Rock'n to a New Youth Culture

The spirit of China's increasingly experimental and independent youth (the so-called "rising power generation") is conveyed in a famous chorus from Indie rock band Carsick-Cars' 2007 release, Maybe Mars. While the song paints a drippy, dreary night of Chinese conformity, an anthem blares out championing a lone hero who defies the darkness to become a "rock 'n' roll" hero:

Harmony (和声)

"it was late at night,
and all the people going to their hole
walking down the street
he talked to me just like crazy, real loud
he said this is all about your dreams
you should fight all the time
and he was the only one who wasn't scared,
to fall apart

hey, johnny, he doesn't want to,
he wants to be a rock and roll hero

hey, johnny, he doesn't want to,
he wants to be a rock and roll hero

hey, johnny, he doesn't want to,
he wants to be a rock and roll hero

hey, johnny, he doesn't want to,
he wants to be a rock and roll hero"

The lyrics lionize the youth as a recalcitrant, harmonizing (和声) element to the stagnant melody of his surroundings. While the population sleeps inside their holes, Johnny is made to see a heroic alternative that provides a new avenue for individual expression and in the process enriches the collective sounds of his society.

While Johnny and his rebel friend are by no means flooding the streets of contemporary China, the historically dormant frequencies of popular youth culture are markedly fluctuating. A recent article in The Telegraph (07 Dec 2009, UK) suggests notable rises in alternative band growth (~20,000 at the moment) and huge gains in concert attendance (up 30%). The nation's new found wealth and the radical contraction of the traditionally sprawling, Chinese nuclear family have given China's new youth immense new freedoms and resources to explore the world and to create themselves. Inspired by the retro80s and protopunk sounds and cultures of the West, Chinese bands and their listeners are blazing new avenues for self-expression. Grassroots jamming and lyrical and instrumental innovation have made Chinese Indie a big hit at home and abroad. The Carsick-Cars are close friends with NYC's own noise band Sonic Youth and their dependable opening act.

While excitement brews in cultural and academic circles over the stirrings of Chinese Indie (we anticipate Andrew Field's documentary on the scene early 2010), not everyone is as persuaded by its transformative powers and cultural significance. In fact, P.K. 14, the godfather of Chinese Indie, is pessimistic about its impact and skeptical about its popularization. Yang Haisong says that the fervor surrounding the scene is a marketing construct and that the youth's interest in new Chinese rock is more an expression of slavish conformatism than release of alternative energies. In other words, Indie rock is threatening to become a new catalyst for a classic case of homogenization.

We will look at and listen to some of the leading bands on the Chinese Indie scene and add our own voices to the sociological and cultural debate of what this all means for China's rising generation.

Readings:
*Han Han's His Own Country (他的国)
*Lonely China
*Carsick-Cars
*P.K. 14
*NY Times Article on Communist Sponsored Rockfests (2010)

Questions to consider:
(1) What are you first impressions about the sounds and the lyrics of the music? Thinking of the passage from His Own Country, how can rock be freeing for the Chinese?
(2) What do you perceive as being attractive to Chinese youth in Indie and punk music?
(3) How can what's new about Indie music threaten to snuff out its creative and liberational prospects?

Links:
*Rock Music and China's Youth Market (Telegraph)

Fashionably Red: Nationalist Fervor and the 60th Anniversary of Communism

The Martyrs Float (浴血奋斗) glides majestically past Tian'an men square commemorating the sacrifices of thousands along China's path to modernization. It is one of hundreds of caiche 彩车 (parade floats) that filled the streets of Beijing on October 1, 2009, to celebrate 60 years of Communist rule and national progress.

Nationalist fervor has been, unsurprisingly, on the rise since the beginning of the summer. October's celebrations further capitalize (pardon the word choice) on this increasing patriotism to consolidate nationalist sentiment (especially among the youth), to reinterpret Communist history and to bolster a host of profitable industries. Some social programs and businesses benefiting from this anniversary include: Cun guan 村官 (a modern-day perversion of the Cultural Revolution in which university grads head to the countryside to instruct country folk), Red Tourism (i.e. pilgrimmages to Yan'an, idyllic base of fledgling Communist forces), the film industry (e.g. Han Sanping's blockbuster "The Founding of a Republic" 建国大业),




and, strangely enough, Wedding Photography (this couple poses as Red Guard cadets).



These celebrations mark a new stage in the evolution of Chinese nationalism and national culture. For instance, the Grand Finale of the gala (shown below) features a song by Jackie Chan in which the words "囯" and "家," the modern bisyllabic composite for "country," are redefined and offered as a new communal ideal. Through our study of this and other cultural texts bound up in the anniversary, we will strive to define some of the characteristics of this 21st century Chinese socialist sentiment.




Readings:
*The Founding of a Republic (2009)
*Chinadaily interviews (29 September 2009)

Questions to consider:
(1) How would you explain the paradoxical craze for the Communist past of Chinese youth who are more cosmopolitan than ever?
(2) How would you describe the intersection of nationalism and commerce in China today?
(3) How might you anticipate the different generational reactions to this anniversary?

