花崗齋雜記 Jottings from the Granite Studio provides commentary, analysis, and opinion on China and Chinese history. It is written by Jeremiah Jenne, a PhD Candidate at a large public research university in Northern California. Currently, Jeremiah is in Beijing teaching history, doing archival research, and working on his dissertation.
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Apparently Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi didn’t take it too well when Secretary Hillary Clinton last week essentially called “bullshit” on some of China’s more creative and ambitious claims to the South China Sea. According to US and Asian officials present at the meeting:
“Foreign Minister Yang reacted by leaving the meeting for an hour. When he returned, he gave a rambling 30-minute response in which he accused the United States of plotting against China on this issue, seemed to poke fun at Vietnam’s socialist credentials and apparently threatened Singapore”
Safe to say, it probably wasn’t Minister Yang’s best day on the job…
 Map of Zheng He's voyages Perhaps no Chinese historical figure causes more eye-rolling among historians than the super-naval-bad-ass-7-foot-tall-could-have-discovered-America-but-didn’t-even-if-I’m-a-eunuch-Columbus-still-couldn’t-carry-my-jock admiral Zheng He.* He’s someone that students often ask about, and I’ve written a few posts over the years on the different Zheng He controversies which bubble to the surface of the popular press from time to time.
Like a lot of other historical figures, Zheng He’s story and image are often appropriated as stand-ins for the controversy du jour, whether it’s China in Africa, or China’s rise as a regional naval power capable of projecting force into the waters of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean…coincidentally, Zheng He’s old sailing ground. This past week, a team of Chinese archaeologists have been searching off the coast of Kenya for a shipwreck that some believe was a part of Zheng He’s Ming-era armada.
But what was Zheng He’s mission?
In China, Zheng He is usually depicted as an explorer and diplomat, as in this People’s Daily editorial from 2005 marking the 600th anniversary of Zheng He’s departure:
Zheng He led the ancient world history and the friendly exchanges among different nations, setting a shining example of the history of the exchanges of human civilization.
More recently, Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo told a meeting of ASEAN leaders that Zheng He was a symbol of China’s openness and benevolent intentions, even as China expands its economic and military reach overseas.
“I want to assure you that China is not to be feared.
“The voyages of Zheng He, he said, had brought “porcelain, silk and tea rather than bloodshed, plundering or colonialism” – a reference to violent coercive measures used by Western colonisers.
“To this day, Zheng He is still remembered as an envoy of friendship and peace,” Mr Dai said.
In the same article, however, Geoff Wade, an Australian historian and one of the leading experts on Zheng He and his voyages, offered a different interpretation of Zheng He’s expeditions.
Prof Geoff Wade, a historian who has translated Ming documents relating to Zheng’s voyages, disputes the portrayal of a benign adventurer.
He says the historical records show the treasure fleets carried sophisticated weaponry and participated in at least three major military actions; in Java, Sumatra and Sri Lanka.
“Because there is virtually no critical analysis of these texts even now – history writing is still in the hands of the state – it’s very difficult for Chinese people to conceive of the state as being dangerous, expansionist, or offensive in any way to its neighbours.
“Chinese nationalism is fed on ignorance of its past relations. The way Zheng He is being represented is part of this.”
To say that Zheng He was an “envoy of friendship and peace” is a bit disingenuous. To paraphrase a bit from one of my all-time favorite movies, Snatch: You don’t send an armada that large and that well armed unless you’re trying to say something. The Ming court was trying to prove a very specific point.
On the other hand, these expeditions were of a very different nature than the armed traders/raiders who set sail from Western European ports a few decades later. Zheng He had no interest in colonizing Africa or Southeast Asia, just as long as the people he met could agree that the Ming emperor was the baddest Mofo in the world, he was happy. And the tribute they gave was a nice touch too…
I suspect though, given the ongoing brouhaha of China’s rise and its regional intentions, this isn’t the last time that old Zheng He’s legacy will be hotly contested.
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*I have no idea where the whole seven feet tall thing started. Of the many stories I’ve read about Zheng He, the fact that he could have played power forward for the Celtics is not one of them.
I know that when writing reviews it’s important to focus on the book and less so on the author. I’m breaking this rule. Jefferey Wasserstrom has to be on of the most tireless writers/scholars on China today. Seriously, I have no idea when he sleeps. He teaches history at UC Irvine, supervises a very dynamic group of graduate students, is the author of numerous articles, a blogger for Huffington Post, the driving force behind The China Beat, and in the last three years has published three books: the wry and observant China’s Brave New World – And Other Tales for Global Times (2007), the ambitious scholarly work Global Shanghai, 1850-2010 (2009), and now a new book with a perhaps even more ambitious premise, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (2010). Just this past week, he’s finished up a month long series of talks at M on the Bund in Shanghai.
The man is a force of nature.
Moreover, Professor Wasserstrom is a model for bridging the divide between good academic scholarship and the needs of a general readership, a divide that seems all the more wide when it comes to writing about China. The term “public intellectual” is a fraught term, but I think it’s fair to say that it is a mantle which Jeffrey Wasserstrom has taken on for himself and it is one which he wears well.
Now, what about the book?
Well, it’s short. 135 pages hardly seems sufficient for such an ambitious title, but that’s part of the conceit. Professor Wasserstrom isn’t writing an encyclopedia so much as a highly-condensed briefing book which would be valuable reading for any journalist, traveler, or student about to step off the plane at Beijing’s Terminal Three.
