Lust, Camera, Action: How Ang Lee’s Risqué Thriller Charts a Profitable New Course for Transnational Cinema

By Guest Contributor Matthew Johnson

Was it real? While anticipation for the release of Lust, Caution built, one perennial question followed director Ang Lee’s most recent feature: were the sex acts performed by its two stars, Tony Leung and Tang Wei, simulated or full? The parties involved played coy. Lee himself spoke sparingly of the closed sets and skeleton film crew used to film these scenes. While he would later lament the ceaseless focus on his film’s erotic content, however, Lee could hardly be disappointed with the outcome. Lust, Caution reveled in its superstar cast, splashy publicity, and arresting imagery. Released in both edited and unedited versions, it successfully played by the rules of multiple film ratings and review commissions while earning the respect of audiences worldwide. Box office and rental profits remain high. In short, Lee returned to form as a director capable of courting worldwide admiration for his mastery of spectacle and fantasy. And unlike his two actors, he hardly broke a sweat.

Initial reactions to the film were mixed. Hollywood Reporter coverage of the Venice International Film Festival, where Lust, Caution debuted on August 30, 2007 noted that the film brought to mind “what soldiers say about war: that it’s long periods of boredom relieved by moments of extremely heightened excitement.” Yet festival judges disagreed, awarding Ang Lee his second Golden Lion in two years (the first was for the 2005 release Brokeback Mountain). Nor did U.S. co-producer Focus Features necessarily play up the film’s sexual imagery. One plot synopsis circulated by the company remains fairly close to the details of the eponymous Eileen Chang story on which the screenplay was based:

Shanghai, 1942. The World War II Japanese occupation of this Chinese city continues in force. Mrs. Mak, a woman of sophistication and means, walks into a café, places a call, and then sits and waits. She remembers how her story began several years earlier, in 1938 China. She is not in fact Mrs. Mak, but shy Wong Chia Chi. With WWII underway, Wong has been left behind by her father, who has escaped to England. As a freshman at university, she meets fellow student Kuang Yu Min. Kuang has started a drama society to shore up patriotism. As the theater troupe's new leading lady, Wong realizes that she has found her calling, able to move and inspire audiences and Kuang. He convenes a core group of students to carry out a radical and ambitious plan to assassinate a top Japanese collaborator, Mr. Yee. Each student has a part to play; Wong will be Mrs. Mak, who will gain Yees' trust by befriending his wife and then draw the man into an affair. Wong transforms herself utterly inside and out, and the scenario proceeds as scripted until an unexpectedly fatal twist spurs her to flee. Shanghai, 1941. With no end in sight for the occupation, Wong having emigrated from Hong Kong goes through the motions of her existence. Much to her surprise, Kuang re-enters her life. Now part of the organized resistance, he enlists her to again become Mrs. Mak in a revival of the plot to kill Yee, who as head of the collaborationist secret service has become even more a key part of the puppet government. As Wong reprises her earlier role, and is drawn ever closer to her dangerous prey, she finds her very identity being pushed to the limit...

Nonetheless, the sex scenes included in Lust Caution have dominated almost all media discussion of the film, despite other worthy qualities it may have possessed. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) promptly gave it an NC-17 rating, guaranteeing that screenings and audiences would remain limited. In China, substantial portions of the explicit scenes were excised entirely. State news agency Xinhua reported that these cuts were made by Lee himself, and totaled as much as 30 minutes of the 157 minute film (the final “edited” version runs at 148 minutes). Lee defended these actions to USA Today by asserting on September 12, 2007 that his reputation in China also represented a kind of “burden” for the director. Speaking again to Xinhua, he emphasized that it was Chinese viewers who might feel “uneasy” and “shocked” not only by the explicit material, but also some of the violence of the film as well. These sensibilities were not tested by Brokeback Mountain, which despite Lee’s reputation received no official support in China.

