Jottings from the Granite Studio » Voices from China’s Past

Another CIA/NSC Archive Film: “China: The Roots of Madness” (1967)

Jeremiah — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:50:17 +0000

Another classic attempt to “explain and understand” China from the CIA/NSC archives, this one is like some sort of unholy mash-up of John King Fairbank, Max Weber, Henry Luce, Edward Said, and the KMT propaganda department…but there is some useful archival footage as well as interviews with seminal American “China watchers” such as Theodore White and Pearl Buck. Huge h/t to my fellow historian G.T.

CIA/NSC Archive Film: “China Leaps Foward” (1958)

Jeremiah — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 03:51:17 +0000

Today’s a big dissertation working day so I’ll leave you with this gem, a 1958 film produced by the CIA and the National Security Council: “China Leaps Forward.” Enjoy.

h/t to fellow historian G.T.

The historical record for November 19: Xu Zhimo

Jeremiah — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:55:27 +0000

It’s November here in Beijing. Three weeks ago, before the snow really started to fall, we took the plants in from our garden. A week later, as we were looking out at our small patch of bamboo bending under the weight of the snow and ice, we decided that it was unfair that it should suffer too. So we made a place for it in our living room. It actually looks kind of nice and seems to be adapting well to the artificial warmth of being indoors. But now when I look out from my desk and into the yard, it all seems so gray. We have pumpkins on the windowsills and corn husks hanging so there is a bit of (autumnal) color, but I do miss the greenery and warmth of the garden in bloom, plants and flowers filling the corners and nooks of our small outdoor space.

The cat sitting on my desk, staring out at the garden in summer.

Xu Zhimo was a poet of the early 20th century. Originally from Zhejiang, he took his education overseas, first in the United States, and finally in England where he fell in under the spell of Romantic poets like Shelley and Keats. Xu returned to China where he became one of the better known and more influential poets of the 1920s. Sadly, on this date in 1931, his life and career was cut short when Xu died in a plane crash while flying between Nanjing and Beijing.

This is a poem by Xu Zhimo entitled《为谁》(“For Whom”):

为谁

这几天秋风来得格外的尖利：
我怕看我们的庭院，
树叶伤鸟似的猛旋，
中著了无形的利箭－－－
没了,，全没了：生命，颜色，魅力：

就剩下西墙上的几道爬山虎：
他那豹班似的秋色，
忍熬著风拳的打击，
低低的喘一声鸟邑－－－
［我为你耐著！］他仿佛对我声訴。

他为我耐着！那艳色的秋萝，
但秋风不容情的追，
追，（摧残是他的恩惠！）
追尽了生命的余辉　－－－
这回墙上不见了勇敢的秋萝！

今夜那青光的三星在天上
倾听著秋后的空院，
悄悄的，更不闻鸣咽：
落叶在泥土里安眠　－－－只我在这深夜，啊，为谁凄惘？

For Whom

These days, the autumn winds blow harshly:
I lack the courage to look at our backyard,
The leaves rustle swiftly in the wind,
Just like invisible arrows —
It’s gone, all gone: life, colour, beauty:

What’s left on the west wall is the climber:
With his spotted autumn skin,
He bared the strikes of the wind,
Softly spouting out words —
“I’ll do anything for you!” he seemed to say.

He’ll do anything for me! The autumn blooms,
But the autumn winds chase with no mercy,
Chase, (to destroy is a blessing in disguise)
Hunting down life’s gentle radiance —
The courageous blooms have lost their place on the walls.

Tonight, the aurora of the stars shine in the skies
Listen, the empty backyard after autumn,
Softly, the leaves lay asleep in the soil —
All alone in this night, sigh
For whom do I feel sorrow?

————–

Chinese version and English translation courtesy of Reminiscences of Xu Zhimo

Voices from China’s Past: Sima Qian on the Wisdom of News Blackouts

Sean — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:00:22 +0000

Ed Note: This post is the first by Sean, a graduate school colleague of mine currently in Taiwan doing research for his dissertation. He’s one of the smartest guys I know and I’m really happy to have him contributing here to the Granite Studio. Enjoy.