As Professor Wasserstrom writes in his “Author’s Note:”
“The goal of this book is to help normalize discussions of China, a country that is too often seen as — to use the cliché — inscrutable. My aim is to clear up sources of Western misunderstanding about China, provide insights into issues of significance relating to it, and above all, reveal that, though it can be dauntingly complex, we can arrive at a basic understanding of its nature.” (Wasserstrom, 2010, p. xv)
The book is organized as an FAQ with chapters proceeding, more or less chronologically. The book moves from “What were Confucius’ core ideas,” (education, ritual, and hierarchical yet reciprocal relationships) to “Why did the Qing Dynasty Fall,” (external imperialism and internal structural weaknesses) “What happened after Sun Yat-sen became president,” (Yuan Shikai nudged him to one side); to questions of a more recent vintage, “How do ordinary Chinese feel about Mao,” (the gamut from nostalgia to fury, admiration to disdain) “What is the real story of the Tiananmen Uprising,” (not only by students and not only about democracy) and “How do U.S. and Chinese views on Tibet differ?” (Americans think Tibetans are cuddly and oppressed, Chinese think that Tibet is part of China), etc.
Specialists in different fields will no doubt wish for more details to fill in key gaps. In my own area, I could lament that there was obviously a lot more going on in China in the 19th century than the Opium War, the Taiping Rebellion, and the Boxer Uprising. (The self-strengthening movement gets a couple of sentences.) Which I suppose is being a bit greedy, since all the other dynasties from the Xia through to the Ming are covered in the span of about four pages, one of which is devoted to Zheng He.
But despite questions of what should have been included, the basic information in the book is quite sound and the concision with which Professor Wasserstrom presents these complex topics will be appreciated by people who are more interested in jumping right in and understanding China’s past and present than wading through a blow-by-blow of the different dynasties. The book also comes with an excellent and up to date recommended readings list, so readers interested in learning more about, for example, “How did China’s rulers avoid falling prey to the ‘Leninist extinction?’ are directed to David Shambaugh’s China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation.
I’m teaching a class this summer (and next year) on Understanding China. It’s an introductory class for our Contemporary Issues Program here at the Beijing Center. I’ve been using Wasserstrom’s book (along with a similar book by Rana Mitter, Modern China: A Very Short Introduction) as a way of setting up the basic questions and giving the students some background on various issues before we delve into more detailed readings. It’s been a successful strategy so far, especially because so many of the questions which make up China in the 21st Century are the same ones my students ask each semester, and also, I suspect, ones Professor Wasserstrom has heard in his own classes.
If I were heading over to China for the first time and wanted a readable and information-packed read for the flight over, this is the book I would take with me on the plane. Highly Recommended.
On last week’s Sinica podcast, host Kaiser Kuo along with Jeremy Goldkorn and Will Moss held a semi-serious wake for the English-language China blogosphere:
The China blog is officially dead, moribund, cadaverous, extinct, buried, bereft of life, defunct and totally-and-utterly-inert. It could even be said to be resting in peace, save for the fact that Will Moss drove a silver stake through its heart before recording this podcast. “We single-handedly made the China blog obsolete,” he joked in our studio after further sawing off its head. But he has a point. Because who reads blogs these days?
Well…true enough. I remarked a few weeks ago at a small gathering of…China bloggers that these days “blogs were essentially repositories for content disbursed and shared via RSS readers and Twitter.” I know that I do much of my blog-reading on Google Reader and I’ll admit that I get irked if I have to click too far to read. If your RSS feed provides the full article, I’m just that much more likely to read your stuff.
While Twitter and the like haven’t completely killed the blog, they have done a number on the state of blog commentary. As many (if not both) of my readers know, I’ve gone back and forth over the last year or so on allowing comments, finally deciding to keep the comments section active. Part of my original notion was that I felt I was getting the most substantive commentary and feedback on Facebook or Twitter. Long time commentators, who also double as friends, began leaving comments on my Facebook page rather than the comments section of the blog. At first, it was kind of nice because we could discuss the posts without some moronic fenqing barging in an blathering about the Western media after seeing the post title had the word “Tibet” in it. But then I wondered…
As the Sinica podcast noted and even, to an extent, celebrated, the English-language China blogosphere (especially the Beijing chapter) has always been incestuous . It was quite a cozy little circle jerk whereby we all linked to/re-posted bits of information that were then picked up by the foreign correspondents in Beijing who wrote articles that we then linked to and re-posted…a cycle of dispatches and blog posts which tended to present China through the haze of Zhongnanhai cigarettes and the dyspeptic cynicism of jaded Lao Wai. This trend seemed to accelerate when we all moved to Twitter.
One of the greatest intellectual traps of the Internet age is that of confirmation bias, a danger all the more real with the closing of discussions into balkanized self-selected blobs of like-minded “friends” and “followers.” I realized that I was missing a lot of ideas and opinions by not having comments, so I reopened them and I’m glad I did. Yes, I still get the freakshow nationalist trolls, but I also get called out by people who actually read the posts and that only makes for a better discussion (and, selfishly, helps make me a better writer).
I also think that in the last year or so there has been a…renaissance, rebirth, restoration in the English-language China blogosphere, and here I mean restoration in its classical sense, that of a 中興, or a moment in which the decline of an age or a dynasty is arrested, usually though the actions of a vigorous leader or group of officials, and there is a final bright spot of dynastic fortunes before the inevitable slide into history’s dustbin. The most well-known example is perhaps the Tongzhi Restoration of the 1860s. I do think that blogs, as daily diaries of thoughts (and, yes, jottings) are not the future but that doesn’t mean that a few bright spots aren’t going to keep the blogosphere alive for the time being. I shall enjoy it while it lasts.
Four years ago next week, I started this blog. (Real die-hards may also remember an earlier, more inchoate version which ran in 2005.) The first post was a short one entitled, appropriately enough, “Why Write?”
There is something about a blog that is inherently narcissistic. Here are my thoughts! Look at me!Look at me! The elitist in me dismisses blogs as mass chatterings. Even considering my own chatterings, I wonder if they are worth the tiny bits of bytes required to publish these musings to the world. (Or at least to the half-dozen people who actually might stumble across this site.)
