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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With the help of my old pal 李文华/ Lǐ Wén Huá, aka Mr. Huá, I have collected together a handful of Chinese proverbs that can help keep our Chinese studies on the straight and narrow. I will begin with a couple of proverbs, 谚语/yànyǔ,  which suggest that we take the long view during this learning process.

The first one is: 冰冻三尺，非一日之寒／bīng dòng sān chǐ fēi yī rì zhī hán. It basically translates, as one metre of ice doesn’t come from one day of cold. Or as us English-speaking folk might more likely interpret it; Rome wasn’t built in a day. It could be used in a situation where someone’s high level of Chinese is just being put down to the fact he or she is intelligent. The saying would stress that: “Yes, she might be clever, but… (cue phrase) it still took hard work to get to this level of Chinese. It didn’t happen overnight.” Indeed!

image taken from theresilientearth.org

The second goes along the same sort of lines but emphasizes the need for the student to get the foundations right, and then to build upon them. This one is: 一步一个脚印／yī bù yī gè jiǎo yìn, and means to take things step-by-step, slowly but surely. It can be used when advising someone about how to approach their Chinese studies: 学汉语你应该～／xué hànyǔ nǐ yīnggāi~. With all the pinyin, annoying tones, different forms of de(的／地／得) and uses of le (了) that we face at the beginning (and beyond), this can be a tricky perspective to keep hold of.

The third phrase is the one I like most, due to its structure and emphasis. For me, there is nothing more important in teaching or learning than the aspect of review. But so many teachers ignore it, and many students let it slide, as we get bogged down in a never-ending stream of new vocabulary. This four character idiom, 成语/chéngyǔ, goes like this: 温故(而)知新／wēn gù (ér) zhī xīn. The literal translation is warm the past, know the new. It can be read in the sense of needing to understand history so one is able to understand the present, but for our purposes it just emphasizes the importance of review.

温/wēn is commonly used today as the adjective, warm. In the past it was used as a verb, to warm something up, which also carried the connotation of refresh or review. In formal writing today review can still be written as 温习／wēnxí. To hammer home this point about the importance of focused study, let’s consider the life of the diligent student. Everyday the conscientious student must: 埋头苦学/ mái tóu kǔ xué, which translates as bury head, hard study. This chéngyǔ can carry the negative meaning of being a slave to the teacher and the book. More fundamentally, however, it emphasizes the importance of getting your head down and putting in the hard work of learning – in this instance – Chinese. Something that I am sure we are all fighting with.

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Part I.

Before I take a summer sabbatical from life in Xi’an, and from checking into the world wide web, I will throw out a thought on Xi’an that has been nagging at me for a while.

The system here in China where cities are tiered in terms of their level of economic development has never been one I have liked. I have always felt that this system of stratification has sounded insulting, with the comparison it unnaturally makes between first, second, and third tier cities. (And, yes I do understand the reasoning behind the classifications.) Cities such as Xi’an, that are not first tier, are by categorisation inferior.

Xi’an was, in my opinion, always more than just an adjunct to those Chinese metropolises out East; it was a city with its own nature, its own identity and its own pace of life. Classifying Xi’an as second tier was always to say that it wasn’t quite what it could be, that it lacked something, the special something that would make it first tier.

Which, based on certain criteria, was greater economic development, with high levels of investment, a modern transport infrastructure, and so-called improved standards of living. But, in many ways Xi’an didn’t lack anything, it wasn’t nearly or not nearly something else, it was what it was and it was different to those first tier cities, and from my perspective better for it.

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Mao and 14th Dalai Lama 1954 from Let's Talk About Mao at hoffstrizz.com

What follows comes, in part, from reading Philip P. Pan’s: Out of Mao’s Shadow, and in part from dwelling a little on a recent Note of mine, that referred to the issue of understanding China. In it I noted two main points, which were built on my reading of Sam Crane’s article Understanding China- Or Not, which was itself built on Wang Qishan’s comment that Americans are “simple people” and that it “is not easy to really know China”. The two points I made were, one, most peoples’ knowledge of other cultures and societies is limited and thus could be perceived as being simple. Two, that while I recognize that understanding China can be seen as being multifaceted, I was seeing it as meaning understanding the mass of Chinese: the group Crane defines as lacking knowledge due to “limitations on knowledge within China itself”.

I will start here however with a brief anecdote that has coincidentally helped tie Pan’s book and those thoughts together. I was sitting quietly in the Village Café, tapping away at my computer, with Pan’s book sitting on the table next to me, when a youngish Chinese woman quietly asked if she could take a look at the book. (It should probably be noted that Pan’s book has the ‘Mao’ of the title written in large capital letters, while a statue of Mao also sits prominently on the front cover)

I looked up and handed it to her. Suddenly, a scenario began to play out in my mind where the book was being passed between silent shifting hands until it ended up in the possession of an undercover policeman, who was standing somewhere not far behind. The security official, after a quick inspection, nodded to a few of his security staff who swiftly lifted me from my seat.

