Notes From Xi'an 西安随感

A week or so ago as I got bogged down in trying to protect this site from a malware attack – no easy task, I can tell you, for this computer illiterate fool - I did pay attention to the fact that a reasonable amount of content has been added here during the last three years, now over a 100 Notes. So, for my own simple pleasure, and as I have not given myself much time to write recently, I will pick a few Notes that I have liked for whatever reason and put them up in two parts – 5 Notes in each. The first 5 of Part I can be found here, and were written during 2009. The second 5 included below in Part II all come from the last couple of years.

1.Oh Sweet Cháng’ān Lù, Is It Really You?  2. Chinese Conceptions of Time (Part I) and a Question of Western Maturity  3. NoNo Cafe: An Apology, a Cathartic Process and a Less Than Turquoise Hue  4. Mr. Lǎo Bǎi Xìng, A Bit Of Income Inequality, An Archbishop And Some Social Solidarity  5. Master Orwell, Garton-Ash, Facts, Politics And The English Language

Oh Sweet Cháng’ān Lù, Is It Really You?

This is just a Note that has been brewing for a while.

*Cháng’ān Lù 长安路

We have grown up together side-by-side but now your behaviour has gotten to a point that I cannot abide, nor simply hide, or ignore that which crosses my mind. But, first I gotta ask: “Sweet Cháng’ān Lù: Is it really you?”

I am sure, back then, it wasn’t just me who revelled in the criss-crossing mass of humanity, which descended on the Junction of Shi Da Lu; like some joyous, incongruous stew. No matter spluttering car or steaming truck, we strode out with a little good luck and little regard, knowing, in fact, it was we who would pass.

Halting the traffic in our wake we grasped our long fought for humanitarian stake. But, make no mistake Chang’An Lu, you must take responsibility for the lack of humanity that now resides at your gate, you leaving us simply to wait and to wait. But, I ask… for what?

Back then buses would halt as an aged old lady would take to the street, simply sweeping a broom made from plastic bagged sheets, while motorcycles still weaved between pockets and sleeves. But, the time most enjoyed was when we all at once, directed and objected from the centre of stage, before being forced to turn the page: losing that urgent, organic, glistening spell which storybooks will never be able to retell. We all halted, we all moved, the life was all there at that crossroads at Shi Da Lu.

A tear now crosses my eye for the deep sadness of goodbye, and a progress more reminiscent of a creational mess than a strategic game of post-war chess. The shiny black wasteland that one-day you will be, now carries eight high-speed lanes of immovability, directly dissecting our community.

Oh Chang’An Lu, I stood there at your side as the last roll of new tar was itself applied, giving your potholed visage a life a new. That night we watched as an aged old man not far from his grave, contributed his last efforts for you to be paved. So hot, it was steaming in the dark of the night, but we, a few, gathered in the future knew, one life had passed and another… who knew?

You changed then Cháng’ān Lù, you were never the same once this glistening black coat was tied at your neck. I wanted to believe it could be as before but now the reality has sunk in, there is no drop of that past left for us to draw. Today, we are no longer allowed even to gather at your side. “Take a chance” I hear you say, but sweet Cháng’ān Lù that’s a thing of the past, it just wasn’t able to last. A fact we cannot hide, if only you knew, no chance now, unless of course we are ourselves taken for a ride.

Don’t look back I hear wise words say but it was actually you who taught us that way, back in the day: “Don’t look back, stride out, you are Kings on my road”, you would say, and we believed you. Because, be sure, back then, as those who travelled with us knew, looking back was not something we knew how to do. We strode with criss-crossing glee, oh yeah, really quite free. May be some say it is not the case to be true, but today is a place less free, to be true, to be true. Oh Cháng’ān Lù what has happened to you?

Just a day or so ago, I was thinking of you, as I held up a bus, of course, not wishing a fuss, but when I looked out from the North to the South, do you know what I couldn’t see Cháng’ān Lù? It was you. I could not see you, for a continuous, sickening metallic hue, which had morphed into one almighty incomprehensible queue: that quite simply had obliterated you.

But now, at the dawn of a new modern era, it does in turn dawn upon me what I probably always could see. You have gone Cháng’ān Lù. It is no longer you. I talk to myself now it does seem but if that is all I have left then what I wish say I wish to be clear, to be fresh, to be seen.

Oh consume, Oh swoon, Oh legitimate heir, Oh the reason so fair, Oh fair: the fair of fair rides, fair maidens and fair despair. Oh pollution, Oh evolution, Oh ignominious death, Oh development, Oh wither, Oh sickened river, Oh imbedded, hot headed, earnestnessness. Sweet love, sweet freedom and sweet redress.

Oh Sweet Cháng’ān Lù, I really miss you.