It should be noted, however, that United States audiences were initially given little opportunity to appreciate the unedited version, which during its opening week in New York played to a single theater (although earning $61,700, which placed it among the year’s best films in terms of per-theater average). By October, Focus Films had released Lust, Caution in 19 theaters and was earning approximately $22,000 per, during a month when art house theaters were generating strong numbers overall. Yet Focus executives remained hesitant to push the film, which U.S. CEO James Shamus described as “a very Asian film … whose politics and sexuality are challenging.” While the Western press gave Lust, Caution mixed reviews, the film was greeted as a sensation in Taiwan, where it was shown uncut and opened in 95 theaters to generate a $2.9 million September record. Hong Kong box offices reported similarly exuberant numbers. The largest totals, however, came from the mainland, where despite releasing only Lee’s tamer “director’s cut” distributor The China Film Group boasted a four-day opening total of $5.4 million.

Among mainland audiences, however, the existence of an alternate, potentially titillating version of Ang Lee’s new masterpiece created additional demand, with interesting consequences. China University of Political Science and Law student Dong Yanbin filed a lawsuit again the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) alleging that the organization had infringed on his “consumer rights” and “society’s public interest,” while demanding that SARFT apologize and pay him compensation for “psychological damages.” Pirated uncensored versions of Lust, Caution available for download turned out to be rife with viruses. Rumors of mainland couples traveling overseas for romantic viewings of the unedited cut also surfaced. Hong Kong, which maintains its own film review board, was the most frequently-mentioned destination.

Lee has not been the only beneficiary of his erotic thriller’s international success. Independent festivals in the United States warmed to the director only gradually, particularly following the box-office triumphs of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Yet stars Tony Leung and Tang Wei have gone straight to the big time, with both nominated for honors at the Film Independent’s 2008 Spirit Awards; Tang alone received a nomination for the Orange Rising Star award at the British Academy Film and Television Awards (BAFTA). All of which paled in comparison with reception of the film and its makers in Taiwan, where the Taiwanese Golden Horse Awards credited Lust, Caution, Lee, Leung, and Tang with Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Newcomer respectively (Lee was also awarded Outstanding Taiwanese Filmmaker of the Year, while Lust, Caution co-star Joan Chen won Best Actress for her role in another film).

This contrasts with the somewhat surprising response of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, which rejected the film as Taiwan’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film Category at the 80th Annual Academy Awards (2008). Oscar spokespeople described the film as having insufficient Taiwanese participation. Controversy over Lust, Caution related to its country of origin has indeed followed the film. Prior to its debut at the Venice International Film festival Lee’s work was labeled a “USA/China” co-production, based on the involvement of United States companies Focus Features and River Road Productions, and Chinese companies Haishang Films (Shanghai Film Group Corporation) and Hai Sheng Film Production Company (Taiwan). Later the producers’ respective countries of origin were given as “USA/China/Taiwan, China,” whereupon the Taiwanese Mainland Affairs Council wrote to the festival protesting the wording. Other festivals and awards labeled Lust, Caution an entry of “Taiwan.” If such events count as controversies, they have nonetheless failed to adversely affect the commercial success of the film in any appreciable way. Produced for an estimated $15 million, Lust, Caution has grossed close to an estimated $10 million worldwide while pulling in approximately $16.5 million in U.S. video rentals alone.

Yet there are also reports that participation in Lust, Caution has also created longer-term problems for the film’s stars. An early March 2008 memo circulated internally by SARFT ordered that television and other media content featuring actress Tang Wei be pulled. No reason was given for the decision, which effectively ended broadcast of a series of advertisements for skin care brand Pond’s featuring Tang and limited her exposure in the mainland press. Hong Kong sources have speculated that this decision reflects dissatisfaction with the sexual nature of Tang’s performance, and that it corresponds with a public statement issued by SARFT, entitled “Reassertion of Censorship Guidelines,” which informed film and broadcast companies that the state would be renewing prohibitions against “lewd and pornographic content” and depictions of “promiscuous acts, rape, prostitution, sexual intercourse, sexual perversity, masturbation, and male/female sexual organs and other private parts.” SARFT had issued an earlier injunction in December 2007, warning directors that they would face “the heaviest punishment” for films with overtly erotic content. SARFT also warned that directors submitting films with such content to overseas festivals might find themselves barred from directing for a period. The earlier list of prohibited depictions included “rape, whoring, obscene sex exposing human genitals, sex freaks, vulgar conversations, nasty songs, and sound effects with sexual connotation.”