As it turned out the young girl simply returned the book to me a few minutes later, smiling happily. And, I wasn’t to feel a shadowy hand land upon my shoulder. I did ask her what she thought, though.  She said that it was the first time she had seen a foreigner reading about Mao. She continued to tell me that she had heard that most Americans thought Mao Zedong was a great leader, especially the generation of 1950’s America. I replied: “mmm”. She also animatedly informed me that her family thought of Mao in almost god-like terms; that he was not only a great leader but, in her own words, also a “genius as a personality”.

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cartoon from es.toonpool.com

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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I had a few different ideas for a Note this week. I would have liked to have tied together some of the abstract ideas that have been floating around a few of my recent scribblings into something more coherent. I was going to take some time to reflect a little on some of the news stories that have made up this year so far in China. I would have also been happy just to have gotten back to basics and written a random Note about what is going on down on the street below. But, there is one thing that has prevented me from doing any of these things and which has led me to begin a slightly more personal Note From Xi’an, and that is the fact that I am getting married this weekend, May 1^st.

Although, this being China, to be more specific we are actually having the wedding ceremony; the legal certification was completed a few weeks ago. Now, in most ways the legal status of marriage would seem the most significant part of this whole process, and it certainly felt pretty important at the time. I was, after all, at that point a married man. However, in the spirit of Chinese life, where the day of the ceremony will still be considered to be our anniversary, I have managed to compartmentalize these stages; I have come to recognize the social and psychological importance of the ceremony, while holding onto the obvious fact: that marriage is more than just a legal pact.

So, the wedding is on its way and I have signed on the dotted line but I’m not entirely sure anything will trump the moment when I acknowledged to myself that Ling was the woman to pass down through the ages with me, or the time I actually uttered those epic words of engagement; which have endowed many a film and book with its romance and tragedy. The point where you know you want to spend your life with someone, and the moment you ask someone to spend their life with you are special things.  At that time you have met the magical or monstrous one, or both, and you’ve bitten the bullet.

I am not one for devaluing long-term relationships that have not partaken in wedding nuptials; many of them I don’t see as any less committed than a couple that have married. This point about the importance of commitment within or without marriage is certainly one that has to be made a few times here in China, where marriage is thrust so quickly upon a courting pair, and which is seen as the true measure of the commitment between two people. We don’t have to look much further than the divorce rates in China to see the problems that exist within a relationship that has no real basis beyond a couple’s legal status. (more…)

I live not far from Xi’an’s Botanical Gardens [Zhíwù Yuán/植物园], which are located behind Shǎnxī Normal University, but I haven’t taken a trip over there for a while. This is not because I have anything against fine varieties of plant life, I actually had a couple of temporary jobs working on horticultural nurseries when I was younger, and if all else failed I would probably go back to it. There are not too many things quite as meditative and peaceful as watering plants on a glorious summer morning.

I have also always enjoyed visiting public gardens, from Kew and Wentworth to Brisbane’s own Botanics, via Córdoba and Marakesh. However, on my last visit to Xi’an’s variety of Botanical Garden it did feel as if a lot more could be done with the space they have. Now, this seems to have changed, although not quite in the way one would imagine.

This week, my camera-clicking sidekick, Sir G. Blackett of Wells, and I decided that we should put down our coffee cups and see if we could catch Xi’an’s short Spring in full bloom. It was not, though, a multi-coloured array of flora and fauna that ended up capturing our attention. It was a particular sub-specie of Chinese marital ritual that we observed, wandered around, pointed at, discussed and took pictures of. It was the ritual known as the pre-marriage photo shoot.

It is not an exaggeration to say that shrub, flower and tree life is no longer the focus of attention. Delicate planting procedures, rare plant species, and flowers in full seasonal bloom are now simply a backdrop for the more important business of getting young Chinese couples to create the most unnatural poses possible. For those unaware, as part of the wedding celebrations here in China, couples pay a few thousand yuan for a professional photo studio to snap exceptionally contrived poses in generally natural environments, the Botanical Gardens being one such location. (more…)

image from benmcdarmont

Mr. Hua:

Today is not my day. It is not my day in more ways than one. Today is National Day; it is the Nation’s day. I’m a small piece of that Nation, but maybe so small I am not really a piece at all. It is also not my day because today I locked myself out of the house. Worse, this is not my house, not my real house, not the one with my neighbours and friends. This is my new house, my new house in the new city, or the old city, it just looks new. Well, parts of it do. This is where I now live. As the last of the summer heat left, we arrived.

It is also now the city that I am left to wander around for hour upon hour. I am waiting for my son and his family to arrive back into the city this evening. My son lives here too. I live with my son. He is a good boy but I do wish he’d left a key around here someplace for me.

