Kunming Is Not Horrendous…Yet
Ever since I discovered him by chance in a second-hand bookstore in Thailand, Paul Theroux has been one of my favorite writers. His travel narratives- characterized by cantankerous, unflattering observations twinned with depictions of pure beauty- have inspired me more than almost any other author I can think of. Yet in this Financial Times piece promoting his new travel anthology, Theroux has this to say about Kunming:
...once a small, self-contained agricultural town in the rural south of China, ancient, visually bewitching, known for its serene parks, Kunming is now a huge horrendous city
Right now I'll admit an obvious bias- I lived in Kunming for three and a half years and have an obvious fondness for the place. But this description doesn't ring true. Kunming hasn't been a 'small, self-contained agricultural town' since perhaps the Qing era, long before Theroux or anyone else alive ever visited. The serene parks- Green Lake and Daguan are what he presumably means- are still alive and well. And while referring to a city as huge and horrendous is certainly a matter of opinion, when I left Kunming last summer it was still possible to cycle from one end to the other in less than an hour.
Yet given the city's building boom, it wouldn't surprise me if in another twenty years Theroux's description of the city is quite accurate. Even still, due to its climate and vibe Kunming is likely to remain one of China's most charming cities, if only by default.
Some China Book Notes
Not long after moving back to the US, I indulged in a book buying spree. Unsurprisingly, China-related books was the theme of my new purchases, and after several weeks of grad-school induced fatigue I finally got around to reading the first one of these.
China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know is more a very long FAQ list than a work of non-fiction prose, but for its content this format works well. Jeffrey Wasserstrom has cobbled together a comprehensive list of misconceptions that blur Sino-American mutual understanding, ranging from historical events to issues that dominate contemporary politics.
One would think that this guide book of sorts wouldn't be appropriate for someone who has lived in China, but I found Wasserstrom's writing to be highly informative. In discussing why Westerners and the Chinese have divergent views about Mao Zedong, Wasserstrom writes that the American historical figure most comparable to the Chinese leader was actually Andrew Jackson:
Though admittedly far from perfect, the comparison is based on the fact that Jackson is remembered both as someone who played a significant role in the development of a political organization (the Democratic Party) that still has many partisans, and as someone responsible for brutal policies toward Native Americans that are now referred to as genocidal.
Both men are thought of as having done terrible things yet this does not necessarily prevent them from being used as positive symbols. And Jackson still appears on $20 bills, even though Americans tend to view as heinous the institution of slavery (of which he was a passionate defender) and the early 19th-century military campaigns against Native Americans (in which he took part).
At times Jackson, for all his flaws, is invoked as representing an egalitarian strain within the American democratic tradition, a self-made man of the people who rose to power via straight talk and was not allied with moneyed interests. Mao stands for something roughly similar.
Wasserstrom, whose blog The China Beat is a great resource for learning more about China, devotes much of the last part of the book to explaining why Americans-or Westerners more broadly- do not understand how the Chinese think, and vice versa. I won't spoil more of the book's contents by summarizing his conclusions, but needless to say his take on the issue is interesting and worth reading in full.
If there is one criticism I could make of the book, it'd be that Wasserstrom spends too little time discussing issues such as the rural-urban divide, internal migration, and other economic issues that threaten to become major problems for China in the very near future. Of course, it would take far more than 130 pages to mention every salient factor concerning contemporary China, and Wasserstrom clearly was going for brevity over thoroughness. I bring up the issue because (it's your pet issue, duh- ed.) I think commentators too often neglect it and focus too much on the urban elite.
I'd recommend Wasserstrom's book to anyone, but particularly for people who want to learn more about China but are reluctant to dive straight in without obtaining basic knowledge about the country. Even old China hands would benefit from Wasserstrom's succinct, even-handed writing style.
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If James Fallows' work at the Atlantic had a theme, it was to 'explain what you can't learn about a place until you've been there'. Most who followed his reporting from China over the past four years would agree that he succeeded in this regard. Fallows' writing on issues both grave and mundane has garnered significant praise from Sinophiles and laypeople alike.