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This Note actually has nothing really to do with Xi’an apart from the fact I am writing it, on a MacBook, in Xi’an, and that I am using a Xi’an based wireless Internet connection. This Note is also not an obituary for Steve Jobs, who passed away yesterday, nor a hallelujah for the Apple products he has bequeathed us, though, I like them. This Note does, however, offer a bit of context to his passing. It also gives me an opportunity to share some of my concerns about the omnipresence of multimedia devices in our lives today. First, a note from Ai Wei Wei, taken from Edge.org’s timely annual question -  How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think?:

“I only think on the Internet anymore. My thinking is now divided into on the net and off the net. If I’m not on the net, I don’t think that much; when I’m on the net, I start to think. In this way, my thinking becomes always part of something else.”

I will offer some context to Steve Jobs’s passing by way of a link to Malcolm Gladwell’s recent article in The New Yorker: the opening paragraphs of which I will include below. Gladwell outlines the evolution of the mouse, the printer and Apple’s personal computer. In his interesting piece Gladwell focuses on the personalities and environments involved in the development of these products. From it we understand the determination, ingenuity and passion that different types of people, with different motivations, all harnessed to produce technological advances most of us could never have dreamt of.

Malcolm Gladwell – Creation Myth: Xerox PARC, Apple, and Creation of the Mouse from The New Yorker May 2011:

“In late 1979, a twenty-four-year-old entrepreneur paid a visit to a research center in Silicon Valley called Xerox Parc. He was the co-founder of a small computer startup down the road, in Cupertino. His name was Steve Jobs.

Xerox Parc was the innovation arm of the Xerox Corporation. It was, and remains, on Coyote Hill Road, in Palo Alto, nestled in the foothills on the edge of town, in a long, low concrete building, with enormous terraces looking out over the jewels of Silicon Valley. To the northwest was Stanford University’s Hoover Tower. To the north was Hewlett-Packard’s sprawling campus.

All around were scores of the other chip designers, software firms, venture capitalists, and hardware-makers. A visitor to Parc, taking in that view, could easily imagine that it was the computer world’s castle, lording over the valley below—and, at the time, this wasn’t far from the truth…” The New Yorker

Whatever peoples’ take on Steve Jobs and Apple, his work has directly or indirectly influenced most personal computers, mp3s and mobile phone products on the market today, and thus all of us as consumers. Jobs’ passing provides a timely reminder of how the last 40 years of technological development have changed our lives, for both good and bad.

Personal computers are becoming increasingly smaller, more powerful and more ubiquitous; mobile phones are themselves now forms of personal computer. Add to this the variety of software that is now out there; the number of apps; the choice of games, and it is hardly surprising that time spent on personal computers is becoming a major part of people’s days.

There are questions to be asked about where this is all going. Most importantly, what is the nature of our own individual relationships to these devices and the wider world beyond them? Our lives are increasingly spent going online and into web-based social forums with new forms of communication being created all the time. In doing so, we are diluting previous forms of social activity and interaction.

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While I am still in a post-nuptial state of flux, or rather more disconcertingly a post-matrimonial photo-shoot state of mind, and as my next atom-splitting Note is still only in the gestation stage, I am going to have to follow the lead of prolific blogger David Wolf at Silicon Hutong. I will do what I rarely do and that is simply post an extract from another blogger (or two). I will however throw in the odd comment for good measure, or at least for my own small sense of ownership.

I agree with David’s appraisal that Patrick Chovanec’s Primer on China’s Leadership Transition is well “worth reading and absorbing”. For those of us uneducated about all things Chinese, or more specifically uneducated in things Chinese government, this article is a godsend.

I will however go a step further and throw in a second extract, from another great blogger, Sam Crane, whose perspective on China comes from a slightly different domain to Patrick’s Business, Economics and Management perspective. Creator of The Useless Tree, Sam is a professor of political science who focuses on ancient Chinese thought, and who approaches the issues covered on his blog from that multi-faceted but concentrated perspective. He wrote a piece last week, titled Understanding China – Or Not, in response to Vice-premier Wang Qishan’s recent emotive comments that Americans are a simple people who don’t understand China.

(i) “Primer on China’s Leadership Transition“

But first, and without further ado, here is the opening extract from Patrick Chovanec’s article: Primer on China’s Leadership Transition, followed by a couple of my own brief comments:

“Over the past few months, several people have written asking me to offer a short “primer” on China’s upcoming leadership transition, which begins next year. The handover to a new president and premier has generated plenty of speculation in the press, about who the leaders are and what is will all mean, but sometimes it’s useful to go back and fill in the very basics, since China has a unique and in some ways quite confusing political system.