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Shortsighted governments using the power of the state to silence criticism is nothing new, in China or anywhere else. Sima Qian, the founding father of Chinese Historiography, dealt with similar sorts of narrow-minded rulers in his day (and paid a steep price for it), and gave China’s future officials and princelings this timeless advice, in the form of an anecdote about King Li of Zhou:

[King Li of Zhou] acted cruelly and extravagantly. The people in the capital spoke of the king’s faults. The Duke of Shao remonstrated, saying: “Your people can no longer bear your orders.” The king was angered. He found a shaman from Wei and had him watch for criticism. Whomever he reported was killed. The criticism subsided, [but] the feudal lords stopped coming to court. In the thirty-fourth year [of his reign], the king became even more stern. No one in the capital dared to say a word, but only glanced at each other on the roads. King Li was pleased. He told the Duke of Shao: “I was able to stop the criticism. Now they dare not speak.” The Duke of Shao said: ] “This is [merely] stopping up criticism. To block peoples’ mouths is worse than blocking a river. When an obstructed river bursts its banks, it will surely hurt a great number of people. People are like this, too. For this reason, those who regulate rivers dredge them and let them flow; those who regulate people broaden [channels] and let them talk.

Sima Qian then goes on to point out something that supporters of democracy have long maintained, that the criticism and opinion of the governed is not just an irritation to put up with, but a great resource for the wise ruler:

People having mouths is similar to the land having mountains and rivers, from which the daily needs are drawn; and [it is also] similar in that there are highlands, lowlands, swampy lands, and irrigated lands, from which clothes and food are produced. When mouths are made to express words, [both] good and degenerative [ideas] will arise. To put the good ones into practice and to guard against the degenerative ones are the ways to make daily necessities, food, and clothing abound. As people have thoughts in their minds and express them through their mouths, if [the ideas] are constructive, you should finish them and put them into practice. If you gag their mouths, how many of them would support [you]?”

Then, as now, the duke’s advice was ignored, and criticism of King Li continued to be censored. The result?

The king would not listen. Then no one in the capital dared to say a word. Three years [later], they joined each other in rebellion, and attacked the king. King Li fled to Chih.

Those who do not learn from history…well, you know the rest.

Translation taken from Ssu-ma Ch’ien, The Grand Scribe’s Records, Volume I: The Basic Annals of Pre-Han China (ed. Nienhauser), Shiji 4 (142).

Voices from China’s Past: Wang Fuzhi on Defending China

Jeremiah — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 02:46:52 +0000

Wang Fuzhi (王夫之, 1619–1692, courtesy name, Ernong 而农, he also styled himself Chuanshan 船山) was witness to a calamity — the fall of the Ming Empire first to the bandit armies of Li Zicheng and subsequently to the Manchu ‘peacekeeping forces’ under the regent Dorgon. He became active in the anti-Manchu resistance and when the last of the Ming claimants proved unable to restore a Chinese emperor to the throne, Wang “retired” in his early-30s, living in the hills of Hunan province, and devoting himself to a life of writing and scholarship. So virulent were his writings attacking the Manchus that his essays and books went unpublished for nearly 200 years, until Wang was “rediscovered” in the latter half of the 19th century when his particular brand of anti-Manchuism seemed a useful complement to more recently imported and adapted ideas of ethnic-nationalism. The fact that philosophically, Wang espoused a form of materialism, guaranteed that while nearly unknown in his own time, he would be well-remembered in ours.