While Fallows lived in China he was accompanied by his wife, the linguist Deborah Fallows. With the singular task of mastering Mandarin at hand, Fallows learned to use the language as a window into the dynamic, complex, and rich culture and society in China. Her observations now appear in book form, under the title Dreaming in Chinese. I can't wait to find the time to tackle it.
I recently had the opportunity to see both James and Deborah Fallows and the prominent Sinologist Orville Schell appear on Deborah's book tour, which stopped in New York City on Tuesday. Though the event was ostensibly intended to promote Dreaming in Chinese, the format consisted of the two Fallows' describing their China experience with Schell in an easy, conversationalist style. Though the event was held in the auditorium of the Asia Society, it had the cozy feel of sitting in someone's living room. At several points I was tempted to pipe in with my own observation yet thankfully managed to wait until question time to butt in.
From Left: James Fallows, Deborah Fallows, Orville Schell. Couldn't zoom in, sorry.
Much of the conversation revolved around the day-to-day life of the Fallows' in both Shanghai and Beijing, a topic that both recounted with great humor. Yet the conversation also touched upon China as a whole, and mainly China's relationship with the US. Orville Schell mentioned that what some Americans view as the 'menace' of China is truly the country's inexhaustible energy, while James Fallows said that how other Americans perceive China: dynamic, exciting, futuristic- mimic European attitudes about the US a generation or two ago.
The other day I read that the lunatic Republican senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell spoke of a secret Chinese plot to invade and occupy America, a plot made privy to her that she couldn't reveal for national security reasons. Even a cynic like me doubts that most Americans hold similarly acute fears. But there's certainly a tendency in this country to view China in an adversarial way. The efforts of people like Jeffrey Wasserstrom, James and Deborah Fallows, Orville Schell, and countless others to provide a more accurate portrayal of the country cannot be underestimated.
The Multitudes of Christopher Hitchens
Recently I finished reading the memoirs of Christopher Hitchens, entitled Hitch-22. Anyone who has read much of his work would understand the title's appropriacy. A Trotskyite socialist neo-con atheist with a loathing of Kissinger, Mother Theresa, and the Clintons (among others), Hitchens has long defied classification. No public intellectual is less predictable than Hitchens, and none evade classification quite as well as he does.
In areas in which I agree with him, most notably in his opposition to religion, his words have the habit of articulating my thoughts better than I ever could. In areas in which I disagree, like his support for the Iraq War, I've found him at least compelling. His erudite writing style is so idiosyncratic that he remains one of the few writers whose byline atop the page seems an almost superfluous detail. Whether his topic is Jane Eyre or Ahmad Chalabi, Hitchens is Hitchens- occasionally maddening, never dull.
Like most memoirs Hitch-22 is presented in chronological order yet has a particularly strong emphasis on personalities. Entire chapters are devoted to the people who have affected his life most deeply, from his parents to fellow public intellectuals Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, James Fenton, and Edward Said. In another memoir their inclusion would seem gratuitous, but this cast of famous names has seemed to have had a great influence on Hitchens; for instance, the seedlings of his eventual rift with the Left were sown from Rushdie's condemnation by the Iranian theo-thugs following the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1989.
This rift reached its apotheosis, of course, with Hitchens' public and vocal support of the Iraq War. Though one shouldn't put too much stock in the opinion a mere public intellectual, I do believe that Hitchens' full-throated defense of Operation Iraqi Freedom dealt a blow to those in opposition. It was one thing for the middling minds of the Right to vouch for belligerence. But Hitchens? His support, and that of other prominent thinkers, gave the pro-war Right an air of legitimacy it might have otherwise been denied.
Hitchens remains unrepentant about his position, revealing a stubbornness that may or may not be admirable. For a self-described socialist, he says little about the war's effects on the Iraqi population, many of whom have made terrible sacrifices on account of the war. Little is said about whether the war advanced the strategic interests of the West, a factor that one would think should override most others. He paints many of the war's opponents as misguided Leftists tolerant of tyranny or anti-American Chomskyites, strawmen more popular with by far less acute thinkers than Hitchens. In short, when it came to Iraq, Hitch became the anti-Hitch- ersatz and predictable.