So it is my plan to keep the personal musings to a minimum and concentrate more on the professional. There will be thoughts, random and otherwise, on China and things Chinese and other ideas, perhaps more random, on affairs in other parts of the world. That said, be prepared for the occasional stream of consciousness meanderings on those things that manage to hold my attention for more than a passing moment. Occasional profanity-laden tirades may also appear as decided by the whims of Boston’s assorted sports franchises or the fortunes, good or bad, of Arsenal.
The decision to write a blog as an aspiring historian was a little out there. When I first started there were few academic history blogs, and I suspect that my blogging was viewed by colleagues (and perhaps my professors) as at best a waste of time, and at worst a potentially career-crippling body of half-formed thoughts and opinions available to any prospective employer in a 0.4-second Google search. After four years though I’d say it’s been worth it.
I think of all the friends and contacts around the world I have made through the blog, how when I landed back in Beijing in 2006 it seemed I had a ready-made social circle, people who are still my best China friends to this day. Yeah, maybe the Beijing blogging community is not as tight as it was back “in the good old days,” but I like to think that one reason I have such a fascinating group of acquaintances — including a trio of curmudgeons named Will, Jeremy, and Kaiser — is because of blogging.
The blog is dead, long live the blog. For now.
We’re away this weekend (not in Chengde!) and so I’m turning the blog over to a guest host…kind of like the old Mike Douglas show but not nearly as hip. This is a guest post from my former student Matthew “Maxiu” Bruzzese, who I will always remember fondly for his short film starring a Zombie Mao leading the “跳舞跳舞大革命”. Enjoy and I’ll be back next week.
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This past weekend, I took a four hour train ride to Chengde* with 3 friends for what we expected would be a relaxing weekend of hiking and sightseeing. First, a word on Chengde: it’s really not a bad city. Really. I’ve visited some truly depressing cities in my time here, and I wouldn’t count Chengde among them by a long shot. The hiking that we got to do was pleasant, and the Puning temple features a 42-armed, 73-foot statue of the Guanyin Bodhisattva which puts the Lama Temple to shame. By all accounts, the Summer Palace and recreation of Lhasa’s Potala Temple are also great. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to see the latter two, for despite its attractive scenery and interesting history, we soon discovered that Chengde doesn’t exactly take kindly to outsiders.
Our trouble began following an excellent lunch,**which we were dumb enough to take as an auspicious sign for the rest of our weekend. It was about 1 pm, and we decided to find a cheap motel to stay for the night before heading out to sightsee. There were about a dozen small, ratty motels within sight, so we walked into the closest one. I had barely walked through the front door before the owner started shooing me away.
“Do you have room?” I asked.
“No, we don’t rent to waiguoren.”***
No worries. I’d learned long ago to let apparent prejudices like that slide. The real problem began when the next six or so places reacted in exactly the same way, making it very clear we were not wanted. When asked where we could stay, they all replied, “Chengde Dasha.” This was apparently the only place in town foreigners were allowed to stay, for reasons which were hard to discern.****
It went on like this for about an hour. I’d walk into a place, ignore the owner’s violent shooing gestures, and ask about rooms. The owner would spit something about “No waiguoren,” and I’d move on.
We tried another place. We found the boss passed out in a drunken stupor on the couch. I woke him up and asked if he had room.
“Sure, we’ve got room. How many you need?”
“Two, please. How much? He quoted us a reasonable price. “Can we take a look?
He grabbed the keys and staggered up the stairs with a guardedly optimistic me in tow, opening the door to a sparse but apparently roach-free room. This will work, I said. He lurched back down the stairs to his desk and started to scrawl out the paperwork. I allowed myself to breathe easy, in the belief that our hotel woes were finally coming to an end.
“Okay, I just need to see your national ID cards,” the boss slurred.
“Our what?”
“Your citizenship cards. Like this one.” He helpfully pulled out his national ID card.
“We don’t have citizenship cards. Just passports.”
“Oh, you’re not Chinese citizens? Go to Dasha. We don’t rent to waiguoren,” he said, passing back out on the couch before I could even attempt to offer a proper bribe. Not one person in our party looked even vaguely Asian.
We finally made out way to Dasha. We walked in to an airy, marble floored lobby with chandeliers, a considerable step up from the places we’d been inquiring at. The receptionist greeted us in English.
“How much for a room?” I asked.
“550 yuan for a double,” she said.
“And that’s your cheapest?”
“Yes.”
“Are there any more affordable options in this town?”
“You can try that way…” she replied. “They may not be able to rent to waiguoren, though.” Just fork over the cash now, buddy, her voice implied.
“Well, we can’t afford 550, so we’re going to try somewhere else. Why does your city have this policy?” I asked.
“It’s like this. Chengde doesn’t see many foreign tourists, so we don’t have many hotels that are suitable for waiguoren.” I didn’t bother asking how one would define a hotel considered “suitable” for the 5 billion or so of us who are not Chinese, or pointing out that this didn’t really answer my question at all.
At that point we said screw it, and decided to get in some touristy stuff. We made our way to the Puning Temple, which as I mentioned above was lovely, save for the 80 kuai entrance fee. “Seriously, who do these people think they are?” said my travel companion. This summed up our thoughts on Chengde rather succinctly, I dare say. Nevertheless, we enjoyed some sightseeing, followed by some hiking near Sledgehammer rock (another 50 kuai).
Following our sightseeing respite, we tried a few more hotels. All failures. The sun was now setting, and we were becoming desperate. I walked into a chengguan station to see if the local Paul Blart brigade could take enough time out of their busy schedule of ripping down used air-conditioner advertisements and accidentally beating pedicab drivers to death to shed some light on the situation. Unsurprisingly, they could not.
“Stay at Dasha,” said the slovenly dressed chengguan at the front desk. “The facilities are very suitable for waiguoren.”
“We can’t afford Dasha, we’re poor students,” I replied.