Supplementary references:
*Top 15 unofficial documentaries of the People's Republic (Fanhall)
* The 4 major anthems heard at the celebration (Xinhua News)

* Danwei article on Mao Impersonators

*Modern Society Website (Anti-Western)

*Red Songs Competition at HNU (2011)

Formosa and the Fear of What's to Come

Formosa Betryaed, written by Will Tiao and directed by Adam Kane, is a 2009 Formosa Film release that explores the anxieties the inhabitants of the small island of Taiwan carry with them into the 21st century. A territory of mixed races passed through the hands of multiple imperial powers (e.g. Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese), the island now nervously contemplates its future just as one of its staunchest political allies, the US, now seems to be quietly observing its cultural, political and economic gravitation back towards mainland China. The official website of the film describes it in the following way: "Taiwan is a nation that struggles to be recognized, sometimes even by its own people, as an independent nation. Perhaps most significant is America's refusal to recognize Taiwan as a nation while protecting its right to democracy from the People's Republic of China government across the Taiwan strait."

The political thriller resurrects actual events that occured in the 1980s when the Taiwanese Nationalist government tracked down and murdered a number of intellectuals abroad who disagreed with plans to reunite with the mainland. An interesting twist in this cinematic interpretation of historical events is the presence of American officers and detectives seeking to track down the killers and uncovering a national conspiracy. Recently (Sept. 2009) the film was privately screened for US congressmen in hopes of raising consciousness of the contemporary cultural and political plights of Taiwan in a world of global powers gambling again with its fate.

Questions:

*How does the film's plot succeed in invoking a nationalist spirit to rally around?
*How is an overt American presence in the film relevant to the political message of the production?
*How might some Taiwanese reject this understanding of their nation?

Links:

*Caving in to the Chinese Economy (2010)
*Formosa Betrayed (official website)
*Article on private US Congress screening (Taipei Times)

From "I am!" to "What am I?": Bei Dao and Can Xue

After the death of Mao and the fall of the tyrannical Gang of Four in the mid-seventies, China felt the natural tremors of cultural change rumble to the surface after more than a decade of boundless repression. Maoism had demanded of the people a constant psychosomatic devotion to the communist party and its nationalist projects. After years of mental and physical conditioning in the methods of forfeiting their selves to and for the party, Chinese citizens seemed destined to remain passive to the eternal mandates of an external authority. Despite these strategies and tactics to vaccuum out its people individual essences, certain indominitable spirits survived. When Maoism and its ultra-militant champions were temporarily halted, intellectuals and artists who had sheltered their spark of individuality broke out to express themselves. During the 1980s, this frantic airing-out of individuality occured forcefully and moved briskly. From the simple, impassioned cries of affirmation of Bei Dao to the surreal, confounding explorations of the substance of subjectivity of Can Xue, Chinese writers rushed to articulate what it meant to exist individually in a post-Mao China.

Bei Dao 北島, Misty poet stand-out and co-founder of the controversial literary publication Jintian 今天 (1978-80; 1990-), is recognized as one of the first artists to break out after the collapse of Maoism to assert openly the possibility of assuming individuality in China. His poem "A Reply" 回答 demonstrates the forceful imposition of a singular voice against the colossal forces of history and reality that weigh down upon it: "I tell you, World! / I--Don't--Believe--You!"

From these initial outbursts of affirmation of post-Mao subjects, Chinese writers of prose moved quickly from the assertion of the "I" to explorations of its defintion in a new era of modernization/postmodernization. One of its most provocative and controversial writers, Can Xue 殘雪, originally a tailor, is an extreme example of how narratives have come to confront the meaning of subjectivity in Chinese literature. Her dizzying, Kafka-esque worlds of volatile identities and fluid personalities reveal the hyper-instability of the content of individuality. From a study of a selection of Bei Dao's and her work, we catch a glimpse of the frantic evolution of the search for subjectivity in late twentieth-century Chinese literature.

Readings:
*Selections from Bei Dao's poetry collections
*Selections from Can Xue's Old, Floating Clouds

Questions:
(1) What seems sure in Bei Dao's exclamations of individuality?
(2) How do the expository methods of Bei Dao and Can Xue contribute to their differing conceptions of individuality?
(3) What is stable in Can Xue's narrations?

Links:

*Hong King Bei Dao Archive

Supplementary references:
*Dian Li. The Chinese Poetry of Bei Dao: Resistance and Exile, 1978-2000. Edwin Mellen, 2006.