If anything, English-language media coverage of Lust, Caution, including that provided by the Chinese state press, indicates that Ang Lee’s most recent film has proven popular for several reasons. The director’s star has risen internationally. He is gifted at working within numerous national contexts, and willing to dialogue with authorities concerning the limits which these different systems can accommodate. Lee declined to follow MPAA guidelines ensuring that Lust, Caution would receive an R rating, acknowledging that popular enthusiasm for this “Asian” topic would probably be limited in the United States anyway. In China, by contrast, he has capitalized on flexibility where given the opportunity. As noted by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, Lee does indeed eschew employing “sufficient” numbers of Taiwanese in his film crews, placing emphasis instead on assembling an international cast of talent capable of winning awards beyond the narrow Best Foreign Language Film Category of the Oscars. The sensitive nature of geopolitics across the Taiwan Strait, or state attempts to stem the tide of a rising sex industry, may occasionally disturb the hermetic chamber of “art” which Lee has constructed around his career. They have not, however, compromised its structural and economic integrity.

The immense prestige conferred upon Ang Lee by his international successes has, perhaps unsurprisingly, become a tremendous source of pride for many members of Lee’s Chinese audience. Even those disturbed by the “humanistic” depiction of the relationship between a collaborator and patriotic student/spy have often proved willing to commend the director for his creation of a Hollywood-sized success that showcases Chinese actors with nuance and daring (this same depth, it should be noted, is not extended to the film’s Japanese characters, who during their brief appearances are depicted as either submissive hostesses or boorish, drunken officers, each according to stereotype). One stereotype that Lust, Caution does break with: that of the risqué Chinese film “banned” by mainland authorities. Tang Wei’s recent and much-publicized plight aside, thematic innovation and multinational productions will continue to thrive in China’s rapidly-expanding exhibition industry, so long as filmmakers and the state can agree on who the protagonists should be.

Matthew Johnson is a Ph.D. Candidate at University of California, San Diego and has recently accepted a position for next year at University of Oxford.

(This article written using material from: The Hollywood Reporter, Studio Briefing, World Entertainment News Network (WENN), and the IMDb database. Any additional errors are the responsibility of the author.)

Report from the Road: AAS Meeting, 2008

As our regular readers will have noticed, China Beat has been unusually quiet of late. This is mainly because we were out of range of the internet two weeks ago to attend the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia (and in recovery from the conference hubbub the following week). The AAS is primarily composed of scholars but is also open to those in other fields who study and think about Asia; it has about 7,000 members, with a few thousand in attendance at this conference.

We took advantage of the largest gathering of China Beat contributors in one place since our founding to have breakfast together (where we also got feedback on the blog and brainstormed with a friend of the blog in the world of publishing) before everyone dashed off to hear panels, meet with publishers, and catch up with colleagues from other institutions. Paul Katz, Tim Weston, Nicole Barnes, Jeff Wasserstrom, and Kate Merkel-Hess were in attendance. As most of us had not met the others before (Jeff was the link between us all), the breakfast gathering was an affirmation of the fundamentally virtual nature of this endeavor.

However, we were not the only ones at the meeting who were considering how those involved in Asian studies could be writing and talking to a larger public. Several crowded sessions featured scholars who have made “outreach” (in other words, work that goes beyond the standard academic job description of teaching and research) a central part of their practice. These included a panel on “New Dimensions in China Watching: Internet Forums and the Study of Contemporary China” (chaired by Richard Baum of the University of California, Los Angeles); “China’s Move into the Global Spotlight: Implications for Scholars” (chaired by Jeff Wasserstrom of UCI), and “Public Intellectuals: Old Hands and the New Generation in China Studies” (chaired by Kristin Stapleton of the State University of New York, Buffalo). The lack of empty seats at these panels indicated the general interest in the topics at hand, and the lively discussions that followed the sessions reiterated how seriously many of those in attendance were considering the implications of public engagement.