“Hmmm…Just walk that way. Yes, there are many hotels that way,” he said, pointing off to some vague spot in the distance, and clearly just wanting me to go away so he could get back to doing whatever it is chengguan do when they’re not harassing street peddlers. I persisted, asking why exactly we weren’t allowed to stay at the vast majority of hotels in the city, even some which were quite nice.
“Those places aren’t safe…” pseudo-cop replied. There was an awkward pause. ”You’re waiguoren!” he reminded us helpfully.
We tried yet another hole in the wall place. Rejected.
“Where in this city can we stay?” I asked.
“Dasha,” the surly old owner replied.
“We can’t afford Dasha!”
I was met with a blank stare. A crowd of smiling bystanders had formed around us. “Look at the waiguoren speaking Chinese!” giggled one.
I began to get angry. “Don’t you realize how harmful this policy is to your local economy? Your city is nice, but do you think anyone is going to want to come here when you have this policy? What’s wrong with your local government? How stupid can they be?!” I looked around to see the previously smiling crowd had gone silent, and were now apprehensively gazing at their feet, looking all the world like they would rather be anywhere but on that street corner with this recklessly loose-lipped foreigner. One by one, they began to shuffle away uncomfortably. The motel owner’s face changed from passive to worried, her eyes darting up and down the street. It occurred to me I may have crossed the line, and, silly as this may sound, for the first time ever in my year and a half here did I become acutely aware that I was living in an authoritarian state. Of course, I had always been aware of it from an academic standpoint, and even from a practical standpoint, with such small bits of day-to-day mafan like having to register at the police station. But never before, save perhaps for my time in Xinjiang, had I seen the effects of an authoritarian government on the psyches of its people so clearly as on the face of that motel owner. What was the point in complaining? I realized. What’s this woman going to do, write her city councilman? This is the way it is, and there’s nothing she can do about it.
I then realized that the local government officials who formed this policy weren’t idiots at all. Their goal was never to encourage healthy long-term economic growth through tourism in the first place; it was to enrich themselves as much as possible, small-time motel owners like the woman in front of me be damned. This was politics of the bottom line, and nothing more. What incentive do they have to spread prosperity, so long as the owners of Dasha continue cutting them a paycheck to maintain the status quo? They had nothing to fear; at the end of the day, their bowls of shark’s fin soup would continue to runneth over, and all would be right with the world.
Dejected, we resolved to leave this city that would not have us that very night and never return. One problem: there were no train tickets. Or bus tickets. We couldn’t stay, but Chengde wouldn’t seem to let us leave, either. The only way out was with the illegal cab drivers, who seemed to be able to smell our despair like a shark does blood. They struck.
“80 per person!” said one.
“100 per person, but I’ll get you there in two hours!” said another. “It’s only more expensive because you’ll have to pay for my speeding ticket,” he added. Jesus, will we have to bail you out of jail too? I thought.*****
We ended up negotiating the price down to 50 per person (and then had to specify we meant RMB, not USD, thank you kindly). A random man came up to us and began talking in broken English about how these are bad men, and its dangerous to go with them. Two of our travel companions had only been in China for a short time, and this only further frayed their nerves. I regaled them with the story of the driver we’d hired off the street in Xinjiang who’d waited until we were well into the desert to inform us he’d just gotten out of jail for murder. This didn’t help things. I couldn’t help but reflect on the irony of the chengguan earlier today telling me that we couldn’t stay in any of the hotels in town because they weren’t safe, when this only lead to us being put in a considerably sketchier position. Luckily, the illegal cab ride turned out to be the most mundane part of our trip, and we pulled in to Beijing around 1 am. To paraphrase Arrested Development patriarch George Bluth, “And that’s why…ya don’t go to Chengde.”
Matt Bruzzese is a translator/token white guy for a Chinese computer company and wannabe freelance writer who has published three blogs at various points in his life, each of which have exactly one entry.
*Not to be confused with Chengdu; one is known for its pandas and unfortunate fault line location, the other for its Qing-era Summer Palace and a comically phallic rock formation. We went to the latter.
** Seriously, if you ever happen to find yourself in Chengde, first of all, sorry, but secondly, go to the Dongpo Restaurant outside the train station. It’s phenomenal.
*** Foreigners.
****We got conflicting reports on the actual reason, everything from, “we don’t have the proper license,” to “we’re not sure how to fill out the paperwork.”
***** We rejected this guy on the grounds that we would rather get there two hours later, but alive. This fact seemed to be lost on him, as he continued to make the “Me: fast! Them: slow!” pitch from the sidelines.
 We're at the Great Wall this weekend...not for the first time to be sure. Here's a photo of me and "The Mighty Ho" hiking the wall between Jinshanling and Simatai in the summer of 2002. (If you blow up the picture you'll see the TMH is keeping hydrated with a lukewarm can of Yanjing.)
With the 90th anniversary of the CCP just around the corner (okay, next July…), the Party brass and their academic ass sucks got together for a high-level history hootenanny. At the kick-off, China’s Heir-Apparent-But-We-Still-Can’t-Admit-That-Publicly-Yet Xi Jinping called for more education regarding the Party’s history.
Xi said the Party, having experienced the tests of revolution, development and reform, “successfully united and led the Chinese people to achieve miracles under an extremely complicated circumstance.”
“Over the past 89 years, the CPC contributed greatly to the nation’s independence, unification and the people’s well-being,” he said.
Well, I for one am relieved…because THAT’S a story that hasn’t been told enough times through China’s education, media, or entertainment industry.
I suspect though that Xi’s main message had less to do with trumpeting a triumphalist narrative of Party history than about his accompanying admonition against those who sought to “distort or smear the Party’s history.”
For the CCP-impaired or if you are otherwise unaccustomed to Zhongnanhai-speak, allow me to translate:
“People are starting to see through all of our bullshit, so we need to pump some ex-lax into the cattle feed and get the shovels ready.”
