Character Reform 2009

List of characters with proposed modifications from Tianya.cn

A little-reported policy proposal in China is the reform of 44 Chinese characters. All the changes are minor in the extreme -- mostly just calligraphy modifications from straight-hook 坚钩 to plain straight 坚 strokes. And yet, huge numbers of Chinese are uncomfortable with the changes. It's a popular political question now open in China. Link to the only story I see on this so far.

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Raising Taxes

Fareed Zakaria says we can fix the deficit by taxing a bit more

Personally, I like Zakaria's reasoning, and I think he's calculating he can attract some momentum for tax increases now. The same idea is expressed in his column from last week. As a job seeker, this is yet another issue I must now follow carefully if I want consider my decision about where to live and work a responsible one.

Stress!

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Chinese Dissidents List

Gao Zhisheng, via the Guardian

Around Christmas last year Liu Xiaobo made headlines when he was given a heavy prison sentence; essentially his only crime was to help write and distribute the "Charter '08." I remember at the time that Wei Jingsheng, the famous Democracy wall activist now exiled in the USA, spoke on Liu's behalf before news media, showing inter-dissident solidarity.

Now another human rights lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, is making some waves for a strange story of disappearance -- or perhaps he was in custody the whole time? The British press in particular seems to enjoy the opportunity to make Chinese security bureaucrats look evil:

China says missing lawyer is 'where he should be'

Foreign ministry official hints leading human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng is in custody after he disappeared nearly a year ago.

I'll be honest, the debate over human rights in China has never been my favorite subject. But that's because I was not looking at it from a literary perspective. Portraits of dissidents have a long tradition in all cultures, and particularly get a lot of attention in English-language coverage of China.

So here I'll leave a list of dissidents and interesting texts about dissidents -- I'm not sure what if anything I'll do with that yet. My larger goal is to create knowledge banks sort of like old-school note cards to come back to. I notice that so far in this blog I have not come back to things very often, but I want that to change.
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Signs of intellectual change

(This is a random aside: perhaps these can spur me to critical thinking in my field as well as outside of it)

Well, maybe not actual signs, but there is a growing momentum to the criticism of conservatism; Joe Biden stated definitively that there no more moderates in the Republican party on The Daily Show, and even if this is an exaggeration it tallies nicely with yesterday's news that Andrew Sullivan is leaving the "movement." I'm skeptical that Sullivan was as genuine a conservative he needs to claim to disavow it properly (Po-mo feelings: what do "conservative," "disavowing" conservatism," and doing so "properly" even mean, anyway?), but I do feel overall that these are hopeful signs. As I was telling A. yesterday, I firmly believe that moderate, but piquant conservative critics are important to the health of our country -- we may not like the lone wolf, but it's no good letting the sheep population get out of control.

Then CN. posted two devastating reviews, one of the new memoir by Cornel West, one of the new novel by Paul Auster. Both are wide-ranging castigations, not just of these individual works, but of the life's projects of these figures. In West's case, a powerful and new kind of mind seems to have been co-opted by fame. Auster's case seems much worse if this critic can be believed: he was never more than a hack, though some readers apparently believed mistakenly that he was "post-modern," and thus a more serious craftsman. There's a lot to argue with in both reviews, but taken together I wonder if they might represent a least an effort to revive no-nonsense, common-sense, critical thinking that seems to have dropped sadly out of the political world.
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Daji the Evil Bitch

Daji, 1964 Shaw Bros. film

I talked about the figure of the evil concubine Daji today as I introduced Ban the Concubine to class, and I wasn't at all surprised to find that they loved her immediately. But unfortunately there is no good solid translation of her life into English; looks like a job for Life Writing Man!


Among several sort of substandard retellings of the story, one that made me smile is a new volume called Liberal Utopianism Is Destroying the United States (2009) by Charles Keitz. I'm not sure what role Daji plays for Mr. Keitz -- maybe she's Hilary Clinton?










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Translation: Anti-Fascist Screed

Chiang Kai-shek, Fascist

On the Dual Nature of the Nationalism Advocated by the Nationalist Literary and Arts School

by Qian Zhengang (see my Google docs page for complete translation; the original Chinese has a Google doc as well)

In addition to some more work on the theory of autobiography, I did a bit more translating of this latest paper. The main ideas of the argument in the latter half are:

Chiang Kai-shek, the most important supporter of the Nationalist Literary Movement, was already by 1927 no longer faithful to the Three Principles of the People but rather a devoted follower of Fascism.

