Archive for the 'China' Category

Writing Tiananmen

Published
by
Tom Chatfield
on June 26, 2008
in China
. 0 Comments

I’ve visited China six times in the last six years, and every time I’ve gone I feel like I’ve visited a different place. The pace of change is simply incredible, as is the scale of variations between its mountains, plains, towns, cities and regions. China is a crowded, dazzling nation, and one that has begun to enthrall the world. Yet, for those of us on the outside, understanding what it means to be Chinese today, and what it might mean to be Chinese in the future, can seem unassailably alien questions.

The barriers to understanding are at once linguistic, cultural and political. China is ancient, yet there are deafening silences in its official history. Its culture is among the world’s richest, yet it remains constrained by official channels narrower and more zealously regulated than those in any other similarly affluent, influential nation. This month, I met one of China’s most significant modern authors, Ma Jian—a writer who has worked from Britain in self-imposed exile since 1997—and discussed his monumental recent fictional account of the 1989 Tiananmen protests and their aftermath, Beijing Coma.

Beijing Coma embodies many of the contradictions of modern Chinese self-exploration. A work quietly raging at the suppression of both historical accounting and individual rights, it won’t be printed in mainland China; its greatest impact is likely to be in the English translation crafted by Ma’s wife, Flora, which will make its way both online and through the international reading world. Yet it’s a delicate, hopeful book, which suggests the enduring force of introspection, and the ways in which a thoroughly Chinese literature might come to address those events forbidden from public discourse—and unlock the lessons they contain.

China’s Tibetan Shooting Team in Olympics Training

Published
by
John Kelly
on March 17, 2008
in Asia, China and Foreign affairs
. 7 Comments

Who says China isn’t involving Tibet in the run up to the Olympics? It sounds as though they are as acutely aware of international sentiment as was the USSR when it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. I suppose the thinking is that if they get the purging, quelling and brutal suppressions in well ahead of the summer everyone will have forgotten by the time the Olympic flame is lit in the National Stadium. Maybe they will: we’ve already discounted the uncomfortable rumours that tens of thousands of people unfortunate enough to live in or near land required for the Olympic village were forcibly evicted. According to Kurt Streeter of the LA Times, a news blackout applied to any CCN report on Tibet and the streets were full of (not-so) secret police last week during nothing more controversial than a Dodgers’ exhibition baseball game. It doesn’t sound too welcoming. I’m surprised that there is a news blackout if the government is confident that, mischievously, Tibetan protesters are shooting and stabbing themselves to death in large numbers in Lhasa, Sichuan and elsewhere. That’s what I call news.

Tibet won its first gold medal for China before the Games even started. That old splittist the Dalai Lama, a well-known advocate of violence if ever there was one, received a Gold Congressional Medal last year from the US Congress for “human compassion, courage and conviction as his tools in carving a path for peace. For half a century, he has struggled to better the lives of the Tibetan people. In doing so, he has been a shining light to all those fighting for freedom around the world,” according to Senator Dianne Feinstein. Renowned Peacenik George W. Bush presented the gong in a private ceremony - in marked contrast to our lovely UK leaders who daren’t offer the twinkly old reincarnation of Chenrezig, Bodhisattva of Compassion, a cup of buttered tea when he comes to England this May.

Perhaps this is not so surprising: Britons never, never, never, will be slaves but we don’t mind other people having them so long as there’s a quid in it. And we aren’t slaves to the US, despite what cruel foreign devils like the French and Germans might sneeringly say. We uncharacteristically defied our US cousins and sent a crack team of hopefuls to the 1980 Moscow Olympics (and still didn’t win much against Togo and the Faroe Islands apart from Daley Thompson who won the three-legged race and probably would have won anyway). In passing, it’s ironic that the US boycotted the Ruskies for invading Afghanistan in a vain, brutal and savage attempt to form a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism. Was this the same US who armed the ‘freedom fighters’, brought down the Soviet Union and - invaded Afghanistan?