AAS President Elizabeth Perry even raised the issue of public engagement in her Friday night presidential address on reconsidering the legacy of the Chinese Revolution, a remarkable lecture (nicely illustrated with visuals) that centered around the history and memorializing of CCP labor organizing in Anyuan in the 1920s (she used the 1960s image above—Mao Goes to Anyuan—and its many variations to talk about how revolutionary memories have evolved in recent decades). In effect, Perry challenged the scholars in the audience to question (and then question again) the dominant narratives that emerge around particular events—using her own beginnings in Chinese studies (as a member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, an organization whose members viewed Mao's legacy much more positively at the time than most of them do now) to illustrate how our understanding of historical topics can change, in part simply because of new information coming to light. As she noted in closing, paraphrasing a line by the late great Benjamin Schwartz (and here we paraphrase her paraphrase from our notes): “The Chinese Revolution probably wasn't necessary, but China definitely needed a revolution."

In her talk, provocatively titled "Reclaiming the Chinese Revolution," Perry's goal was to remind us that there were roads not taken at many stages in the unfolding of the events of the 1910s-1970s. This means that China might easily have ended up with a revolutionary legacy less stained with bloodshed, more attuned to the goals of equality and openness, than the one now associated with the Maoist era. A powerful presentation, it is one that will be worth revisiting and taking in more fully when it appears in print in the Journal of Asian Studies, the flagship publication of the AAS, in November.

Predictions and Timing in an Olympic Year

[Note: in the past, several China Beat postings have been brought to the attention of new audiences by being reposted (with attribution) on the History News Network website, a wonderful online resource for the historically minded. With this piece, we are reversing the process, as a slightly shorter version of what follows--number 4 on the prediction list has been added for the China Beat version--appeared a few days ago as an HNN original.]

Let’s pretend that, twelve months ago, someone had put me in a room with 20 or so other China specialists, handed us each four slips of paper, and asked us to write on each piece a story with a Chinese theme that we predicted would make headlines in 2008, the year when the Beijing Olympics will start on August 8. It’s quite possible that the following would have happened:

1) One or more of us would have written that a headline-grabbing protest would break out. And going into more detail, some of those who made that forecast would have added this detail—that the authorities, unusually concerned with global public relations in China’s Olympic year, would respond less quickly and less harshly to this oppositional act than they would have at another point in time, though in the end repression would come.

2) Other slips of paper would have forecast that an individual foreigner or group of foreigners would disrupt an Olympic ceremony in an effort to draw attention to a human rights issue. (That would probably have been something I would have written down myself.)

3) Some of us would have predicted that, at some point during the year, the Chinese blogosphere would be filled with complaints that the Western media had been biased in its coverage of an event involving China.

4) At least one or two of us would have speculated that plans would be discussed about the wisdom of handling things differently in upcoming Olympics, due to things that had occurred during the 2008 ones.

Now, the four main predictions mentioned above have all come true during the last couple of weeks (as has the prediction within a prediction about how the authorities would respond to unrest). But if you gathered that imaginary group together again to talk about the situation, I don’t think any of us would be feeling that our clairvoyance had been demonstrated.

Why? Timing.

If we were honest, we would have to admit that, when making our most on-target predictions, we were writing about things we expected to take place in August of 2008, not March. I know that whenever I have mentioned to someone that I wouldn’t be surprised if an individual or small group of people, probably from a country other than China, used an Olympic ritual to draw attention to a human rights issue, I have been thinking about what could happen in Beijing during the open ceremonies. Or, a la the 1968 Black Power salute in Mexico City, while a medal is being awarded.

