days ahead, but were told that tables had all been taken two weeks earlier. I thought it laughable, and tried to persuade my friend to give up the idea. I said this Valentine's Day thing is a money-making scheme from the businesses. We can eat out any day, why do we have to go on that particular day. Didn't you see young people holding the banner "Boycott the bad custom Valentine's Day" parading on Shanghai's streets? Lets not make the street jam worse. My friend got stubborn and said, I just like bustling, I just like festivals! I'm a vulgar person, so what? We are not short of money.

So at 6 pm on Saturday the two of us elbowed our way into an Italian restaurant, the usually deserted place with 60-70 tables now fully occupied. The proprietress smiled thoroughly. The menu came, and naturally the prices were up more than 50%. The Valentine's Day table d'hote cost 260 yuan a person, while the dishes included in it usually would cost only a bit over 100 yuan. Since this was all expected, my friend patted her pocket and restated exaggeratedly, "We are not short of money!"

Half an hour after we sat down, we hadn't gotten a cup of plain boiled water, not to mention a dish. Looking around the crowded room full of hungry customers waiting for their food, I saw only three or four waiters working. I went to the bar and asked a chubby young man:

"Could you please give us a cup of coffee, or even plain water?"

"It's embarrassing," the little chubby man said with a nice smile, "but we are out of cups."

"How come?"

"Too few workers. The cups from lunch haven't been washed."

"I have been here before; it wasn't like this."

"Financial crisis. Boss reduced employees. What can we do."

"Today's business is so good, and prices are up so high, you'll get paid more."

"Not possible. Boss is very stingy. Since American's financial crisis, our daily staff meals offer fried cabbage only. Today, Valentine's Day, we get one more dish – fried eggs. Staff members lack the enthusiasm to work."

"Did the financial crisis make your business worse?"

"I don't think so. From the New Year Day to now our business has been quite good. Especially on Christmas and Valentine's Day, we were filled."

"So it's the boss making excuse to exploit you. Why don't you fire her?"

"But it's true it's hard to find jobs now. Many people behind you are waiting to take your position. Boss doesn’t worry about finding employees. Didn't you hear that several thousand university graduates couldn't find jobs? People like us don't even have a diploma. Very difficult."

A man with his wife and young child at a nearby table angrily shouted, "What's going on? Where's our food? My kid is ready to faint from hunger!"

Little Chubby whispered to me that the number of cooks had also decreased from 3 to 1.

At another table, a foreign man sat with an intellectual-looking Chinese woman. The woman had been wiping tears, while the foreigner had a sunken face. They had ordered a bottle of expensive-looking red wine. No dishes came, and they were drinking with empty stomachs. After a long time, their beefsteak finally arrived. The foreigner tried hard to bite but the beefsteak didn't budge. He tossed the wine bottle on the table and said angrily, "Let's go!"

As they walked out, the proprietress chased them. All people waiting for food now watched them elatedly.

Our coffee finally came. Hungry, I said to my friend, I don't want to wait any more. Lets go eat a bowl of noodles somewhere else, that would be better than waiting here. My friend sighed, A big meal turns into a bowl of noodles. It's not like we are short of money!

At the door, the proprietress was still talking to the foreigner and his girlfriend. The foreigner refused to pay for the wine and beefsteak. He said the restaurant ruined his Valentine's Day, and he wanted compensation. The proprietress kept smiling, "This is China, China!" She meant at least the wine should be paid. But the foreigner ignored her.

I told the proprietress, bill please, we are leaving too. She said but you've already ordered your meals. I said but we've waited for more than an hour.

We finished our coffee. Another ten minutes passed. Still no dishes. Nor the bill. My friend said, "Lets go!" She was ready to get into a fight with the proprietress. But no one stopped us from leaving. My friend was depressed – she didn't even get to fight!

Outside, we saw the foreigner again. Now he was negotiating with a taxi driver. It seemed the driver didn't want to use the meter, instead he tried to fleece customers on such a good business day. The foreigner threw the car door up and walked away, leaving his heart-broken girlfriend dragging behind. I wondered which country this foreign "angry youth" was from. Perhaps they chose the day to drink farewell wine, but nothing went smoothly. Poor lao-wai and his poor Chinese girlfriend.

My friend said, did you see the table near the door with six white women dressed colorfully? When we were leaving, they still sat there calmly and empty tabled, not even a beef hair had arrived. They might be wondering, this Valentines Day is our festival, what do all the Chinese do here? Think about it: if you live in America and it's our Dragon Boat Festival, you go to a Chinese restaurant and all tables are taken by Americans, how would you feel?

I laughed: Now you got it. It's a festival of the Westerners, but we Chinese people come to co-operate with the businesses. A bit of dark humor, isn't it.

My friend also laughed: Great Harmony of the world, Great Harmony of the world. After all, we are not short of money.

"Lets escape the vicious Shanghai Valentine's Day"

Talking in Chongqing

1. With a taxi driver

(at the stop)

Driver (impatiently): Hurry! Hurry!

Me: Why, isn't this a designated stop…

Driver: Don't be loquacious! Don't get me fined!

Chongqing taxi

(on the road )

Me: Shifu, you seem to be in a bad mood.

Driver (upset): I just got fined! The police fined me for tailgating his car! But there was a private car between me and him. What the fuck! Why did he skip the private car but take on a taxi? Some sort of revenge?

Me: Didn't you reason with him?

Driver: What's the use! They don't care!

(a moment later)

Me: Shifu, did your situation improve a bit after last year's strike?

Driver: What improved? The taxi company did nothing, didn't reduce a penny of our "share-payment."

My sister: So it's only the government pays you each an extra 50 yuan a day…

Driver: 50 yuan per car. 25 yuan each driver. But the company imposes on us more restrictions after the strike. You dare do anything, 200 yuan fine! 300 yuan fine! Who can afford those?

Me: Don't you have a Taxi Association now? Wouldn't it do something for you?

Driver: Do a fart! That association is led by the Party.

Me: But it wasn't supposed to be an official organization…

Driver: Are you Chinese? Any organization has to accept the Party's leadership.

Me: But I heard that Bo Xilai (note: the Party Secretary of Chongqing) handled the strike pretty well last year…

Driver: Bo Xilai is not going to stay. He's leaving soon. Our situation won't change.

Me: Oh yeah? How do you know he's leaving?

My sister: He has been in Chongqing for less than a year.

Driver: Word is spreading around. Then again, even if Bo Xilai has a good idea, he's not the one to implement it. So it's just not going to be implemented. (Suddenly) You work for the government, wouldn't you know more than I do?

Me: Oh no, I'm just a tourist returned home for a visit from somewhere else.

My sister (suddenly): Shifu, you've passed our destination!

Driver (stopping and laughing): Hah hah! Sorry, I had too much fun chatting with you.

2. With a migrant worker

(image from http://hsb.hsw.cn)

(Mrs. Leng, 45, is a housekeeper working in the neighborhood where my parents live)

Me: When did you come to Chongqing?

Mrs. Leng: March 2001. (Counting with fingers) Aiya, 8 years already!

Me: So you left the countryside then?

Mrs. Leng: No, I went to Guangzhou first. I worked in a shoe factory for about half a year.

Me: What made you leave Guangzhou?

Mrs. Leng: I missed my two children too much … The factory gave us two weeks vacation because its suppliers were backlogged. I returned home and didn't want to go there again. Chongqing is close enough to home.

Me: Are your children with you now?

Mrs Leng: No, they are in schools at home in Dazu. But I can go see them on holidays, and they come to stay with us in the summer.

Me: What does your husband do?

Mrs. Leng: He works as a freelance installer and transporter for an electronic appliance distributor. He gets paid on each job, because it's a better deal than being a staff worker on fixed-salary.

Me: What happened to your land in the countryside?

Mrs Leng: We gave it to a relative to farm.

Me: Does he pay you for using it?

Mrs Leng: No, he doesn't pay anything. We just don't want the land to go fallow. He's doing very well with it. He is richer than us now. People who stayed on the land are doing better than us migrant workers now.

Me: Really? Then don't you want to return to your land?

