An Anniversary

I've been stuck in somewhat of a blogging rut for these past two months, probably because I was directing all my creative energy elsewhere. More on that to come. But today I felt the need to share with you my experience of living in Nanjing on this, of all days. You see, today was the 75th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanjing.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what happened today, a brief explanation:

The Nanjing Massacre was perhaps the greatest war atrocity of the Second Sino-Japanese War. On this day in 1937, Japanese soldiers captured the city of Nanjing and proceeded to rape, murder, and mutilate hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians. As I personally find the details very disturbing, I am not linking any text to the Wikipedia page and instead will leave it to the reader's discretion to search it on his or her own. Anyone with further interest in the Nanjing Massacre can search out Iris Chang's definitive historical account, The Rape of Nanking. 

Tellingly, Chinese people refer to this incident as the 南京大屠杀 Nánjīng Dàtúshā, which, literally translated, means the Nanjing Holocaust. There is a memorial here in the city whose campus may be just as large as Nanjing University proper, further evidence of how large a presence this incident has in the public psyche. Part of the reason I was so worried for my Japanese roommate during the anti-Japanese hysteria over the Diaoyu Islands dispute was because she was a Japanese girl in Nanjing. I was equally worried today. However, judging by her demeanor today, and the demeanor of my three Japanese classmates, there seemed to be nothing to worry about. It was actually very odd.

Every year on December 13th, the city government sounds air raid sirens across the city. I didn't know about this ahead of time, so when the sirens started going off during a break between classes this morning, I was taken by surprise. Growing up in Nebraska, I heard tornado sirens every first Thursday of the month, so when these sirens began, I actually expected to feel a pang of homesickness. But these sirens were different from the ones at home. I don't know how to explain it, maybe it's due to all the WWII movies that make use of the air raid siren motif, but these sirens made me feel afraid. Even though I knew they were commemorative sirens, even though I have had no personal experience being the subject of a military attack, the sound of these sirens made me want to hide and cry. Imagining the fear Nanjingers must have felt at the sight of Japanese troops 75 years ago only made it worse.

I looked around at my classmates as the sirens continued, wondering if any of them were as deeply affected. My Italian classmates were; one was clutching her rosary and had her head bent down in prayer. My Kazakh classmate seemed contemplative at the very least. My Japanese classmates (one elderly gentleman and two girls my age)... continued to chat and joke around even as the sirens were wailing around us. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about that. My Korean classmates weren't in class today, nor was my Iranian classmate, so I don't know how they felt.

Anyway, since today was such a meaningful day for the city of Nanjing, I knew there would be interesting ceremonies around the city, and wanted to try to find one. Unfortunately, I had class today from 8-4, so I had to wait until it was already dark outside before venturing out.

I decided to go to the Nanjing Massacre Museum, even though I knew it would be closed by the time I got there and even though it had started to rain outside. I had been delaying my visit until after I finished Iris Chang's book myself, but on a day like today I felt compelled to go. 

Oh my goodness that place is huge.

I don't know how to feel about this either

I saw this glowing white statue really far away, so I decided to keep walking towards it, hoping I would see people holding a candlelight vigil or something. Nope. No people, but I did discover the extent of the memorial as I had to walk all the way around it to see her properly. Here she is:

As I made my way back to the "front" of the memorial, I felt disappointed that I hadn't seen anything commemorating the 75th anniversary. No signs, no flowers, not even litter. Where was the evidence of the events I had seen in news releases?

That's when I looked down. Just on the other side of the memorial's barricade fence, someone had tossed a small bouquet of white flowers. It was a very poignant sight.

After contemplating those flowers for a little while, I moved so that I was directly in front of the memorial's main statue. I saw even more flowers at the base of the statue's feet.

The first time I glanced at this statue, I was preoccupied with getting to the lady in white that I had seen earlier, so I didn't stop to look at it too closely. Besides, I thought it was fairly obvious that it was a woman representing the pain the victims endured at the hands of their captors.

This second time, I stared at the statue a little while longer and realized I was only half-right. The woman was representing the pain felt by the city's victims, but she was doing so by holding her slaughtered child in her hands.

Maybe it's because I was taken by surprise (again), but staring at that statue and then suddenly recognizing the shape of an infant in the woman's hands maxed out my emotional responses for the day. I contemplated the statue a little longer, and then I went home.

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in memoriam

Diaoyu

For those who haven't picked up the news lately, tensions between China and Japan are running pretty high, all due to a collection of rocks in the southern waters of the East China Sea called the Diaoyu, Tiaoyu, and Senkaku Islands by China, Taiwan, and Japan, respectively.

photo courtesy of Wikipedia

The islands themselves are of little importance, but the ocean floor around them is rich in natural resources (read: oil), making ownership of the islands highly desirable. To complicate the issue, the islands have changed hands some five or six times (read a cartoon history here), so both China and Japan have a somewhat legitimate claim to ownership.