This is Wang Fuzhi in high dudgeon:

“Now even the ants have rulers who preside over territory of their nests, and when red ants or flying white ants penetrqate their gates, the ruler organizes all his own kind into troops to bite and kill the intruders, drive them far away from the anthill, and prevent foreign interference. Thus he who rules the swarm must have the means to protect it. If, however, a ruler fails to make long-term plans, neglects the integrity of his territory, esteems his own person more than the empire, antagonizes colleagues, creates divisions where none should exist, is driven by suspicion to exercise a repressive control, and weakens the central region, then, while he clings desperately to his privileged status and enjoys the advantages of his position without fulfilling its obligations, disaster strikes and he is incapable of ocercoming it. Confronted with an external menace, he is unable to stand firm against it. He can neither keep the succession of his own desscendants nor protect his own kind …

And so, with a mind full of grief and anger, and a heart full of sorrow, I rectify what went wrong in order to restore the original divisions of the Yellow Emperor. I look forward eagerly to the advent of an enlightened ruler, who will restore sovereignty to the country, accomplish its mission, and stabilize its frontiers, and thereby guard the central territory and drive off the barbarians forever. Once this were accomplished, then though my body may perish, my sould would rejoice.”

Source: Wm. de Bary ed. Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume II. New York, 1999. pp. 34-35

Voices from China’s Past: The Abdication of Puyi

Jeremiah — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:14:56 +0000

Puyi (The Xuantong Emperor)

Most people know that yesterday marked 200 years since the births of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin…but it was also the 96th anniversary of the end of Manchu rule. The text below is a section from one of two edicts which officially ended imperial rule. The first turned over the reins of government to Yuan Shikai and the new Republic of China. The second requested that the Republican Army for not disturbing the Imperial ancestral tombs and temples, and to protect the title and person of the young emperor and his family.

“We have respectfully received the following Imperial Edict from Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Dowager Longyu:

As a consequenceof the uprising of the Rebublican Army, to which the different provinces immediately resonded, the Empire seethed like a boiling caudrong and the people were plunged into utter misery. Yuan Shikai wsa, therefore, especially commanded some time ago to dispatch commissioners to confer with representatives of the Republican Army on the general situation and to discuss matters pertaining to the convening of a National Assembly for the deciding a suitable mode of settlement. Separated as the South and the North are by great distances, the unwillingness of either side to yield to the other can result only in the continued interruption of trade and the prolongation of hostilities, for, so long as the form of government is undecided, the Nation can have no peace.

It is n0w evident that the hearts of the majority of the people are in favor of a republican form of government: the provinces of the South were the first to support the cause, and the generals of the North have pledged their support. From the preference of the People’s hearts, the Will of Heaven can be discerened. How could We bear to oppose the will of millions for the glory of one Family?

Therefore, the tendencies of the age on the one hand, and studying the opinions of the people on the other, We and His Majesty the Emperor hereby vest the sovereignty in the People and decide in favor of a republican form of constitutional government. Thus we would gratify on one hand the desires of the whole nation, who, tired of anarchy, are desirous of peace, and on the other hand would follow the footsteps of the Ancient Sages, who regarded the Throne as the sacred trust of the Nation.

Now Yuan Shikai was elected by the provisional parliament to be the Premier. During the period of transference of government from the old to the new, there should be some means of uniting the South and the North. Let Yuan Shikai organize with full powers a provisional republican government and confer with the Republican Army as to the methods of union, thus assuring peace to the people and tranquility to the Empire, and forming to one Great Republic of China by union heretofore, of the five peoples, namely Manchus, Chinese, Mongols, Mohammedans, and Tibetans together with their territory in its integrity.*”

Translation from Pei-kai Cheng & Michael Lestz with Jonathan Spence, eds., The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection. (W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), pp. 211-212

——————-

* The second edict has a section echoing this theme: “We hereby proclaim the Imperial Kinsman and the Manchus, Mongols, Mohammedans, and Tibetans that they should endeavor to fuse and remove all racial differences and prejudices and maintain law and order with united efforts. It is our sincere hope that peace will once more be seen in the country and all the people will enjoy happiness under a republican government.”

From the Granite Studio Archives: Lao She’s 110th

Jeremiah — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:00:36 +0000

February 3, 2009 marks the 110th anniversary of the birth of writer Lao She. I wrote this short piece last year to mark the occasion of anniversary number 109, and I like it so much that I’m running it again. Enjoy.