Since the Nationalist Literary School took its orders from the Nationalist Literary Movement, no matter what their own ideology was like, for any and all ideology they all could only proceed to propagate Fascism, accepting or further explicating the ideas of their instigator, Chiang Kai-shek.

Well then, why did the Nationalist Literary School also propagate the egalitarian nationalism of Sun Yat-sen in theory and in parts of their works? I believe this is a result of the influence of the authoritative power of Sun Yat-sen's ideology. Sun Yat-sen was once the public leader of each revolutionary class of China; his Three Principles of the People were once the theoretical manifestation of the public will of each revolutionary class of China.

In one area, that accepting the government of Chiang Kai-shek required disseminating Fascism formed the deep nature; in the other area the utter necessity to fulsomely praise the nationalism of Sun Yat-sen formed the surface nature.

This is of course vaguely disturbing to translate, but I like that it has me thinking more about the lives and personalities of people like the author of the paper. Unfortunately the word that comes to mind is 'warped.' Deep feelings of some sort seem to brim just under the surface of this piece, but I can't say exactly what those are. Meanwhile the logic of the argument has the tacky, tired feel of Chinese inner/outer and deep/surface idioms. One thinks of De Francis, Hannis and others who have argued that Chinese language stifles innovation:

As I have elucidated above, for Sun Yat-sen's egalitarianism we should express affirmation, while for ultranationalism wet must steadfastly offer rejection. Well then, how should we distinguish this nationalism possessing a dual nature? The key to the problem lies in making clear the structural relationship of the dual nature, which means we must make clear which nature resides in a deep layer of the structure, and which in a surface layer.

Notably, what "structure" would refer to in real life is left out of the picture, along with any apparent realization that the term "structure" here is an empty abstract, a simple rhetorical tool really meant for no more than to emphasize what is no doubt a very safe point: Fascism is bad, and so is the KMT.

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Next translation: Fascist screed

Where to find the Fascism: Vanguard Monthly, a KMT literary journal

The next translation I'm doing for Nobo contains some interesting information about Fascism among KMT writers in the early 1930s.



In 1933 Chen Xinchun was urging his readers to be more "Like Italy's Mussolini, like Germany's Hitler..." And in 1931, a fairly scary dramatic poem (ju shi) called "The Blood of the Yellow People" by Huang Zhenxia 黄震遐 gives us a vision of racism in the Chinese language. Set in the 13th century from the perspective of the 'yellow' Mongols who had scored a major defeat against the 'white'/'caucasian' Russians, the poem's beginning reads (first draft):

Give up ba, you menial fools, begging for your life,
Die faster ba, why you need to frown so?
Escape ya, crestfallen king of Russia;
Lie down ya, vicious mad dogs of Europa;
Topple ya, fabled high towers of Moscow;
Roll ya, Caucasian heads growing yellow hair;
Horrifying ya, boiling oil for frying corpses;
Frightening ya, rotten skeletons all over, what bad men;
Dead spirits clutching at white maidens embracing with all their might;
Beauties' lovely heads become hideous skeletons;
Savages like wild animals in the palace, combat fierce and mighty;
Knights of the cross, faces blanched with sorrow;
For a thousand years the coffins leach out their vile smells'
Iron heels trampling broken bones the cry of the camels becomes a weird hou;
God has fled, the demons have raised their firey whips of vengeance;
The yellow peril is come! The yellow peril is come!
Brave knights of Asia, show your bloody, man-eating faces.

绝望吧，你们这些哀求饶命的手，

快点死吧，何必多皱眉头？

逃呀，斡罗斯颓靡的王侯；

躲呀，欧罗巴失魂的猛狗；

倾倒呀，莫斯科万重的高楼；

滚呀，高加索人长着黄毛的头；

恐怖呀，煎着尸体的沸油；

可怕呀，遍地的腐骸如何凶丑；

死神捉着白姑娘拼命地搂；

美人螓首变成狰狞的髑髅；

野兽般的生番在故宫里蛮争恶斗；

十字军战士的脸上充满了哀愁；

千年的棺材泄出它凶秽的恶臭；

铁蹄践着断骨骆驼的鸣声变成怪吼；

上帝已逃，魔鬼扬起了火鞭复仇；

黄祸来了！黄祸来了！

亚西亚勇士们张大吃人的血口。

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Qu Yuan, Visually

Reciting Qu Yuan poems at Double Fifth, the Poet turned Patriot

I'd like to collect here a few images that illustrate how the figure of Qu Yuan was used throughout Chinese history. (A continuing entry)