Mrs. Leng: Not at all. Farm labor is a lot harder than urban jobs. I can't imagine going back to the hard labor again. We've become lazier, spoiled by city life. But if I had stayed at home I wouldn't do worse than anyone! Even in the bad times I managed our land and pigs well.

Me: How many people have left your village to the cities?

Mrs. Leng: Most the young people.

Me: Is any land left unfarmed now?

Mrs. Leng: Yes, mostly the unfertile areas. Our land is very fertile. Some families who have money hire others to farm their land.

Me: I heard that the government no longer allows an urban resident registration to change to a rural one.

Mrs. Leng: That's true. Now the land is much more valuable. We wouldn't want to change our registrations to urban. We wouldn't want to give away our land.

Me: I heard that Chongqing is experimenting with unifying urban and rural registrations.

Mrs. Leng: But our registrations don't belong to Chongqing.

Me: Ah. Do you make enough in the city?

Mrs. Leng: We are just getting by…didn't manage to save any money in the past year. My daughter mistakenly left out three questions in the high school entrance exam last summer, so her score was lower than the admission-line for first-rate schools. We had to pay 9000 yuan to get her into such a school. For her meals alone we are paying the school 450 yuan a month…

Me: Public school?

Mrs. Leng: Yes. Then my father-in-law was killed walking near his village by a hit-and-run motorcycle, and we spent over 10,000 yuan for his funeral. The police still haven't found the motorist. Where do you go to find such a person? It was dark in the night…

Just before the Spring Festival my husband got into fight with another man and we had to pay for that man's medical cost…

Me: How did he get into a fight?

Mrs. Leng: He had never gotten into a fight with anyone before! He was attending several jobs that day and couldn't finish one of them. He told the customer he would forego the payment because he didn't have the time to finish it.

Me: A city guy?

Mrs. Leng: Yes. But the guy yelled at him, "Are you the country pumpkin looking for fists?" My husband dared back, "Just try me then!" So the guy hit him on the left eye and he hit back…

Me: Who's bigger?

Mrs. Leng: My husband. I became really scared afterward. He could have beaten that guy really badly! Fortunately that man's wife was also there and she grabbed my husband's arm tightly, so he only got in a few kicks.

Me: Were you there?

Mrs. Leng: No. I went to the police station after my husband called me. The other guy's wife accused my husband, "The migrant worker lacks culture!" I wanted to say, Who are you? Even my very cultured boss doesn't look down at us migrant workers.

Me: What did the police do?

Mrs. Leng: The police officer said, "I see you are evenly uncultured." The police ordered them to pay our medical cost and we pay their medical cost. Each family ended up paying a similar amount.

A Forthcoming Book about China

With a foreword by Jonathan Spence, China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance, edited by Kate Merkel-Hess, Ken Pomeranz, and Jeff Wasserstrom, is coming out in March. You can order the book from both Amazon and Barnes and Noble, as well as http://www.rowman.com/isbn/0742566609.

This book includes my article "China: Democracy, or Confucianism?", first published on the China Beat.

You can also find information about the book on the China Beat:

http://thechinabeat.blogspot.com/2008/11/china-in-2008-pre-orders-now-available.html

A bit more on Charter 08 and the Great Firewall

Ian Lamont at The Industry Standard contacted me last week asking my opinion on what role the Internet has played in Charter 08's spread, and whether the Charter will present a serious challenge to the government of the PRC. Here's my response:

About websites filtering in general, James Fallows provided by far the clearest explanation of how China's "great firewall" works. You can find an entire chapter in his new book Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China devoted to this topic.

As far as I know, for internet savvy people, it is not that hard to get around the "great firewall" - there are many ways to do it. As an example, my blog is blocked here in China, still I can use Google's translation feature to view it completely. This is to say, for anyone in China who wants to access particular information, there is a way to find it with a bit extra work or cost. As such, I have the impression that the purpose of the filtering is more to discourage the general population than to completely block information. And so far it has worked exactly to that effect, because most people don't like to go through that extra trouble.

About Charter 08 in particular, I've found at least one Chinese language website hosted on a sever in the US can be accessed from within China, see https://knol.google.com/k/-/08/3jhi1zdzvxj3f/9#. This site can easily be Googled using either Chinese or English keywords. If you read Chinese, you can see the comments on that site by mainland Chinese are mixed: there are supporting voices and there are doubts and criticism.

From my latest conversations with people in China, most have not heard about the Charter. Among those I have talked to, only one friend, an educated man who is interested in political issues, knew about it. I think internet blockage is not the sole reason for this. As I have reviewed, and also analyzed by ESWN and Rconversation, the Charter needs more work to appeal to the working class and general population, especially at a time when the Chinese government enjoys high trust and support from a large population who are more sensitive to economic conditions than political issues. In short, so far the Charter is an abstract though sound concept in the ivory tower, without concrete and practical ideas, interesting mostly to a small group of elites.

Part of the above response has been quoted in Ian Lamont's article "Charter 08 exposes flaws in China's 'Great Firewall'."

Comments from Behind the Great Firewall

[I'm still in China. Today I received the following note through the Contact page. Because the Great Firewall prohibited me from viewing or commenting but not posting on my own blog, I'm making a special post for those comments. Discussions are welcome. -- Xujun]

Comments from hsknotes:

I'm in the mainland so I can only access your site through secure-tunnel. (If you know of a better alternative that would allow me to post comments directly in response to post, that would be much appreciated.)

Anyway, here are a few comments I wanted to leave, but couldn't. By the way, I'm an American who is currently living in Beijing working as a translator.

Comment 1:

Does anyone in the English speaking world even know where or what Canton is? What are we from the 70s? Peking, Canton, Chungking fell off the map for English speakers at least 20 years ago at the latest.

As for Charter 08, I don't even know why the government tries to block such things or even takes actions against a few of the signers, the impact and push for that kind of thing is non-existent in China. The rioting in the countryside where the real disquiet and unrest is is so out of sync and out of touch with the rhetoric coming out of the foreign (overseas) intellectual community that it's bizarre. Its more disturbing that the overseas intellectual community still even bothers or thinks that their declarations make any difference.

Comment 2:

Ok. About "awkwardness". I myself work as a translator and also had the experience of reading Chinese literature in translation (and loving a lot of it) before I ever knew any Chinese. Years later when I got around to say, looking at what Howard Goldblatt does to modern Chinese literature in translation, I was frightened. 师傅你越来越幽默 becomes Shifu, You'll do anything for a laugh. What the fuck is that? Was he planning on putting a footnote on the cover?

Ok, back to the point at hand. When you pick a book translated from any language into English there's a certain amount of "local flavor" you can stand without it being 拗眼? Sometimes, when you're translating you feel like you can go pages and translate things freely, because every other word isn't piled with chengyu or beijing slang (Wang Shuo's writing for example). When I translate his work, there is no choice like you have, to think about a phrase. From the first word to the last line of much of his work there's nothing there that cleanly "translates" to english. When people like Goldblatt take Mo Yan or even Wang Shuo and make it clean and "Nobel-worthy" they're essentially rewriting it in nice smooth English of their own creation. That is bad, very, very bad.

Ok, once again back to your issues. You obviously have to choose the "english" phrase as opposed to the "literal" chinese one. The problem here is that you're thinking the "literal" chinese phrase carries some sort of meaning when the truth is that even in chinese, these "stock phrases" are incredibly unimportant. No serious chinese-to-english translator in a million years should ever consider translating "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" into Chinese literally, but Chinese people live under this delusion that chengyu and "phrases" somehow operate differently in their language. They don't, they operate how all these "historical sayings" worked in European languages till about 50 to 100 years ago. Allowing the "chengyu" and other related sayings to be translated "literally" for "effect" or "flavor" when there is no incredible and abiding reason (for example, someone says the "sticks and stones" line and then has rocks thrown at them, but even then a footnote explaining the phrase is well-deserved) is mistake, a giant mistake that ghettoizes, ethnicizes, and just is one whole pile of otherness and things good translations shouldn't get into. Awkwardness, strangeness in "language" is the enemy of any good translator or writer. Your well intentioned search for flavor and "effect" should come across from characters, style, story, etc. Given all that, tons of the translators still feel it's ok to throw in a few "non-translations"/"literals" for effect. To anyone who knows the original language it's almost always an eyesore/embarassment, but to people who don't, its always up for grabs. The point is your readers don't know anything, I could translate 200 pages of "literal" translations of Wang Shuo's hoodlum dialect mixed with slang and refined Chinese and I can guarantee you not a single person would like it. On the other hand, I could pull a Goldblatt and make shit up and that's also horrible. The point is, be very, very careful and never try to "ethnic up" something. Look at Naipaul's comments about the young Indian writers writing in English and doing the whole exoticism shtick. He rightly calls a spade a spade and sees it as horribly crass boutique multicularism gone marketing. Don't do the same with translation, and the literal chengyu translations go scarily close to that. It's why people who know chinese feel so incredibly uncomfortable when they see things like that.