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Originally published February 3, 2008:

Today is the birthday of the celebrated novelist, playwright, and also YJ’s favorite author, Lao She, born Shu Qingchun in Beijng, 1899. His family was Manchu, members of the Red Banner, and Lao She’s father was killed defending the city against the Allied Expeditionary Force sent to quell the Boxer Uprising. After her husband’s death, his mother took to working as a laundry woman to support herself and her son. Remembering those years, Lao She would later write:

“During my childhood, I didn’t need to hear stories about evil ogres eating children and so forth; the foreign devils my mother told me about were more barbaric and cruel than any fairy tale ogre with a huge mouth and great fangs. And fairy tales are only fairy tales, whereas my mother’s stories were 100 percent factual, and they directly affected our whole family.”

As a young man, he worked as a teacher and school administrator in Beijing and Tianjin, before leaving for England, where he took a position as a lecturer in Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. It was there in 1926 that Lao She wrote his first novel, The Philosophy of Old Zhang.

Lao She would go on to write some of the most brilliant works in modern Chinese literature, including the science fiction satire Cat Country (1932), the novel Rickshaw Boy (1936), and the play Teahouse (1957).

Sadly, he was also one of the many literary notables destroyed by the frenzied anti-intellectual thuggery of the Cultural Revolution. According to one story, on August 23, 1966, members of the Red Guard rounded up Lao She and about two dozen other authors and dragged them to the grounds of the Confucian Temple and Imperial Academy in Beijing. There he was beaten and forced to his knees for hours while wearing a placard around his neck denouncing him as a “counter-revolutionary.”

As Lao She knelt on the ground in his pain and humiliation, the Red Guards continued to hit and torment the elderly writer until late into the night, when the battered and bruised author was finally handed over to his family and taken home. The next day, Lao She went to the shores of the reedy slough known as Taiping Lake (near present day Jishuitan) and there drowned himself in the turgid water.*

This is a passage from Lao She’s first published novel, The Philosophy of Old Zhang.

What sort of fellow was Chao Four?

Things everyone else liked, he didn’t; things no one else liked, he did. Plans everyone else made for their own benefit, he wouldn’t make; plans no one else made–for the benefit of others–he was full of them.

Unfortunately, his money ran out before his taste for fun. He looked for no return of the money he was always giving away, and so there was no return; what was more, the people who had favors from him were now even readier to ignore him than those who had not. Many a time, he would go up to someone, “Excuse me…,” but their necks would twist and he would be facing the back of their head. Whereupon Chao Four would go outside the city, collect a pile of brickbats and chalk a circle on the city wall. Then he would try out his wrist and his eye against the day he would be aiming at heads.

To Chao Four’s way of thinking it was all just a game: when there’s money I treat you to dumplings, when there isn’t I treat you to brickbats, in reality it’s the same thing. The strange part was that so soft were the people’s heads, they could enjoy the dumplings but they couldn’t take the bricks. And once he really did split a head wide open and out gurgled the red rich blood that properly belongs there. And so Chao Four was hauled off to jail by the policeman and did his three months’ hard.

The ordinary sort of man contemptuously hangs a label marked ‘bandit’ on anyone who has been in prison. The bandit himself, on the other hand, dignifies the jailbird with the title of ‘bravo.’ Which of them is right, I’d rather not say.”

———

*Other accounts suggest that he didn’t commit suicide, but was in fact beaten to death at the hands of the Red Guards, who then simply dumped his body in the lake.

Source and translation:
Cyril Birch. “Lao She: The Humourist in His Humour, “The China Quarterly, No. 8. (Oct. – Dec., 1961), pp. 45-62.

Other sources and references:
An Intellectual History of Modern China, Merle Goldman and Leo Ou-fan Lee, eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002)
Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China. (W.W. Norton, 1990)
老舍纪念网 An online memorial to Lao She (zh)

Voices from China’s Past: Yung Wing on courage and China’s future

Jeremiah — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:15:37 +0000

Yung Wing (容闳, 1828-1912) was the first Chinese graduate of Yale University (class of 1854) and went on to have a long and diverse career as an interpreter, tea trader, diplomat, educator, military procurement specialist, and writer.