Stop what you're doing

and read this: http://tealeafnation.com/2012/07/translation-one-authors-plea-for-a-gentler-china/

Never have I read anything that more poignantly and precisely captures the spiritual malaise that seems pervasive throughout modern Chinese society.

I've been thinking about the state of modern Chinese society quite a bit these last few weeks. I still need to organize my thoughts, but after I do, you know I'll be quick to share.

Bureaucracy

I had to wait a few days to write this post so as to give my temper a chance to cool down. I shouldn't have been so surprised really. I knew going into this that China can be bureaucratic to the point of being nonsensical. It's just that all of my previous experiences with China have been through American programs that took care of the bureaucracy for me, so I was always a step removed from the mess.

Not this time.

Getting settled into my program here has redefined my parameters for what constitutes a hot mess. It didn't help that I was basically flying solo. Therefore, in order to help anyone who will be doing the Chinese Government Scholarship in Nanjing in upcoming years, I've made a sort of "How To" post.

For the sake of (relative) brevity and my sanity, I won't blog the many moments of frustration I endured. Let's just say the experience involved considerable trial and error.

The National Museum of China is... Open?

Finally, after over a decade, one of Beijing's largest and most prominent buildings will have purpose again.

National Museum of China during National Holiday

The National Museum of China, located in the heart of Beijing (and CCP headquarters), makes up one fourth of the glorified perimeter of Tiananmen Square, with Qianmen Gate, the Great Hall of the People, and Tiananmen Gate making up the other three sides. Recently, it has been a silent testament to the confusion felt by many over the tight-lipped nature of the Chinese Communist Party. For over ten years, it has been shut down for "renovations," although very few people could tell you what those renovations were. From every Beijinger I asked, the answer was always the same, "Who knows what they're doing? Who knows if the museum will ever open?"

Now that the doors are open, it will be interesting to see who chooses to walk through them. On one hand, the glorification of Chinese history that the museum purportedly displays may be uplifting to some citizens, while to others, it may only give rise to further frustration if the museum is found following a political agenda. This New York Times article suggests it very much does:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/world/asia/04museum.html?hp

I think many foreigners will go not only because it's a classic tourist trap, but also because it's a source of political, intellectual and historical fascination. How can a country so open be so closed at the same time? How can they present a historical narrative that is so obviously false? You would think that they couldn't, but people also thought that they couldn't open up their markets and continue to maintain a Communist regime. I suppose only time will tell.

The Protest Heard 'Round the World

At this point, most everyone has heard about the mass protests in Egypt that led to the ejection of President Mubarak and inspired similar protests across the African continent. While these protests kept igniting, I continually searched the official Chinese newspaper, The People's Daily, to see just how much the government would allow revealed to their citizens. I admit, I was surprised when I saw some pretty extensive coverage of the Egyptian protests as they reached their zenith. Of course, the articles also painted Mubarak as a horrible person who very much deserved to be ousted. I'm not saying that's false, but it was definitely an effort to craft a distinct separation between Mubarak's Egypt and the CCP's China.

Maybe it worked. I was surprised that I didn't hear much about protests on the news, nor even in the China blogs. But then came the protests across the rest of Africa. I found Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution," interesting the first time I heard it because it sounded quite a bit like something one would hear from the tumultuous years when China transitioned from a dynasty-driven empire to a party-driven nation. Jasmine, of course, is a popular flower and tea in China, and revolutions... well they were popular for a while too. But this was Tunisia, not China, so I got a bit lax about following every detail of their movement. (However, I do want to stop for a second to acknowledge the many lives that have been lost as people continue to stand up to the tyrannical and oppressive forces in their lives.)

Then, in today's New York Times, the story that I've been waiting for finally broke. A la Egypt, China saw its own national protests coordinated through social networking sites such as (sigh) Twitter. I really do have to congratulate these protesters on finding such an incredible and productive use for Twitter. Anyway, this mass national protest was called, surprise, the Jasmine Revolution. According to the article, one protest was in the middle of Wangfujing, which is like Beijing's Times Square. Also according to the article, according to one Twitter-er (Tweeter?) students at Peking University were warned not to take part in the protests. The Yale students at PKU this semester are so lucky.

I'll be following developments in China as much as possible. It will be very interesting to see if this story progresses at all, or just gets swallowed up by the censored media.

Procrastination, An Addendum

To be fair, the previous post characterizing the harmonizing tendency of Chinese society doesn't necessarily cover ALL of Chinese society. After all, trying to characterize any group of 1.3 billion people is a very difficult, if not impossible task. China is slowly assimilating more "Western" values, such as individualism, human rights and free speech. I call them "Western," because they are predominately traits found in the United States and European countries. China was getting along fine without any of those things for a while, at least in their eyes.