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Sculpting in Time is known here in Xi’an, Beijing and Nanjing as a pretty relaxed café chain, but for the founders and others who enjoy the art of film making, it actually refers to the title of a book written by the Russian auteur Andrey Tarkovsky. The title offers us, as metaphor, an expression of what he feels the art of filmmaking to be all about: “[T]he rhythm of the movement of time is there within the frame, as the sole organising force of the – quite complex- dramatic development.” (Tarkovsky:1986:114).

Cinema for Tarkovsky is not a matter of simple pleasure, escapism or advertising but is Art, which for him: “…takes hold wherever there is a timeless insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art.” (38). Tarkovsky considers it: “…perfectly clear that the goal of all art – unless of course it is aimed at the ‘consumer’, like a saleable commodity – is to explain to the artist himself and to those around him what man lives for, what is the meaning of his existence. To explain to people the reason for their appearance on this planet; or if not to explain, at least to pose the question.” (36). The emphasis he places on the rhythm of the film comes from the fact that it is the rhythm; the filmmaker’s sculpting in time, that carries the role of inquisitor.

Here again, as in Confucianist thought, we have a synthesis between time and humanity, this time we find it not simply in philosophical theory but within the auteur’s frame of creation: “…in artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher and communal idea…[t]he allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.” (38/43).

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Questions surrounding the nature of Time and Humanity can certainly fill the mind when living a life in China. Whether, as in recent days, the questions surrounding the nature of Humanity relate to the incomprehensible tragedy at the school in Hanzhong, with the knife attack on those small children. Or whether the issue of Time can be related to a trip we took last week to distribute clothes in the mountains. The plan had been to get back to Xi’an about 5 in the afternoon but we were still out and about in the mountains at nightfall, not so surprising, however the Chinese drivers without even a word to the wise decided to stop for supper at around 10, much to the surprise of many who had had other plans. I am quite used to the latter scenario, I do hope I never get used to hearing stories like the former, no matter how many more of these similar cases we do end up hearing about. 

This is by way of a small introduction to a continued interest I have in trying to understand a little of Chinese philosophy, of which I know basically nothing but hopefully will continue to pay a little attention to through these notes. It was noted in an article I read recently, The Chinese View of Time- A Passage to Eternity by Manuel Dy Jr, that the ethical strain of Chinese philosophy, concerning the nature of and quest for humanity/ virtue, has historically superseded questions that delve into the more abstract notions of space and time, matter and spirit. Thus, conceptions of time with regard the Chinese mind, are difficult to clearly distinguish from the nature of humanity and what can be referred to as virtue. For me, that seems no bad thing and of some interest. Here, I will very briefly offer a simple introduction to Confucianist and Daoist conceptions of Time. (more…)

A prolific blogger on things China, David Wolf from Silicon Hutong, noted last week:

China will reach maturity not when it returns to the hubristic self-adulation of The Qing emperors, but when it learns to walk a middle path in its approach to things foreign, assigning value to ideas, innovations, systems and people based not on their origin, but on their intrinsic merits. The country could once afford to forego this middle path, but today it is at odds with everything China seeks to accomplish in a global economy, polity, and society.

Adam Daniel Mezei, fromAdam Daniel Mezei, butchered, by his own admission, David’s note, to conclude:

China will reach maturity not when it returns to the hubristic self-adulation of the Qing emperors, but rather when it begins to adopt a Western, or “foreign,” approach to time, assigning a near-commodity value to its passage, not squandering it as in days of yore. Like a true Westerner, time should be devoted to only the most deserving of projects and endeavors. China could once afford to forego this extreme path, but today the country is at odds with everything it seeks to accomplish in a global economy, polity, and society.

I would, however, be inclined to disagree and suggest that the West may only reach maturity when it forgoes assigning a near- commodity value to times passage. It seems to me that there is value in the contrived expediency of time only when it comes together with a second value, that of human exchange and mutual respect.

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One of the joys of many about living in China is that we get two New Years a year; one Solar, one Lunar and that they are spaced just a few weeks apart. So if there was a false start to New Year plans and resolutions the first time around, come late January or mid- February there is a chance to refocus those end of year goals. I am not sure that that is quite how I have approached this New Year but with a few extra days at my disposal and a change of environment, with a quick trip to the Chinese capital, a period of reflection has been allowed. All is well. ps. Beijing’s not bad but Xi’an’s still the city for me, though a Bookworm, a 26 metre high sandalwood Buddha and a couple of trendy hutongs wouldn’t go amiss in Xi’an’s where to hang out, what to do landscape.

Now, with some relevance to the former point and maybe even to the latter, recent discussions with friends have on a couple of occasions orientated around how plans are made and/ or targets, short or long term, are set. (more…)