In his autobiography 我在中国和美国的生活 My Life in China and America, he recounts an incident that took place in Shanghai after his return from the United States via Hong Kong. Yung Wing was insulted by a Scotsman and took matters into his own hands, punching the Scot in the mouth in front of the British consul and calling out the man as a ‘blackguard.’ It’s an amusing story, but Yung Wing draws from it an analogy for the Chinese nation:

“The incident was the chief topic of conversation for a short time among foreigners, while among the Chinese I was looked upon with great respect, for since the foreign settlement on the extra-territorial basis was established close to the city of Shanghai, no Chinese within its jurisdiction had ever been known to have the courage and pluck to defend his rights, point blank, when they had been violated or trampled upon by a foreigner. Their meek and mild disposition had allowed personal insults and affronts to pass unresented and unchallenged, which naturally had the tendency to encourage arrogance and insolence on the part of ignorant foreigners.

The time will soon come, however, when the people of China will be so educated and enlightened as to know what their rights are, public and private, and to have the moral courage to assert and defend them whenver they are invaded. The triumph of Japan over Russia (Ed note: While the incident happened in 1855, Yung Wing is writing his account in 1908) in the recent war has opened the eyes of the Chinese world. It will never tolerate injustice in any way or shape, much less will it put up with foreign aggression and aggrandizement any longer.”

While the passage echoes similar sentiments by other Chinese writing at the same time, it’s a bit striking coming from Yung Wing’s pen. Yung Wing has a kind of wishy-washy reputation among Chinese historians. His efforts in educational reform and his acheivements overseas are certainly noted, but at the same time his unabashed love for the United States, his dual citizenship, and his marriage to an American, cause some to call into question his Chineseness–the original 假洋鬼子 if you will. But I think Yung Wing, as a liminal figure straddling two cultures at a time when few had the ability or desire to do so, makes him a fascinating subject for historical inquiry and his patriotism and desire for a strong Chinese nation are quite apparent in passages like the one above.

Anyway, for those interested more in his life and times, the Yung Wing Project is an online collection of Yung Wing’s papers and materials as well as other documents related to Sino-US relations and Chinese students abroad. On this last subject, another great resource is the CEM Connections website, which contains photographs, materials, and biographical information on all 120 students who participated in the Chinese educational missions.

Voices about the Past: Paul Cohen on a China-centered history

Jeremiah — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:52:04 +0000

One new feature I’m trying to kick off here at The Granite Studio is an entirely biased and hugely subjective review of some of my favorite historians of China. These are the writers and scholars who influenced me when I began studying Chinese history and who continue to serve as inspirations as I continue my own career in the field.

Given my research interests, I’m starting with Paul Cohen. It was a footnote in his first book, China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Anti-foreignism, 1860-1870 that was the original impetus for my dissertation, and I still re-read Professor Cohen’s seminal work on the subject about once every six months or so.

But of his many works, perhaps my favorite is a slim volume he published in 1984, not about Chinese history per se, but about the study of Chinese history in the American academy. To briefly and inadequately summarize, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past ambitiously breaks down the collective oeuvre of American academic writing on China since World War II into three distinct generations based on the predominant mode of analysis at the time: “China’s Response to the West” with the late, great John K. Fairbank being the most notable example; “Tradition and Modernity” best personified by the brilliant historian, Joseph Levenson; and “Imperialism” exemplified by James Peck and the contributors to the journal Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars.

In Discovering History in China, Professor Cohen finds fault with all three approaches, suggesting broadly that each generation, while in some ways building upon and also repudiating the work of their teachers, still fell into the same analytical traps. First, all three, according to Cohen, overstate the importance of the West in terms of its effects on Chinese history. Second, each generation, in their own ways, seems to suggest that either China cannot change without the West, or if it did, historians rely on a Western ‘yardstick’ for describing–and implicitly valuing–certain types of change over others.