No, really. One of my Chinese roommates here at Peking University once told me, "You guys think human rights are really important. Here in China... it's not a big deal." And in terms of the education system, the 高考 Gāo Kǎo, or College Entrance Exam, is actually the most fair way to deal with the millions of high school seniors vying for only a few thousand spots at the nation's top universities; it's just unfortunate that the byproduct of such a fair examination system is an education culture that emphasizes information acquisition over analysis. But free speech holds some promise.

The internet has been an amazing tool for promoting free speech in China. While being over-zealous or over-critical of the government online can still result in exile or imprisonment, people have been able to exercise their voices like never before, partially because they can find strength in numbers. You see, the government has a very real fear of its own people, because, as you can guess, a revolution by the Chinese people would be very, very difficult to suppress. It has actually created a fascinating dynamic between the party in power and the people it "controls." Just look at the move by senior members of the Politburo to promote free speech for the media, or the online movements condemning the corruption among the hierarchy of the Communist Party.

So yes, the attitude of "harmonization," from my experiences in China over the past six months, is definitely the prevalent attitude across the country, but things are changing, and they are changing quickly.

Because I Haven't Procrastinated Enough Yet...

I am now precisely 203 hours away from leaving the tarmac of Beijing Airport bound for the good ol' US of A. Discounting my brief two weeks in Nebraska this August, and my four days in Seoul a couple weeks ago, I have been in China for approximately 170 days. And in 170 days, I have learned more than I ever thought possible about a culture I was clueless about 18 months ago.  At one point I'll make a cute little list of experiences á la Miles Grimshaw, but until then I'm going to wax eloquent on the single most important thing I think I have learned in my time here, and that is that the Chinese mentality is fundamentally different from that of America, or even much of the rest of the world. Not necessarily better or worse, simply... different.

Let me make something clear. Before coming to China, I understood that there were cultural points that were different around the world. The role of the female, for example, varies widely from region to region. Educational practices, as well, differ depending on what country (or even city) you find yourself in. Courtesy and etiquette obviously fit into this little schematic too. But never did I think the role of the individual would be so completely muted as it is in China.

That's it. That's my big revelation. Chinese society places a higher premium on the pursuit of a "harmonious society," than on the pursuit of individual happiness. I know, I know, this is like China 101. I know that it's one of the first things a student of China learns and it's one of the first things any Chinese person will tell you too. But there's a difference between "knowing" something by reading it in a textbook or hearing it second-hand and actually living it every single day. See, when you learn it through a textbook, you think maybe it's just a generalization, maybe in practice people are actually more individualistic and independent than you think. But... that's where you'd be wrong.

红楼梦, or Dream of the Red Chamber

One of the five classes I took as part of the Yale-PKU program this semester was "Dream of the Red Chamber," a class that was literally devoted to the reading and discussion of one book. I'm sure you can guess the title. This book, 红楼梦 Hónglóumèng aka Dream of the Red Chamber aka Story of the Stone, is said to be one of China's greatest and most defining literary works (think of what the Shakespeare canon is to Great Britain).

Growing up in Nebraska and only recently having taken an interest in Chinese culture, I had absolutely no inkling of the importance of this book in China, or to the Chinese people. But now, four months after having started the book, I am officially part of the 红学 hóngxué (Redology) club (Redology being the study of this book).

Just kidding. There IS a club on campus dedicated to the study of this book, but I don't think I'll be joining. Reading this book has been enough. I admit, I skipped some chapters here and there, and maybe some of the longer and less understandable sections of poetry, but still, getting through 120 chapters on the lives of over 400 characters was mentally exhausting. You see, one of the reasons this book is so famous is because it is so incredibly long and complicated.

The Great Wall of China

You might have heard of it. You might have seen the pictures. You might have been there yourself. But no matter how many times you've heard it described, no matter how many pictures have flown before your eyes, no matter how many steps you've taken up its steep sides, there is nothing that ever extinguishes that incredible rush of awe when you behold the Great Wall of China unwinding before you in all its glory (and there's nothing to be done about my poor poetic efforts when I'm writing on sleep deprivation).

Today's trek to the Jīnshānlǐng (金山岭) section of the Great Wall was... humbling, to say the least. My group consisted of a small contingent of people affiliated with the Yale-PKU program in one way or another, including all of our Yale professors (and some of their kids!) and my Chinese language teacher.

Didn't See That Coming

A friend sent me this news article, which has me blogging during a break in class:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11529920

Chinese veteran politicians call for reform

"A group of 23 Communist Party elders in China has written a letter calling for an end to the country's restrictions on freedom of speech."

Crazy, right? And right on the heels of very blatant critique of Chinese oppression through the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo. The goverment's got to be having a great time right now. And by great time, I mean they are probably feeling very off-kilter, being attacked by multiple fronts in such a short period of time, and right before their big "Let's plan the future of our country" meeting.

