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Okay, so I’m actually getting published somewhere that isn’t on a site I personally run. It’s going to be on paper, with ink, and in libraries and everything. So…yeah, that’s kind of cool for a grad student.
China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance is a collection edited by Kate Merkel-Hess and based on the successful group blog The China Beat. My own small contribution is an essay on Granite Studio fave Hua Guofeng entitled, drolly enough, “Hua Guofeng: Remembering a Forgotten Leader.” I wanted to call it “Hua Guofeng: I was a Chairman, too and Deng Xiaoping can kiss my ass” but the editors didn’t feel that fit the theme.
Not to let my own ego run amok, because the real reason to buy the book is the stunning collection of historians, China scholars, and noted journalists who contributed material: Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Leslie T. Chang, Peter Hessler, Pankaj Mishra, Howard French, Xujun Eberlein, David Bandurski, Geremie R. Barmé, Kenneth Pomeranz, Timothy Weston…and I’m stopping there lest this start to sound like I’m a basketball announcer.
Check it out.
This post is a response to two essays written this past weekend. One on the blog Froogville that in turn sparked a response from Richard at The Peking Duck. Below are my own thoughts, which began as a comment on TPD but ran long and so I’ve decided to post them here.
I don’t think that fenqing can be defined by a particular perspective or viewpoint. Certainly adopting the CCP or Han nationalist worldview doesn’t make one a fenqing. Furthermore, it is far too simplistic to say that just because somebody accepts the CCP worldview on a set of issues this means they are “indoctrinated” or “brainwashed.” But I would suggest that fenqing do share some traits in common with the CCP. The CCP’s information/education environment is not only mono-message but actively hostile to dissenting perspectives. Likewise, for me, the defining characteristic of a fenqing is not strong belief in a particular view, but rather an inability to accept that other valid perspectives might exist.
As with the CCP, a common strategy is to attack the speaker/writer rather than address an argument. For the party, witness the continuing ham-handed attempts to paint the Dalai Lama as a “jackal in monk’s
A few quick and final hits on a week of Tibetan nonsense…Michael Albada has a nice piece in the Stanford Progressive that reminds us cutting through the rhetoric from both sides of the Tibet debate is essential to reconciling the situation there:
Tibet has gained a highly romanticized, idealistic image that does not stand up to the test of history. Tibetan history has been bloody, quarrelsome, and oppressive and does not match the idyllic Buddhist paradise painted by writers and Tibetan nationalists in the west. Tibet is not, on the other hand, merely a province that has been ruled by China since antiquity. The debate over Tibetan sovereignty has raged since the Chinese takeover of the region in 1950, yet we are little closer to compromise. Opinions remain highly polarized both within and without Tibet. Both sides assert uncompromisingly and refuse to back down. Both sides ascribe strong nationalistic narratives which distort the true historical background to the controversy. Tibetan sovereignty can best be understood in its full historical complexity; efforts at oversimplification will only prolong the controversy.
I couldn’t agree more, though as I’ve said until hoarse, history is not always the best arbiter of contemporary political disputes. Not
Today is Friday the 13th for those who care about such things. Personally, I’m not taking any chances and will be behind locked doors all day. I actually do have a good excuse as a wicked late-winter/early-spring cold has taken hold filling my lungs with an odd substance, the consistency of which varies between ‘watery doufu’ and ‘rubber cement.’ Ah well, such is.
It’s also the birthday of Charles Grey, the 2nd Earl Grey (1764-1845), Prime Minister of the UK from 1830-1834, and whose early life was depicted in a positively dreadful film The Duchess, one of only a handful of options available for viewing in United Economy class on my most recent trans-pacific flight. It was one of those movies that made me wish for hijackers, if only because being tortured to death at 35,000 feet seemed at the time less painful than the prospect of watching Keira Kneightly act. The other movie selection was the apocalyptic sci-fi smash-up Death Race, and seriously folks, when Jason Statham shows more range and character development as a futuristic demolition derby driver than you do in a period piece, it’s time to start thinking ‘career choices.’ Oh yeah, Did I mention that
“I don’t know much about money, I’ve seen so little of it.” – Fletch, by Gregory MacDonald
Yeah, graduate students shouldn’t pose as financial experts. We’re generally living grant to mouth. After the gravity of last year’s financial crisis set in though, I realized I may have benefited from spending my late-20s and early-30s being so financially irresponsible. I didn’t have a house, stocks, car loans, trust fund with Bernie Madoff, etc. Never had being so poor seemed so smart. I do owe enough in student loans to buy my own island nation in the Caribbean (with a little to spare for lounge chairs and a round of umbrella drinks) but I think it’s best if we move on to talking about this day in history…
On this date in 1161, the Southern Song court issued the world’s first government-backed paper money. Certificates of deposit and exchange had circulated privately for many years, but the demands of the Medieval Economic Revolution, which saw an enormous expansion in trade and an increasingly sophisticated and complex economy, meant that new forms of exchange were needed. The 会子 (huizi) made its debut on March 11, 1161, backed by copper. Naturally, it took exactly
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