In an extraordinary episode, Hitchens would meet with the real-life consequences of his rhetorical hawkishness. A few years ago he learned of a young man who, encouraged by Hitchens' writings, enlisted to fight in Iraq and paid the ultimate sacrifice. The boy's parents contacted the famous writer to whom their son's fate was inextricably entwined and Hitchens, to his credit, visited the family on multiple occasions and learned much about the young man. In this case, Hitchens' rose above the easy platitudes about the virtue of dying for one's country and wrote movingly of the reality of war's wreckage. Short of recognition of the war's folly, this section showed a moral soundness absent in many other armchair warriors.
Hitchens wrote about the fallen soldier 'so that we might know him better, and even miss him'. Given the terminal nature of his illness, one could say that Hitch-22 may ultimately provide the same function. I have never met Christopher Hitchens, yet reading his articles and books over the years has enriched my life to a great extent. As a fellow atheist, I don't believe in celestial immortality. I am confident, though, that his books and ideas will continue to delight and infuriate us well into the foreseeable future.
China Underground- Everyone’s Wasted!
China's Tawdry Underbelly
No country in the world conjures up the image of 'the masses' quite like China. News stories about China invariably contain stock footage of thousands of black-haired men and women walking on crowded city streets, as if the population were a billion-strong army marching lockstep under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party.
Foreigner conversation overheard in China reinforces this monolithic stereotype. People are fond of referring to the Chinese when making sweeping characterizations. These include gems like 'The Chinese don't listen' and 'The Chinese don't build things right'. Some of these characterizations are positive, but for the most part the Chinese exist as a large, homogeneous bloc in the eyes of most outsiders.
Zachary Mexico's book, China Underground, attempts to undermine these stereotypes by portraying fifteen-odd Chinese individuals whose lives defy convention in one way or another. These individuals include the muckraking journalist, the Uighur guitar god, the slacker in Dali, the precocious young prostitute, and several others- each in one way or another exemplifying the complexities of modern Chinese life.
These vignettes, when considered together, paint an interesting picture of the Chinese underbelly. One of Mexico's strengths is his ability to elicit candid assessments from his subjects, several of whom are initially reluctant to meet with a foreign writer.
Mexico's writing style won't win any awards, but his prose reads smoothly, if the speed in which I finished the book is any indication. He could have used a better editor, though. Mexico's assertion that the China-Vietnam skirmish in 1979 resulted from the Sino-Soviet split- an event that occurred 19 years earlier- goes against much of the scholarship I've read on the subject.
In addition, Mexico explains who the Uighur people are- several dozen pages after devoting an entire chapter to a Uighur guitarist living in Shanghai. These chapters were clearly written separately and then welded together at the end. I would have appreciated a more seamless transition between them.
China Underground also seems to focus on the type of Chinese people Western people like to imagine comprise the whole country. A clear example of this phenomenon is the overachieving student at Qinghua University. The student, whom Mexico describes as a meek girl, speaks at length over how much superior American tertiary education is to its Chinese counterpart
His other subjects likewise seem designed to elicit great sympathy from a Western audience. There's the journalist who agitates against state control of the media, the gay man stymied by China's conservative sexual mores, the restless minority angered by the government's treatment of his people.
I've no doubt that these people exist; however, they seem to reinforce rather than challenge Western stereotypes about China, as if to say that the only 'underground' that exists in the country is pro-Western, anti Party.
If anything, there are a number of so-called 'underground' people who would also have made interesting subject matter in Mexico's book. How about the large numbers of fenqing, the ultra-nationalistic young Chinese who dominate political chat rooms? Their place in Chinese culture may not warm the hearts of idealistic Western observers, but they represent a fairly significant chunk of the population. There are other figures, too, including the increasingly vocal left in China that has sounded calls for a return to a more socialistic value system.
Instead, Mexico prefers to focus on the more tawdry side of Chinese life; a great deal of his subjects seem to be carousing, drug-addicted bohemians. These tales are entertaining enough but ultimately say little more than that the Chinese like to party, too. No one who has set foot in this country for longer than a few months would find these examples the slightest bit noteworthy.
