4 posts tagged “china”

“The relationship between a husband and a wife is like a garment; if a garment is torn, it can be mended. The relationship between two brothers is like a limb; if a limb is broken, it cannot be repaired.” – Chinese Proverb taken from the Romance of the three Kingdoms

A few weeks ago, while browsing through the “free books” section of a local library sale, I came across a pristine set of the two volume Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a classic 1300 page novel written in 14^th century China. Perusing through it, it seems to be an almost endless testosterone laced tale of military valor, intrigue, adventure, swashbuckling, and feudal conflict. Definitely a switch from reading Jane Austen as I have been lately. Imagine a teenager playing World of Warcraft for a year and then creating a novel from the narrative. Anyway, in one particular story, the warrior Guan Yu attempts to reunite with his brother and sworn overlord Lu Bei. In chapter 27 of the epic, one reads of Guan Yu’s seemingly unlimited tenacity as he overcomes numerous obstacles to fulfilling his desire to live up to his filial ideals to his brother. The chapter is entitled “Crossing Five Passes and Slaying Six Generals” and for all intents and purposes, the chapter title tells you about all you need to know about the story. Pity the man or army who stands in the way of Guan Yu as he seeks to fulfill his duty to his sworn brother. (incidentally, as the quote at the top of this page indicates, the relationship between men is primary in the Confucian world view and ethic.)

 You can read of the original vows made between the brothers in the first chapter of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms below:

“Fei said, "There is a peach garden in the rear of my estate, and the flowers are now in full bloom; tomorrow, we should conduct a sacrificial ceremony to heaven and earth. We three should become brothers, joining forces with a common purpose, and later we will be able to accomplish great deeds." Xuande and Yunchang both responded in unison, "An excellent idea!" The following day, they prepared sacrificial offerings such as a black bull and a white horse. The three of them all burned incense, and performed double obeisance. They all took an oath, saying, "When saying the names Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, although the surnames are different, yet we have come together as brothers. From this day forward, we shall join forces for a common purpose, and come to each other's aid in times of crisis. We shall avenge the nation from above, and pacify the citizenry from below. We seek not to be born on the same day, in the same month and in the same year. We merely hope to die on the same day, in the same month and in the same year. May the gods of heaven and earth attest to what is in our hearts. If we should ever do anything to betray our friendship, may the gods in heaven strike us dead." Having completed the oath, Xuande was declared to be eldest brother, followed by Guan Yu, with Zhang Fei as the most junior brother.”

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms/Chapter_1#Map

Guan Yu

From my limited understanding, the story of Guan Yu “Crossing Five Passes and Slaying Six Generals” is a story of a Confucian determination to live up to filial obligations and in many respects, it mirrors the fealty that one sees evidenced in Count Roland as he takes on any challenge and fights any foe on behalf of Charlemagne in the French epic Song of Roland. You can see Guan Yu “riding alone for thousands of miles” in this famous mural.

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles

So, where is the connection? Last night, I watched Zhang Yamou’s Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, a contemporary story about a modern day Japanese fisherman who determines to go to China and record a particular Chinese Opera of the same title on behalf of his estranged son who has liver cancer. I am not exactly sure of all the connections between the plot line of the movie and the plotline of the opera and the plot line of chapter 27 of Romance of the Three Kingdoms but on the surface it seems as though the theme has to do with the demonstration of one’s respect for filial ties, be they between father and son or between brother and brother.

In the story of Guan Yu, he goes through a series of obstacles and challenges as a result of his commitment to Liu Bei but in the end, arrives at the destination only to find that his brother is not there. The whole chapter, all its passes, all its skirmishes, seems to have been for nothing really. Similarly, in the movie, the fisherman Gouichi Takada’s, son dies before the father gets him the video he hoped to give him. Similarly Takata fails to reunite Yang Yang, the orphan with his father in jail. In both the ancient Chinese novel and in the movie, the mission is a failure. But on another level, the attempt itself is what may matter most. Chapter 27 of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, celebrates Guan Yu’s feat, honoring him not for what he accomplished but for what he sacrificed and attempted.

His seal hung up, the treasury locked, his
courtly mansion left,
He journeyed toward his brother dear, too long
from his side left.
The horse he rode was famed for speed as for
endurance great,
His good sword made a way for him and
opened every gate.
His loyalty and truth forth stand, a pattern
unto all,
His valor would frighten rushing streams and
make high mountains fall.
Alone he traveled lustily, this was death to meet
his blade,
He has been themed by myriads, his glory never
will fade.  

I suppose we all have relationships that have at some point in time been severed. And perhaps we may never fully accomplish our wish to reunite them. This story is all about what we are willing to try even if we are quite sure that we will fail. For maybe there is something honorable in attempts and something that can inspire others in trying.

This entry is dedicated to my brothers Andy and Tim and my sister Faith. May we always be friends.

Question for comment: What failure in your life serves as testimony that “at least you cared”?

