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| March 12, 2010 |
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The Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity; they do not have national spirit…they are just a heap of loose sand…Other men are the carving knife and serving dish; we are the fish and the meat. Dr. Sun Yat-sen [1924] When I was a child a favorite book, Children from Many Lands, included a picture of two children from China. They were dark haired, plump and rosy cheeked, surrounded by blue sky and standing under a mulberry tree, staring in rapt attention at a cute little worm weaving his cocoon which, the author wrote, would later be turned into silk. When I left to visit China this spring, somewhere tucked away in a far corner of my brain I still carried that childhood picture with me. I also carried an admiration for a culture that had survived thousands of years of upheaval while achieving enormous accomplishments, from art and poetry to the paper on which to print them. And in a more adult way, I longed for some glimpse of the wisdom and insight that I believed must have been developed through the experience of all those years of human existence. We have been traveling in China for two weeks by the time we arrive in Beijing. It is the evening of May 8th, 1999. Freed finally from the government's tour guides, who have squired us carefully from bus to designated temples, pagodas and factories (all with their souvenir shops) and to numerous, carefully specified "picture taking opportunities" three of us run eagerly out of our hotel to use the last daylight to see the city. We walk quickly down the wide, modern street with its huge, new glass buildings, its MacDonalds and KFCs, its Woman's Activity Center, its bustling sidestreets. With everyone else, we walk in the lane with the bicycles, barely to the right of the buses. We wait obediently at the crosswalks, having learned that here pedestrians come last. But then we hurry on. We want to see Tiananmen Square, the place where Mao gathered the Red Guards at the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 and the scene of the student protests and the subsequent military takeover of the square on June 4, 1989. But when we get there, Tiananmen is cordoned off by a solid, seven-foot fence, the Monument to the People's Heroes wrapped in green tarps. It is closed we are told as part of the reconstruction project to prepare the city for the fiftieth anniversary of the Communist revolution this October-the birthday of the People's Republic of China. Nobody believes this. They all believe that it is closed to forestall a commemorative gathering on the tenth anniversary of the student protests. Defeated, we turn back toward the hotel. We move to the side as a group of blue-uniformed workers strides brusquely past us. We note policemen stationed every half block. We think about ducking down a sidestreet for some browsing, but something, perhaps the police presence, perhaps the darkening sky prods us on toward the safety of the hotel. When we get inside, we learn that NATO has bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and students have been demonstrating at the U.S. Embassy. The next day we contact the American embassy, two blocks up the street, for some direction. Being pelted with rocks and jeers, glass shattering all around, they are in no position to tell us to do anything other than to stay inside our hotel, that to do otherwise is dangerous. For that day, we comply. We are Americans in China; we are foreigners. Our round eyes and curly hair, the fuzz on our arms, our "big noses" and, more often than not, our portliness, give us away instantly. In yelling "Hello Purse" to a member of our group, one merchant makes her view of us glaringly obvious as do other adults who send two and three year old children to grab our clothes and demand money. On a more expensive level, we are the business people who bring the joint ventures that help to fund the infrastructure like the new city buildings and the Three Gorges Dam. Such investment is vital to current Chinese hopes and plans. We have been to several temples where pillars of red hold up the blue roof of heaven. We are told that red stands for prosperity. For much of our trip we are isolated by the government's control of foreign travelers. One of our group breaks through the barriers now and then because he speaks Chinese. These words coming from his mouth surprise and then delight his listeners (all of them except our assigned guide who hurries to tell the person taking us around at each new stop that "a member of the group speaks some Chinese") as they eagerly engage him, telling him of ancestors who worked for American factory owners, and probing him about his marriage status. Pulling him into a nearby office a factory manager tells him of his dream to go to America to "a great university," hoping that the young American's connections to Stanford will help his chances of admission. They tell him that because he speaks Chinese, he doesn't have to pay tips. There is the beginning of an easy banter and an atmosphere of good will. This feeling is smothered when NATO bombs the Chinese embassy. At first, like the Chinese though for different reasons, we don't quite believe the explanation. Years of postponed truth has taught us to be wary of first accounts. But if it is true, we are ashamed. We feel tarred by an act in which we played no part, and yet for which we feel somewhat responsible We hear the act excused on CNN by American politicians and government officials as something that was bound to happen with so many bombing raids and blamed on lack of funding. We see the faces of the dead. The next day, we venture out to the Forbidden City, Imperial Palace of the Emperors. It is explained to us that these 183 acres housed the Emperor because it was easier to watch, and therefore protect, one Emperor than it was to watch the rest of the country. We hear of the "very smart" Empress who, when threatened by loss of her control over her nephew-Emperor (his favorite concubine had introduced him to her brother's circle of young intellectuals who had traveled abroad, and he was being influenced by them) had the concubine murdered and her nephew poisoned, temporarily burying the influence of foreigners. The treasures of the Forbidden city are long gone--to Taiwan in 1949. Outside the Forbidden City, we are attacked by street entrepreneurs, this time enthusiastically pressing us to buy Mao's revolutionary writings. "Hello, hello!" a short, dark-haired intense faced vendor stands squarely in our path. "One hundred yuan!" (about twelve dollars) "No," the one nearest the intrepid attacker shakes his head vigorously. "No," is not understood. "Eighty yuan!" two books, Mao in Chinese and English are shaken in his face. The middle-aged man strides out of reach. The vendor turns to a young man in our group, the one who speaks Chinese. "Forty yuan," says the vendor with a conspiratorial smile. The