Ultimately, though, China Underground succeeds in entertainment, the sine qua non of successful literature. Readers should keep in mind that his description of underground life in China reflect the author's biases far more than an accurate representation of the actual situation.
Mao and an Important Milestone
I recently finished reading Jonathan Spence's brisk biography of Mao Zedong, published ten or so years ago. Unlike other biographies, Spence kept his focus narrow; he merely documented Mao's life and eschewed long ruminations on his legacy. Spence also conveys a sense of who Mao was as a person, analyzing his poetry and his personal relationships with family members. The result is an impressive achievement- a biography of a towering figure that barely exceeds 200 pages.
One complaint, though; Spence spends an inordinate amount of time discussing Mao's early years and seemingly sprints through the period in which Mao actually governed China. By the time Mao climbed Tiananmen in 1949 and proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China, the book was nearly two-thirds done. Significant events such as the Cultural Revolution are only fleetingly mentioned.
I suspect Spence did this intentionally; much has been written about Mao's years in power, while comparatively little is known about how he got there. Yet the transition between young idealist and bloated dictator wasn't explained as seamlessly as it should have been.
The most interesting part of the book, to me, was a description of how Mao fomented a cult of personality as early as the late 1930s. Then in his mid-forties, Mao was ensconced in a Communist base camp in Yan'an, Shaanxi Province, where he simultaneously fought the Japanese occupation and the rival Nationalists. During these years, Mao studied Marxist dialectic and began elucidating his own interpretations of the doctrine, focusing on the need of rural reform. He wrote extensively and had his men read and study his works. Several of the key players in Chinese history- Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Lin Biao- were present with Mao at this stage.
Spence's discussion of the Cultural Revolution did include one interesting nugget. Mao, then in his seventies and increasingly feeble, initially intended the chaotic street scenes to last a mere four months. By the end of 1966, he had lost total control of the situation even as his people marched around chanting his name. In his later years, Mao expressed contrition for the damage done, as well as bitterness toward his fourth and final wife, Jiang Qing, whom China has blamed as the Cultural Revolution mastermind.
For a man of extreme intelligence, energy, and charisma, Mao's understanding of the wider world hardly exceeded that of a typical Hunanese peasant of his time. He traveled twice to the Soviet Union (once to meet Stalin) but otherwise never left China. He studied Russian and English but mastered neither, and during his meetings with foreign leaders he remained totally reliant on his more cosmopolitan advisors. Under Mao, it is easy to see how China slid into autarky, closing itself from the outside world.
The funniest section of the book was an account of Mao meeting Richard Nixon for the first time. The American president awkwardly tried to praise Mao for his lifetime achievements, while the mentally ill and erratic Chinese dictator brushed these encominums aside. In a sense, Mao and Nixon could have had a lot to talk about. Nixon, of course, came from rural California and resented the snobbery of more cosmopolitan Americans. He was intelligent, driven, and ruthless, but later was undone by his paranoia and thirst for power. The same could be said of Mao, born twenty years earlier and in entirely different circumstances.
Speaking of Mao, Tim Johnson notes that the era in which he governed China has now been eclipsed in length by the current era launched by Deng Xiaoping. Later this year marks the 30th anniversary of Deng's rise to power and the subsequent transformation of China.
Oracle Bones
I just finished reading Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler, and my goodness: what a phenomenal book it is. Unlike Hessler's first work (the wonderful River Town), which functioned mostly as a memoir of his two years spent teaching in a small city, Oracle Bones casts a far wider net into Chinese society. Now working as a journalist in Beijing, Hessler puts a human face on several themes prevailing in contemporary China: the mass migration of peasants from west to east, the destruction of the hutong dwellings in Beijing, the national excitement over the Olympics, the plight of ethnic minorities, and the rise of the Overnight City of Shenzhen. Intertwined with these vignettes is Hessler's investigation into the origins of the Chinese language itself, as well as the various challenges Chinese archaeologists have faced over the years in trying to document their nation's long history.
Hessler's book is apolitical. He doesn't pontificate, make sweeping predictions, or offer prescriptions for what he perceives might ail his adopted homeland. Instead, he mostly watches, listens, and sympathizes, using these observational skills to present an extraordinary clear picture of today's China. A must-read.