Similarly, while it seemed most likely that plans to alter the pattern for future Olympics would wait until the Games actually took place, there is already much discussion of how, in the future, the torch relay should be handled differently, due to how fraught the route has become this time around. Some have suggested the relay should be abandoned completely, others that it should revert from being an around-the-world event to one that just goes from Olympia to the host city. And so on.

The rest of the lead-up to the Olympics will undoubtedly include dramatic moments. Some completely unexpected things will surely take place, as well as some things that are more predictable, but which may serve to surprise us, due to the precise form they take or timing of their occurrence. But the event-filled last few weeks have sometimes left me with the strange sensation that China’s much-anticipated Olympic moment, rather than still being in the offing, has already come and gone. The one thing that virtually no one would have predicted a year ago is that the opening ceremony scheduled for 08/08/08 and the Games that follow would have the potential to feel anticlimactic, the coverage them merely a rehash of familiar stories. But this is now within the realm of possibility.

This is nothing, though, compared to the situation with the other big Chinese mega-event on the horizon, about which there will be much more international media attention once the Games have ended: the Shanghai World Expo set to start in 2010.

This first World’s Fair for the country is being eagerly anticipated in China, and especially in the city that will host it. This is to be expected, at least by those who know their history. Expos may seem passé to people living in Western nations that hosted their first World’s Fairs more than a century ago. But when the first American ones were held in Philadelphia in 1876 and Chicago in 1893, they were a very big deal indeed, moment of intense local and also national pride, which symbolized that the United States and its leading cities could hold their own in any international arena.

The thing about the Shanghai Expo is that the city already looks in many ways more like one that recently held a World’s Fair than like one gearing up to hold such an event. For example, it already has state-of-the-art architectural landmarks (like the Jinmao Tower and the Shanghai Museum) that look like the kinds of structures erected especially for a World’s Fair (think of the Crystal Palace). And in the Maglev, it has a iconic—if contested—novel mode of transportation, of the sort that sometimes debuts during a World Fair (as the moving walkway did at the Paris Exposition of 1900).

Still, just as the 2008 Games may still surprise us in the end, the 2010 Expo could manage to make a novel imprint on the already landmark-filled Shanghai cityscape. For after all, Paris as it geared up for the 1889 Exposition also looked like a city that had already hosted a World’s Fair—naturally enough, as two had been held there previously, in 1855 and 1867. Yet that year’s fair, thanks to a tower built by a man named Eiffel, left an already landmark-filled cityscape forever transformed.

Tibet, 228, and Ta-pa-ni: Some lessons for us all

(Please note: The following is based on my recent book about the Ta-pa-ni Incident (a colonial era uprising that changed the course of modern Taiwanese history), primary and secondary sources about the 228 Incident of 1947 (see also my recent blogpost), and current reporting + web/blogosphere debates about the tragic events in Tibet)

As we struggle to make sense of the maelstrom of violent resistance and its suppression, not to mention cope with our own feelings as concerned observers, it might be useful to consider the following:

*Such outbreaks are invariably sparked by a complex combination of socioeconomic, ethnic, and religious factors.

*The violence is never a case of black and white; it is simply red, with aggressors and their victims far outnumbering any heroes. When tensions boil over, the initial targets tend to be symbols of authority (policemen, officials), but can also include men and women who are stigmatized and persecuted as scapegoats. However, when the empire strikes back, it uses violence on a much larger and more systematic scale, with those who end up being punished including not only the original aggressors but many innocent victims as well.

*Casualty figures vary wildly, and are rarely subject to critical analysis. In the case of the Ta-pa-ni Incident, estimates of the dead have ranged from a few hundred to tens of thousands, but my analysis of archival and demographic sources puts the total at slightly under two thousand. It is also essential to note that the dead included men who fell on the field of battle, men who were rounded up and systematically executed, men who died in prison, women, children, and the elderly who were indiscriminately massacred, and children who died of exposure and disease while hiding in the mountains. All were victims, but death came to them in many different forms.

