Oceans and Mulberry Groves: A Hebei Middle School Girl's Tips for Dealing with Tragedy and Time

“We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone.”

Henry IV Part Two

If you've been paying anything more than scant attention to China the past six months, you're probably aware that China's had a full plate of metaphorical problems of late (accompanied by metaphorical solutions to those problems): the proverbial dams bursting and the Han Brinker-type plugging of dykes; a pre-emptive cutting of (jasmine?) trees to save poorly defined forests; and plenty of (international and domestic) chickens coming home to roost. Of course, the particular resonance of any and all of the above idioms will depend on at least two factors: one, your own political ideology and, two, your understanding of what's actually happening “in China,” something I'd like to suggest that no one, Chinese or non-, can ever wholly grasp.

Of course, that's debatable, and I'm happy to debate it with anyone. Here's some provocative opening generalizations.

1. Size Problems. China's simply too big and too complex.
2. Media Problems. The media is either incapable of, or prevented from, publishing reports of consequence. Most reports of consequence aren't published, but supplied on a need-to-know basis.
3. Bureaucracy Problems. People of need-to-know status are almost completely surrounded by yes-men and women who obfuscate information out of self-interest and/or a desire to please. People below the need-to-know-folks at the provincial, county, and village levels have no interest in letting anyone know what's actually happening on the ground.
4. Sociological Problems. China's empirical tradition is not strong, and is complicated by the fact that most political/economic elites have little interest in real interaction with the vast majority of Chinese who dress/eat/live worse than they do. In short, well-entrenched stereotypes and prejudices regarding different regions and classes hinder true understanding.
5. Interest Problems. And the kicker, most people just don't have time, energy or interest enough to care.

Of course, none of these stops anyone, including the author, from putting forward what may be wildly irresponsible claims, most centered on what “the left behind” population in China wants or needs. We're elitist populists, speaking for a population few of us know. This is dumb.  Most of the time, these opinions are based on careful reading of the media reports we deem to be the truth; “inside information” from people “in the know” who really aren't (again, also, our friends); and regional and class biases that make my Wisconsinite distaste for most (all?) things Illinois seem quite agapic.

What Egypt Means for China: Just More Boring Scientific Proof

(Photo from Evan Osnos)

I'm sitting in my apartment, inspired by what's just happened in Egypt, and wondering if the millions of Chinese living around me feel the same.

In one of my last posts (quite a while ago, I know), I asked: 

“What is still unresolved [in China]? [I]t's the question of whether or not the concept of “scientific development” extends to political reform, rule of law, and universal values.  Besides the overabundance of Greek-inspired architecture in China, another thing one notices if one spends a lot of time here is the (surprising?) belief, held by more people than you would think, that democratic progress is inexorable.  In many ways it makes sense.  The story of post-Renaissance Europe is a messy, violent, bloody period, but progress in science, culture, art and economics were intricately tied to political reform.  Enlightenment-era romantics certainly believed this was the case.  More than that, China's neighbors -- South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan -- are all excellent examples of how well democracy took in Confucianist countries when it was more or less imposed upon them (by foreign and domestic agents).  Perhaps their confidence that democracy is just another offshoot of their economic and social progress of the past thirty years is not too far-fetched.”

Chinese Political Reform: A Question of Hu, Wen and How

Last week, I argued at considerable length (sorry) about my belief that China's fundamental underpinnings have not really changed that much, but rather, that it has adopted a Confucianist type of reverence for the “old white men” of Western science and economics.  Reading the Western experience as a road map, China's been able to develop rapidly, in part because the majority of its population has not adopted the pesky democratic habit of publicly questioning the wisdom of each particular action.  I believe this makes sense, it's much harder to blaze a trail than to follow it, and requires very different institutional capacities -- China's long tradition just happens to be one of the best at following the precepts of its venerated classes.

The problem for China, though, is just how far to go on this second journey West?  Wen Jiabao and a group of party liberals have recently made their case for universal values, made manifest in political reform and increases in the rights of speech and the press.  These leaders seem to hold to the notion, (surprisingly?) prevalent in China, that democracy is inevitable -- a striking imbibing of 19th century Europe's belief in the inevitability of “progress."  The star of last week's blog, Mao Yushi, has more to say about the necessity of political reform, and does so again in a forthright, hilarious way here: “nobody trusts the government.”

So, one group of China's patriarchs has spoken, but many have been wondering the following: where's Hu Jintao in all of this? I think to many of us in the West -- perhaps because we were reared on bianary conceptions of good and evil in popular movies and literature -- assume that for Wen's “Luke Skywalker” there must be a “Darth Vader,” and Hu seems the most likely choice (or rather, the default choice, because really, how many other members of the Politburo can you name?). Of course, Darth Vader wasn't a simple character by any means, and neither is Hu.