Here's a link to some of what I'm talking about with Naipaul.

http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/naipaul_04_06.html

(from hsknotes)

My Hip-Hop Nephew

Doggy is a 15-year-old Chongqing kid, who tells me he's a B-boy ("B" for "breaking"). His English comprehension and pronunciation are surprisingly good, given that he hates school. I asked him how he learned his English, and he said from rap music. He loves 2pac and T.I., and urges me to download their music from Baidu.com, where one can find Chinese translations of the songs as well. His favorites are "Don't Worry," "Life Goes on," and "Dead and Gone." He calls the lyrics "touching."

"Why do you like those songs?" I asked.

"They are more real," he told me. Apparently he views Chinese songs as not real, too much propaganda.

my nephew Doggy

He wears a cool colorful brand jacket and big loose pants with a great number of buckles and pendants; the pants hang low exposing his boxers and the legs flow down over his shoes, inimically American. The ever present baseball cap adorning his head is the source of constant arguments as it so often twists askew. The adults blame him for looking like a loafer, not a middle school student, and he defends himself for just having different fashion taste. As a concession to his aunties and grandparents, he has been keeping his hats straight during my visit.

He refuses to drink the plain boiled water his parents and grandparents exist on. Instead he buys bottles of sweetened ice red tea. If he can't get hold of his favorite drink for more than a day, he becomes visibly agitated. So his mother, a retired government worker, allows him that luxury. And this again causes arguments between family members who love him and have high hopes for him. I keep my mouth shut when they argue.

His mother, my older sister, who never got a college education because of the Cultural Revolution, wants nothing but good grades from him. Doggy, on the other hand, cares mostly about Street Dance. Every afternoon he assiduously practices on the living room floor, too small a space for his 1.83m frame. His mother often complains about his indulgence in hip-hop culture. "Only boys with bad grades like Street Dance," she said. And Doggy rebuts, "You don't understand!"

He constantly worries about growing taller. The taller one gets, the harder to dance well, he said. He sometimes gets leg cramps, and his mother thought he was growing so fast he needed more calcium. I was requested to bring American calcium for him. But Doggy's first question for me was, "Will calcium make me taller?"

It's puzzling to me that he's so tall. Chongqing men are known to be short on average. Perhaps it's because his generation gets better nutrition, perhaps not. One theory my sister has is that he liked to eat chicken, and chicken might have been fed with hormones. But Doggy said four boys in his class are even taller. They might have all eaten hormone-fed chicken then.

He has taken dancing class from Chongqing New Dance Society. There may be over a hundred such hip-hop dance societies in Chongqing, he told me. When I asked whether the government interferes with such organizations, Doggy said, "Of course not! Why should they?" I told him when I was 15 no one was allowed to launch a private organization, not even a math-study group. He looked confused and did not know what I was talking about.

Here are a few photos I took when Doggy was practicing:

In addition to dancing he likes comic books and graphic novels, as long as they are not from Japan. I can’t figure out where the distaste for Japanese things comes from, but made in America is great. He also dabbles in writing and drawing. Here is a sketch of Jackie Chan he did for Bob.

The Silk Road to Recovery

by Larry Mongoss, guest blogger

It was interesting to see Xujun’s post on consumer activity in China. Her observations suggest some interesting developments may be coming in the years ahead. Curious about this, I contacted a couple of my friends in Shanghai to get their take on consumer activity. Their personal observations were consistent with hers, but they were prudently reluctant to draw any conclusions from that, especially given the Spring Festival splurging going on. When it comes to officially reported numbers, all were viewed with skepticism.

With all those disclaimers, it is still seems that the Chinese consumer is far more confident than his or her American counterpart. Could this mean that China will help rescue the US?

China and America have had an odd relationship over the past 20 years. Things get produced in China and sent to America. Then, instead of sending back other things of equal value, America sends an IOU. Lots of people, including me, have worried endlessly about what will happen when those IOUs come due. But we have been missing the point.

Now that America doesn’t want so much of the stuff it was not paying for, the Chinese will have to turn elsewhere, most notably to themselves. It sounds like the government, by simple admonishment, can cause a jump in consumer spending. The effect of that may dwarf their 500 billion dollar stimulus package announced last year. A pretty cool technique if it works, especially if it is possible to turn consumer spending back down as well.

Telling Americans to spend more, on the other hand, is not at all likely to work. Many would need to borrow money to make that happen, and right now those that can borrow don’t want to and those that want to can’t – or so it seems. Most Chinese, in contrast, only spend money that they have saved, and many have built up modest accounts over the past decade. Thus, narrowly from the perspective of consumer sentiment and ability to spend, China is much better positioned to grow consumption, and there are signs they are doing just that.

Put simply, the Chinese are taking care of themselves. Domestic consumption appears to be compensating for the fall off in exports, not magnifying it as is happening in Japan. And that consumption, though with a different focus than the export production, is related. All of this is good for China, at least in the short run, but what about America?

Since the 1980s, China has seen amazing economic advancement, in large part from catching up to western manufacturing techniques. Some people have belittled this as just being the activity of copycats, but that was exactly smartest thing to do. It is much faster to copy what is being done than to reinvent it. Giving stuff away, and manufacturing to the needs of the developed world, has allowed China unprecedented growth in both activity, and sophistication.

That sophistication is good news for America, because it also carries over to consumers. Chinese consumers love things that are made in America, and growing consumerism in China is a golden opportunity. In the past, the Chinese government has discouraged consumption to keep the export driven economy from overheating. Now, it will need to discourage exports, to keep the consumer driven economy from overheating.

An exaggeration most likely, but we have a very real possibility to see more exports from America to China. We may, in fact, see the huge American trade deficit turn into a trade surplus. America will be producing things, and giving them to the Chinese along with the money to pay for them. Only this time through, it will be because the money is being paid back by America instead of lent by China.

Unlike the past situation, which was clearly not sustainable, the present situation is. If America can become proficient at producing more than it consumes, it will pay back its foreign debts. Once those debts are paid back, America can turn back to itself, and use that excess production to take care of its retired people. China becomes the training ground for dealing with the social security crises people keep talking about.

For China the path is somewhat more convoluted. They are facing an even stronger demographic adjustment than America. In addition to doing something for the rural population, the Chinese need to temper their domestic consumption with the knowledge that people will be retiring without replacement in the near future. Developing the equivalent of a social security system is critical to keeping China functioning smoothly. Luckily for them, there is no shortage of poor people to practice on.

Hainan, China: Market Crunch

Surprise! Blogger.com is not blocked here in Hainan, though my blog is. This is illogical to me. I'm not sure what I have done to deserve such an honor. This also means that I can log in and post, but can't view my blog normally – quite ironic really.

Let me come to the main point quickly. I returned to China with the lingering question of how people fare in the financial crisis. (Apparently I'm not the only one who is concerned. An American writer friend wrote me to say she "would be fascinating to hear how China is weathering this amazing economic descent into wherever we're going. How is it affecting the people there? I'd love to hear." PekingDuck also had a post on this subject titled "China is the place to be," which attracted quite a few comments.