The Dragon-Boat Festival, also known as 'Double Fifth' festival or duan wu jie, is now often explained as a memorial tribute to Qu Yuan. In 2008, a major celebration activity series in Zigui, Hubei included an assemblage of middle school students to recite Qu Yuan's poetry (they are reciting "Ode to the Orange" 橘颂). (source: Xinhua news)

As David Hawkes so spurnfully points out, however, this tradition was not a product of Qu Yuan's day, but more likely an innovation of the Confucianist 'cult of Qu Yuan' that probably began to develop in the second half of the Han dynasty. The story that dragon boats were launched to save Qu Yuan or scare away the fish, as well as the one that rice and/or rice dumplings (known as zongzi) were thrown into the river to save the corpse of Qu Yuan from the fish (the wikipedia entry on Dragon Boat Festival contains these stories, for example), are probably inventions that help to bind together the figure of Qu Yuan with an older folk tradition.

Wen Yiduo, Poetry and Poetics Expert, 1920s and 1930s

Wen Yiduo, Painting by his son, Wen Lipeng (?)

David Hawkes quotes Wen Yiduo to show the general tendency to praise Qu Yuan in the 20th century:

Although Qu Yuan did not write about the life of the people or voice their sufferings, he may truthfully be said to have acted as the leader of a people's revolution and to have struck a blow to avenge them. Qu Yuan is the only person in the whole of Chinese history who is fully entitled to be called 'the People's Poet'.

Qu Yuan, the Poet turned Patriot

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Listening to Yang Jiang Talk about the Past - Chapter 1

The first chapter of Listening to Yang Jiang Talk About the Past is all about the background of China surrounding Yang Jiang's birth, including her parents, her sisters, and, especially, her father's work. The most interesting feature here is the new portrait of her father, Yang Yinhang aka "Old Mister Gardener" 老圃先生. First we meet Old Mister Gardener, the progressive family man, who treats his wife like an equal, is sweet to his children, and fills the house with intimate speech mixed with local Wuxi expressions and allusions picked up from Chinese and Western literature.

Only later, as Wu Xuezhao closes the chapter, do we meet Yang Yinhang, a tragic idealist whose ethics ultimately led him to give up participation in the government. At least, it was either that or his stubbornness in the face of another man of government, Xu Shiying 許世英. What can we make of their conflict? How much can we believe what we read in this book, which defends Yang Jiang's father against Xu Shiying?

Facts of the Case, According Yang and Wu

In 1917, while acting as a high judge in Beijing 京師高等檢察庭, he had started investigating accusations of bribery 受賄 against then-Transportation Minister Xu Shiying. But Xu had already served in a number of leadership positions and had a lot of clout; many of his supporters lobbied for the case to be dropped. When Judge Yang refused, he was fired by the Minister of Justice 司法長. The Minister, Zhang Yaozeng 張耀曾 (1885-1938), told Yang there was not enough evidence, but this was essentially a lie; the evidence was produced, but it did not prevent Judge Yang from getting reprimanded and fired, together with his colleague 張汝霖. Yang Yinhang was able to find other work eventually, but from this point forward, he was disillusioned with the Republican government in Beijing, and never sought to serve in office again 對官官相獲的北洋政府已看透了，無意繼續做官.

According to Wu Xuezhao, articles from Shen bao on May 24 and 25 illustrate that Yang Yinhang had widespread support for his investigation. Xu Shiying was never sanctioned, and went on to serve in the KMT government in Taiwan. Wu regrets she has not seen Xu's own memoirs, which might shed some light on this case.



Xu Shiying, from a typical web profile that celebrates the man for a brilliant career.



Statue of the Xu Shiying on Jinmen Island, Taiwan. (From this webpage)



Zhang Yaozeng, died 1938 in Shanghai (from an online profile). He was one of Sun Yat-sen's "Council of Seven" 七君子.

Follow-up article, unfortunately not available online:

Xu Xiaoqun. "The Fate of Judicial Independence in Republican China, 1912-37," China Quarterly (1997), 149:1-28.
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Everybody show us your Tao Yuanmings

Swartz, Wendy. Reading Tao Yuanming : shifting paradigms of historical reception (427-1900). Cambridge Mass.: published by the Harvard University Asia Center ;distributed by Harvard University Press, 2008.