Your Old Men Will Dream Dreams: Wen Jia Bao's “Political Reform” and "Universal Values," Party Elders Calling for Free Speech, and the Addition of Old White Men into the Chinese Canon

There's an old, apparantely mis-attributed, quote by Winston Churchill that reads, “Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.”  Whoever said it, I'd like to suggest that this is a kind of Western common knowledge.  We expect our children to feel, question, and explore – to make something new.  We expect that, through the process of maturation, accumulation, and procreation, those older than us will naturally become more conservative, as they have very important things – their children, choices, and dignity, among others – to protect.

Of course there are myriad exceptions to this rule, but I'd like to argue that this “common knowledge” is what makes dramatic actions, admissions, and changes of course by our elders so moving, and so persuasive.   Our fathers say things like this.  After twenty years of fly fishing with me and my two brothers, and after we'd just finished yet another day of scaring trout upstream with nothing to show for it, none of us expected my dad to sit down, sigh, and then laugh hysterically, saying, “We really don't know what we're doing, do we?”  We didn't, but never thought that he'd say that.  When the formally pro-death penalty Supreme Court Justice Blackmun stated, after twenty years of trying to formulate a just death penalty process, “I will no longer tinker with the machinery of death,” it caused even the most pro-death penalty law students to pause, and even the least wonder-prone to wonder.

I believe that in China, this “common knowledge” is exactly the opposite.  Tradition, pragmatism, and political necessity require that the young use their brains conservatively, nodding their way up professional and social ladders that don't want their opinions but only their obedience.  Only once one is at the top of the ladder can one be explicit about what her heart is telling her.   This, in some ways, is the essence of a Confucian, conservative society: learn everything that's been learned, experience everything that can be experienced, have children, wallow in life's complexity and contradictions, learn about hypocrisy, submit your will to the mass of greatness that has come before you, and if you still have something to say at 70, maybe we'll listen to you.

So while the common knowledge may be different here in the Middle Kingdom, the power of such admissions of elders may be even greater because their audience is better prepared to accept them (or, at least, less prepared to disagree).  Our elders here have said quite a lot of late.

Liu Xiaobo, Weibo, Beethoven, the Nobel Prize and Whether to Feel Happy or Sad

有一位姓刘的中国人，长期致力于中国的非暴力人权事业，今天获了一个奖


“There's a Chinese man named Liu, who has for a long time devoted himself to the non-violent human rights movement. Today he received an award.” -- Posted today on Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-type site.


I cannot read this phrase without emotion, and keep returning to it like one might return again and again to the notice of a death of a loved one.  The only difference being, perhaps, that I'm uncertain of whether I'm happy or sad.

It reminds me of when I was younger and would play Beethoven's simple piece for children, Lustig, Traurig (Cheerful, Sorrowful), a two-page song that had two themes -- one major, one minor, one happy, and one sad -- both beautiful.  Beethoven had you play Lustig first, then Traurig, and then finish with Lustig, intimating, at least to me, the romantic view that we can (and maybe, should) pass through difficulty to find an even greater, enlightened happiness.  And it's true, Lustig has another layer of meaning once you've played Traurig. I was less convinced though, in high school, and would keep playing through the coda, from Lustig to Traurig, over and over, in a kind of musical Russian roulette, daring myself to stop after Traurig, to ignore Beethoven's notation, but perhaps also his admonition, that finding joy amidst sadness is something we must do to stay sane.  It's why Dostoyevsky could write entire novels that depressed you, but would finish with two pages of exuberant (desperate) hope.  I still don't know if I'm convinced, but tonight I'd certainly like to be.


Lustig

The man in the above quote, Liu, is of course, Liu Xiaobo, who was just announced to be this year's recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.  He is most likely not aware of this fact, however, as he has taken up an eleven-year residency in a Liaoning prison, sent there for subversive activities.

Something Forgotten in the State of Denmark? Crowding out the Mermaid at the Shanghai Expo

I went to the World Expo yesterday, to add my scalp to that of the 70-odd million others Shanghai plans to have notched to its belt when this whole thing is over.  Despite the fact that I have had many opportunities to go in the past and that I only live ten miles away, this was my first visit.   It had taken all of five months for me to overcome my cynicism; my childish urge to dislike anything too many other people like; and my fear of four, five, and even eight-hour waits to see single exhibits.  But China doesn't need you to approve or disapprove of anything it does, and it is this Taoist (?) desirelessness that assures that it wins most battles of wills.