I've been throwing questions around since my arrival Friday (AA delayed my trip by one day, hardly a surprise). And this is the impression I got:

For urban people, the financial crisis is largely a Western issue. Life and business in Chinese cities are humming along as usual. If anything, the purchasing activity has only increased in the run up to the Spring Festival. A relative who works in the financial sector for a private company tells me that, since last fall, the government has changed its position from discouraging general consumption (in order to slow down the overheated economy) to encouraging domestic consumption (as the world braces for recession). Now, "to consume is to be patriotic," and people seem to be more than happy to follow this calling.

I was in Shanghai Thursday night and saw on CCTV that some cities were subsidizing grocery prices to help stimulate holiday shopping. My experience in Hainan, hardly a rich place, seems to question the necessity of such a policy.

Here are a few photos I took Saturday in a huge supermarket named Da Ruenfa owned by a Hong Kong company, where I went grocery shopping with my sisters and their husbands. I haven't been in such an overwhelmingly crowded store for decades.

Supermarket: an entrance ("New Year Goods Avenue")

The supermarket is one of the biggest I've ever seen, yet there wasn't even enough space for a single shopping cart to turn around. I was told it had been like this crowded for over a month. At the pork counter, people fought like looters ("as if the meat were free," my sister Maple complained). However the fact is that nearly all prices have increased because of the high demand. It was near the meat counter that a staff member came to stop me from taking photos. "We are a business, not a journalism unit. No photos," he insisted. Afterward my brothers-in-law said he probably thought we were from a competitor.

Supermarket: meat counter

After my sisters finally snatched their pork (to make dumplings for New Year eve), they went to the next counter to have it ground, a free service provided by the supermarket. However the staff working there simply ignored all such requests. Instead they were busy selling pre-packaged ground pork for 13 Yuan a pound, a 75% increase from the 8 yuan/pound of our pork. My sisters had a brief conference between themselves on whether to go for the expensive price and abandon their hard-earned unground pork, but they had little option.

There were about 40 check-out lines, each looked like it would take an hour or longer to reach the cashier. We diverted to look for the shortest line, another bit of hard work. Eventually Maple's husband found one at the farthest corner of the supermarket and called by cell phone for us to converge. "Line 15!" he ordered. It took a sweaty battle to push the packed shopping cart through layers and layers of human walls.

Supermarket: an exit

Presumably, it is premature to make a general conclusion from this thrilling shopping scene. For one thing, the biggest holiday season of the year may have colored things. At the dinner table with my family members, who came from different cold-weathered cities to gather in this warm island, Maple's home, for the Chinese New Year, I asked about housing markets and the situation of migrant workers. The consensus was that the export business (in which one of the men works) has been hit hardest (surprise!), especially the light manufacturers such as textile factories in Canton and other coastal cities. Those producers had been the biggest employers of migrant workers. The estimated contribution from the export business to China's GDP is about 20%. There had been about 200 million migrant workers across the country, and among those about 20-30% lost their jobs due to the financial crisis. That 40-60 million people was a big number to cause a stir, and the government worried intensely about the holiday season's "harmony and stability."

That was when I asked if they had heard Charter 08. The answer was uniformly "No," though they knew the name of one of the signatories Liu Xiaobo. My brief description of Charter 08 did not generate much interest. "Useless," one of the men said, in an immediate reaction. Then he thought about it a bit more and said tolerantly that such things were not that bad to have. "The democracy activists and foreign media complaints about our government help to improve policies sometimes. Just one of those natural noises that should be allowed to exist. But if they attack too much they will get attacked back by Chinese people." His assessment was that right now the government enjoys the highest trust ever in history, and others agreed with him.

Their guess on why the government has blocked the spread of information on Charter 08 was it 's timing, with the clouds of financial crisis hanging above the migrant workers and the Spring Festival approaching. At a time like this the government is most nervous about potential chaos and tends to overreact.

My relatives mentioned that local governments such as those in Sichuan, one of the provinces that supplies a large number of migrant workers from its countryside, were ordered to arrange local jobs for the newly unemployed who returned home from coastal cities. There is no concept of unemployment insurance for those people, but apparently actively putting them to work is part of the mandate. Many did get new jobs, I heard, though no one could say to what extent the problem had been resolved. I may find out more about this when I go back to Sichuan after the Spring Festival.

About the housing markets: I heard Canton was again hit the hardest, with an estimated 40% plunge in real estate prices. People say this was mainly the result of bankrupt factories selling no-longer-wanted properties cheaply. Chengdu's real-estate market, where my younger sister bought a yet-to-build house last year, went down 10-20% in the last several months, but it has stabilized since the government began to encourage domestic consumption. Chongqing's housing market has actually been going up, because its prices were low to start with. These two cities are among my planned next visits.

The Chinese stock market has crashed badly, but none of my family members were affected because they are not players. Lucky for them.

Terracotta Typewriter

One more thing before I go --

Matthew Lubin, a writer and editor living in China, is starting a new literary magazine, Terracotta Typewriter. The magazine welcomes submissions from Western expats in China and Chinese expats in other parts of the world, or anyone who has something to say about China. You can write about any subject, as long as there is a connection to China. I think this is a great idea. Please take a look and send your creative work to Terracotta Typewriter!

See you in February.

Packing for China and Celebrating Inauguration

In between packing, I watched the inauguration on TV. It was the first time I had paid attention to such an event during my 20 years of living in America. The huge crowd, reportedly two million people standing in the cold on Capital Hill, inopportunely reminded me of the millions of Red Guards received by Chairman Mao, on Tiananmen Square during the Cultural Revolution, in the summer of 1966. The sheer size of the assemblage alone can carry anyone away. I'm glad I was sitting in the comfort of my home, distant and calm.

There was a small glitch during Obama's oath; he suddenly paused, apparently perplexed by something, and John Roberts hurriedly repeated his words with an apologetic smile. It passed quickly, but not before I (and apparently someone else as well) took notice. Given Obama's excellent performance during the campaign, I didn't believe he would be too nervous to not do the oath well. "I think his mind is on his speech," Bob said. Not until much later was the incident finally explained here.

And Obama really is a great speaker. Now lets wait and see if he is also a great doer. As his 10-year-old daughter Malia advised him, “Better be good.” I really loved those cute kids of his.

Though an extremely exciting day in DC, on Wall Street there was another miserable slide. The market went down big. Perhaps all the optimistic people went to witness the inauguration, leaving only pessimistic ones to trade in the stock market.

But I will be away from all this for a while. I'm heading to China, for the Spring Festival and for more research on my next book. I'll be gone for one month or so. Not sure how easy it will be to post on my blog – last time when I was in China the entire Blogger.com was blocked. I might send pieces to someone else to post for me. Stay tuned.

Happy "Bull" Year everyone! See you later.

(image from www.nipic.com)

Obama and Chinese Emperors

Oddly, since winning his election, Obama has twice reminded me of certain Chinese emperors. The first time was when his cabinet picks were termed by some journalists as a "team of rivals." The second was when I heard that the scale of his inauguration would be unprecedented, and that he was going to ride an inaugural train from Philadelphia to DC with stops along the route to receive people's cheers.

In the first case Obama is comparable to Li Shimin, arguably the greatest emperor of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). No, Obama did not kill two brothers in his fight for the crown, like Li Shimin did, and his campaign language was admirably more civil (and smarter) than his opponents. What reminded me of Li Shimin was Obama's big heart in choosing Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State.

After Li Shimin killed his oldest brother, Jiancheng, the crown prince who had tried to poison him, Jiancheng's key advisor, Wei Zheng, was arrested and sent to be beheaded. Legend has it that, knowing how talented Wei was, Li Shimin tried to convince Wei to work for him in exchange for a pardon. Wei refused, citing the Chinese moral "a loyal minister does not serve two Majesties." Li Shimin was touched by his loyalty and, at the last minute, just before the executioner's blade fell on Wei's stubborn neck, pardoned him anyway.

Then Wei was touched and convinced he should serve Li, reasoning that, only a great emperor could forgive an obstinate rival advisor like himself. Wei became a key minister in Li Shimin's imperial court after that.

The Tang regime under Li Shimin has been hailed by historians as one of the most prosperous periods in Chinese history, and stories of Wei Zheng bluntly admonishing the emperor to abandon bad policies (and behaviors), at times again risking beheading, are very popular. There is a consensus among historians attributing the regime's success to Li's daring in using talented rivals such as Wei, and to the guidance of ministers like Wei who dared to speak up and give wise, at times harsh, policy advice.