The Dalai Lama has never urged Tibetans to rise in violent protest, and continually avows that he is not an advocate of independence for Tibet, merely free autonomous status, which China claims it already has, so what’s the problem? (It might be that the Gelugpa leader leans towards feudal theocracy, to be fair). This much we know. Several millions have died, been exiled or have been imprisoned since the invasion in 1950. Innocent Tibetans have been forced to endure Richard Gere, Prince Charles, The Beastie Boys, Bjork, ‘comedian’ Russell Brand and Steven Seagal, yet we still turn a blind eye to their plight.

The autonomous region of the Publisher’s office at Prospect has decreed that if you like, you can sign a petition asking Gordon Brown to show an ounce of gumption and meet the Dalai Lama. He probably won’t, but Mr Lama is welcome to come round here and write an article. People outside the UK (though probably not in China) can sign a petition here. To make it fair, Hu Jintao is also more than welcome to drop round if he’s in London provided he asks his mates to stop allowing these misguided Tibetan monks to shoot, stab and stomp themselves to death with such monotonous regularity.

China Design Now at the V&A

Published
by
John Kelly
on March 12, 2008
in Arts and culture and China
. 13 Comments

When the Triumph Bonneville was sex on wheels and Roberts radios were avant-garde, “Made in Japan” meant cheap and garish. Those silly little transistor radios— hadn’t they heard of valves? How we laughed at their little noddy bikes that didn’t leak oil and kick started without breaking your ankle. Sony who? Raw fish? Well, the rest is history. 
So we should not be in the least surprised that “Made in China” means stylish, futuristic, smooth. The only shock is the transition from agrarian to Bladerunner in less than a decade. Young Chinese designers smorgasbord sources from industrialised East Asia, China’s communist past, Russian constructivism and US counter-culture with cosmopolitan nonchalence. But they need to work harder in a world where multicultural western seven year olds understand the kitsch semiotics of Hello Kitty, love retro mobiles, and forgive Mao his eccentricities (those caps and suits were divine).
It’s racist, patronising and tiresome to even affect surprise at how modern China has become, but if you still have doubts, visit the V&A and enjoy the Angry Pandas, delicious graphics, beautiful installations and the agitprop skateboards for what they are: the finest Fusion design. I doubt if this exhibition reflects anything close to the reality of life for 98% of Chinese citizens, any more than Hoxton represents Heckmondwike, but why should it? Don’t look for subliminal messages: some of the work on display is mildly subversive, but only in the same way as Chop Suey is authentic peasant fare. Nothing I saw here made me think of tanks and students in big squares; some made me think of Neuromancer, but the overall effect was uplifting and, well, optimistic.I still don’t like sweatshops and the cultural genocide in Tibet, so you’ll be relieved to know that I haven’t been brainwashed. But if China Design Now signals a world which is coming, in one form or another, to your shopping mall soon then we should be as grateful as bikers were when Honda made motorbikes that started in the rain.This is an inspired and well-curated exhibition, (admirably and lavishly sponsored by HSBC).
Mao was a bit of a monster, but his kids are good at art— with a surprisingly western sense of humour. Let a thousand designers bloom. In the semiology of global contemporary design, China is proving an expert linguist. 
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Prospect’s new issue: how China thinks

Published
by
Tom Chatfield
on February 27, 2008
in China and Inside the magazine
. 46 Comments

In this month’s cover story, Mark Leonard addresses a question that has been largely neglected by even the most ardent admirers of China’s rise as an economic superpower: what exactly are the ideas shaping the growth of this potent challenger to western hegemony; and who are the people thinking them?

China has a very different political and intellectual tradition to those of Europe and America—but throughout history, and since long before Europe began to claim itself a civilized place, it has been at the heart of global technological and educational innovation. As Leonard explains, China’s intellectual class is now growing at an astonishing rate, in tandem with a huge expansion in its universities and think-tanks, whose memberships already outnumber those of any other nation. Free thought in the western sense may remain distant in many areas, but modern China enjoys a level of national debate inconceivable even a decade ago—and one that nourishes a distinctly Chinese model of economic development and political legitimacy which is increasingly proving a global alternative to the attractions of western market democracy. Over 3,000 Chinese-style “special economic zones” are now to be found around the world, for example, in addition to its own expanding multi-billion dollar trade hubs in Africa.