young man takes the books in his hands and thumbs through them. "Twenty yuan," comes the new offer. "For both?" the young American asks in Chinese. The vendor nods his head yes, collects the money, smiles again and blocks the path of a well-dressed woman from another group. "One hundred twenty yuan," he says. Perhaps Fox Butterworth, New York Times bureau chief in Beijing, was prescient when he quoted seventeen years ago the Chinese observation of their seemingly inconsistent communist-capitalism "Our minds are on the left, but our pockets are on the right." When we return to our hotel, there is shouting coming from Embassy row. Again we turn on CNN and watch government-controlled busses deliver students to the American Embassy in Beijing and to other U.S. missions around the country in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenyang. It is now apparent that the government has a large hand in directing the protests, even going so far as to provide the students with slogans to write on signs and yell during their marches and attacks. We learn that the U.S. ambassador, James Sasser remains trapped in the embassy; he has ordered sensitive papers to be destroyed and the embassy is closed. There have been several firebombings, and the Albanian Ambassador is pleading with the Chinese government for protection of diplomats' wives and children. A traveler's advisory has been issued by the U.S. State Department warning Americans to delay or cancel any planned trips to China. The Asian news channels turn up the heat by displaying around-the-clock graphic photos of the victims and their families followed by interviews with and profiles of the leaders of the student protests. It is clear that the Chinese government is still fanning the flame. There is speculation among our group that this is a convenient diversion for the government from the coming anniversary of Tienanman. In an ironic twist, the energy expended on a demonstration for democracy ten years before is now being channeled into a full-blown, unquestioning nationalism. In the hotel lobby, the government's China Daily flashes a banner headline--US-Led Nato raid condemned: Brutal act draws wide protests. The next day we travel out of Beijing to The Great Wall-built some say to keep the invaders out and the Chinese in. Twisting along mountain ridges from the desert to the sea, it serves as both an incredible accomplishment and an extensive graveyard for its builders. The Great Wall was begun by the feudal ruler of the state of Qin, known as Qin Shi Huangdi who became the first emperor of the Qin dynasty (221-206 BC). Rumor has it that he was the son of a tribal ruler and a prostitute who upon becoming king succeeded in conquering all the other kings in the area and unifying China under a single rule, with a single language, currency and system of measurement. He also burned all available books and persecuted all who disagreed with him. His two public works programs, the Great Wall and his tomb at Xian were built with forced labor that quit immediately on his death. Near his tomb excavations reveal thousands of life-size terra-cotta soldiers, horses and chariots that are still being unearthed. The story goes that he wanted to take his army with him, but upon being convinced that they might still be needed for defense after his death he had these replicas made of them, each with individual features. On his orders, his "nonessentials" like his concubines and architects were buried alive with his body. Step by step we climb the stairs up to the Great Wall, reach the top and imagine ourselves sentries looking out over the kilometers of hills and valleys for the barbarians. We ride down in a cable car, one of the group that Clinton rode a short while ago while he was in China improving relations. Upon returning to our hotel, another headline blasts: People agonized by criminal act. There is an editorial that cites NATO's "war crimes against humanity," while Chinese "human rights experts" frame the bombing as the "ultimate violation of human rights." In no Chinese news outlet do we hear any mention of genocide in Yugoslavia. NATO's bombing is presented as NATO's show of strength. To the Chinese, the possibility that the bombing could have been an accident is inconceivable. "They must have done it on purpose; their technology is so advanced," says one interviewee. "China's recent growth is a great threat to America's hegemony. America does this to China because China dares to oppose the attack on Yugoslavia suggests another." American hegemony, U.S. hegemony are slogans repeated constantly until it becomes clear that the specific Chinese concern involves their fears that we will interfere with their sovereignty, particularly in regard to human rights (One of China's first responses to the embassy bombing was to drop out of talks on this issue.) and ethnic peoples such as Tibetans and Manchurians and, of course, Taiwanese, who may want, or feel they already have, independence. More generally, Americans are foreign and, seen in the context of Chinese history with the Japanese, the British and the Russians, given to imperialist-hegemonic aims. It is the experience with some of those foreigners to which Dr. Sun Yat-sen refers in the quote at the beginning of this essay, the words he used to try to kindle a spirit of nationalism. Though none of us watching the recent demonstrations would deny that the spirit of nationalism is alive and shouting in Beijing, the question of just what makes up that spirit is difficult to grasp. Quite possibly it is our own lack of perception, knowledge, and language. But to us China seems full of ambiguity and contradiction. The continuity of the history, the culture, seems broken, the stories incomplete. On a more pragmatic level, a ride through the countryside of this superpower, reveals people working and irrigating their fields by hand. A flight into commercial Shanghai at night shows few lights breaking the darkness. A walk around Chongqing the largest city in China, heavily laden with industry, reveals unfinished and empty buildings, the result of joint ventures put on hold and foreign investors pulling out. The prospect of millions of consumers has been a magnetic draw, but the realization of limited buying power and the actions of a government so quick to demonize Americans give foreigners pause. China is not a simple storybook country. It forces us to deal with complexity. Part of that complexity is reflected in a student quoted in an Asian Wall Street Journal article on the protests in front of the American embassy, "I really admire America very much,…Of course we all still want to go there." Lest we become too negative about the future, it is comforting to remember the hope and opportunity that the U.S. represents, and can continue to represent, to the Chinese people, and lest we become too sanguine, it is vital to appreciate the effort required on both sides to preserve this possibility. |
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