As an emperor, Li Shimin had taken over a messy job from his predecessors. Before his crowning, a border war with the ancient Korea had been going on for years, and there were also large scale peasant uprisings. The country's economy was in a grim situation, and people's cries of discontent filled the street. Li Shimin followed Wei Zheng's advice and adopted the policy of "desisting from military activities and encouraging culture, education and the arts of peace." A series of admirable policies soon improved the economy and also served to pacify border disputes.

The situation Obama faces now is not unlike Li Shimin's, with the remaining mess of wars to clean up, and a huge grim financial crisis to deal with. It is a difficult time that calls to use the able, whether they are friends or rivals. We have already witnessed Obama's wisdom in using capable past rivals to fill key positions; we now also hear that Hillary Clinton, as reported in The Economist, "has forgone any ambitions for higher office, preferring to make her tenure as American's chief diplomat the pinnacle of her career." So that's good – it makes me feel Clinton is not the opposite character to Wei Zheng I'd thought she was. Still I'm not convinced she is nearly as wise; given her "cold war" residual way of thinking, she might not be the best chief diplomat to implement Obama's "soft power" ideas. This part, we'll have to wait and see.

By now you can see that I have been praising Obama by comparing him with Tang emperor Li Shimin favorably. My second comparison, however, is more ambivalent.

Now the scale of Obama's inauguration and the heavily publicized train trip remind me of Emperor Qianlong in Qing Dynasty (1611-1911). "Qianlong goes south of the Yangtze River" is one of the most popular emperor stories and movie/novel topics. During his sixty years of rule, Qianlong went six times on "southern inspection" tours by boat, each tour on a larger scale than the previous one. The trips "exhausted the people and drained the treasury," their costs far exceeding any benefits.

(image from www.997788.com)

An earlier Qing emperor and Qianlong's grandfather, Kangxi, also made six "southern inspection" tours from Beijing. However Kangxi's trips were much simpler and less expensive. In contrast, Qianlong had very luxurious trips. Between Beijing and Hangzhou, thirty lavish "travel palaces" were built for him. His entourage included over a thousand sailboats. For his own use alone, five exquisite "dragon boats" were carefully manufactured. Everywhere he arrived, local officials and people gathered in huge crowds and shouted "Long live!" "Long live!" like rockfalls and tsunami.

CNN reported today that "In Baltimore alone, some 40,000 people stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the cold to greet Obama as he stopped on his way to his Tuesday inauguration. His welcome was raucous and animated, as the sea of people cheered, waved and took pictures." His response was calm, but I don't know if he felt like an emperor.

Kangxi and Qianlong were hailed as the two greatest emperors of the Qing Dynasty. The difference is, the most prosperous time began with the thrifty Kangxi and ended with the luxuriating Qianlong.

In terms of his inaugural extravagance, Obama is more like Qianlong. I asked my American husband if such extravagance is really necessary, and Bob said "it is the tradition" that each US President has a bigger inauguration than his predecessor. However, are we forgetting the state of the economy? Even Chairman Mao stopped eating meat when he heard about the famine in the countryside, which he believed was caused by bad weather instead of his own bad policies.

One thing I know: the bigger the inauguration is, the bigger the expectations (and thus the potential disappointments) people might have. Such big promise might not be to a president's advantage.

Well, I have made the odd comparisons that are bound to meet some protest. If Obama is like Li Shimin, we might be heading for prosperity again. If Obama is like Qianlong, his term will be the end of the good times. If he's in between, well, then we might see a situation in between. Of course the comparison goes beyond Obama. Many of our political leaders are so caught up in their own parades they could easily miss what is happening to people.

This said, I must say I'm very much encouraged by the report that "Before getting on board the train in Philadelphia, the president-elect implored Americans to commit to a new declaration of independence -- rejecting ideology and bigotry -- as he acknowledged the nation faces severe challenges." (my bolding) .

The Sky Is Not All Grey

Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China
by James Fallows

A review by Xujun Eberlein

1.
A proprietary approach I use to help assess English journalism books about China is to measure how much they tell me, a Chinese, what I don't already know. This, needless to say, lacks objectivity, and it can easily undervalue an otherwise excellent book. As an example, Out of Mao's Shadow by Philip Pan consists essentially of stories I had already read from the Chinese media or the internet. Not new to me, but that doesn’t mean the book is not worth reading for Western readers (in fact, it is).

On the other hand, this approach raises a high bar for journalists writing about China. To find stories not broadly known even to the Chinese requires not only extraordinarily acute ears, but also the admirably open mind of a deep thinker. Thus, I can narrow down my reading list to a few outstanding books. James Fallows' new book, Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China, is one of them. Many things he writes about are new to me, but that's the least of the delightful surprises. Continue reading on The China Beat >>

The Mosuo Walking Marriage on Lugu Lake (2)

by Maple Xu

(Maple's travel log continues from The Mosuo Walking Marriage on Lugu Lake (1)...)

On the long distance bus to Lugu Lake, two men sitting behind me had been chatting about "walking marriage." One man asked, "Mosuo men can 'walking-marry' freely, but they don't get to live with their children, wouldn't they be too lonely in old age? Who take care of them when they get old?" The other replied: "The abundant romance of youth, is worth the loneliness of old age. Everything has a price after all."

The two men did not know all the facts. Though Mosuo men live with their mother, and are not responsible for rearing their own children, they have the duty to help bring up the children of their sisters. In a Mosuo family, uncles are the decision makers on external affairs. They have an adage, "The biggest flying thing in the sky is eagle, the biggest walking thing on the earth is uncle." When they get old, their nieces and nephews attend upon them until their death.

Lugu Lake

A friend once told me, his Mosuo friends couldn't understand why the Han people have terms like "lonely old widows" and "five-guaranteed households" (五保户"). They don't understand why Han families are full of domestic fights, even violence and family wars. Those are things they just can't imagine. The Mosuo people living along the Lugu Lake are proud of the auspicious and peaceful ambience in their family life; in this respect they think they are superior to any other race.

*

One morning I was photographing a sunrise at the lakeside, and ran into a bunch of tourists waiting for a bus to return to Lijiang. A fifty-ish northern woman was talking volubly. She said, "Yesterday I asked the young man rowing the boat, 'You sing and laugh all day, do you ever have an unhappy moment?' But he asked me back, 'What is "unhappy"?' I wasn't convinced and again asked a girl who was washing her hands in the lake, 'Are there times that you feel unhappy?' She replied, 'Unhappy? Why unhappy?'"

At this point the northern woman got very excited and raised her voice, "Look! They don't even know what unhappy means! They are always happy!" Her companion replied that nobody can always be happy. The woman argued, "They don't suffer extramarital affairs or property disputes like in our Han families, why shouldn't they be always happy?"

Her friend teased, "Sounds like heaven, then why don't you stay here?" The woman said seriously, "I really wish I were a Mosuo woman!"

That was the moment I understood why my friend has lived here contentedly for ten years.

*

Last night at my friend's teahouse, we warmed ourselves by a fire and chatted. The landlord came by, and I tagged him. "I have many questions for you," I said. He sat down by me and said good-naturedly, "I'm happy to answer any question."

My friend's tea house on Lugu Lake

- First question: How come you and your wife live together?

- That's because we have three brothers but no sister, and our mother died early. A family must have a woman as the household head; I'm the oldest brother, so my wife has to live here and take the responsibility of managing the family. Actually, "walking marriage" isn't the only form of marriage. There is another form: man and woman live together with either one's family. The principle is that the relationship is based on love, to marry by will, to leave freely. If the relationship is terminated, then each side returns to his or her mother's family. Unlike me, my two brothers are in walking marriages, and my youngest brother is the village head.

- How did you decide on your wife?

- Our love is no different from you Han people. When I was young I dated three or four girls. Only after I had children with my wife did the relationship become stable.

- How do you end a relationship?

- When the woman stops opening her door, or the man no longer comes in the night, the old relationship is ended and both sides are free to start a new one. It's all natural.

- How does a woman's family view her man in a walking marriage?