Love in a Time of Consumption

Love and sexuality are physiological phenomena that despite their apparent transperancy, are actually highly temporal and cultural specific. It is often taken for granted that human emotions and aesthetic responses are universal and universally translatable across times and cultures. The display of a sub-Saharan African child crying or the image of smiling Burmese elder might seem to be naturally comprehensible. What we intuitively grasp as the reasons for and meanings of these emotions are, in fact, culturally conditioned. The sub-Saharan child may not be crying because he is hungry, as decades of televised, American broadcasts have insisted, nor is the Burmese elder smiling because he lives an idyllic, oriental existence. We interpret emotions and feelings hastily and instinctively, but when confronting those of other cultures, it is important to take a step back to remember that the expressive rising and falling of emotions are themselves languages, culturally-specific codes that function differently in various contexts and are as susceptible to misinterpretation as any foreign gesture or word. Furthermore, those same culturally-specific codes are as subject to the evolutions of time as simple vocabulary. The influences of authority, history, cultural exchange, education, media, and the markets all impinge upon the changing manifestations of how people fall in love and how they express it.

In Comrades, Almost a Love Story (Tian mi mi)(1996), Peter Ho-Sun Chan reveals the susceptability of romantic sentiments to the recurrent pulsations of a global market. Li Xiaojun and Li Qiao embark on financial and sentimental quests in Hong Kong to find money and to nurture love. In these complicated processes of chasing down both goals, Chan demonstrates just how much love is affected and conditioned by capitalist consumption. The power and pervasiveness of the global market succeeds in producing a number of different ways of being Chinese and of being in love as such.

Questions to consider:
(1) What is the relationship of money to romance in the film?
(2) How does the continual presence of Teresa Teng's song "Tian mi mi" function in the film?
(3) How has consumption in Hong Kong affected the love of the main characters in the film?

Links:
*Censoring Dating Shows in the PRC (2010)

Secondary references:
*Chow, Rey. "By Way of Mass Commodities." Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films. New York: Columbia UP, 2007. 105-120.

Ha Jin: “Affected by the Insufficiency”

Ha Jin (哈金) is the pen-name of Jin Xuefei (金雪飛). He was born February 21, 1956 in Liaoning, China to a family of faithful comrades. His father was an officer and Jin would follow in his footsteps by joining the PLA in 1969 at the height of the Cultural Revolution (文化大革命). After the demise of the Gang of Four and the rise of Deng Xiaoping, Ha pounced on the opportunity to seek higher education. Between 1981-84, he obtained advanced degrees in English and Anglo-American literature at Heilongjiang and Shandong universities. His opportunities for intellectual growth increased in 1985 when he and his wife moved to Waltham, MA to study at Brandeis University. While on scholarship there, he witnessed the attrocities of the Tian’an men incident from afar. The horror of the experience compelled him finally to emigrate permanently to the US to secure a better life for his wife and child.

After receiving his PhD (1992), Ha remained in the US. He is a unique and especially talented writer in that he writes exclusively in English about Chinese culture and history. Living in the US for only 20 some years, Ha has already become one of its most acclaimed authors, composing in a language that originally was not his own. His bibliography includes: Between Silences (1990), Facing Shadows (poetry)(1996), Ocean of Words (short stories)(1996), Under the Red Flag (short stories)(1997), In the Pond (novel)(1998), Waiting (novel)(1999), The Bridegroom (short stories)(2000), Wreckage (poetry) (2001), The Crazed (novel)(2002), War Trash (novel)(2004), A Free Life (novel)(2007), and The Writer as Migrant (essays)(2008). Ha is also the recepient of a number of awards: Hemingway/PEN (1997), National Book Award (1999), PENFaulker (2000). Currently, he writes and teaches as a professor at Boston University.

The following is a selection from a poem Ha is famous for that emphasizes the heightened role of language in the immigrant experience:

"In New York City

In the golden rain
I plod along Madison Avenue,
Loaded with words.
They are from a page
That show the insignificance
of a person to a tribe ,
Just as a hive keeps thriving
While a bee is lost [...]

No wisdom shines
Like the neon and traffic lights,
But there are words as true as
The money eyes, the yellow cabs,
The fact of pigeons on the sills."

Readings:
*Powell Books interview with David Weich
*The Writers as Migrant (2008)

Questions to consider:

(1) According to Ha Jin, what are the specific complications and challenges facing migrant writers?
(2) What are the specific ways in which you see Ha Jin managing his hybrid identity as an immigrant writer?
(3) How do you see him attempting a dual maneuver to preserve and to acquire original and new identities?

Links:
*Radio interview with Commentary.Ca' s Joseph Planta

Yao Ming and Olympic Dreams

If you've ever walked the streets of any major Chinese city and happened to mention that you were an NBA fan, you've almost certainly heard fired back at you the question: "You like the Houston Rockets?" At which point, you anticipate where the conversation is headed and jump right to the chase: "Yeah, that Yao Ming (姚明) is pretty good!" After rubbing the collective ego with that reply, I've sometimes felt impressed to actually share a personal opinion. I do not recommend doing so. It's a waste of air for the most part. "I'm actually a fan of the Boston Celtics." Blank stares... "You know, Boston's home team." (crickets chirping)... "Boston...it's near New York." At which point some nervous smiles and head-nods are thrown around. Like a lot of American's fleeting affairs with Lance Armstrong and cycling, one gets the sense that the majority of Chinese interest in baskestball is solely because one of their own is in the mix.