"Introduction"

When Swartz presents her motivation for this study, I saw her anticipating many of the questions I had begun to ask myself as I was preparing to teach about Tao Yuanming. I think because I was seeing my own half-formed thoughts fully articulated in this introduction, all I could do was marvel at a few of the juicier passages:

I have to believe that this old gentleman never really died. Even
today he remains awe-inspiring and alive.
— Xin Qiji 辛棄疾 (1140–1207)

Xin Qiji, the Patriot Lyricist (Bio on EpochTimes.com)

What a wonderful epigraph! Such an amazing indication of the rich influence Tao Yuanming has enjoyed over later generations of Chinese intellectuals -- one wonders what range of responses exists: did everybody love Tao as Xin Qiji did? (Oh, and what's up with this guy? Why does the Epochtimes host a creepy agitprop portrait of him? Methink me smells another Wen Tianxiang.) Did Tao have detractors? Did women appreciate the figure (persona, face) of Tao Yuanming as well? This is plainly Swartz's task. She promises a systematic use of reception theory, going back to the writings of Gauss.

Reception ought to be a topic of special centrality in Chinese literary history, in light of the time it spans, the relative stability and continuity of the literary language, and the accessibility of the literary corpus...a study of literary reception in the Chinese tradition must examine literary questions in relation to nonliterary categories, such as history, biography, and morality.

Swartz wisely focuses this broad scope of inquiry almost immediately, promising to examine a "dialogue spanning fifteen hundred years about three categories that lay at the heart of literati culture: reclusion, personality, and poetry." I wonder about the scope one should choose for such a study. Swartz by all account wishes to focus on other Chinese, male, intellectuals. Of course she means to examine famous Tao Yuanming admirers like Su Shi, Liang Qichao, or Lu Xun. But what about women readers? What about the possibility of a popular reception, including representations in modern fiction? I'm not criticizing Swartz at all here, just thinking aloud about different lines of investigation to which we can also apply reception theory. Swartz might be said to have laid the groundwork for future study by beginning with the most general case reasonably handled in a book-length project: "central issues animating premodern Chinese culture as a whole." I'll suspend judgment on this choice of scope for now.

From here, Swartz moves to a beginning: the influence of Tao Yuanming's biography, generally, as it is likely to have been imagined by previous readers:

Tao Yuanming, above all, wrote about himself. There is no extant precedent in Chinese literature for the candor with which Tao Yuanming spoke about his principles, fears, personal fancies, and wants, or for the scrupulous dating and prefatory notes he attached to his works. The strong autobiographical presence in Tao’s writings raises two immediate questions: how much agency has he been granted in determining his own critical reception, and to what extent did his detailed self-characterizations define and constrain later interpretations of him and his works?

To begin answering this question, Swartz presents a conclusion that I had just hit upon myself in the previous few days, though I had not said it so clearly:

The core of Tao’s autobiographical project lies somewhere between earnestness and playfulness, the latter implying a recognition of both the boundaries of autobiographical writing and the intention to push them.

This is a really nice statement of the central issue here. What's at stake is nothing less than the definitions of history and literature, and the frought question of distinguishing them. The nature of truth also comes up here -- we have historical truths, psychological truths, and maybe others as well -- poetic, artistic truths? The question of Tao Qian's significance in the development of Chinese political thought, in the basic ideology of Chinese intellectuals as informed through great works of literature, begins to emerge.

Reception as Mechanism; as Process

Swartz goes on to describe in general terms a literary-historical framework that matches so exactly with my interests that I am sure to memorize these words and use them over and over again:

We have Tao’s texts as redacted and restored by later readers. What we do know are readers’ interpretations of Tao and his works; what we can infer are the motivations behind these readings; what we can learn are the changes in literati values and reading practices; and what we can understand are the mechanisms behind Tao’s reception and construction.

Canonization is merely the first step of this process (this "mechanism"?)

My discussion distinguishes between canonization and reception, a process that continues after a writer has achieved iconic stature and his works normative status as an embodiment of a culture’s values.

Once an established icon, the shifting patterns of reception map against shifting cultural values:

His withdrawal brought to the foreground issues central to traditional literati culture: service versus reclusion, public duty versus self-cultivation, and loyalty to the state versus a transcendence of politics.

(Theoretical note: I've connected "values" here with "issues," a logical breakthrough for me. As issues are contested in a society, values are tested. For every major issue there are models, solutions -- portraits -- offered up by the culture to illustrate values. The values that writers can stand behind come to last the longest. But these can shift radically over the course of a culture's life. Witness Chinese family values in the age of revolution.)

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"The Soul of China"

Wen Tianxiang, the martyr (d. 1282)

Unfortunately I have not found a translation of the autobiography Wen Tianxiang 文天祥, China's first and most important national martyr. That's a shame, because as Mr. Brown shows in his brief but note-packed little book, this guy is tremendously interesting. From Yuan-dynasty accounts of how much he impressed the invading Mongols, down to statues of him in Singapore, we can see that Wen has been a model figure of national sacrifice for almost one thousand years, everywhere where Chinese is read and spoken.