Beppe’s Chat
Last night the Italian-American Institute put on a special presentation by Beppe Severgnini, a foreign correspondent for Italy's Il Corriere Della Sera newspaper who has recently written a book trying to explain Italy and the Italians to an American audience.
Severgnini delivered his speech informally, offering humorous anecdotes about Italian life without revealing too much of the book's content. I was interested in hearing more about his foreign correspondence career (he wrote for The Economist for close to a decade) but he didn't get into that at all; his intention was clearly to promote his book.
His closing anecdote was the funniest one. Asked by an audience member to sum up Italy, Severgnini told this story (paraphrased):
I was on an Alitalia flight from Milan to New York City that was nearing its conclusion when a flight attendant told me that one of the fellow passengers was upset and that, being a doctor, wanted to talk to me.
So I went to see her and she was indeed crying, saying "it's the salami's fault" (la culpa della salame) . She was carrrying in too much salami and prosciutto (Italian ham) and cheese to possibly get through customs. She showed me her bag, and inside was an enormous amount of all three items. She wasn't sure what to do, and was afraid that she would have to throw away all of the beautiful food she brought.
Then the flight attendant and I thought of a solution: there was just enough salami, prosciutto, and cheese to serve all of the passengers. Why not break out some red wine and have a last-minute snack before the plane lands? The woman agreed and the flight attendants, bored after a long flight, snapped into action and prepared the food.
As the passengers happily ate their snack and drank their wine, the flight attendant said over the intercom: "You were expecting a boring flight, but instead you got a food and wine party.".
The Italians, for all their faults, can turn even the most banal situations into a bacchanalian celebration. Amen.
The Mosquito Coast
Allie Fox, the protagonist in Paul Theroux's novel The Mosquito Coast (published in 1982), believes himself to be the "last real man in America". He is fond of regaling his family with pablums against American society, which he believes to be in a rapid state of deterioration. Americans, he argues, have become so anesthesized to technology and fast food and religion that they no longer possess the ability to be self-sufficient, productive members of society. Citizens of "The Land of the Free" are not free at all; slaves to television and drugs and cheap thrills, Americans are self-destructing without even realizing it.
Allies sees himself differently, and possessing the courage of his convictions he takes his wife and four children to live in isolated jungle on Honduras' Mosquito Coast, as far from modern American society as he could possibly get. His children, raised on a farm and kept out of school, yearn for a normal life yet at the same time place their full trust in their father's vision. Allie is, after all, a mechanical genius who has invented a pollution-free method to produce ice from fire. This he plans to introduce to the Central American "savages" who "don't realize how good they have it".
The Mosquito Coast is narrated by Allie's oldest son Charlie, a boy of thirteen who idolizes his brilliant father yet is tantalized by the American pop culture that eludes him. We see Charlie bravely climbing the rafters of the ship to please his father, the latter exhorting the boy to "conquer his fears". In the jungle, where Allie serves as mayor of a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, Charlie struggles to carve out his own identity and come to terms with the choices his parents have made.
Allie's ice machine is a smashing success, and soon he acquires a religious-like devotion among the natives, who refer to him as "Father". As the town grows, so does Allie's egomania; he never misses an opportunity to remind his family that he alone has provided them with "liberty" and "prosperity".
But inevitably things begin to go wrong. A mission to deliver ice to a neighboring village fails when the ice melts in the tropical heat. Missionaries visit and take away one of the village families, showing that Allie's grip on group ideology is more tenuous that previously imagined. During this period of conflict, the young Charlie begins to see cracks in his father's facade- determined idealism transformed into destructive megalomania.
What makes the book so pleasurable to read are its delicious ironies: hoping to free his family from the constraints of traditional religion and hateful of the Christian missionaries common in the developing world, Allie becomes a religious-like tyrant himself. His version of "liberty" and "freedom" cannot be criticized or challenged; any dissenters are dismissed as cranks and even outright abused. Allie puts his family under considerable strain in order to pursue his vision of paradise- only he fails to realize how selfish he really is.