Yao Ming is NBA's tallest player and China's best-known athlete. He was born in Shanghai where he began honing his skills as a teenager with a local club, the Sharks. His height and skills later helped win Shanghai's veteran squad a CBA (Chinese Basketball Assocation) championship. In 2002, he entered the NBA draft and was selected by the Houston Rockets as the first overall pick. He has since started seven times in the NBA All-Star Game and has been named to the All-NBA team five times. In so many ways, he is the fortuitous symbol of China's modernizing aspirations, representing the superior athletic prowess and physical dominance that China's populations possess. Known as the "Great Wall of Houston," his successes are an appropriate prelude to Beijing's 2008 dreams of demonstrating on the world stage their athletic superiority.

By many accounts, the Beijing Olympics were a huge success. China provided the world with an army of capable volunteers and translators, showcased some of the world's most daring, new architecture and proved their superior athletic might by seizing the most gold medals of any participating nation (51). Furthermore, doubts about potential terrorist attacks or media altercations fizzled out with the extinguishing of the flame on August 24. China achieved its goal of hosting the world and showing off its progress while graciously treating and safely protecting its guests. With the success of this 29th Olympiad, however, have come a series of criticisms--some old, some new--that point to a number of blemishes on this pretty face of things: the violation of open media access, violation of human rights, boycotss, pro-Tibetan protestors, religious persectuions, surveillance of foreign hotels, manhandling of foreign journalists, protest zones, secret arrests, imprisonment and harassment of protestors, etc.

Questions:

(1) Why do nations pin nationalistic hopes upon their athletes?
(2) How do the different ways in which the Olympics were portrayed demonstrate the persistance of an East-West cultural and political divide that contradicts "One world, one dream"?

Links:
* Great Wall of Houston
* The Year of Yao
* 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremonies
* Official Olympic Song (You and Me)

Secondary references:

* Xu Guoqi. Olympic Dreams: China and Sports 1895-2008. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008.

*Susan Brownell. Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People’s Republic. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.

*Rowan Simmons. Bamboo Goalposts. London: Macmillan, 2008.

Shakespeare, the Sonnet and China

One of PSU's own, Dr. Alexander Huang, recently published (June 2009) a benchmark study on the interpretations and performances of Shakespeare in Chinese over the past two centuries: Chinese Shakespeares (Columbia University Press). Whether you are interested or not in him (and you should be), Shakespeare's reception, influence and transformation as he has traveled through Chinese language, media and performance is something that sheds a great deal of light upon the main topic of this course: What does it means to be Chinese? As a locus classicus of the western world, Shakespeare carries more with him than bawdry witticisms, enduring plots and neologisms. His name embodies the sundry powers the West has exerted upon the world in its cultural and colonial imperialisms. How the Chinese have appropriated him in the modern era fashions its own virtual stage upon which we as critical observers may observe how the Chinese interact with an enduring paradigm of western culture.

In addition to examining the use of Shakespeare in Chinese in the recent past, we will also look briefly at how the western sonnet form was adopted by the Chinese during their New Poetry movement in the 1920's and 1930's. During this period of cultural renewal in China, following the May 4th (1919) watershed moment, the Chinese were looking to borrow and create their own, novel poetic forms that would depart from the traditional shi that had endured and stiffled creativity for millenia. The sonnet's reception and transformation in Chinese during this period is a testament to New Poetry's dedication to forming its own unique, Chinese creation.

Materials:
*The Banquet (2006)

Questions:
(1) Is this Shakespeare or Feng Xiaogang? Why should this question matter?
(2) What does the inclusion of a pseudo-Shakespearean plot add to the re-imagination of Chinese history?
(3) What are the reasons New Poetry intellectuals gave for adopting the sonnet?

Links:
* Shenzhen Daily, Banquet review
* Movie Review Query Engine, Banquet reviews
* Imdb, Banquet reviews

Secondary references:
(1) Huang, Alexander. Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange. New York: Columbia UP, 2009.
(2) Zhang Xiaoyang. "Shaju yanchu yu shidai shenmei yishi." Waiguo wenxue yanjiu 3 (1988): 68-74.

Zhang Yimou and His Girls

Zhang Yimou is internationally the most well known of a renowned group of modern Chinese directors called the Fifth Generation. The group gets its name from the order in which it graduated from the Beijing Film Academy (Class of 1982). Zhang's is a history laden with the greatest of hardships and the highest of successes. A citation from a recent interview with Bright Lights touches briefly upon the lingering angst of his past:

"I think my experience represents a wealth of assets for my life and my work. During the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, I went from age sixteen to age twenty-six. I experienced a lot of chaotic situations, and I saw a lot of terrible, tragic things happening around me. From all that I got a deep understanding of human life, of the human heart or spirit — of human society, really — and I think that it benefits me today: in my work, in my thinking, and even in how I deal with personal problems.

The Cultural Revolution was a very special period of Chinese history, unique in the world. For many years, I wanted to make movies about that period — to discuss the suffering and to talk about fate and human relationships in a world that people couldn't control and which was very hostile. In today's political climate, such a project is impossible — as To Live (1994) has proved, at least in my native country — so I'll just have to wait."