- The man comes to the woman after dusk, and leaves before dawn. At first he would avoid running into her family members. In the morning if you see sheepish men passing by, chances are they are returning home after a night of the walking marriage. The lovers will stay shy, even pretending not know each other on the street, before they have children and their relationship goes public. If you observe closely you will see that, in the night, no matter who knocks on a door, no one inside will open it for you, unless you shout out that you are an outside visitor, then an elder or a child will come.

- Since a man does not have the legal obligation to raise his children, wouldn't that give men too much freedom and women too much work?

- Mosuo women are the happiest members in their family. The female house head has all the power, including control of property and money. Her siblings take care of the children together with her. Even in sexual relationships women take initiative. On the surface, men have all the freedom, but once he is rejected by his girlfriend, there's nothing left for him except a "spring dream." There is a Musuo adage, "Men's heaven, women's world."

- Could a man be walking-marrying to three women simultaneously?

- (Laugh) Where does his time or energy come from? When I was dating my wife, we had a 20-kilometer distance between us. It was only because we were young and energetic that we lasted. Although there is no rule on how many walking marriages one can have, you must terminate one relationship before starting another. Custom and tradition do not allow two relationships simultaneously; an unfaithful man is going to be despised. This is no different from you Han people.

- Would you enter another walking marriage?

- Certainly not. What age does what things. Most Mosuo people settle down after they have children. Furthermore, I'm very satisfied with my present life. My wife is good in every respect!

What he said made my thoughts fly to the Mosuo life style. All relationships are based on love. A big matriarchal family with tens of members is filled with joy and peace. Children are loved by multiple mothers. Elders calmly enjoy their final years with a loving family. In another thousand years, will we Han evolve to such an ideal state? But the vanguard Mosuo people already began the heavenly life 1500 years ago. #

(All photos by Maple Xu, ©Copyright 2008, Maple Xu)

China: Revolution or Reform? - A Summary of the "Charter 08" Dispute

New America Media, News Analysis, Xujun Eberlein, Published: Jan 07, 2009

(Note: the following text is my original draft, slightly longer than the NAM published version, with more complete links. Posted with NAM's permission. - Xujun)

During the final month of 2008, there was a heated debate among Chinese bloggers and commentators outside of China. The cause of it was "Charter 08," a democracy manifesto originally signed by over 300 Chinese citizens and published on the internet on December 10.

Times Online said Sunday that since then it "has been signed by more than 7,000 prominent citizens," but the number is difficult to verify. Two versions of the English translation for this manifesto can be found online, one at nybooks.com (by professor Perry Link), and one at Human Rights in China. While the former is widely linked and reprinted, the latter is a more accurate translation of the Chinese original. A detailed recounting of the birth of the Charter can be found on Fool’s Mountain.

By now the hubbub around "Charter 08" has largely died down, however the issues raised in the dispute continue to beckon for attention. There are unanswered questions as to why the Chinese government and the US media reacted the way they did, and whether the Charter has achieved its intended effect. As such it might be a good time to look back at the reactions the event has provoked, and make a few observations.

The official reaction from the Chinese government was both harsh and overdone. Liu Xiaobo, a primary drafter and signatory of "Charter 08," was arrested in Beijing two days before its publication. No explanation was given by the government. Twenty three days later, Liu was allowed to see his wife for New Year’s Day, but police still did not say why he was detained. Many other signatories were summoned and threatened, according to a post on Fool’s Mountain.

Any discussion of "Charter 08" likely has been banned in China; a Google search using the Chinese keywords turned up no mainland links on the subject.

A well-known dissident writer and journalist in Beijing, Dai Qing, also one of the signatories, said in an interview with Voice of Germany that "the [Chinese] government's reaction is too irrational, a total surprise to us."

On December 11, The US State Department's spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement that "We are particularly concerned about the well being of Liu Xiaobo, a prominent dissident writer, who remains in the custody of authorities."

According to Time Magazine, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told journalists on Dec. 16 that the U.S. position was another example of the unwelcome "interference of other nations in China's internal affairs."

Curiously, major US media outlets, CNN including, have been unusually quiet, despite the fact that the Charter is hailed as a major breakthrough by its supporters. Time Magazine and the Christian Science Monitor were pretty much alone in reporting on the Charter, with the latter commenting in a somewhat upbeat tone that "the Communist Party's hesitancy to crack down harshly on the scholars, lawyers, engineers, and others who issued the so-called 'Charter 08' document sends a subtle signal of hope."

More curious, and changing, reactions, came from Falun Gong, or FLG, a religious and political group that has been banned in mainland China. A search on FLG's Chinese language website Sunday came up with 100 links cheering "Charter 08," with titles such as "Reform Is Dead, Long Live Revolution!" However a click on any of those links gave only a blank page. Remnants of posts here and there indicate that FLG originally found "Charter 08" an exciting sign of the coming revolution and supported it whole-heartedly. Later, though, they made a 180 degree turn after the FLG leader deemed the manifesto not revolutionary enough, but rather a "ghost shadow" of the communist party.

Understandably however, revolution is favored by few Chinese, whether supporters or contenders of Charter 08. In contrast, many pointed out the legitimacy of Charter 08 in accordance with China's constitution.

Among the well-known signatories, Dai Qing calls the Charter a mild appeal. "If the government can't even accept such a mild appeal, I think the government is too frail," she says in the aforementioned interview. A scholar of Western philosophy, Xu Youyu says the Charter is totally constitutional, and his signing was a citizen's "rational and responsible decision." Bao Tong, a high-ranking official imprisoned after the June 4th movement in 1989 and still under house-arrest, angrily inquired of the government "What crime has Charter 08 committed?"

On nearly every website I visited that discusses Charter 08, in English or Chinese, there are not only voices advocating and opposing, but also supporters raising constructive criticism and contenders issuing moral support (plus the usual white noises and meaningless vituperates). The issues that are at the center of argument include – by no means an exhaustive list – whether the ideas are too "Western," or the proposed democracy model suits China; whether the proposal for a "Federal Republic of China" makes sense, or it has gone too far; whether the wording in the Foreword is needlessly inflammatory; whether Taiwan's democracy is a good model for the mainland; whether the aim of the Charter is to agitate the government or have a practical impact.

There are also a few one-of-a-kind remarks worth noting:

-- A blogger on dwnews.com is unhappy that the signatories include a well-known advocate for Tibet independence. He says he is against the Charter because it supports the Dalai Lama's "republic of greater Tibet". (On a related note, On December 12, the Daila Lama issued a statement saying “I am greatly encouraged by the launching of Charter 08.")

- Taiwan News published an editorial on Dec. 25 to praise Charter 08 but also criticize it as "unable to transcend 'great Chinese nationalism' as its implied commitment to eventual unification seems to share the CCP`s rejection of the free right of choice of Taiwan`s 23 million people, not to mention the people of Tibet or even Hong Kong and Macau."

- A religious blogger claims that she does not support the Charter because it doesn't address how to reform the Chinese people's faith.

As a Chinese adage goes, "What bewilders the players, spectators see clearly." A European expat blog in China, Chinayouren blog, which was the first to note the inconsistency between the Chinese original of Charter 08 and Prof. Link's translation of it, published a post on December 26 titled "Charter 08 and political change in China." It assesses positively the Charter's significance and provides several constructive criticisms. The author points that, "A document of this kind should try to seek the maximum consensus in mainland China. This is, in my understanding, the main weakness of the Charter 08."

The post ends with:"… Most importantly, from a theoretical point of view, figures like Mao or KMT should have no place in a Charter that wants to unite the Chinese. The recent History of China is an amazing tale of cruel failures and unequaled successes. Events that need to be openly discussed at some point, certainly, and compensation given to the victims. But direct accusations are altogether at a different level and unworthy of sharing the same document with the generous ideals stated in the Charter. These things do not only weaken the Charter 08 from a practical point of view, but also reduce its soundness as a Universal Statement."

If nothing else, "Charter 08" has stimulated a great discussion on China's future direction. #

Chinese Humor Posters

A friend sent me the following photos. If you can read Chinese, you're guaranteed to get a few chuckles out of them. The English translation on some of the posters is incorrect, so I provided my own. I'm afraid though, the humor may have been lost in translation.