A couple of interesting notes from Mr. Brown's text: A film called "The Soul of China" 國魂 was made in 1948, just as Chiang Kai-shek was losing China. From its popularity in Hong Kong as late as 1959, it's clear that anti-Communist Chinese audiences saw Wen Tianxiang as a martyr for the anti-Communist cause. Funny enough, Wen Tianxiang was also taught in history classes in mainland China during these years, presumably with a different interpretation. Also, the star of the 1948 film was Tao Jin 陶金 (above); he stayed in mainland China, I guess, because he starred in the famous Communist agitprop romance Song of Youth 青春之歌 just a few years later.

More fun facts: Wen's martyr figure appealed to Chinese intellectuals; Brown cites the case of William Hung, author of Tu Fu [Du Fu]: China's Greatest Poet:

"...when imprisoned by the Japanese in 1942, he requested a copy of the works of Du Fu in the hope of using them as had Wen Tienxian, while imprisoned by the Mongols. In coversations with me Professor Hung also reported that the memory of Wen's devotion to his cause not only gave hope and sustenance to those Chinese intellectuals who were suffering at the hands of the Japanese but also affected the captors themselves, for the Japanese officers, having been taught in their educational system the stories of Wen and other Chinese historical heroes, could not but respect those of their captives who remained steadfastly loyal."

Cool, huh? Also, the following passage really made my eyes widen, because I visited the tiny town of "Tianxiang" in Toroko gorge in 2005, but I had no idea it was founded for an ancient political martyr.

In 1960, during my first tour as a language student on Taiwan, I found that the portrait of Wen Tianxiang was prominently displayed, that there was a place (Tianxiang) named after him in the Toroko Gorge, and that this name was familiar to all Chinese with whom I spoke, some of whom not only knew his famous "Song of the Upright Spirit," but could also readily allude to his works or biography in one way or another. In 1979, during my second tour, I found that a stature of Wen had been erected at Tianxiang in 1967 and that a scene depicting Wen before his execution had been installed in the Wax Museum of the Central Film Studio in Taipei.

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Remembering Helmut Martin

Martin, Helmut, and Jeffrey Kinkley, tr. and eds. Modern Chinese Writers : Self-Portrayals. Armonk NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1992.

Sometimes a scholar can aggravate me to no end because they seem blind to something that I can see plainly, and yet I still would admit that I reaped ample rewards for reading them carefully. Helmut Martin is a good example with his introduction to Modern Chinese Writers : Self-Portrayals:

Helmut Martin (d. 1999 in Taiwan)

The repercussions after June 1989 prove that China had not really advanced beyond the stage of mere preconditions for creative freedom. Any literary historian of the period must still concentrate largely on the struggle between the writers' demands for autonomy and the constraints imposed on them by the prevailing cultural policy -- instead of exclusively following literary developments.

I don't agree. I think that above all, it is to literary developments that have to attend to understand what the Chinese readership is doing. Specifically literary techniques, like irony, express worlds of critique and mental action that Martin is unwilling or unable to appreciate. If Martin honestly thought that literature of the 1980s was nothing more than hackish "scar literature" or "cheap entertainment fiction," he is sadly mistaken, as work on Wang Shuo, Yu Hua, or Yang Jiang will show (note: this list under construction). No wonder critic C.D. Alison Bailey says that in Martin's list writers , "A sense of irony is a rare commodity as are modesty and an internationalist standpoint." This may be partly China's fault, but Martin's own stubborn focus on political dissidents also leaves us with this bias.

Apparently Martin resided in Taiwan and often published in Chinese (I'll just bet he was friends Yu Guangzhong). The link above to a few memorials dedicated him contains an immense amount of disturbing and touching information. It's a fitting memoir to a man who accomplished so much in the humanities, and was apparently a true teacher, despite suffering from chronic depression that eventually seems to have led him to commit suicide. I can't help but want to picture myself memorialized like this, with speeches from my Taiwanese friends, who will call me (in Taiwanese) a true friend of Taiwan.
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Princess Iron Fan (1942)

My advisor P. showed an excerpt of this old war-era Chinese cartoon to his class:
It's actually pretty engrossing, even if you don't speak Chinese. Archive.org also has the complete film for free download, and there are English subtitles also available.

When I saw it, I was immediately reminded that Mao Zedong made a reference to Monkey in an agitprop piece from the same year the movie came out. He must have been drawing on the movie's popularity at the time! Mao wrote,

As for the question of how to deal with the enemy's enormous apparatus, we can learn from the example of how the Monkey King dealt with Princess Iron Fan. The Princess was a formidable demon, but by changing himself into a tiny insect the Monkey King made his way into her stomach and overpowered her.