It’s not clear if Xi was responding to an actual threat within the Party ranks or if he was simply joining the latest in a long list of celebrity blowhards mangling history in an attempt to justify their own paleolithic notions of the world.* Hey, it’s a big club and the more I hear Xi Jinping talk, the more I realize that China’s about two years away from letting Shaanxi’s take on Glenn Beck run their country.
But the problem that Glenn Beck, or the Tea Party, or Sarah Palin, or Xi Jinping face when they try to pile on the bullshit is that that try as they might, history isn’t always as neat or tidy as they would like it to be and it has a nasty habit of being remembered in ways that can be…inconvenient to maintaining a message. Sometimes it’s those egghead academic snobs who point out that Alexander Hamilton was not in favor of weak central government, other times it’s annoying Western media types who have the audacity to question the CCP’s linkage of the Tibet issue with “Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves.”
But I can see why Xi might be worried. The Party’s control of history is a key element to the Party staying in power.
I just finished Richard McGregor’s The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers. Richard has a review on The Peking Duck and I agree with him that it’s a very good book, perhaps one of the best books produced for a general readership on Chinese politics in recent memory.
Recently there has been this…theme by Party hacks and the trolls who love them to downplay the idea of “Communism” as it relates to China or to lament that the Western media uses the term “Communist” to describe China’s government. Frankly, I think this is one of the stupidest bees in the fenqing bonnet, but then you don’t buy geniuses for RMB .50 a post.
Most people living or working in China are already well aware of the Party’s presence even as the CCP tries to play down its involvement in various enterprises and facets of day-to-day governing. But not everyone sees it or is willing to admit it. McGregor’s book should disabuse those inclined to believe or preach that the Communist Party has ceded its ground in pulling the levers of power at all levels of Chinese society and industry.
In fact, if one line could summarize this book, I’d give that one line to Kevin Spacey: “The greatest trick the Devil ever played, was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
For me, however, the best part of McGregor’s book was the chapter discussing the work of Yang Jisheng and his research on the Great Leap Forward. Yang’s book Tombstone is the definitive work on this troubling period of China’s recent past. And this really gets at the crux of Xi’s (and Glenn’s and Sarah’s) vexation. Once we start reexamining the past, those narratives which have justified various systems of power begin to unravel right before our eyes. I don’t know if WE are products of history, but how we see the world is certainly influenced by how we understand the past. When that past is thrown into doubt, when “book types” have the temerity to shake things up, it can be troubling.
And it’s particularly troubling if you’re a Party whose legitimacy is based on a carefully constructed historical narrative with more holes in it than a Lindsay Lohan alibi…no matter what flavor of tea you serve.
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For a particularly brilliant satirical take on the abuse of history, see this piece in the Onion.
While I am not a lawyer and have very little interest in business, I nevertheless love reading Dan Harris’ China Law Blog. Dan is a tireless blogger who always manages to make the most mundane issues of legal prudence and China business babble interesting to the non-business person. Maybe I just like to fantasize about the road not taken, if only I had decided to study law and not, say, 19th century China. Would spending my days reading legal briefs be more interesting than deciphering inter-office memos from the 1870s? Thinking a bit more (and knowing my temperament) probably not…but I bet I’d be closer to owning a nice boat.
Over the weekend, Dan blogged about this article (from China Market Access Blog) and how being a “good friend” to China is important for your business. The original post, by Jason Patent, is based on a talk by Dr. James Chan. The advice (via Chan via Patent and via Dan Harris) is this:
There is one thing many Westerners don’t think about when they walk into China. What the Chinese people really want from Westerners is “acceptance.” If you want to sell anything to the Chinese or, for that matter, build relationships with the Chinese, you must make your customers, contacts, associates, and partners feel you are not behaving that a “barbarian” or “marauder.” This is a key perception that is deeply-rooted in the Chinese psyche based on thousands of years of mistrust and distrust of the “outsiders.” There is one thing about “acceptance” that only you can do: you have to be able to accept the Chinese as they are. You want to do business with the Chinese; you don’t want to change the Chinese. The moment you make people feel that you’re going to China to make the Chinese look and act and adopt the same values that you fine “superior,” you’ll be perceived as the age-old “barbarian” and “marauder” whom they’ve learned and taught to distrust. You cannot make all 1.32 billion Chinese to trust you. But you can find and groom the one or two persons, the “insiders” who feel that you respect them and that you listen to their advice. If you can do this, you will make money for as long as you desire in China.
That’s good advice as far as it goes. As a salesman, it’s not exactly ripping a page out of Dale Carnegie to belittle or insult your potential customers. Walking into a room and telling people what they are doing wrong just isn’t good form — nobody likes that guy. Dan wisely notes:
This is something I am constantly preaching to clients and friends who go overseas, not just to China. We Americans are so used to being the “big dogs” that we generally do not care much about what others think of our country. I have learned through my own personal experiences that this is not true of most other countries.
Many Americans are unaware to the extent that “American Exceptionalism” informs our world view and how it insulates us from criticism while freeing our tongues to poke holes in other people’s culture and systems.
That said, I think the article also begs the question: What does it mean to be a “friend of China”?
In an essay about China’s relationship with overseas Chinese published this past weekend on the Wall Street Journal website, Australian historian and author Geremie Barmé discusses the equally persistent and insidious notion of “Chinese Exceptionalism”:
“You simply don’t understand China’s unique national conditions.” This common refrain is still chimed with certainty, and stridency, by average citizens, just as leaders of the party-state employ it when addressing foreigners. Unless you appreciate, and accept unequivocally, China’s “unique national conditions” you betray yourself as lacking insight into and empathy with the mysteries of that country’s tortured history and complex present realities.
This kind of talk allows for a kind of “Chinese exceptionalism.” People employ it whether they are rejecting well-intentioned observations on social mores or staring down the incredulity of outsiders confronted by egregious political and mercantile behavior. Not only can the criticism of outsiders be deflected in this fashion, even those with intimate ties to the country are frequently derided for failing to appreciate China’s conditions. Sometimes, individuals are taught a lesson about the country’s peculiarities by means of a long stint in jail.
