Jottings from the Granite Studio

I spent yesterday cruising around the hutongs with a group of my students as well as our program director and Fang Laoshi, a descendant of Manchu bannermen and a real Beijing history buff. Fang Laoshi was a treasure trove of information as we wound our way down Chang’an Dajie, through Tiananmen, up to Houhai and Xihai and then back to our home campus. I think the students found it a little long–five hours of lecture while cycling can be rough on a Sunday morning, but YJ and I had a good time.

We did however attract some unwanted attention. Our stops in front of Zhongnanhai and Tiananmen were both cut short by plain clothes PSB officers who felt that foreign students learning about Chinese culture on bicycle were a danger to national security. Prior to that, Fang Laoshi’s take on Chinese history–he is frank in his opinions of both the good and the bad of China’s recent past–angered an old fellow who wandered by during one of Professor Fang’s explanations and lectured the lecturer that Professor Fang ought only tell foreigners good things lest the Chinese people lose face. Ah yes, objective history–that horrible, horrible threat to precious self-worth.

On to today’s links:

• A peculiar phenomenon in China is the “Cute Chinese” spoken by barrel-chested, beer-swilling, manly foreign men who have picked up unfortunate phrases like “taoyan! 讨厌!” and “zhenshide! 真是的!” or who add an upturned “ah 啊!” to the end of statements thus making them sound like…well, a little more feminine than they might realize. Nice to know that foreign men in Japan face similar struggles. Though I suppose another question might be why do foreign men in China and Japan seem so resistant to make friends with local guys. It seems to me that most of my American and European friends here like drinking beer, card games, playing ball, talking about sports and women, and generally just hanging out…which is exactly what most Chinese guys I know like to do as well.

• A bronze horse looted from Beijing during the Anglo-French expedition of 1860 has been put up for auction by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong. Experts predict the statue will fetch upwards of $10 million. China–taking their cues from other colonized regions with long histories and relics to go around–is understandably upset and wants the statue back. According to the story in the Daily Telegraph, deputy director of the China Fund for Rescuing Protected Relics, Niu Xianfeng was quoted as saying, “It hurts the feelings of the Chinese people to auction cultural relics that were stolen during a very sad part of our country’s history. Sotheby’s behaviour is no different to British and French soldiers in 1860. It’s the behavior of thieves.” I tend to agree with the repatriation of artifacts and antiquities when practical. ‘Finders keepers, losers weepers’ isn’t a good enough reason to deny such requests. But it should be remembered that some of that “colonial thievery” actually served to protect many precious documents and artifacts that would otherwise have been lost to neglect, mishandling, war, or revolution. Case in point, if that horse head statue had been on display during the Cultural Revolution, would it have been cast into the fire along with the thousands of other priceless relics destroyed or damaged by rampaging Red Guards? (h/t HNN)

• Finally, there has been a long discussion over at The Peking Duck. I think the original topic had to do with a poll about China’s new rich but somehow in that quintessentially canard-ian way has morphed into a tit-for-tat spat about Chinese and Western culture. (I really feel for Richard at times like these, I really do.) One of the regular commentators on the blog suggested that a great deal of what made the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BCE) great had come overland from Persia and points west. (You can imagine how well this went over with some of the uber-nationalist trolls who lurk on that site.) While I wouldn’t go nearly that far, there are certainly cases to be made for diffusion of military and transportation technology and, suggests an article in today’s IHT, in art as well. That China has received a great deal of influence down through the ages from its Eurasian neighbors should in no way diminish the great cultural, philosophical, and political achievements of the Chinese people. Unfortunately, some don’t see it that way.