"Everyone pretends to be proper; I'll have to pretend to be improper"

"Dare to love, dare to elope"


"Carrying talent is like being pregnant, only time can tell"

"Oh love is like a ghost - more people believe in it than encounter it."

Today!: China's Premiere Underground Magazine Turns 30

(image from http://book.ifeng.com)

The January 2009 issue of Hong Kong's Mingpao Monthly published an article titled "For Today's Yesterday and Tomorrow" by poet Liao Weitang. It reports on the celebration activities for the 30^th anniversary of Today magazine in Hong Kong during December 11-13. The celebration was initiated by Bei Dao (北岛), and many Chinese poets participated, including my old friends Zhai Yongming (翟永明), Ouyang Jianghe (欧阳江河), Meng Lang (孟浪), and a new friend Xi Chuan (西川, whom I met in Beijing in summer 2007).

American readers probably know nothing about Today, the once extremely influential "underground" literary magazine in China. Nobel nominee Bei Dao was one of the founding editors of the magazine, and his poetry first became known to us through Today. When I was a university student in China, in the early 1980s Bei Dao's sorrowful lines such as "Privilege is the passport of the privileged / low is the epitaph of the lowly" were recited on every campus I visited. Whoever got hold an issue of the mimeographed Today magazine, it was quickly grabbed by another student. The magazine passed from hand to hand until it literally melted to pieces. Oh, what an unforgettable time it was! I can't think of it without being sentimental. We gathered in undersized dormitory rooms in this and that university, in small groups, arguing about China's future and read aloud poems from Today. As the first batch of students admitted to universities after the Cultural Revolution (the so called "year 77," though our first class began in spring 1978), we felt responsible for changing China. Each issue of Today induced more passion in us, even after the magazine was banned (around the time the "Democracy Wall" in Beijing was demolished in late 1980, I think).

I know of no other literary magazines, official or otherwise, that had the influence on young people Today did in the early 1980s. (Around that time there were many others, underground magazines thrived like bamboo shoots after a spring rain.) Later Today resumed its publication overseas, however it has lost its clout. On the other hand, it is the only unofficial magazine from the post-CR time that still exists today.

Bei Dao says in commemorating Today magazine's 30^th anniversary that (in translation):

I want to emphasize that, a nation needs a spiritual sky, especially at a time of materialism. Without imagination and passion, no matter how wealthy a nation is, it is still poor; no matter how powerful a nation is, it is still weak. In this sense, Today returns to its starting point: it revolts not only against autocracy, but also against abuse of language, mediocrity in aesthetics, and wretchedness in life.

Sadly, the impact of poetry seems to be getting weaker and weaker as society grows its material wealth. Perhaps poetry's revitalization requires mankind's purposeful effort to restrain both material wealth and the development of luxury technologies.

Happy New Year from My Snowy Backyard

Who, or What, Is Doing the Fake Links?

Last night when I logged in The China Beat to read their interview with James Fallows (a great interview by the way), I was quite surprised to see several of my blog posts appeared linked to that one. The problem is, I wasn't the one who created the links, and even if I wanted to, I would have to time travel, as those posts of mine occurred earlier than the one they were linked to. In short, those links apparently were done by some automatic program on the internet – quite annoyingly.

The China Beat is a great blog and I have no problem promoting it. However those links made it look like I was promoting my own blog. I've always detested excessive self-promotion, and I'm very bothered by those automatic links.

Similar things also happened on my blog. Recently I often see the so-called "links to" appearing under a post of mine, but a check on those links showes they are not actually linked to my post. That is, they are fake. In most cases I tolerate the fake links, but I have also deleted a few that are obviously irrelevant to my blog content.

So the question is, who, or what, is creating the fake links? One suspect is Sphere, which I first noticed a while ago on CNN. Often one can see under a CNN report the "From the blogs" feature, marked "powered by Sphere."

Sphere offers a so-called "contextual widget" free to bloggers; at first I was intrigued and even considered installing it. However after I saw the irrelevant fake links appearing on my blog and fake links using my blog's name appearing excessively on other sites, I became sick of it.

So, my message to Sphere or any similar program: it is obnoxious and violation of my right of authorship when you insert fake links that are not actually linked from my blog posts. Please stop doing this!

China's Gas Tax: Progress in Spite of the Press

I'm excited to see that ten professors from Tsinghua and Beijing University wrote to Premier Wen Jiabao proposing a further increase in the gas tax. This is on top of the recent announcement that, starting in 2009, China's gas tax will be raised from 0.2 yuan (3 cents) to one yuan (15 cents) per liter, a 5-fold increase already.

The new proposal from the professors argues that (in translation):

One yuan fuel tax can't at all send the resource shortage signal to society. This figure not only is lower than the EU countries (about 6 yuan per liter) but also our surrounding countries and areas. It is only close to the United States. We can't imitate the American life style. We don't have sufficient resources. As such we can't follow the US fuel tax example either.

We think the fuel tax of 3-4 yuan per liter conforms to China's situation. Right now is the best time to introduce this tax quota. Currently the international oil price has fallen hard. If we keep our retail gas price intact, while adjusting the price of processed oil close to international standards, we will be able to provide room for the 3-4 yuan per liter tax. A one-Yuan tax wastes such a room; only 3-4 Yuan can fully take advantage of this rare opportunity. The opportune time, once passed, will not return.

This is a bold proposal, which would increase China's gas tax 15-20 fold instead of 5 fold. However, it sounds to me like the right move. We have seen in the US that, with gas at $4 a gallon, people really started to change their behavior. There were fewer miles driven, and a noticeable movement away from gas guzzlers. SUVs became hard to sell. A substantial tax increase in China would certainly change people's behavior there as well. The current tendency to drive more and bigger cars more miles will certainly lead to an American-style consumption disaster.

Strangely, since Xinhua's report on China's gas tax increase on December 20, I've not seen any major US paper mention it. This is certainly not because the gas tax issue is not a major concern. NY Times, for example, had an excellent editorial a few days ago, on December 26, which argues eloquently the need to increase "The Gas Tax." However the editorial completely shies away from the fact that the Chinese are one step ahead of Americans in this. It is an uncomfortable truth after all.

Another possible reason that major US media outlets avoided reporting China's gas tax increase might be due to their politically oriented attitude in journalism.

A great op-ed columnist of the NY Times and a two-times Pulitzer winner, Thomas Friedman, has also been strongly advocating a gas tax hike. However, I was quite surprised, and all the more disappointed given my admiration of his writing, when I read one of his op-eds in August titled "Postcard from South China." That op-ed begins with a great point that Macau's gambling business largely cancels the power of Zhuhai's wind turbines, a poignant observation on human conduct. (IMO, both Las Vegas and Macau are contributing to mankind's self-destruction.) However Friedman ends his piece vacuously with a mocking postcard and, because of ideological differences, dismisses all attempts in China to develop a cleaner economy. A demonstration that even a great journalist can sometimes be fooled by his own strong attitude.

"The problem for the ruling Communist Party is this: China can’t have a greener society without empowering citizens to become watchdogs and allowing them to sue local businesses and governments that pollute," Friedman writes. While this sounds profound and indisputable, what is his point, really? Does it mean that the Chinese should stop their efforts to develop a greener society and instead engage in a revolution to overturn the government first? Does it mean that the right political solution is the absolute premise of any economic solution? If so, since America has the absolutely best political system in the world, shouldn't its economic and environmental problems be solved already? Unfortunately, that is not the case.

I can see why Friedman hates China's political system. I don't particularly like it either. However, the attitude that always ties non-political issues with politics does not help. America is the world’s largest energy consumer, China is second. China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas producer, America is second. Any effort in either country toward a greener economy should be encouraged rather than ridiculed. The two countries should learn from each other, and be willing to follow suit when a good idea emerges in either one.

I should mention that, a non-political American publication, Morningstar, did report on China's increased gas tax. "We believe the reform is a major step toward reducing the distortions in fuel pricing and making sure consumption taxes are proportional to actual usage," stock strategist Dan Su comments. Nice to see someone is paying attention, though his name does sound Chinese.