The Road Home

Zhang Yimou’s beautiful The Road Home took me,  threw me in the back of its wagon, and hauled me off down the road the moment that it moved from the stark black and white present to the glorious Fall colors of memory. This is a movie that recreates the experience of love at first sight better than anything I have ever seen. The world is bleak, barren, gray. We do not know it because we have never seen it in color. We suspect that the whole “movie” will be what it is. And then we see the beloved and the world is on fire with yellow wheat, flaming trees, red jackets, deep green fields, and an eternal sun backlighting everything.

The ancient Greeks surmised that the experience of love at first sight was a consequence of a separated soul finding its estranged half. Aristoiphanes is quoted in Plato’s symposium to this end:

"... when [a lover] ... is fortunate enough to meet his other half, they are both so intoxicated with affection, with friendship, and with love, that they cannot bear to let each other out of sight for a single instant."

RoadHome

The Roman philosopher, Seneca wrote in a letter that “love is friendship gone mad” but sometimes, it is a madness that starts a friendship. One gets that sense from the experience of Zhao Di and Luo Changyu in The Road Home that there is something almost miraculous in such moments. Something that cannot be understood by research and perhaps should not be attempted to be understood.

RoadhomeZhao_Di_cryingCRR

Perhaps the most profound thing about this story is that it is set during the time of China's great "cultural revolution" a time of immense conflict, tragedy, animosity, and even brutality. Everything in "the real world" is going from gray to black as everything in this young eighteen year old girl's life is turning a vibrant firey supernova. It is a perfect compliment to Anchee Minn's Red Azalea.

Red Azalea

Anchee Min

Red Azalea asks an interesting question? Can human passions be domesticated? Can they be surgically removed with slogans, deprivations, threats, punishments, political pressure, education, re-education, trauma, betrayal, injustice, doctrine, despair, neglect, or any one of the hundred other things that we humans have done over the centuries to bury ourselves?

Red Azalea is a coming of age story in a rather horrible place and time to come of age: Mao’s cultural revolution in the 1960’s and early 70’s. It was a period of time in which the idealism of youth was harnessed to some of the most dehumanizing of cultural and economic initiatives. People were expected to subsume their intuition, their intellect, their family connections, their sexual instincts, their occupational interests, their musical tastes, their wills, their emotions, their spiritualities, their time, their energy, their entire being into the will of a distant (with respect to understanding you) but all-pervasive and powerful (with respect to controlling you) party.

Anchee Min’s father wanted to be an astronomer. He wound up being assigned something completely unrelated. Her mother was a teacher but made a few inexplicable careless ideological blunders and wound up sent off to a shoe factory. Its almost as if people handed in their cerebral cortexes in exchange for party membership. Anchee Min, like hundreds of thousands of young Chinese Communist zealots was sent off to work in a labor camp. “Build’s character” I can imagine her being told. Her crimes throughout the book amount to this in my way of thinking: She was cursed by being an enthusiastic idealist without being blessed with the ability to think-by-slogan (the logic version of paint-by-number). I am reminded of Einstein’s comment: "He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.”

Like millions of Chinese under Mao I suspect, she finds herself caught between a moral cause she finds worthy of her life (human equality) and an intellectual climate that she cannot find worthy of her brain … or her human passion. “The revolution’s needs are my needs” the various idealists are wont to say throughout the book in both the way they talk and the way they live. One cannot really tell the difference between Mao’s form of communist dictatorship and a militant, intolerant, dictatorial cult. “I am us. They are me. The individual does not exist.”

So often, community builders come to believe that community can only be built with the help of slogan thinking instead of honesty. And what they get is what Psychologist and author M. Scott Peck calles “pseudo-community” – a deadly brew of formaldehyde and hypocracy that is the herbicide of the soul. “Her mind was a propaganda machine,” Anchee says of one of her supervisors, “It had no engine of its own. . ..  Phrases from Red Flag magazine and the People’s Daily dropped out of her mouth like a waterfall.” One of the characters that Anchee has to compete with in the course of the story has clearly learned how to play the part of a psychophant when the part is needed to impress a communist party superior “I am Soviet Wong’s student,” she says, “I am what she made of me. I am the soil and she is the cow who cultivates me. . I am her harvest.”Is it any wonder that she gets the part?

One of my favorite parts of the book is Anchee's relating of the way that her competitor for a key role in major motion picture was basically stolen from her by this calculating and conniving competitor. After losing the part, Anchee is given the task of working on the sets while the other woman performs. All her idealism. All her service to the party. All of her aspirations to be a team player are rewarded with insult and vindictiveness. Beaten, like millions before her and millions after, by those who are better at appearances than at the pursuit of ideals. Her description of jealousy and the pain of an infected justice were quintessential expressions of the feelings I have known only too well myself in my own occupational life.  