Will the “China model” be to the 21st century what the American way was to the 20th? Mark Leonard presents us with a vivid picture of a nation still in transition, yet determined to bring the results from its formidable laboratory of social experiments to bear on the world. Let us know what you think here (and for those wishing to find out more, Leonard’s book What Does China Think? has just been published by 4th Estate).

The travelling travails of Gordon Brown

Published
by
Stephen Chan
on January 16, 2008
in China and Foreign affairs
. 0 Comments

Gordon Brown visited both Iraq and Afghanistan in December, and will visit China in the second part of January. He began visiting China only in 2005, curiously late for a chancellor of the exchequer who might prudently have been watching the rise of China as an economic superpower. Neither of his senior foreign ministers, the young Miliband and the acerbic Mark Malloch Brown, has deep China expertise—Brown having chosen the latter at least in part to help him prosecute his agenda in Africa. But it is the Chinese who are the big news in Africa, and in a way that resonates with much of Africa far more persuasively than the conditionality-ridden debt write-offs that are prudently and charitably—almost Calvinistically—extracted from the Brown bag.

There will be much to talk with the Chinese, but Africa will not loom large. China’s trading relationship with Europe and Britain and Chinese investment in Britain will dominate the “serious” agenda, but for the most part, this will be a “getting to know you” visit. The Chinese rated Tony Blair. He was seen as a moderniser, someone who fitted the Chinese image of the “Young Marshall,” and they understood his treacheries. They have an unformed but, at this stage, not fully appreciative view of Gordon Brown. Perhaps, they think, he is a chancellor who could not step up properly. They would not have appreciated his almost public intrigues to stay in line for the succession. That is unseemly and shows no style in the more brutal but hidden Chinese methodologies. But, as with everyone, Gordon Brown will learn the necessity of patience in dealing with the Chinese. The word is no longer “inscrutable.” Deliberately slow is the new Chinese style.

But the Chinese would have paid attention to Brown’s visits to Iraq and Afghanistan. Britain is slowly withdrawing from Iraq, but the pledge to stay in Afghanistan “for the next few years” would have surprised the Chinese, who have been concerned about foreign powers in that country since the Soviet invasion of 1979. Quite apart from old and possibly dated strategic concerns, the Chinese will wonder whether Brown actually means it. They know Britain cannot actually afford a long haul that will inevitably become more expensive. They watched with delight as their then antagonists, the Soviets, took a mauling in Afghanistan. Anything that further weakens an economic power that they have very recently surpassed to become the fourth largest economy on earth will quietly delight the Chinese, as they smile their welcomes for the Man of Prudence.

Continue reading ‘The travelling travails of Gordon Brown’

The silicon valley of China?

Published
by
Tom Nuttall
on November 22, 2007
in China and Inside the magazine
. 7 Comments

Rob Gifford’s piece of reportage from China in the new issue of Prospect opens with the staggering statistic that there are 49 Chinese cities with a population of over 1m. One of these is Hefei (4.7m). Heard of it? Thought not. Almost unknown outside of China, the inland city aspires to be the country’s answer to Silicon Valley by 2020. Gifford paid a visit to Hefei as part of his journey along China’s new Route 312, and found a bustling city whose aspirations are emblematic of the future of China—and whose success raises thorny questions about the relationship between political and economic freedom.