So I went, holding firm to my mantra that it's better to have had mixed emotions and lost than to have never had your emotions mixed at all.

And mixed they were.  There's plenty of great things to see, and eat.  It was a lot of fun introducing the Chinese I was with to authentic Belgian fries, Thai food, and Turkish ice cream.  The architecture of many of the exhibits is really outstanding, breathtaking even.  However, the insides were often a different story. Or, rather, many different stories.

China vs. Japan, Out of the Mouths of Babes

A few days ago I was walking along the road, weaving in and out of what must have been a kindergarten class coming back from a field trip. Chinese kids are cute. Not just in the way that all little versions of people-not-your-own are cute, but they've also got another quality that makes them even more endearing: Unlike children in (most parts of) the world, Chinese go to school to learn not just how to read and write but also how to speak.

Mandarin, while it's spoken by an increasing number of Chinese, is often not the language spoken in the home—especially here in Shanghai. This means that elementary school language classes are packed with pronunciation and oral Chinese classes. You even have to pass pronunciation tests to graduate from high school and college, which is why foreign teachers here are constantly asked if their English pronunciation is the “standard” pronunciation (and obviously, unless you're from Wisconsin, it's not). So, if you listen carefully to a young Chinese speaking Mandarin, they speak with a broken, self-consciously exaggerated enunciation, as if whatever they were saying was still part of the rote exercises they did in class, and also as if they're taking the first greedy bite of a candied apple. It's cute, trust me.

On the day in question, I happened to be eavesdropping on this phalanx of hyper-enunciators. From behind me I heard, “If I were a Chinese official...” followed by a dramatic pause. I knew this pause. This was a kid who wasn't talking to anyone, but rather, to some imaginary everyone. He was a transcendentalist, who had made up his mind about something and was going to proclaim it to the world, regardless of who was listening or how out of context it was.

A Festival for Longing

Yesterday was Mid-Autumn Festival, the Chinese celebration of the fall equinox. Because it's one of those holidays related to the seasons and the harvest, it's very old, and potentially quite meaningful. I say potentially, because, in many ways, Mid-Autumn Festival could have all of the blissful simplicity of Thanksgiving, but the traditional holiday killers of modernization and commercialization haven't left Mid-Autumn Festival unscathed.

For starters, like Thanksgiving, Mid-Autumn festival is about reunions: all you really have to do for Mid-Autumn festival is get together with your family for a great meal, perhaps light some lanterns, and recite one of the seemingly hundreds of Chinese poems to the moon. The first problem is that a lot of people don't go home (talked about here), for a variety of reasons, big and small: My girlfriend's sister-in-law missed our meal because she was attending a class on how to dress fashionably. (Presumably for occasions of more import to her than 3000-year-old holidays.) The rest of us watched the Chinese version of Dick Clark's New Year's extravaganza. Which is fine, but for the fact that every Chinese holiday ends up nearly the same way, with a variety show that stultifies most meaningful familial conversation. (Come to think of it, it's just like Thanksgiving.)

The Answer to Societal Corruption? A Liberal Arts Education: The Chinese Stanley Fish Speaks

Today, browsing Professor Liu Cheng's blog, I came across a fascinating interview with the dean of Fudan University, the top university in Shanghai and one of the top universities in China.  Of course, while I'm always thrilled to read every dean interview I can get my hands on, it was the title of this interview that particularly intrigued me: "The Collapse of the Chinese University Consciousness."

It seems fair to ask what consciousness existed that could have collapsed, as it was only thirty years ago that many of China's universities re-opened after being shut down for years during the Cultural Revolution.  Well, Dean Yang answers that:

“If there's corruption, bribery, and sex-power transactions even within the universities, then is there any point in talking about social trust at large? Universities are getting carried away with following the trends, and have become employment services. ...."

What'll it be World...Cup or Expo?

If you haven't heard, the World Expo's taking place right now in Shanghai, the same time that South Africa's hosting the World Cup.  Assuming you had to pick one to visit, to which would you go?

I'm a fan of an educated decision, so let's look at the stats:

Stats de Excess

• Shanghai's spent forty-five billion US dollars on the event, more than was spent on the Beijing Olympics.
• South Africa's spent over five billion US dollars, nearly 2% of its GDP.

Stats de Exasperation

• If you head to Shanghai, you'll have to deal with long lines, over-booked hotels, and Gumby's googly-eyed Chinese cousin , Haibao, plastered all over the city.
• South Africa promises long lines, over-booked hotels, and a cacophony of 127-decibel traditional horns that they will guilt you into tolerating.

Factor de la Determination

So, as far as excess and exasperation indicators go, they're running neck and neck. What to do? Please allow me to offer the determining factor: their official songs.