The Most Accomplished American President

By Weigeng Shi, guest blogger


It is Bush 43. His biggest accomplishments include (this is by no means a complete list):

• Liberating American privacy;
• Making possible the election of the first black president in US history (even if that hadn't happened it would have been the first woman president);
• Bringing Florida, where the 2000 election was decided, five of its biggest hurricanes;
• Reinvigorating the word "depression," which had fallen out of use since WWII;
• Starting a war from scratch (he is the first modern American president to do so);
• Getting bipartisan support to nationalize banks (he is also single-handedly doing the same for the auto industry);
• Growing executive power enough to prevent serious legislative checks;
• Eradicating crime in New Orleans, even though temporarily;
• Successfully dismantling the Republican Party;
• Bestowing the control of both the House and the Senate to the Democrats.

"Thirteen Books that Changed America"

Monday morning, my friend Jessica alerted me that Jay Parini was going to be on WBUR's "On Point with Tom Ashbrook." She told me this because she knew how much I admire Jay and his writing.

I first met Jay when I attended Bread Loaf Writers Conference under a fiction scholarship in the summer of 2005. Jay was the instructor for my group of twelve writers. We each brought a short story manuscript to workshop. The morning before we workshopped my story, Jay told me he dreamed about Sail, the 10-year-old protagonist in my story. "Sail is such an unforgettable character," Jay said to me. These were the warmest words I had ever heard about my writing, especially surprising as they came from such a prominent author, at a low point of my writing career. I had submitted that story to many magazines, only to receive form rejections. Toward the end of the conference, Jay surprised me even more by recommending the story for the Best New American Voices anthology. Though in the end it did not get in, Jay had saved my writing career. That story, now titled "Feathers," is included in Apologies Forthcoming.

After the conference, I occasionally emailed Jay. I did so a bit gingerly, worrying about disturbing him. But he always replied. He has no airs. This is a rare quality in a great writer, in a time when it's common for established authors to be dismissive of newcomers. Jay stands out not only for his masterful writing, deep insights and great humor, but also his generosity and big heart. He has won forever my respect and fondness.

Listening to Jay's talk on WBUR Monday, I was very pleased to find that his new book, Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America, is just what I need. I've always wanted to learn about American history more systematically and thoroughly; what a fun way to do it via discussion of influential books! Jay's book comes just in time for me to get myself a very nice Christmas gift.

Here are the thirteen books Jay is talking about (h/t www.onpointradio.org):

- Of Plymouth Plantation (1620-47), by William Bradford
- The Federalist Papers (1787-88)
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1793)
- The Journals of Lewis and Clark (1803-06)
- Walden (1854), by Henry David Thoreau
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), by Mark Twain
- The Souls of Black Folk (1903), by W.E.B. DuBois
- The Promised Land (1912), by Mary Antin
- How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), by Dale Carnegie
- The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946), by Benjamin Spock
- On the Road (1957), by Jack Kerouac
- The Feminine Mystique (1963), by Betty Friedan

Interestingly, and I'm quite proud to say, during my childhood and youth I've read at least three of the thirteen in Chinese translation (in comparison, my American husband had only read two: "Walden and Huck Finn," he said), which are:

- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin
- Huckleberry Finn

As I recall, those were popular books in China at the time. Ironically though, Uncle Tom’s Cabin had served as evidence to support China's anti-America propaganda in the 1960s and 70s. And all of us school kids had bought into the notion that the capitalist America had nothing good but was full of racial discrimination and labor exploitation. This is not much different from the way average Americans view China today: that the communist country has nothing good but is full of human rights suppression and government corruption. I'm sure Americans got that simplified notion from reading some well-written books, just like we Chinese did. Once again, reading diversely is crucial for real understanding.

On the radio, in answering an audience question, Jay said another book, Whitman's Grass, would have been the 14th in his list but was reluctantly left out because not many people read it upon its original publication. Interestingly though, the Chinese translation of Grass was a most popular poetry book among Chinese writers and poets when I lived in China.

Now I wonder, if I come up with a list of 13 most influential contemporary Chinese books, how many would have been introduced to America? I wouldn't even ask how many have been read by Americans.

Another thought: it would be an interesting research to find out which American books have been most influential in China. I can think of a few already. I would love to conduct this research if someone is willing to sponsor it.

"Reading is thinking, and writing is thinking," Jay said on the radio. That is exactly what I feel. Thank you, Jay, for saying this!

The holiday is upon us and let me stop here for now. Merry Christmas, everyone!

The Pandas Don't Care

CNN reported today that a pair of pandas arrived in Taiwan Tuesday. It is quite amusing this has finally happened. It made me recall fondly my sister Maple's photo of the pair, Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan (see below), taken in July 2006, when we visited the Wolong Panda Conservatory together. Maple titled the photo "爱要不要", which means "want me or not, who cares."

I thought the title caught the pandas' leisurely and carefree manner quite true-to-life. Apparently, Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan were unaware of their predicament. They didn't seem to care that a great responsibility had historically fallen on their cute shoulders. In ancient times, Chinese emperors used beautiful girls, often princesses, as diplomatic tools, marrying them against their will to tribes in remote places, in exchange for border peace. I can't quite decide if it should be considered progress in civilization that pandas have now replaced girls.

"爱要不要" photograph by Maple Xu, © 2006-2008

At the time of our visit at Wolong in 2006, Taiwan refused to accept the two pandas, while Beijing waited for a change of heart. As such Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan became sort of orphans, because they were the only pandas not put up for "adoption." Apparently, "adoption" was a fund raising scheme: an organization or individual pays a large amount of money annually to become an adopter of a chosen panda. Each adopter's name appears in a plaque hanging on the wall of the panda's house, and the adopter is given privileges such as free visits, even hugging the panda. (Otherwise, a visitor has to pay 500 RMB, or about $65, for a hug. My daughter considered buying a hug during our visit, but gave up the idea for the fear of infecting the cute animal with an American cold.) A panda can have multiple adopters, but the number is limited to prevent excessive disturbance. When we visited, we saw lots of Japanese names on plaques. I asked a staff member why, and she said for some reason Japanese are really fond of pandas, even more so than Chinese.

The Wolong Panda Conservatory is in a peaceful suburb of Chengdu. If you've read Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian's novel Soul Mountain, you might remember the book spends many pages on the place. "Wolong" means "crouching dragon."

Pardon My Feet

by Larry Mongoss, guest blogger

I can remember back when everyone was talking about how Reagan won the cold war, and that Bush 43 was going to defeat the “axis of evil” the same way. I was scared out of my wits. We had a dimwit President who wanted to revise history then embrace that revision and launch Armageddon. Or so I thought. As bad as the Iraq war has been, it did not measure up to my fears. I am almost finished shaking now and finally, when the other shoe drops, it is happily aimed at Bush.

We keep hearing stories of protesters celebrating the action of the stocking footed journalist. Indeed, I have heard no one strongly upset about what happened; perhaps they have stopped shaking as well. Even the secret service seems to be downplaying it as an unimportant incident. I guess that might be because they are embarrassed.

Beside the fun though, what is most interesting about the shoes? It is not the demonstration that there are angry people. We kind of knew that; Bush probably even had a clue. No, what is interesting is how well the President handled it. There was no fear in his face, just a slight glint of amusement. And he followed up almost immediately with a joke.

This little incident has probably more to boost Bush’s favorability rating than anything else that has happened this year. He came across as cool, collected, and fully aware that some people do not like him. He did not get angry or do anything that would give the remotest hint that he wanted revenge.

So, as the Iraqi’s struggle to come up with an appropriate punishment, they should consider the following. While throwing a shoe may be big insult in the Middle East. Standing up to an insult is something that big people do. The journalist’s action, rather than doing anything to harm Bush, has shown him in that light.

While it may be a crime to attack a foreign dignitary in Iraq, it is not a crime to insult one, especially when the insult is so gracefully deflected. The best punishment for this man may simply be the knowledge that he was foiled in his intent. Worse, he helped the one he wanted to hurt.

The dilemma facing the Iraqi government need not be a dilemma at all. This is, after all, th