The First Emperor

Published
by
Tom Chatfield
on September 12, 2007
in Arts and culture and China
. 0 Comments

I was lucky enough to attend the press preview of the British Museum’s new show, The First Emperor, earlier today. Intimately enclosed within the Great Court’s reading room, it presents the largest group of important objects relating to China’s first Emperor—Qin Shihuangdi (秦始皇), who ruled from 221 to 210 BC—ever to be loaned abroad. It’s also set to be one of the most-visited shows in the history of the museum, with 160,000 advance bookings and a target of at least 500,000. It barely scratches the surface of the vast archaeological site in China the artefacts are drawn from, yet offers glimpses of the world over 2,000 years ago that are astonishing enough to induce a kind of historical vertigo.

Qin’s greatest legacy to the world is what UNESCO describe as the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, better known as the “Terracotta Army”—the largest and most elaborate tomb the world has ever known. Determined to live as gloriously in the afterlife as he had on earth, Qin had 700,000 workers spend almost four decades crafting an entire world for him to rule after death, and an army of over 8,000 fantastically detailed figures to rule it with. Discovered entirely by accident in 1974, its excavation is an ongoing mission that will not be complete even in my lifetime.

Seeing the figures in China—massed in battle formation in the pits they were buried in, beneath aircraft-hangar-sized roofs—is an awesome experience, and one that drenches visitors in the sheer scale and massed labour of Qin’s vision. The British Museum have, necessarily, opted for a quite different emphasis: on the First Emperor himself, and the astonishing force of will he brought to bear on his new empire, from the standardisation of its language, weights, measures, transport and laws to the beginnings of what would become the Great Wall.

It’s a far cry from the picturesque, “mystical” Orient of western myth-making, and all the better for it. This is China as the Chinese like to see it, with a proud and disciplined history of government, culture, invention and military might. In such an intimate setting, moreover, it’s the exquisite quality of the items on display that is most evident. The terracotta figures, astonishing as they are, took second place in my appreciation to the quite beautiful etched bronzes—ornamental bells and massive, elegant vases and urns. Moreover, as the Chinese know very well (and every major sign is conspicuously translated into Mandarin) these masterpieces were being created at a time when most of Europe, let alone the United States, consisted of tribes attacking each other with crude iron tools. Even ancient Greece and Egypt had nothing like this mastery of clay or metal.

Perhaps the greatest wonder of the show, though, is that which no-one has seen: the interior of the giant earth pyramid that is the Emperor’s actual resting-place, reputed to contain a miniature universe made of precious metals, stone and pearls, with mercury seas and gilded stars. Exploration of this has barely begun—largely because of the huge technical challenges involved—and the ongoing excitement of discovery is palpable in the exhibition’s orchestration, which guides you carefully through the Emperor’s life and times and his planing of the tomb before revealing its scale and riches.

There is also a great irony at the heart of it all. This incredible repository of art and information was the product of a brutal, futile egoism—the self-immortalisation of an all-powerful despot, intended for no-one but himself, built by criminals and slave labour, buried away from the eyes of the world. The First Emperor was his empire, which collapsed into civil war soon after his death, and as the exhibition makes clear he believed in a universe that literally centred on his own being. Yet of all history’s achievements, few are more enlightening or affecting than this most unenlightened and deluded of projects.

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The state that ate itself

Published
by
Tom Chatfield
on August 10, 2007
in China and Media
. 0 Comments

A few years ago, I travelled around China and Tibet with a friend who had lived there for a few years. Like me, he’s an obviously western male; unlike me, he has taught himself both to read and to speak Mandarin fluently—something that offered us many uneasy delights in terms of understanding rather more of what people were saying around us than they thought we could. Being called a big-nosed monkey by every other person on a street was one thing, as was the unquenchable hilarity that tended to follow a hairy Englishman speaking fluent Chinese; but the politics was quite another and, although we had the luxury of being able to treat much of it as a black farce (i.e. not our problem), we were acutely aware that those around us could not.

At the end of our several travels around the country, there were few things more entertaining than returning to Beijing and flicking through the English-language Chinese press. What country, and what people, were they writing about? It certainly wasn’t the place we’d just been in. This was a weird, parallel world, in which the only words were growth, triumph, great! and popular; this was 1950s Russia in the 21st-century, and it just didn’t work. It was hilarious. It was, in the case of the China Daily, almost as if a crack team of satirists were covertly writing the whole thing.