若说：何以对付敌人的庞大机构呢？那就有孙行者对付铁扇公主为例。铁扇公主虽然是一个厉害的妖精，孙行者却化为一个小虫钻进铁扇公主的心脏里去把她战败了。

From the Liberation Daily 《解放日报》, in Yan'an, September 7, 1942.
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Reading Yang Jiang (IV):Yang Jiang's a Patriot

Qian Zhongshu and Yang Jiang: Romantic Nationalists?

Spring, 1973
Hunan, China.
The "May 7th" Cadre School in Minggang village.

Yang Jiang:

My mind wandered back to the days just before Liberation when so many people were fleeing overseas. Why hadn't we taken one of the many offers and left as well?

Though the couple was famous worldwide, and though they were sought after as lecturers in America and Europe, still, Qian Zhongshu and Yang Jiang in 1978 remembered agreeing not leave China in 1949. They loved being at home, together. Just as together, they can be patriots. How patriotic was Yang Jiang, really? And Qian Zhongshu -- did he really quote that rather sappy and romantic Liu Yong line?

My belt may grow looser all of my days; for her, I will wither away
衣帶漸寬終不悔，為伊消得人憔悴

I believe that the logic of Yang Jiang's reading is as follows: She wishes to tell us why and how she and Qian Zhongshu chose not to leave China in 1949. Or, to be more precise and accurate, she wishes to tell us what Qian Zhongshu thought of when she asked him why they hadn't left China in 1949. Apparently he would quote a rather trite line from a distinctly second-rate love poem, which seems uncharacteristic of the grandmaster, unless he be making some kind of joke at the poem's expense. Was it possible or even common for Qian Zhongshu to quote poems against themselves, to use a line of poorly set praise to effect a criticism? Perhaps I'm over reading here. Even if we settle whether Qian Zhongshu is up to some sort of game here, we also must ask ourselves whether Yang Jiang is up to one. If Qian Zhongshu means for the 'her,' of the poem to mean China, then it's quite natural to see the thinning, withering man as both Qian Zhongshu and the Chinese people. The generally romantic notion that national identity is like true love, and would not see reason, would not respect a sense of self-preservation may be a darkly witty comparison meant to criticize. Or it might be quite genuine. Other studies have linked nationalism, both generally and Chinese in particular, as related in the world of words to the terms of love, truth and eternity. Qian Zhongshu might be a bit of an old-fashioned romantic, as Stephen Owen has strongly implied in a series of objections to Qian's reading of the Rhapsody on Literature (Readings in Chinese Literary Thought).

The Romantic Patriot

Whether Qian Zhongshu's romanticism is genuine or not, in this passage, Yang Jiang's romantic notion of nation certainly is.

The simple fact was that we couldn't abandon our homeland, discard 'her' -- the only place in the world we could ever be part of that 'us'. Even though there are hundreds of millions of Chinese, members of the 'us' who we don't know, we are all still part of one entity. We feel as one, breathe as one, all undeniable, inseparable parts of China. I felt ashamed that I had believed the rumors and had hoped that Mocun would be going back to Peking to live with Ah Yuan in safety. It was selfish of me to think only of my own family without any regard for others. In the end, that's what it all had come to: despite the endless campaigns and injunctions to reform my thinking, I was worse than I had been before.

"The simple fact," "the only" -- Yang Jiang imagines in very concrete terms here the bond between the couple's identity and their identity as Chinese. With what is really, on close inspection, breathtaking directness (we "breathe as one"), Yang Jiang imagines China. The issue here is suddenly not that Yang Jiang is patriotic; it is that she writes a definition for patriotic, a beautiful and romantic way to imagine China as a life love, a destiny -- one's lungs. [To be...uhm? re-read?]
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Susan Buck-Morss at UMN

"From Hegel and Haiti to Universal History": A presentation by Susan Buck-Morss
Sponsored By: Institute for Advanced Study
Additional Sponsors: Institute for Global Studies
Series: Thursdays at Four

Hegel *and* Haiti

Hegel began using the term "revolution" in earnest after reading an 1804 issue of the journal Minerva which carried analysis of the Haitian Revolution. Can we go beyond the treatment he gave to revolution? Can we develop a true and morally righteous, universal opposition to capitalist exploitation? A radical new anti-slavery? In a politically charged call for empathy and syncretism in the teaching of history, Professor Buck-Morss proved her mettle as an intellectual historian to contend with.