Portions of this book are indespensable for understanding the Salem Witch trial like experience of China in the Cultural Revolution. But it is not a book that could be regarded as uncontroversial and there are reasons why it might be as denounced in American culture wars as it would be if ever published in China. Anchee Min is a woman who lived her life with passion. Her communism was pursued with abandon when she was a communist and her instincts were as well. It was to become the tragedy of her life that she could not pursue both with the same unreserved passion and survive. The communist state was not the sort of thing that felt inclined to sharesomething as powerful as a person's passion.

In an interview with author , Min laments what has happened to China and what is happening today:

Farley: Is what you are saying in your work threatening at all to the Communist Party?

Min: As long as you don't say you are going to overthrow the party, that's fine. Actually, the problem is not the party. The Chinese Communist Party is doing a good job, in a way. It's the people who are decadent. I've been receiving requests from Chinese publishers for blurbs. The bestselling works in China... I mean, it just breaks my heart. I refuse to blurb these books. One is called Don't Call Me Human. It's about promoting the idea that it's all right to be a hooligan, to be irresponsible, to take one's outrage, one's anger out on the world, to make people pay. And the other one is called Shanghai Baby. The main character lives with an opium addict and is having an affair with a German married man. She has shiny, purple fingernails. She thinks it's fun to be decadent.

I think China is going through this yo-yo thing. You know, you go from one extreme to the other. It's like that farm in Red Azalea. I wrote about it like it was an animal situation. There were a hundred thousand youths camped on a desolated farm working a backbreaking job. They were from 17 to 25 years old, and they were not supposed to date or mate. If anyone did, the woman was brainwashed to denounce the man a rapist, and the man would be executed. And now it's the other extreme: anything goes. No morals. No nothing. I feel it's very harmful for the children. So I believe that's what is happening in China: people are disappointed with one extreme so they go to the other. Eventually they will find the balance in the middle, but it takes time. In the meantime, I feel that literary work has to promote goodness.”  http://www.powells.com/authors/min.html

Khadak

A few days ago, I watched the the movie Khadak, ostensibly a movie about the relocation of Mongolian nomads into communist mining compounds where they are to mine coal for a pittance. It was for a better understanding of this story that I rented the movie but I found quite soon that this was not really the story the movie was most interested in telling. I will let one reviewer, Rob Gemen, on the Internet Movie Database tell my story about watching it as it was fairly similar.

"This movie lacks about everything what a movie needs for being a movie. First of all, it tells no story. It is an endless array of non-coherent scenes where every scenes lasts for at least 20 seconds. There is very little sound in the movie. People do not talk, there's no background music and there is hardly any sound from the backgrounds. Most scenes are staring people to 'god knows what' or very empty sceneries. It bores you to death.

If should want to compare it with more 'down to earth' objects, then: It's like eating soup without ingredient. It's like Music without rhythms or melody. It's like a bicycle without a frame. It's like a novella without characters. It's like food without taste. It's like a car without an engine or wheels. It's like a holiday in which you have to work for 17 hours a day. It's like sailing without a boat. More of all: It's like a movie without a story."

I had suspected that I might be ambushed by a cultural lack of understanding of Mongolian religious-philosophical  beliefs and I think I was right. Preciently, I had stopped to ask my friend Mike, the Anthropologist, to watch it with me and unfortunately, he had been unable to do so leaving me, veritably unarmed.

Another reviewer at the Internet Movie Database who came back to the movie with a better understanding of Mongolian Shammanism than he had at the first viewing, substanciated my suspicion that my instincts had been right to invite an anthopologist to watch it with me.

"The first time I saw it, I was bowled over by the gorgeous visuals, but couldn't follow the narrative, especially in the last half. I got the feeling this was normal, that there wasn't really any narrative except in the magico-realistic sense, that the movie was meant to be viewed impressionistic-ally. Then I absorbed just a bit about the history of Mongolia and Mongolian shamanism at home, and saw it again. The second time the narrative was clear throughout. The gorgeous visuals were still there, but now they weren't the only thing.

One key was understanding that shamanism was heavily discouraged when Mongolia was a Soviet satellite for decades. Another was understanding just a bit about shamanism itself: that the giant blue sky is almost a personality; that poles and clefts and even trees can be entrances to the world below; that shamans are called by their first trance experience, which often manifests as an illness, and trained by the previous generation's shaman; that shamanistic trances and epileptic fits are similar; and most importantly that the highest calling of a shaman is to "restore balance" with nature for an entire people.

More imagery made sense with the understanding that going under water meant death from this world (and perhaps birth into the world of nature). The parallel between a woman traumatized by the relocation to modernity and a peeled potato going under water in a basin became clear."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475241/usercomments

Clearly, a story is a better story when you understand that it is a dream and this movie may be more like a dream than a story and when watched as the latter, is probably bound to disappoint. It will however go into my list of movies to see again and maybe even to use in classes in dealing with the subject of spiritual displacement.

Question for Comment: What is your general relationship to things that you do not understand? Is it to become familiar with the context so that the understanding eventually arises? Or is it to classify that thing you cannot understand as inscrutable? When is the last time you confronted something that seemed senseless from your frame of reference?