The film we prepared for today, Raise the Red Lantern (1991), is a modern International classic based on Ni Zhen's 1990 novel, Wives and Concubines. It represents nicely two of the most salient characteristics of Zhang's cinematic art: (1) stunning visual beauty, and (2) the centrality of female protagonists. The film tells the story of a young woman, Songlian, who becomes the fourth concubine in a powerful family during the Warlord Era (1916-28CE). She is warmly received only to become slowly entangled in the poisonous machinations of the household. Her position is ultimately compromised and the trauma she is forced to endure changes her forever. The screenplay was approved initially by Chinese censors but later banned for rumors that it doubled as a veiled allegory of an oppressive communist China.

Materials:
Raise the Red Lantern (1991)

Questions:
(1) How is the feudal institution of polygamy portrayed in the film?
(2) How do women exercise power in a system where they are often made politically powerless?
(3) How does color contribute to the interpretive force of the film?

Secondary references
*Cardullo, Bert. "Beyond the Fifth Generation: An Interview with Zhang Yimou" Bright Lights Film Journal 58 (2007 Nov).
Chow, Rey. "Not One Less: The Fable of a Migration" Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes. Ed. Chris Berry. London: British Film Institute, 2003. 144-51.
*Levitin, Jacqueline. "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero, and House of the Flying Daggers: Interpreting Gender Thematics in the Contemporary Swordplay Film-A View from the West" Asian Cinema 17.1 (2006 Spring-Summer): 166-82.
*Huang, Yiju. "Weaving a Dark Parody: A Psychoanalytical Reading of Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower" Film International 6.2 (2008): 41-51.
*Lan, Feng:. "Zhang Yimou's Hero: Reclaiming the Martial Arts Film for 'All under Heaven'" Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 20.1 (2008 Spring): 1-43.
*Beus, Yifen: "The Road to Modernity: Urban and Rural Scenes in Zhang Yimou's The Story of Qiu Ju, Not One Less, and The Road Home" Representing the Rural: Space, Place, and Identity in Films about the Land. Ed. Catherine Fowler. MI: Wayne State UP, 2006. 276-91.
*Li, David Leiwei: "Capturing China in Globalization: The Dialectic of Autonomy and Dependency in Zhang Yimou's Cinema" Texas Studies in Literature and Language 49.3 (2007 Fall): 293-317.

Selling Punches and Puns: From Huo Yuanjia to Bruce and Jet Li

From heroes of the people to superstars of the world, Chinese Kung-fu artists have come light years away from the simple, incognito guardians of temples, officials and small villages of the past to dominate the world cinematic stage. They are a continuing, palpitating presence of the Chinese past in the global imaginary. The present lecture treating Hou Yuanjia, Bruce Lee and Jet Li, offers a historical way of viewing the nationalization and commodification of the Kung-fu master in twentieth century, diasporic China. Tracing the lives, films and fames of these artists suggests a compelling narrative by which we may witness a traditional Chinese cultural practice evolve into a nationalistic and world-wide, financial force of entertainment.

Huo Yuanjia (霍元甲)(1868-1910)

Huo’s story is the stuff made of legend. He was raised in a family of boxers, where his father made a living as a bodyguard. Fighting prowess, however, was not the only skill passed down through the Huo generations. Legend has it that Huo’s father turned down on principle the offers of all the Fat Cats and officials who petitioned his services. Instead, his father was satisfied to lend his services only to those who truly needed it: the poor and misfortunate. He was morally opposed to backing corrupt officials and merchants no matter how enticing the offer (a genuine superhero). Huo, would absorb this sincerity for the masses that would come to characterize his history. At first, though, his future as a martial artist was dim. His father refused to teach a son so obviously physically disadvantaged. The potential damage to the family reputation was too great. But constant, secret training done at night turned him into an adept Labyrinthine boxer (密宗拳).

After his childhood years, Huo moved to Shanghai, a major international port city during the late Qing, where he ardently promoted the martial arts and established an institution called the Jingwu Gym (1910). He was a frequent contestant in international martial arts bouts and was widely known as the defeater of the Japanese and the Occidental strongmen. One of his most famous matches was with a Russian who had moved into Tianjin selling his arts and claiming to be the world’s greatest fighter (1901). Rumors flew that he disparaged the Chinese and their meager martial arts; China and its people were sickly (病夫之国). Huo was enticed by the Westerner’s claims and challenged to take him on in the ring. The crowd mocked him as he approached the mat, but he paid no attention. When he met his Russian contender, he said proudly, “I’m sickly, Asian Huo Yuanjia come to measure up with you on the mat” (“我是‘东亚病夫’霍元甲，愿在这台上与你较量”). Huo proposed two conditions and one consequence to the Russian: (1) retract his claim to be the world’s best fighter, (2) publically apologize for insulting the Chinese empire, or (3) fight to the death. The Russian having heard of Huo’s fame accepted the conditions and snuck out of town. (There are other accounts of similar things happening with foreign challengers). Huo’s fame spread so widely that Qing rebel and Father of the Chinese Republic, Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) indicated Huo as the example of the health and vibrant spirit of the Chinese people: “If you want to make China strong, you must study the martial arts.” In his own hand, Sun wrote calligraphy that hung in Huo’s gym.