I am now sitting on one of those orange plastic-seated benches that they seem to have next to many of the main roads here. This one’s not far from the house. There’s a big tree right next to me; there are actually trees going all the way down the street. The road is busy, though. There are more trees than I thought, but there are also more cars too. In front of me are a lot of colourful shops. Maybe later I will go across and see what they sell. The buildings are tall here. Above the shops the buildings just go up and up, really tall.

I could go and talk to some of the neighbours. I ought to, but I am not going to. My son said I should go and see Mrs. Qin on the third floor. I should go, but I am not going to. Don’t ask me why.

I don’t want to sit here all day though. Maybe I will cross the road in a minute.

There are some birds chirping loudly above me. As I look up I can see there is one bird chatting away from inside a cage, while another is replying to it from a branch opposite. I watch as the leaves that surround them rustle and move in the breeze and, as the road’s noise reverberates up amongst the branches, I notice how remarkably still they both stay.

When finally one flies higher up into the tree, the other begins to hop and flutter agitatedly from its perch, in a sort of bouncing motion from the roof of the cage to the bars below, its wings flapping wildly. It repeats these movements again and again, moving faster and faster, getting more and more agitated.

A lady with loaded shopping bags in one hand and a daughter being pulled along by the other hurriedly brushes passed me, drawing my attention down from the tree and back towards the road. I can’t sit here any longer. I must get up. I must do something. I will cross the road. I stand. I walk towards the street. I feel anxious. I don’t know why. But I quickly realize, as my thoughts catch up with me, that I’m not sure if I can actually get across.

Rushing along in a sort of narrow side section of the street, just down from the curb’s edge but separated from the main road by a low white fence, are a collection of motorized bikes, pedal bicycles and san lun che. Even if I can get across and can get over the fence, what am I going to do about all those cars? There are really so many of them and they are going so fast.

It’s really not my day.

I also now see that the trees in the central area of the road have brick plinths built around them, and that a green wire fence runs the whole length of the central section of the street.

I sigh silently.

There is no way I can get across.

I sit back down and look out towards the shops opposite.

I will wait here for my son.

‘Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing… What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them.’

The above extract is taken from George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language, it comes after he quotes from 5 examples of English usage that he found, for different reasons, somewhat vexing. This particular Note From Xi’an will break from a recent pattern of Notes and will exist in the category (if there was one) of note-to-self. This will be where I give myself a bit of time to dwell upon thoughts articulated by an historical great, Orwell, as well as ideas expressed by a contemporary man of precise political thought and concern, Timothy Garton-Ash.

The subject matter of this Note was brought on in-part from rediscovering Orwell’s above article over at the marvelous site Arts & Letters Daily; in-part from re-watching a lecture given by Garton-Ash about his book ‘Facts are Subversive’, and in-part from reading Garton-Ash’s own article Orwell’s List, as well as a consequence of briefly reflecting on my own reading, some time ago, of Orwell’s disturbing text, Nineteen Eighty-Four, after a friend of mine was discussing his reading of it with me recently.

painting by fu bao shi

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Image taken from The Guardian Newspaper

As a Chinese gentleman was recently sharing his thoughts with me on the different responses to, and consequences of the quakes in China 2008 and Japan last week, I will add this related article from Ministry of Tofu, entitled: China See Quake Hit Japan As Role Model, Engage In Self-Reflection

This Note may be somewhat symptomatic of these end-of-February days: a bit of a hotchpotch; wet afternoons, holidays over; Winter’s gone but Spring has not yet sprung; a world of potential, and a potential for disorder; a host of things to come, but none yet arrived; good news, bad news and a million comments on the news; damp and dark, leaves amazingly still falling; Arab world, another world; wise people, knowledgeable people and in spite of those people people; disinformation, inspiration and what does the future hold; I can jump, you can jump, what about now those billion Chinese have jumped?

That is by way of an introduction to this slightly more eclectic Note. It will include an extract from Jonathan Watts’ own introduction to his book: When A Billion Chinese Jump, which I have just got a hold of for the first time. I will add to Mr. Watts’ words a few pictures taken by Lu Guang (卢广), a Chinese photographer who captured what are now quite renowned images of ‘Pollution in China’. I will also include a couple of photographs from a photo-journalist mate of mine in Beijing, the pictures he takes always give me pause for thought; as well as often managing to bring a smile to my face.

In addition, I will add to the mix a couple of maps of China and the US that express the GDPs of their respective Provinces and States in comparison with smaller Nation States. To finish, there is an infographic showing the rise in Chinese language usage on the Internet, [Update 08/03: I have also added an infographic on China's Social Media Evolution] as well as links to a couple of good recent articles on the ‘Internet in China’.

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First, a couple of Chris Cherry’s evocative pictures, more of his work can be found over at his Flickr page (elephantonabicycle) or on his own site (christophercherry.net); where his mastery of the written word certainly supports his eye for a resonating picture. As an aside, the lostlaowai flickr page is also worth passing through.

see more of christopher cherry's pictures (flickr)

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