In response, Cohen proposed a China-centered history, a paradigm that would become predominant in the American China history establishment throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and which–though increasingly challenged by a new generation of China scholars–remains highly influential today,

One wonders what a 25th anniversary edition of Cohen’s book might look like, one written from the perspective of 2009? Would the catfight between Joseph Esherick and James Hevia over post-modernism and the use of historical sources make the cut? What of the recent vogue for colonialist and post-colonialist theory? What about gender as a category for analysis? Are we moving away from an ‘area/period’ balkanization of history departments toward a discipline increasingly defined by topic/methodology? (That is to say: Do I share more in common with my colleague down the hall studying anti-foreign violence in 1870 Africa than I do with my office-mate researching Tang Dynasty poetry?)

I re-read Discovering History in China over the weekend, and I was as fascinated by Professor Cohen’s concluding remarks yesterday as I was when I first read the book over a decade ago. Here he is responding to the idea that American historians would face inherent limitations in writing a “China-centered” history. True to a point, says Professor Cohen, but such a statement ignores the limitations under which all historians–regardless of nationality or ethnicity–must labor:

“The fact is–not only Americans approaching Chinese history from without but also Chinese historians approaching it from within–are, in some sense, outsiders. All of us are to an extent prisoners of our environments, trapped in one or another set of parochial concerns. And the truth we retrieve is inevitably qualified by the intellectual and emotional preoccupations each of us, through our vocabulary and concepts, brings to bear on the study of the past.”

Cohen then continues, speaking broadly of history, “truth,” and historical inquiry:

“To to qualify a truth is not, however to nullify it. In the last analysis, all historical truth is qualified, in that it consists not in the whole truth about the past but in a limited set of factual statements, adequately supported by evidence, that constitute the answers to a particular question or set of questions that the historian has in mind. Historians with different concerns and preoccupations will naturally pose different questions. This is not a problem. The problem arises when historians are insufficiently aware of the assumptions buried inside their questions, with the consequence that “truth” is imposed upon the data of history instead of being derived from it and we end up with a picture of the past–of the kinds of historical change that are important–that is really defined too much by the historian’s innermost reality and too little by the reality of the people he or she is writing about. This is truly outside history. It can be written by Chinese as well as Americans. And it can never be avoided by the historian all together. But all of us, to the extent we are conscious of this problem and take it seriously, can find ways to moderate its impact.”

As I’ve written before, I reject both the exceptionalist argument that ethnicity or national identity ‘pre-qualifies’ a person’s ability to research or ‘understand’ a particular topic, just as I find abhorrent the lingering traces of Orientalism in western journalism, bloggers, and academics which suggests outside observers have a broader and more nuanced perspective on China on the basis of pick-your-false-justification: superior access to information, better education, more developed critical faculties. As Professor Cohen notes, we all labor under a common set of limitations in our search for answers, as well as limitations inherent to our own position and perspective. At the same time, we all bring to the table a set of abilities, ideas, questions, and points of view valuable to the communal spirit of intellectual inquiry.

In the end, isn’t that what it’s all about?

Voices from China’s Past: Confucius on priorities

Jeremiah — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:51:36 +0000

There’s a famous saying, attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Franklin was arguing that there exist higher principles beyond the immediate and that is critical in times of strife not to allow the urgent to vanquish the important.

I’d be hard pressed to find an equivalent quotation from the Chinese canon (and there are likely reasons for that), but this little nugget from Confucius suggests that in the Chinese political tradition there also exists a need for prioritizing basic principles over short-term exigencies:

Analects 12:7 (Wing-tsit Chan translation):

“Tzu-kung asked about government. Confucius said, “Sufficient food, sufficient armament, and sufficient confidence of the people.” Tzu-kung said, “Forced to give up one of these, which would you abandon first?” Confucius said, “I would abandon the armament.” Tzu-kung said, “Forced to give up one of the remaining two, which would you abandon first?” Confucius said, “I would abandon food. There have deaths from time immemorial, but no state can exist without the confidence of the people.”

And the original (punctuated) for you fans of Classical Chinese:

子貢問「政」。子曰:「足食,足兵,民信之矣。」子貢曰:「必不得已而去,於斯三者何先?」曰:「去兵。」子貢曰:「必不得已而去,於斯二者何先?」曰:「去食;自古皆有死;民無信不立。」