Huo's death occurred mysteriously, some believe at the hands of Japanese visitors to Shanghai. In 1910, a team of Judo masters came to Shanghai to test Huo and his students’ metal. They were soundly defeated. It was at a general banquet after the competition that Huo supposedly ingested poison. He died shortly thereafter. As a result of his exploits and fame, however, the martial arts experienced an explosion in interest. A decade after his passing, over 40 branches of his gym had been established with over 40,000 ascribed disciples.

Bruce Lee (李小龙)(1940-1973)

In posthumous evaluations of Bruce Lee’s life, all contributions find their ultimate significance in Lee’s success in publicizing the Chinese martial arts. Of all the things he was and the titles he was given (e.g. “One of the World’s Seven Best Fighters,” “Kung-fu King,” “The Emperor of Martial Arts,” etc.), the one that tied together all his other successes was the attribution that he was the most effective at promoting world-wide Kung-fu. Without that intense marketing and exposure, all other contributions might have remained personal gains, but they would have never ruptured the East/West divide on such a grand scale as he did in accelerating Hollywood’s affair with China and by spurring philosophical, intellectual and athletic interest in traditional, Chinese martial arts the world over. Thus, Bruce Lee’s expansive influence, largely taken for granted in its current pervasiveness, is a consequence of his relationship to the media, principally the videocamera. In many ways, Lee’s role as oriental object, and later director, of the international media blazed the trail for future Chinese actors, actresses and directors to assume prestigious heights in international cinema.

Lee’s first appearances on stage began long before his martial arts exploits. At the time of his birth in San Francisco in 1940, Lee’s father was counted among the most renowned actors of Hong Kong opera. Rumor has it that as an infant Lee was coddled around on stage. As a child growing up in Hong Kong, he would appear in numerous local films. In fact, before he left for the United States in 1959, he had already appeared in 20 productions. He was on course to becoming a famous actor like his father, but because of a scuffle with local gangs Bruce was forced to emigrate for his safety. While in the States, Bruce abandoned his dreams of becoming an actor and gave himself over to his childhood love for the martial arts. What had really began as a suggestion by his father to toughen up, became in his twenties a consuming passion while studying (or not studying) at the University of Washington in Seattle. The rest, as they say, is history. We look at Bruce Lee today for his interpretation of icon Huo Yuanjian in the film, Chinese Connection.

Materials:

Chinese Connection (1972)
Fearless (2006)

Questions:

(1) How is Kung-fu used as a tool for Chinese nationalism?
(2) Is the way Kung-fu used in these histories a means to modernization or the resistance of it?
(3) What is ironic about the use of cinema to lionize the power of a traditional Chinese art?

Links:

*Jet Li, Fearless (O'Brien Scene)

"Iron Women and Foxy Ladies"

Promoting women's liberation began many years before the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Three decades earlier (circa 1919), May Fourth intellectuals and writers had sought earnestly to reform the status of women and to disabuse the public mind with regards to their proper place in traditional society. Having suffered generations of emotional and sexual repression, female liberals took direct aim at relationships and passions as a root of their ills. Yang Zhihua, an author with multiple romantic partners, wrote the following in 1922 about disassembling the taboo of heterosexual relationships:

"First, when a man and a woman start to socialize by speaking and writing to each other, going to the parks together, or studying together, people jump to the conclusion that this young man and this young woman are in love, even though they are actually just friends. Consequently, some young men and women succumb to these outside pressures and speculations, go ahead and push themselves in to the 'business of love,' and then have sex. After that, they break up, agonize, and part ways. The whole process usually lasts a very short time because their relationship has the wrong foundation to begin with. This kind of love is caused by outside pressure, so it is not true love. It is not a personal choice, so it usually does not last long."

Another important voice in this movement, Ding Ling, raised quite a few eyebrows with her explicit depiction of female desire in her 1928, fictional memoires, Miss Sophie's Diary:

"I looked up and saw the corners of his soft, read, and deeply inset mouth. Could I tell anyone how I looked at those two delightful lips like a child longing for sweets? But I know that in this society I’ll never be allowed to take what I want to satisfy my impulses and my desires, even though it would do nobody else any harm."

These criticisms leveled at traditional Confucian propriety and the containment and control of female desire opened high society up to the possibility of alternatives to the traditional Chinese, female stereotype. Nonetheless, the majority of Chinese women (particularly the illiterate) would gain little from Yang and Ding's kind of liberation.

With the victory of the Communists over the Nationalists in 1949, Mao and his party sought a more pragmatic and far-reaching type of women's liberation that would produce more tangible results. A shift in focus from individual sexuality to passion for one's work and country became the avenue of emancipation for women seeking to break out of traditional modes. They were given the material means to be socially and financially independent.