*The process of mythologizing the history of violent resistance begins almost as soon as the brutality. In the past, the state did most of the myth-making, or at the very least made its voice heard above all others. This is not the case in today's world, where we are overwhelmed by a wealth of information provided by all sides of a conflict, much of which is not rigorously scrutinized before being further disseminated.

*Once mythologizing processes are underway, their greatest casualty is the truth about those who suffered. Complex causes are ignored in favor of simplistic explanations, while the identities of victims end up being subsumed by stereotypical images constructed by the myth-makers. Think about it: How much do we really know about victims and their loved ones, regardless of whose hands they perished at?

Our responsibility is to cut through the Gordian Knot of myth and stereotype in order to better understand the diverse experiences of all people caught up in acts of violent resistance (regardless of whether they are aggressors or victims), as well as contemplate what their tragic fates can tell us about our past and our future.

James Miles on Media Coverage of Tibet

James Miles of The Economist was in Tibet when the riots and protests started on March 14. China’s strict limitations on foreign journalists entering Tibet in the following days made Miles one of the few journalists who saw the riots firsthand. With all the attention being now paid to how the international media are covering the events in Tibet, we thought it would be interesting to find out how Miles felt about the questions he got upon returning from the field. Here's how he answered us via email.

China Beat: Is there any question that you've been asked a lot since returning to Beijing that you think is off the mark or plays into simplistic or misleading thinking about a complex issue?

James Miles: No. The question I get asked most is what happened, and then why. What happened in Lhasa from midday on the 14th to late on the 15th did not fit the normal pattern of unrest in Tibet. It was not monk-led, it displayed little explicitly-stated political purpose, and it was violent. Reporters who interviewed me during the unrest and afterwards seemed to readily understand this. If I were a media studies specialist I'd have a very good look at this case. The foreign media were almost entirely absent from Lhasa (a couple may have sneaked in under cover after the riots broke out but would have had limited access). Yet I have seen some very good reporting on what happened, notwithstanding the Chinese media's nitpicking. Reporting in the official press, by contrast, while reasonably on the mark as far as the violence goes, has been highly misleading by failing to look at the bigger picture of unrest in Tibet and beyond, by not asking what might have caused this anger and by portraying this as the actions of a handful of people organised by the Dalai Lama's "clique." It wasn't a handful, and I saw no evidence to suggest anything other than spontaneity.

China Beat: Is there any question you wish you were asked? Maybe even are surprised you haven't been asked?

James Miles: Again no. I found those questioning me from foreign news organisations wanted me to explain the story as I saw it. Their questions were often open-ended, putting the onus on me to tell the story as fully as I could. Some of them devoted considerable airtime and print and web space to what I told them. Nobody has asked how I felt being on my own, journalistically, in the middle of this huge story. Journalists hunt in packs on big stories, competing with each other but also cooperating with one another. Bouncing ideas off one another helps to sharpen our thinking. Having others there means that some can break away from the main story and look at what is happening on the edges. It is exhilarating being on one's own, but this was not an exclusive of my own creation -- it was the product of an environment where newsgathering is restricted.

On Their Best Behavior: Good Magazine on Contemporary China

The cover story for the May/June issue of Good Magazine, just hitting newsstands, is “Don’t Be Scared of China.” Living up to their moniker as “media for people who give a damn,” Good’s China issue encourages readers to learn more about China and embrace, not hate, in features like the tongue-in-cheek play on tabloid Us Weekly’s “Stars…They’re Just Like Us” photo spread that declares “They’re Just Like Us…They Like Hip Hop” and “They’re Just Like Us…They Go To Vegas.”

Though this approach at cultural exchange is well-intentioned, it continues a particularly egocentric understanding of China as a recipient of American (increasingly presented as global) culture rather than a generator of trends of its own. This tendency crops up in the cover story—“Ten Reasons Why China Matters To You” by Thomas P.M. Barnett—in which reason number 8 is “Because China’s transformation echoes much of America’s past.” When Barnett writes that “right now, China is somewhere in the historical vicinity of ‘rising America’ circa 1880,” he reiterates this progressive view of history and its accompanying notion that there is a trajectory of development (exemplified by England and the United States) along which all nations travel.