There is no "other"

I think of the lecture as a plea for a broader perspective of mankind that does not demonize any single group of beings as "other." By focusing on the history of Haiti, but implying a deeper connection to European history than is generally acknowledged, Buck-Morss hopes to illustrate a great historical truth behind Haiti's insurrection: that it began with a religious ritual, that it banded together the slaves, slaves that capitalist countries had themselves forced together in a never-ending pursuit for the most efficient way to control labor. The deeply spiritual, perhaps irrational, experience of liberty and resistance that Buck-Morss reads in the character of the leader of the Haitian insurrection, a "big black man," literate in the language of Islam, calling forth eloquently for liberty in a Voodoo initiation rite that ignited full-scale insurrection is the real legacy of that event. Professor Buck-Morss would have us inherit this deep need for the liberty of all humanity, from paid factory workers to indentured servants to African slaves on plantations, and apply to the contemporary globalized world. She implies that coalition politics, linking groups of different race, gender, or identity markers of any kind, must rise up based on common need.

Living in the Truth is Still Hard

Clearly, Buck-Morss hopes to use her universal history to start a new dialogue about contemporary global politics. But when questioned about the new terms of this political debate, Buck-Morss still prefers to demur. She is neither for violence of any kind, nor a pacifist. She will dare to criticize Obama, but she admits a surge of hope in modern coalition politics. She is not proud to be an American, but calls to us to see how similar the "liberty" language that is the legacy of the founding fathers "and all that crap" is worth learning from as much as Haiti. The audience posed challenges aimed at showing the possible limits of her "empathy"-based approach to history: it's anarchist, it's all an act, it's a Foucaultian fantasy of power continuously in play. The room went flush with engagement, but it was a skeptical engagement. I wish I could have asked the professor whether Obama is right to keep risking innocent Pakistani lives in the name of our military objectives against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Or whether Hilary Clinton was right to leave the term "human rights" out of any of her recent dialogues with China's leaders. I have a feeling she would be as ambivalent on these questions as any of us. I can't decide if thinking that should be heartening, or make me even more gloomy about the future of the humanities in America.
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Yang Jiang: Finding the Irony

(This is my second post about the subject of my dissertation; check out the first one, if you wish. )

Political Criticism?

Yang Jiang is a widely celebrated writer in China today; her memoir of the Cultural Revolution is actually taught in Chinese schools.


One of the main problems that interests me is: how did this memoir become such an enduring classic? It is especially interesting when we remember that fiction and memoir of the Cultural Revolution was openly published in the years 1978-1980, and then promptly silenced in 1980. Yang Jiang's book was published at the tail end of this period, but unlike other works from those years, it was never banned. Clearly, it was never seen as a deep political critique. But I always got the feeling it was one of the more powerful critiques not only of the Cultural Revolution but against Communist ideology as a whole. It often seems to me to be just the kind of book that China's leaders should have banned in 1980. Why didn't they? I'm only slowly putting together the answer to the question. Below, my initial response to a reading from a 2004 MA thesis by a Taiwanese graduate student.


Yeh Han-yin 葉含氤. Yang Jiang wenxue chuangzuo yanjiu 楊絳文學創作研究 (A study of Yang Jiang’s literary writing). MA thesis, Soochow University Taiwan.

Irony in Chinese: a preliminary note

In this strikingly sophisticated look at the "literariness" of Yang Jiang's writing, Yeh Han-yin 葉含氤 accomplishes a lucid exposition on what I have called in English the "irony" that is everywhere present in Six Chapters of a Cadre School. In Yeh's terms, what Yang Jiang accomplishes is a dual portrait of political movements and her own emotional interior that applies a style most notable for its detached, completely irreverent form of wit, what Yeh calls 'humorous satirico-comical style' (youmo fengci de xiju bifa 幽默諷刺的戲劇筆法). The central term of Yeh's analysis of this crucial feature of Yang Jiang's style is maodun 矛盾, meaning "contradiction" or "paradox;" the strong similarity of maodun in this exposition to the term "irony" in my exposition helps reveal the considerable overlap of our arguments.

A prerequisite for irony: distance

In a brilliant reading of the 1987 essay "On the Cusp of Fire: The Years of the Horse and Ram (1966-1968)," Yeh Han-yin points to the skill with which Yang Jiang is able to use language to distance herself to the situation at hand, thus obtaining in many respects a 'clear perspective' (qingxing de shijiao 清醒的視角). Yang Jiang alludes at various places to the strong bond between this distancing and the capacity for seeing the situation ironically, as when she describes the scene of a public struggle session against intellectuals: "Like Monkey, my soul rose up into the air and surveyed the strange performance, including the ragged troupe of Monsters and Demons trailing on behind in their dunce's caps. It was a superb farce, and even now I can picture that droll parade, with me at the head of it." (Barmé 40) The distance that comes with memory, coupled most likely with the sort of inwardly-turned personal character that Yang Jiang always exhibits, forms its own strategies of survival.