Late Night Thoughts

Apologies to people expecting a nice, polished blog post, but it's late and I'm doing a lot of reflecting, and I feel the need to pour out my thoughts into the void that is the internet.

With the exception of two brief weeks in August, I have been living and studying in China since the first week of June. The time up to now has given me a lot to think about when it comes to this country, its people and its future. I'm not professing to be an expert after a few months here; in fact, I'm asserting the exact opposite. The more I learn about the whole concept of "China," the more I realize how much I have yet to learn and understand.

What did "China" mean to me before coming here, or even before taking an interest in studying Chinese? Superficially, it was that weird, exotic country out east. It had silk, it had tea, and it had a billion people. Economically, it was where everything was made. And it owned a lot of American dollars. I knew that. Politically, it was the world's biggest conundrum: a successful Communist state? A progressive authoritarian regime? How in the world was it working?

Wal-Mart... in China

The fruits of my covert mission to photo-document the Wal-Mart products of Beijing, China...

Red Flag Over China

This past Tuesday, I got it into my head that I wanted to see the the Chinese flag being raised over Tiananmen Square at dawn. It's actually incredibly important to the Chinese people that they see it at least once, and I figured there was never as good a time as any to witness the occasion than National Week. So I mentioned my plan to my friend Nicole, and the both of us decided to pull an all-nighter and catch the first (5:10 AM) subway from the university out to Tiananmen Square.

The flag is raised at Tiananmen exactly at sunrise every morning, every day of the year. That means 4:30 AM during the peak of summer, and about 7:30 AM for the dead of winter. On Wednesday, October 6th, when we went to see the flag, it was scheduled to go up at 6:15 AM.

So, come 5:15 AM, we were up, alert (ish) and ready to venture out into Beijing. The subway was, predictably, almost totally empty. I was torn between frolicking among the empty cars or laying out on a string of seats to sleep.

China Rebel Wins Peace Prize!

Click here for the New York Times article.

What happened...
Liu Xiaobo, an avid advocate for democracy in China, received the Nobel Peace Prize while serving an 11-year prison sentence in his home country. He was recognized for being a persistent and unquenchable voice for freedom in a state that notably lacks it. He is the first Chinese national to receive the prize.

How I found out...
When I got back from a day out in Beijing, I got on the Times website, as usual. I was totally stunned by the cover story I saw floating right in front of me. Apparently my reaction panicked one of my Chinese "suitemates" sitting on the couch opposite me, because she asked if I was ok. I just told her, "Come here! Come here! Oh my God, come read this!" In hindsight, maybe having a Chinese national come read about the oppression in her country had the potential to end very badly. Good thing it didn't.

天安门广场, Tiananmen Square

For any American who has heard of Tiananmen Square (天安门广场, Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng), one historical event will usually come to mind: the massacre on June 4th, 1989. You can read the original BBC news article here. In fact, there is a very iconic image associated with the event of one man standing in front of a line of military tanks.

Beijing Bumming/Blogging Blitzkrieg

Today, October 1st, 2010, marks the 61st anniversary of the People's Republic of China. Known as "National Day," or 国庆节 guóqìngjié, the celebration begins on this day every year and lasts for a full week... and there are Chinese flags literally EVERYWHERE.

The patriotic thing to do, I learned, is to wake up before dawn and go down to Tiananmen Square to watch them hoist the flag at daybreak. Yes, daybreak. I'll wait to see a flag-hoisting ceremony until the sun rises a little later, say 8 AM? Maybe I should check one of those astrological calendars.

Mooncakes and Drama Queens

Let's get down to business (to defeat the Huns - sorry, couldn't resist). I'm way behind on my blogging, but the life here at 北京大学 Běijīng Dàxué (Peking University) is so much more fast-paced than I anticipated. This might turn into a regressive blog for a while as I try to play catch-up, so here we go.

Today was the famous and much-celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival. That is to say, 中秋节 Zhōngqiūjié. Celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month on the lunar calendar, the festival coincides with the autumnal equinox, when the moon is supposedly at its fullest and brightest. The traditional way to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival is by hanging out with your family and eating mooncakes under the moon. However, since Mid-Autumn Festival falls on a Wednesday this year, and our roommates have American "guests," of sorts, they elected to stay on campus and be our stand-in "family."

中华民族园

Alright, busting out one more since I know I'm not going to touch my blog this weekend. Luckily it's mostly pictures.

This past Saturday I went with my 中国家庭 zhongguo jiating (Chinese family) and another HBA student to the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park, sometimes called the China Nationalities Museum (locally known as 中华民族园 zhonghua minzu yuan). It was definitely interesting and informative, but I think more could be done with it. It's just one of those under-appreciated treasures in Beijing; much of the time it felt like we were the only ones in the park.