Similarly, in an article on the ritzy Beijing development, “Orange County” (whose homes look just like their Socal counterparts), author Daniel Brook begins from the premise that modern China is familiar—perhaps even a replicate of the US—and, in his attempts to turn the replicate back on us (positing “If the Chinese are set on emulating us, we might as well give them something worth emulating”), reinforces the idea that the Chinese are indeed copying the United States (rather than a more nuanced view that would argue that the similarities in material culture mask deep differences in use and meaning). This feeds into the naïve belief that China will, indeed, eventually be “just like us,” rather than crediting that there are multiple legitimate paths to modernity, the majority of which do not look like America’s.

There is much to admire and enjoy in Good’s thirty-plus page China spread, including features on (and the art and photos of) many up-and-coming young Chinese designers and an essay by Jia Zhangke (the director of Unknown Pleasures, and Still Life, a recent film shot at Three Gorges Dam). In addition, regulars on the China blog circuit will recognize Jeremy Goldkorn (of Danwei.org) and Dan Washburn (of Shanghaiist) in a feature of interviews with expats who have lived (and stayed) in China.

Tibet 5: In the Third Week

With the crisis in Tibet entering its third week, we continue to sweep the web in search of interesting and/or informative pieces to bring to the attention of our readers. This fifth installment in the series is heavily devoted to retrospective works, which go back in time, either to detail what took place in Tibet in the past or explore historical analogies useful for thinking through the contemporary situation. Still, since the story continues to unfold and take surprising turns, we also include links to pieces that track very recent developments, both on the ground and in the debate over issues of coverage:

1) The Far Eastern Economic Review does a great service by making available, free from its archives, the magazine's reports on the 1959 Tibetan insurgency.

2) Foreign Policy has posted a thoughtful interview with Robert Barnett, author of the recent Lhasa: Streets with Memories and a leading American Tibet specialist based at Columbia University.

3) Ian Buruma, in "The Last of the Tibetans," takes up the common theme of parallels between the treatment of Native Americans then and Chinese ethnic minorities now, but gives it some very interesting novel twists at.

4) The Economist, which continues to have the advantage over the other main Western media outlets of having had a reporter on the ground in Lhasa when the demonstrations and riots began, provides a valuable retrospective and update of things that just happened (like the disruption of a choreographed press conference by angry monks).

5) Richard Spencer, of the Daily Telegraph, offers an unusually wide-ranging and interesting discussion of the complexities to media "bias" concerning Tibet on his lively blog.

6) Parallels between recent events involving Tibet (and Iraq) and 1930s events involving Japan (and Manchuria) are explored by China's Beat's Jeff Wasserstrom, in a commentary that muses on what Hu Jintao and George W. Bush might have to say to one another in Beijing in August. Donald Lopez, one of the leading American specialists in Buddhism and author of Prisoners of Shangrila, also posted a recent piece called "How to Think about Tibet" at openDemocracy, asking us to ponder the historical analogy provided by Latvia.

The Taelspin on Tibet: The Chinese Response to foreign media coverage of the 3.14 unrest

Foreign media coverage of the demonstrations and riots in Lhasa, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Gansu two weeks ago has sparked a significant backlash here in China. State media continues to release increasingly shrill diatribes against Western media bias as Chinese netizens take to the internet with their own protests sparked by a general perception that coverage of the riots was purposely warped and skewed by anti-China forces in the West. (For a sampling in English, check out the back and forth on this forum hosted by that bastion of journalistic integrity and objectivity: The China Daily.) There’s a whole website devoted to attacking CNN, and in this age of user-generated online content, we see the battle spilling over onto (the recently blocked and unblocked) YouTube. Moreover, some of these videos and blog posts seem intended for a wider audience, not just for domestic consumption.