Does being a “friend” to China mean always agreeing with the CCP interpretation of hot and complicated issues? I’ve had people in China within the first five minutes of meeting me start to grill me on my views of Taiwan and Tibet. It’s awkward to say the least, especially because the answers to those questions are complex…often more complex than my interrogator would care to admit. As I’ve written before, my response to “Tibet is a part of China and history says so,” is not “Tibet is not a part of China and history says so,” but “How do you know? What does research done from other perspectives suggest? Are there other ways of looking at this complex issue?” That’s not the right answer — especially if you want to be a “Friend of China” — because it’s not enough to “Not disagree,” what is sought is full and unconditional agreement of a particular world view. Americans might recognize this approach as the one our former president George “You’re either with us or against us” Bush II used when decidering foreign policy in the last decade.
Too often it seems that China doesn’t want friends, it wants sycophants.*
Moreover, how boring would it be to have friends who always agree with you? That’s one (of many) reasons I’m glad I married Yajun. Now, readers of this blog know that Yajun and I disagree on any number of issues relating to China. (My personal favorite was: “Yeah, we’ll talk about letting Tibet be independent right after the US gives Arizona back to the Mexicans.) I don’t always agree with her interpretation (and she even less with mine!) but I love the back and forth. I love reasoned debate. I’ve learned a lot by arguing with her over the dinner table, and these arguments have made me a better observer, writer, and teacher of China. (I’d like to think I’ve had a similar effect…you’d have to ask her. I think my sole influence so far has been to make her a Red Sox fan, and even that’s tenuous.)
Dan’s advice is sound. I do think that foreigners, especially Americans, are too often unaware of our ‘exceptionalist’ prejudices and we hurt our chances of doing business or developing lifelong friendships if we make politics our only topic of conversation or if we take a high-handed approach to our daily lives abroad. I’m not in China to piss people off, but neither did I check my moral or intellectual compass at the door to Beijing’s Terminal 3.
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*For a scathing review of this horrible book, see Yang Hengjun, “China’s Megatrends, and why I can’t hold my tongue.”
Author’s Note: I was watching West Wing last night…can anyone spot the three places I cribbed Aaron Sorkin?
 Sunset on the Hulunbeir Grasslands, Inner Mongolia.
Earlier this month a study was released on human evolution and the settlement of the Τibetan plateau:
Life at high altitudes forced ancient Τibetans to undergo the fastest evolution ever seen in humans, according to a new study.
The most rapid genetic change showed up in the EPAS1 gene, which helps regulate the body’s response to a low-oxygen environment. One version, called an allele, of the EPAS1 gene changed in frequency from showing up in 9 percent of the Han Chinese to 87 percent of Τibetans.
Such genetic changes suggest Τibetan ancestors split off from the Han Chinese population about 2,750 years ago, researchers say. But only those most evolutionarily suited for life at high altitudes survived when they moved to the Τibetan Plateau.
This has caused a bit of discomfort among those who advocate for Τibetan independence, not to mention Chinese politicians a little miffed to learn that Han might not be biologically suited to settling the high-altitude plateau but here’s the thing…
The study, while certainly interesting from a human evolutionary science perspective, is meaningless in terms of the continuing dispute over the political status of Τibet. There are many groups who are genetically similar but are considered different “ethnicities” or “nations.” (An argument, if there ever needed to be another one, that ethnicity is hardly a stable signifier.)
Following this line of reasoning, the Economist’s Banyan blog briefly sketches China’s hysterical historical reasoning when it comes to the sensitive issue of national boundaries and territorial integrity:
When it comes to the contentious issue of China’s political and territorial claims on Τibet, the basis of its current repression rests not on a sense of common heritage or shared ancestors but on a sense of legitimacy based on territories historically controlled by the Qing dynasty. They were Manchus who ruled China from the mid-17th to early 20th centuries and expanded the country’s borders. The irony is that while the communists cling to the frontiers of the Qing empire, their official history condemns the Qing as feudal, foreign, imperialist and usurping.
Holding to the Qing frontiers calls for some curious historical nomenclature. Because ethnic Mongolians live within China’s borders today, Genghis Khan is given star billing as a “national minority”—yet he never set foot in what was then China, and his offspring conquered the place. In north-east China lie the archaeological remains of the Koguryo kingdom of 37BC-668AD, the fount of Korean culture and myth. Chinese historians claim them as Chinese. Scholars and others thus project current political imperatives on to the past, and the notion of “minorities” affirms one big, longstanding Chinese family.
As you can see from the number of inserted links, these are topics we’ve covered in this space before, though I take issue with “Chinese historians claim…” as being a little misleading. Obviously there are a lot of historians from China, and not all take their marching orders from the Politburo. Nevertheless, the Chinese government — and its occasional academic surrogates — do frequently put forward historically suspect, if not downright weird, narratives which have little to do with historical research and everything to do with an ongoing project of CCP state building.
Where it get messy of course, is when historical precedent and political exigency collides. The DL is an old man and this incarnation will not be with us forever. While the DL was (and is) one religious leader among many for Tibetans, the elevation of the DL to temporal power during the Qing and the current DL’s visibility as a charismatic soft-power superstar means the selection process for the next incarnation is sure to be hotly contested. As Banyan notes:
In Τibet the narrative is enforced with a few blandishments and many shows of state power. Like the Qing dynasty, the communists invaded Τibet on a pretext. Like them, they control the Buddhist religion by claiming a right to select lamas.