Today, and despite desperate attempts to retain control, China’s censored state press is being increasingly marginalised by the web. Despite the handwringing capitulations of players like google, braver and more numerous souls are poking holes in the information order faster than they can be plugged. Sweetly, though, the world of state news continues in its timewarp—as I found out earlier today when my friend, back in Beijing for the summer, directed me towards this story. Definitive evidence, at last, of highly-placed anarcho-satirists within the journalistic order:

All the reincarnations of living Buddhas of Tibetan Buddhism must get government approval, otherwise they are “illegal or invalid,” China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) said in Beijing Friday.

The SARA has issued a set of regulations on reincarnation of Tibetan living Buddhas, which will take effect as of September 1.

“It is an important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation of living Buddhas,” the SARA said in a statement issued Friday.

The regulations require that a temple which applies for reincarnation of a living Buddha must be “legally-registered venues for Tibetan Buddhism activities and are capable of fostering and offering proper means of support for the living Buddha.”

All the reincarnation applications must be submitted to the religious affairs department of the provincial-level government, the provincial-level government, SARA, and the State Council, respectively, for approval in accordance with the fame and influence of the living Buddhas in the religious circle, the regulations said.

Revisiting autonyms

Published
by
Tom Chatfield
on June 14, 2007
in Arts and culture, Asia, China and Philosophy
. 2 Comments

I’ve been writing about two Chinese authors for this month’s Prospect, and it just has struck me that Will’s June column about “autonyms”—words that in some way embody themselves—touches on something that is fundamental to all languages, but that is far more obvious in character-based ones: all writing has its roots in autonymy. For example, take a few Mandarin Chinese characters:

中 (Zhong) means “middle,” and is based on the image of an arrow striking the centre of a target, and perhaps also the idea of a flag flying

国 (Guo) means “kingdom,” and is based on the image of a square of land within which stands a highly stylized piece of jade, representing the wealth of that land. This is, however, the “simplified” version of the character; the pre-20th century, “traditional” form contains within its outer square the characters representing a town and a weapon, indicating a defended territory.

人 (Ren) means “person” or “people,” and is based on the image of a standing person—one of the most basic and ancient of all characters, and the basis for many other sets of meanings (大, for instance, connotes “large,” as it represents someone stretching their arms out; while 天 connotes “heaven” because it represents a large man with the sky above him)

Put these together and you have a phrase that reads “middle kingdom people/person,” or, as we might more simply put it, “Chinese person/people.”

Similarly, in Japanese, take these two characters:

日 (Ni) meaning “sun” or “day,” based on the image of the sun—a circle with a dot in it that has over time become a square with a stroke across its centre. Rather wonderfully, the symbol for the moon is the same but with “legs” drawn in underneath it, 月, as it has to run faster around the earth.

本 (Hon) meaning “origin” or “root,” based on the image of a tree (大, the same as the Chinese character for “large,” and with many of its connotations; Japanese writing is derived from Chinese) with the ground drawn in underneath it.

Put them together and you get “sun origin” or, more comprehensibly, “place of the rising sun,” which is the Japanese name for Japan (the word “Japan” is a western mangling of Ni-Hon, also pronounced Ni-Pon. The name ”China” probably derives from the early Qin dynasty).

Even our own alphabet began with the concrete. The letter “A” can be traced to a pictogram of an ox’s head in hieroglyphics; both “C” and “G” probably come from Hebrew representations of a throwing stick; “F” from the image of a hook or club in proto-Semitic; and so on.

There are massive complexities to be explored here which my potted comments barely hint at, but it remains astonishing to think that over the last 6,000 years humanity has leapt from representing the world with images to exploring its deepest workings through the layers of meaning these images have accumulated. No matter how astonishing its flights of abstraction may seem, the written word is rooted in the physical world.

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