A feminist and Chinese scholar, Tonglin Lu, has doubts that that kind of liberation has actually freed women from their ancient restraints:

Up to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the situation of Chinese women after the May Fourth movement in 1919 and since the socialist revolution in 1949 can be summarized by two pictures: Nora leaving her husband’s house and the white-haired girl at the exit of her grotto. The former symbolized individual freedom in the bourgeois revolution; the latter, the liberation of the labor class in the socialist revolution. The two images raise the same question: "What can a woman do after abandoning, or being saved from, her previous slavery?" (4)

In Lu’s analysis, she can only be reabsorbed into ever newer incarnations of patriarchal notions of salvation that engender inequality (3). Communism is the new face of patriarchal repression, in her opinion.

A new generation of young Chinese women rushing to maturity in a contemporary age of economic prosperity might see things quite differently from Lu, however (see reactions to the White Haired Girl in the 21st century)


Readings:
Mao's Red Book (Ch. 31, Women)
Historic Liberation of Chinese Women (1994)

Questions:
(1) Why were women being liberated?
(2) From what were they being liberated?
(3) What do you perceive as ulterior motives for the liberation of women in modernity?

Links:
*Stefan Landsberger's Iron Women and Foxy Ladies
*White Haired Girl (1950, film version)
*Jing Haozhou's 2003 evaluation of the Communisty Party and Women's Liberation
* The Status of Women (Beijing White Papers, June 1994)

Secondary references:
*Tonglin Lu. “Introduction.” Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature and Society. Ed. Tonglin Lu. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1-22.

Insanity: A Diagnosis of China

Starting with the Opium Wars (1839-1860) and continuing through the Boxer Rebellion (1891-1901) and the aftermath of World War I (1918-1919), China's Qing rulers and numerous warlords were made again and again to suffer the injustices of foreign incursions and reperations. As an ancient civilization firmly rooted in its traditional forms of science and government, China was unfit and unable to match the diplomatic, militaristic and economical forces of the West and the nearby, modern upstart Japan. As a result, under this cloud of foreign repression a fleet of leaders and intellectuals rushed to modernize China materially and culturally in the opening decades of the twentieth century.

Lu Xun, a leader in this cultural force to modernize, led a life that would serve as a template for a generation of young authors seeking to make their mark on a new Chinese literature. Lu Xun was born in 1881 at the end of the decaying Qing dynasty (1644-1912) into an important family, the Zhous. As a young man, he, along with his siblings, aspired to positions of high repute in government and society. Because conditions in China did not offer good prospects for education, Lu Xun studied abroad. In 1904, Lu Xun enrolled in Japan's Sendai Medical Academy where he hoped to learn the science of medicine and bring much needed reform to the backwards practice of traditional Chinese medicine. While in Japan, though, he became disillusioned with the power of the sciences to heal his peoples' ills. He tells the story of how he converted to pursuing the arts as a young man witnessing the humiliation of his people:

"I do not know what advanced methods are now used to reach microbiology, but at that time lantern slides were used to show the microbes; and if the lecture ended early, the instructor might show slides of natural scenery or news to fill up the time. This was during the Russo-Japanese War, so there were many war films, and I had to join in the clapping and cheering in the lecture hall along with the other students. It was a long time since I had seen any compatriots, but one day I saw a film showing some Chinese, one of whom was bound, while many others stood around him. They were all strong fellows but appeared completely apathetic. According to the commentary, the one with his hands bound was a spy working for the Russians, who was to have his head cut off by the Japanese military as a warning to others, while the Chinese beside him had come to enjoy the spectacle. Before the term was over I had left for Tokyo, because after this film I felt that medical science was not so important after all. The people of a weak and backward country, however strong and healthy they may be, can only serve to be made examples of, or to witness such futile spectacles; and it doesn't really matter how many of them die of illness. The most important thing, therefore, was to change their spirit, and since at that time I felt that literature was the best means to this end, I determined to promote a literary movement" ("Preface," Call to Arms)

Because all matter of cures and technologies could not reform the spirit of the Chinese, Lu Xun decided to effect change via the arts. The rest of his life would be spent teaching at a number of universities, heading up and editing fledgling literary journals and institutions and writing a mass of influential short stories and essays. Two of his most famous short stories appearing in the collection a Call to Arms (1922) exaggerate and satirize the plight of a modern China in tension with its traditional past.

Readings:
Diary of a Madman
The True Story of Ah Q

Questions:

(1) In what ways is the figure of Ah Q a pun on the unreformed, pre-modern Chinese spirit?
(2) How are the men who escape their cultural pasts depicted in both stories?
(3) What effect do frames/introductions by secondary narrators add to the tales?

Links:
* Ah Q
* 阿Q 外传
* Insanity and Criminality in Contemporary China

Secondary references:
* Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. New York: Vintage Press, 1988.
*Zhang Jingyuan. Psychoanalysis in China: Literary Transformations, 1919-1949. Ithaca: Cornel UP, 1992.