Qing precedent, over two centuries old, matters. Emperor Qianlong sent a golden urn to Lhasa, in which the names of candidates proposed for reincarnation would be placed. Its later use was fitful. But in the mid-1990s the urn was brought into service again. With it the communists chose their own Ρanchen Lama, the Yellow Hat sect’s second-most-revered reincarnation. The [DL]’s earlier choice simply vanished. The boy, his family and the abbot who oversaw his selection have not been seen since. This month China’s atheist leaders, led by President Hu Jintao, used the occasion of the [DL]‘s 75th birthday to say bluntly that only they, with the golden urn, would approve the ageing man’s reincarnation.
There’s no question that the Qing Emperors became involved — some more directly than others — in the selection process for the DL, but that doesn’t mean that the emperors actually chose the DL. Rather the ritual was a form of investiture whereby the Manchu court recognized the incarnation as named by Tibetan religious authorities. (A process that was far from pure or smooth. Let’s just say that the shenanigans of Lama picking probably deserve their own post…)
In his influential, and not particularly partisan, history of modern Τibet, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, Melvyn Goldstein describes the connection between the DL and the Qing rulers as a priest-patron relationship which while serving an important political function also involved a spiritual bond that transcended politics. Even the most cynical PRC Τibetologist would have a hard time describing the current government’s relationship with the Gelugpa Sect (of which the DL is the head) in such terms.
As I wrote in the aftermath of the March 14th riots in Lhasa:
The Qing rulers, great patrons of Lamamism, consolidated their rule by maintaining cultural and religious ties with Τibet beyond mere military occupation. They also – generally but not always – ruled with a light touch, allowing relative autonomy in religious and cultural matters, which suited the situation quite well. The Qing Dynasty was, after all, a large, multi-ethnic empire and maintaining order and peace in outlying territories was the utmost concern.
The problem is that the PRC is a nation-state, and the demands a nation-state places on its people are different than those of an empire. It is not enough that Τibetans merely pay taxes and not revolt, they must also identify with the nation-state first and foremost, with other cultural and religious aspects secondary to the demands of modern state building. Empires want to be respected, nation-states want to be loved. That’s a sticky wicket the Qing never had to face.
It’s not surprising that when we look at the world’s hot spots we see the legacies of colonialism and decolonization. As empires give way to new forms of political organization, there is resistance and tension. Modern states attempt to preserve the territories bequeathed to them from empires of old, while former subject peoples seek greater autonomy and even independence.
Unfortunately, history is a poor arbiter of who gets what, and too often (as in the case of Τibet) history becomes warped and carved, tugged and torn, by states and separatists, to suit the political demands of a contemporary crisis.
There will be more written in the coming months and years on this controversial subject. But I will leave you with one last thought: The CCP has no idea how much they will miss this incarnation of the DL when he’s gone. The 14th DL is their Arafat.
Think about it. The Israeli government HATED Arafat, he was the bête noire for three generations of Israelis, but….they could work with him. It was only after Arafat died that Israel realized just what it meant to deal with the Devil you know. The CCP will soon learn a similar lesson. Even if they rig the selection process, they can’t magically create legitimacy for their choice, and it will be nearly two decades before the 15th DL is ready for prime time anyway. In the interim, forces held in check by the 14th DL’s relative moderation will bubble to the surface bringing to the fore leaders even less willing to work with Beijing. And who knows, there may be equally charismatic figures waiting in the wings.
The CCP is gambling that with the 14th DL out of the way, the Τibetan independence movement loses its most important unifying figure. But that ignores the diversity of the Τibetan plateau. In many cases the DL is a DIVISIVE figure. His proscription of a protector deity important to the Kham Region has led to a schism within the Gelugpa sect, one that continues to divide families, villages, and monasteries. In fact, the most powerful recent force in unifying the fractious Tibetans has been the nearly universal disgust at CCP policies in Τibet, especially in the wake of the 2008 riots. One reason the Karmapa Lama can be seen as a potential “successor” even though he represents the Kagyu and not the Gelugpa sect, is that the CCP may ironically be succeeding where the DL has failed in reducing sectarian tensions on the Plateau…simply by giving the people there a common foil.
History. Biology. Philology. Academia is often pressed into the service of politics, but as I noted two years ago, the increasingly shrill rhetoric of national unity has long since taken on a “Queen Gertrude watching the play” quality. Whatever happens in the future, the question of Τibet will not solved by resorting to historical arguments or biological determinism.
 Yang Guifei being helped onto her horse If you like your historical figures with a little junk in the trunk — and frankly who among us doesn’t? — then this is a sad day. On July 15, 756, Yang Guifei, the imperial consort some blame for bringing ruin to the Tang Dynasty, died…either by her own hand or at the hands of Xuanzong’s bodyguards, depending on which historical account (or TV mini-series) you prefer.
Did the Rubenesque Yang have an affair with wanna-be usurper An Lushan? Did the rash actions of her cousin Yang Zhao (Yang Guozhong) bring about the disaster by provoking An Lushan to revolt? Does Chinese history have room for a plus-sized heroine?
Ed note: This is a guest post by Zhang Yajun.
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As a Chinese person, books written by foreigners about my country always intrigue me. Of course, some are good, others…not so much. The bad books occasionally rate a mocking giggle, but the better ones are like mirrors that reflect the country, the people, and yourself. Peter Hessler’s new book Country Driving is one of those mirrors.
 The book has three distinct sections: The first recounts Hessler’s experiences driving along the Great Wall from Beijing toward the Tibetan plateau, a trip of nearly 7,000 miles. He spoke with people he met along the road and observed first hand how automobile ownership and the boom in new highway construction have transformed interior regions of China. The second part focuses on Wei Ziqi and his family, who live in Sancha, a village in the rural hinterlands of Beijing. For six years, Hessler rented a weekend home from this family and built deep connections with them. He saw the effects on Wei’s family and the village as China’s economic development trickled into this previously isolated pocket of rural life. In the final section, Hessler describes how a little town in Zhejiang has become a boomtown in large part due to a newly built expressway.