A Small Battery of Verbal Ironies, Summarized

Looking closely at the verbal forms these strategies take, Yeh finds two kinds of "paradoxes" (maodun) at the center of Yang Jiang's injections of distance, clarity, and the comic. The first is the paradox of logical dialectic (luoji de bianzheng 邏輯的辯證). In "On the Cusp of Fire: The Years of the Horse and Ram (1966-1968)," Yang Jiang also describes the Cultural Revolution struggle session as incredibly boring, so much so that she couldn't help "falling asleep on her feet, like a horse" (xue ma er shui 學馬而睡). Here, says Yeh, the paradox is between Yang Jiang's apparent calm and collection and the intense atmosphere of cruelty and confession that characterized the setting. For Yeh, this type of paradox is also commonly found in Six Chapters of a Cadre School. In Chapter 3, "The Vegetable Garden: On Idleness," for example, the chief paradox is between Yang Jiang's sense of distress at the tremendous waste characterized by the cadre schools and the more superficial mode of leisure characterized by the term "idleness" (xian 閒). Similarly, the end of this same chapter contains a pithy exposition on the various exclusive but overlapping cliques that existed between prisoners, cadres, and peasants at the cadre school, and as Yeh points out the complex tones of the exposition serves mainly to contrast starkly with the intended function of the cadre school to end the distinction between the prisoners and the peasants and to bring about a general collective identity.

Irony and Political Criticism

Yeh deserves credit not only for working out the main features of this type of "paradox," but also for pointing out that these paradoxes deep critiques of Cultural Revolution policies. But Yeh does not perhaps go far enough to explore the implications of this critique, especially in light of mainland readings of Yang Jiang that remain seemingly blind to her writing as a form of critique. Whether it be the cruelty of struggle sessions, the tremendous waste of human capital and other resources at the cadre schools, or the failure of the schools to foster the intended collective spirit, Yang Jiang's clear meaning is that the project as a whole was a failure from the very beginning. It was not that the Cultural Revolution was a good idea that had gone to excess, and it was not that any particular individuals such as Mao Zedong or the Gang of Four were at fault. Rather, the ideology itself, as expressed in its main terms and assertions, is the subject of ironic, paradoxical play in Yang Jiang's work. In place of "struggle," Yang Jiang alternates between laughter and boredom; facing "re-education through labour," Yang Jiang finds altogether too much 'idleness,' and in the place of 'collective spirit,' Yang Jiang finds only the limited and exclusive 'we-ness' (zamen 咱們) of cliques that are formed in times of duress. The stakes of this political critique are high; if the authoritative mainland reading that labels Yang Jiang's writing a form of "showing a wound, yet uttering no complaint" (yuan er bu nu 怨而不怒) were better readers of irony, they might have found a considerable dose of 'complaint' in her memoirs.
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Health Care in Taiwan

Today our university sponsored a talk about the Taiwanese health care system by a doctor-turned-graduate-student in public health named Wang Shi-yi. They offered a free lunch, and I almost always enjoy events centered around Taiwan, so I went.

As I expected, the room was half-filled with Taiwanese, including one or two acquaintances, obviously proud of their compatriot Dr. Wang and their own achievements with universal single-payer health care. Citing recent studies of the system, Dr. Wang made two illuminating points:

1. Taiwan is poorer and much more densely populated than America, which makes its population more at risk for contagious disease. But since the adoption of universal health care, Taiwan has pulled its rates of infection down to below USA levels in almost all illnesses.
   
2. Taiwan pays for its single payer health system with dedicated taxes from individuals and employers, but this costs much less in per-capita government spending than the American health care system. Dr. Wang says, "This proves that universal single-payer health care systems do not mean more government spending on health care."

Of course, there really are some major caveats to these points, especially the second one. The government pays less because health care costs less in Taiwan. Doctors are paid in salaries, not fees for services. Drug costs are much lower. They have three times as many nurses as in the USA per capita. But even with these caveats, Taiwan's health care system and its spokespeople have solid, irrefutable points: universal single-payer coverage is better -- much better. It's one of those things the USA will definitely adopt someday, once we finally put to rest a whole slew of completely dead ideas.

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