Monkeys Rule

Journey to the West, or The Monkey King, is a late Ming, fictitious creation based on the journey of the historical figure Xuanzang (602-664CE) to India during the Tang dynasty (618-907CE). At the time, Xuanzang was a monk at Jingtu Temple in the capital of Chang'an. Disheartened by social corruption and the poor quality of translations of Buddhist scriptures, Xuanzang took it upon himself to travel to India to learn the doctrine directly and eventually provide superior replacements for the flawed Chinese canon. With the Emperor's blessing and the help of other Buddhists, Xuanzang made the treacherous journey across the barren deserts and steppes of central and western China. His journey lasted 17 years, from 629-647CE, during which he faced numerous hardships, visited important religious sites in India and studied at the ancient Indian university at Nalanda.

Popular stories of Xuanzang's travels cropped up during the Song and Yuan dynasties (960-1368CE). Finally, at the end of the Ming (1368-1644CE), novelist and poet Wu Cheng'en (~1500-58CE) combined all these legends, adding to them his own allegorical, literary and political sensibilities to form a summa of the legends about Xuanzang's journey. Like the other great novels of the late Ming and high Qing, Wu's work was a daring linguistic project, taking up the vernacular instead of the classical language to tell his story. For centuries, in fact, the authorship of the text was in doubt because its author elected to remain anonymous in order to avoid censure for having written in dialect. Journey to the West, like Dream of the Red Chamber, is a work not only read for its surface narratives but for the political and religious meanings that subtend it.

Wu's story contains 100 chapters that recount the perilous journeyings of Tripitaka (Xuanzang) and his four spectacular companions/gaurdians (Monkey, Piggie, Sandy and Dragon) in the episodic manner of Arthurian legend. Assaulted by ghosts, goblins, beasts, often trials programmatically arranged by the gods, the pilgrims are in constant danger but always miraculously pull through. In the end, Tripitaka makes it to India and receives the Buddhist scriptures from the living Buddha atop Vulture Peak.

Readings:
Journey to the West (see ANGEL)

Questions:

(1) How do you see the Monkey King functioning in the story?
(2) Where are there passages where soci0-religious criticisms may be being made?
(3) How is the tale an allegory for the human soul?

Secondary references:
*
*

Palace Politics

The Dream of the Red Chamber, also known as The Story of the Stone, written by Cao Xueqing in the 18th century, is one of the "Four Great Qing Novels." In fact, it is considered the most important of the four and the culmination of classical Chinese novels. Princeton sinologist Andrew H. Plaks encapsulates the importance and universal scope of the work:

"Nearly all readers of the Dream of the Red Chamber--both native and foreign--come away with the impression that what they have experienced in the lengthy span from cover to cover is a comprehensive view of the entire civilization of the Imperial China. This sense of cultural completeness may be largely attributed to the simple fact that the novel presents at exceedingly close range the day-to-day life of a bygone age of glory--and there is little doubt that this aspect is responsible for the degree of emotional attachment with which the work has been treasured by two centuries of readers." (11)

Cao's work is unique in its sheer bredth, taking in the whole sweep of Chinese history, mythology, religion and arts. Having written the novel in the vernacular Beijing dialect, Cao also used the work to legitimize linguistic forms of literary expression other than Classical Chinese, used almost exclusively in the practice of the high literary arts.

The novel records the daily lives of important members of the Rongguo and Ningguo Houses of the Jia Clan, one of the most illustrious clans at court at the time. The history of the fall of these houses follows the narrower narrations of the lives of over thirty main characters and four hundred minor ones. Jia Baoyu, a precious Genji like boy, is the heir of his family and the main character of the novel. His emotional entanglement in love affairs and the mythic nature of his birth and end provide some of the novel's most poignant and engaging episodes.

Like the great works of the Western literary tradition (e.g. the Commedia, The Canterbury Tales, the Quixote, etc.), The Dream of the Red Chamber has accumulated centuries of commentaries and criticisms. The study of the novel in fact has its own designation called "Redology." Four schools of criticism have grown up around it and have debated insoluble historical and literary cruxes for centuries. Important themes that have occupied and intrigued researchers and readers have been the novel's autobiographical, social, archetypal and politically allegorical elements. In reading some passages from the novel, we will focus on some of the social and archetypal aspects of the text.

Readings:
Dream of the Red Chamber (see ANGEL)

Questions:
(1) What are some of the mythic and religious elements informing the story?
(2) How do these elements seem to function in the convoluted realities of this prestigious clan?
(3) What do we learn about social relations between classes and genders during the Qing from in this text?
(4) What some to be some of the inherent tensions between fiction and history in the tale?

Secondary references:
*Plaks, Andrew H. Archetype and Allegory in the Dream of the Red Chamber. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976.
* Xiao Chi. The Chinese Garden as Lyric Enclave: A Generic Study of The Story of the Stone. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2001.
*Alexander des Forges, "From Source Texts to 'Reality Observed:' The Creation of the Author in 19th Century Chinese Vernacular Fiction," CLEAR 22 (Dec. 2000): 67-84.