The book is about change, because that is what China is all about these days. Everyday there are new roads, new cars, new drivers, new business, new rules and new development. It is so different from the China of my parents and grandparents: the China where everyone was told what to do and nobody was supposed to do anything other than that. Wei Ziqi, like the other residents of Sancha, lived in the old China for most of his life. His village remained mired in extreme poverty and isolation. (The annual income was a little over US $250 per person.) Even though their village, officially at least, is a part of the Beijing municipality, few people from there had ever ventured out their valley into the city itself. They lived only a couple hours drive away from Tiananmen Square, but for the residents of Wei’s village the capital city might just as well have been another planet.
But no village is too isolated to feel the effects of China’s dynamic economic growth and Wei Ziqi’s generation is very much a watershed generation. They see the changes and the opportunities happening in the country and they want their share. Every Chinese learns early on that he/she will have to compete with many other people for scarce resources – from space in a good school when young, to jobs and houses later on. So when they see an opportunity to change their lives they are desperate to grab hold of it. Everyone is in a rush. Nobody wants to be left out. Certainly, some win and some lose, but Wei Ziqi’s story is one of relative success. He develops a new business, learns how to dress and behave as a “modern businessman,” and even runs in an election for the village party secretary. Despite these accomplishments, however, neither he nor his family seems happy.
Wei Ziqi is not alone in this problem. For many Chinese, their biggest concern has always been poverty. They believe that all their problems would float away if only they had money. When success does strike — and for the first time in their life they don’t need to worry about money — many Chinese are still anxious and lost and don’t know why. They are just unhappy.
In Hessler’s account of Wei Ziqi, I see my family, my relatives and my friends all facing a similar predicament. But it is not their fault. They are just normal human beings looking for the best for their families and themselves. At the same time, China is developing fast — almost everyone is better off than before — but the psychological and mental adjustment to cope with the rapid change is much more difficult than they expected. Hessler does a good job capturing both the anxiety and opportunity of this transitional period:
“The longer I lived in China, the more I worried about how people responded to rapid change. This wasn’t an issue of modernization…But there are costs when this process happened so fast…from what I saw, the nation’s great turmoil was more personal and internal. Many people were searching: they longed for some kind of religious or philosophical truth, and they wanted a meaningful connection with others. They had trouble applying past experiences to current challenges. Parents and children occupied different worlds and marriages were complicated-rarely did I know a Chinese couple who seemed happy together. It was all but impossible for people to keep their bearings in a country that changed so fast.”
There is a myth, one believed by many Chinese, that foreigners do not and cannot understand China. This book shows that this myth is simply nonsense.
Hessler makes the effort. He drives through many of the least developed provinces and villages in China and down little country lanes for months on end. He camps in the open air and lives on Red Bull, chocolate bars and Oreos. He saw the China where villagers worked for months to dig useless tree holes even though the diggers only received two bags of instant noodles each day to show for their work; the China where young people move away to cities or towns to find jobs while the elderly cling to their old life in the villages; the China where desperate migrants have to lie about their age and identities to seize a job in a booming industrial coastal town. Even many Chinese, especially those who live in the cosmopolitan illusion of Shanghai and Beijing, are unaware of this China. It may not always be pretty in pieces, but there is great beauty in the mosaic of a people living their lives in a time of great change and working to make a better life for themselves and their children. It is a China I want more people to know about.
Yajun (A.K.A. Mrs. Granite Studio) works in the Beijing bureau of The Christian Science Monitor. You can read her latest article for the Monitor here. Her last post for The Granite Studio was on the recent Chinese student demonstrations in Paris.
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I’ve made a few small changes to the site of late including a new archives page (upper left hand corner) that has a list of all of my posts from the last four years. It also has a list of my 27 favorite posts from 2006 to 2009. Enjoy.
 Nine Dragons Waterfall (Dehang, Hunan) Dehang was one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited in China. After taking this picture we hiked up and underneath the falls - a very wet but rewarding experience. And yes, that is your correspondent standing in the foreground. Picture taken August, 2009.
The New York Times today has a story on a joint project between the Beijing and Taipei Palace Museums to retrace the routes by which the imperial collection of art and antiquities was moved from Beijing in advance of the Japanese Imperial Army in the 1930s. (David Barboza, “Rival Museums Retrace Route of China’s Imperial Treasures,” NYT, July 6, 2010) Their research took the team to Chongqing:
“They were stored right about here,” Hu Changjian, a local [Chongqing] museum official, said of the artifacts, an unparalleled collection of more than a million objects from the Forbidden City in Beijing, including fine paintings, calligraphy, jade and porcelain dating back centuries. He added, “We think they dug caves in the hills behind us to store some of the treasures.”
The article also looks into the significance of the imperial treasures in legitimizing 20th century Chinese governments:
David Shambaugh, who with Jeannette Shambaugh Elliott wrote “The Odyssey of China’s Imperial Art Treasures,” said Chinese leaders had long viewed them as a means of validating their power, even under Communism. During the Cultural Revolution, when Red Guards tried to destroy anything associated with tradition, Mao ordered the museum protected.*
“Every successive regime used the collection to legitimize themselves with elites,” said Professor Shambaugh, a China scholar at George Washington University. “Mao and the Communists saw themselves as the inheritors of 5,000 years of history.”
Which partly explains the the tug-o-war between the KMT and the CCP over possession of key cultural works that led to the division of the imperial spoils between rival museums in China and Taiwan.
One last fascinating bit of information:
After the Qing fell, the imperial family kept the treasures. (In 1913 the family offered to sell them to the American industrialist and collector J. P. Morgan for $4 million; Morgan died shortly after his staff received the telegrams.)
Yikes.
The article is definitely worth a read for anybody interested in Chinese art, art history, and the political significance of cultural heirlooms.
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*I’ve also heard a version of this story crediting Zhou Enlai as being the primary force behind the protection of important cultural sites in Beijing.
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