Forty years ago, Nixon and Mao “changed the world.” But the press who covered that historic event had more important issues to address, like Walter Cronkite’s socks and Barbara Walter’s loneliness.
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Is our lasting image of Zhou Enlai to be the smooth, urbane diplomat showing up for talks in Geneva in a tailored-suit, silk tie, and a fedora, exchanging quips about the French Revolution? Or will it be the Zhou Enlai standing on top of Tiananmen with a red armband and a little red book, screeching in a high-pitched hysterical frenzy, “Long Live Chairman Mao!” as hordes of fanatical teenagers chant in the square and the Chairman looks on in approval? 150 years ago this month, troops from an Anglo-French expedition torched the imperial gardens located in Northwest Beijing. The multiplicity of meanings associated with the site and the complicated circumstances of its destruction make for fascinating history as well as an opportunity for the CCP’s educational minions to leech that history of any real substance — other than as a crude device to teach ‘patriotism.’ Author, scholar, and fellow IES faculty member Sheila Melvin has a great piece in last week’s New York Times discussing the history of the Yuanmingyuan. She writes: On the low end of the scale was a free performance called “The Legend of Yuanmingyuan,” which was held weekend evenings on the Yuanmingyuan grounds last summer. Staged by the Beijing Dragon in the Sky Shadow Puppet Troupe and considered “patriotic education” for children, the show alternated shadow puppets and costumed dwarfs in a reenactment that saw invading troops bravely staved off by local villagers using kung fu and bayonets. Foreigners — played by dwarfs wearing curly yellow-wool wigs — were depicted as venal and stupid barbarians who could not even speak their own languages. Eager to aid the emperor, the brave Chinese villagers repeatedly shouted, “Kill the foreign This is a post from 2009 with a special relevance this evening in the wake of LXB winning the Nobel Prize. The original post seems to be blocked probably because it referred to a certain charter in the title and url. Hopefully, this re-post stays up longer. I originally wrote to remember the birthday of the New Culture era educational reformer Cai Yuanpei, one of the leading figures of an era when many people in China sought a new way forward for the country, open to many different ideas and values rather than sit idly blinkered by petty nationalism and parochialism. Enjoy. ——————– Today is the birthday of Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940). [Originally posted on January 11, 2009] A classically-trained scholar who later decided to broaden his education and study in Germany, he was Minister of Education (briefly) under Yuan Shikai and (more famously) the chancellor of Peking University during the New Culture Era. Chancellor Cai took over a campus squalid with the scions of the idle rich and transformed it into a hotbed of intellectual dynamism for a new age. Cai took risks, hiring firebrands such as Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, and luring young scholars such as Hu Shi back from abroad. The dining 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? |
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