Everyone knows obsessive parents; the sort of people whose zeal to provide the best possible life for their children results in tyranny. What many adults forget is that their choice to live a certain way was simply that: a choice. Preventing their children from the ability to make similar choices later in life is a very subtle form of abuse. Allie personifies this type.
The Mosquito Coast is masterfully written, as one comes to expect from Theroux, and it stands as a useful diary from the late 70s/early 80s; a period when many Americans took urban crime, high energy prices, a slumping economy, the success of the Japanese and the persistence of the Soviets as proof that America was in irreversible decline. Few I suspect removed themselves from society to the extent that Allie did, yet as Allie himself says, "I never stop until I get where I'm going". He is not a man to do things half-way.
The Death of Books?
Jeff Jarvis, via whose site Buzzmachine I found the link to the Andrew Brown essay, writes that the era of the book is soon coming to a close. I disagree, and was going to write why, but instead one of Jarvis' commenters wrote exactly what I intended to. Bravo.
Da Vinci Code Snobbery
So, it appears that the Da Vinci Code film is a bit of a dud, judging by the ratings on IMDB and the few criticisms of it that I've read. Disappointing. I, like two billion other people, really enjoyed the book and was looking forward to the movie. I'll still watch it, I suppose (especially for 5 yuan) but I've lowered my expectations considerably.
What is interesting though is that pundits have used the film's release to snark about what they consider to be the book's inferior quality. Here's A.O. Scott in The New York Times:
"The Da Vinci Code," which opened the Cannes Film Festival on
Wednesday, is one of the few screen versions of a book that may take
longer to watch than to read. (Curiously enough Mr. Howard accomplished
a similar feat with "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" a few years back.)To their credit the director and his screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman (who collaborated with Mr. Howard on "Cinderella Man" and "A Beautiful Mind"),
have streamlined Mr. Brown's story and refrained from trying to capture
his, um, prose style. "Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was
now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with
long white hair." Such language — note the exquisite "almost" and the
fastidious tucking of the "which" after the preposition — can live only
on the page.
Last time I checked, A.O., you were being paid to write film reviews, not opine on best-selling novels from your lofty perch at America's newspaper of record.
Scott's scorn pales in comparison to that of someone named Andrew Brown, writing for the Guardian's new group blog Comment Is Free:
But there is a class of author where even this kind of explanation
breaks down: Dan Brown, Dennis Wheatley, and some other thriller
writers like Robert Ludlum fall into this category. They all produce
books so aggressively badly written that no virtues of plot or
characterisation - even if they existed, which they clearly do not -
could make up for the deficiencies of style.In this case, I think we have to admit that the badness of the prose
style is integral to the books' attraction; if better written, they
would sell worse. This explanation requires a special sort of bad
writing. It is not vulgarity, not mere inelegance and certainly not
lack of refinement: it transcends all these flaws. It requires that
every sentence throw up obstacles to comprehension, that every other
word be redundant.To read such books is rather like reading the transcripts of a
telephone conversation, except that they contain words and
constructions no one could ever use in ordinary speech. They have the
redundancy of ordinary speech without any of its naturalness.I labour the point, but this resemblance to ordinary speech (except
for the small matter of being unspeakable) is, I think, the secret of
these books' success. It is not just that they are written by people
who can't, in any interesting sense, write; they are read by people who
have not properly learned to read. I don't mean their taste is
uneducated, or that they can't spell, or that they have trouble with
long words, though all those things may be true; I mean that they have
not internalised the activity of reading so that it feels natural. (h/t Buzzmachine)
So, apparently the success of books like The Da Vinci Code can be blamed on the semiliteracy of the book buying public. Right.
I consider myself an avid reader, and I enjoy reading books from quite a broad range of genres. Every so often, I'll pick up a novel that someone proclaimed a "classic" or "beautifully written" and find it so dreadfully boring that I can't even finish it. Perhaps my literacy isn't yet complete, either, though it didn't prevent me from detecting that Brown's comment was utterly horseshit.
This is the same sort of thing as people only watching movies at the art house cinema, or people refusing to listen to any band signed to a major label.
I'd like to think Dan Brown is reading these insults while flying on his private jet to some Caribbean island, chuckling all the way to the bank.