Over at the popular online forum Tianya, I stumbled across a thread in which a patriotic and enterprising youth has cut and pasted pages from a media directory, telling readers that the telephone is their greatest weapon and they should use it against the foreign news organizations:

If someone is there, inquire about their mother (ahem). If they don’t pick up, keep calling and when somebody answers, curse them out and then hang up—the idea is to jam the lines so the SOBs can’t use their telephones. [paraphrase]

Charming. I remember playing this game once. When I was 12.

On a more serious note, criticism of Chinese government actions and policies is once again perceived as being anti-China, but that said: those who claim that some foreign media organizations have reason to apologize might well be right.

In the hours and days following the event, there were several cases of words and especially images misrepresenting what was going on in Tibet. While I doubt this was due to a global anti-China conspiracy (a state-sponsored bogeyman if there ever was one) it certainly suggested sloppy journalism. As the first news of significant unrest emerged from Lhasa on May 14, it seemed like one of those stories that writes itself, which is a classic trap for any journalist: "Tibetan Monks! Chinese Troops! Film at 11!" Not that the Chinese coverage was any more nuanced (“Let’s blame it all on the Dalai Lama Clique!”), but at least CCTV and Xinhua wear their lack of objectivity on their sleeve.

For its part, Xinhua blamed the Western media bias on a “cognitive blackout,” and many foreign journalists in China do need a more sophisticated understanding of the issues in Tibet. Unfortunately, the government chose to respond to this cognitive blackout with a news blackout. In the absence of information, the mind races even as the fingers type, and western journalists are generally trained in such a way that when a government appears to be hiding something, it must be something worth hiding, and so they begin to suspect the worst. On the day the violence erupted, only The Christian Science Monitor and The Economist had people on the ground filing stories as Beijing Street in Lhasa burned. Everybody else was in Beijing (the city) desperately trying to get as close as they could to the action but to little avail: the government was not letting any more foreign journalists into Tibet. Facing the demands of a 24-hour news cycle, and working with rumors, recycled information, and a limited pool of images and footage from Lhasa, too many journalists relied on preconceived notions and faulty assumptions with predictable results.

When sympathy demonstrations and unrest broke out in ethnic Tibetan regions in Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai, foreign media representatives rushed to these (slightly) more accessible areas, resulting in a flood of "Dateline: Xiahe" stories even as the PSB, local cops, and the usual hired goon squads tried to keep the foreigners away from hot spots. One Beijing-based journalist out west last week retorted that if a meeting of The Foreign Correspondents Club of China had been called in the Lanzhou airport transit lounge, they might have had a quorum. (On a separate note, FCCC president Melinda Liu has been quite vocal in expressing her disappointment and displeasure at the government restrictions on journalists covering this story.) Just yesterday, the Chinese government finally agreed to allow a select pool of journalists to travel to Lhasa, a move that backfired almost immediately.

The whole mess has become a PR nightmare of Olympic proportions.

Unsurprisingly, media coverage of Tibet was a major topic when Danwei held its Second Plenary Session here in Beijing on Tuesday night. It was an excellent evening and kudos to Jeremy Goldkorn and the Danwei team for putting it together. Featured speakers included Steven Liu, Olympic News Editor at Sohu.com and part of the duo that produce Antiwave (反波) a series of podcasts focusing on foreign and Chinese media; journalist Raymond Zhou who has written for The China Daily among other publications; Lindsey Hilsum, international news editor for Britain’s Channel 4 News and whose reports can be seen Stateside on PBS's The News Hour with Jim Lehrer; and Jonathan Watts, East Asia correspondent for The Guardian and a last-minute replacement for CNN’s Jaime FlorCruz, who--it is safe to say--is not having the easiest week of his China career.

(On some level, you have to feel just a little bit for CNN: When Xinhua calls you out for lack of objectivity it’s a bit like Britney Spears suggesting that your life is out of control and you should think about getting some counseling, but I digress...)

Asked about claims of a western media bias regarding the Tibetan situation, Jonathan Watts called the events of March 14, “The most important story of my five years in China, and the most difficult to cover because we weren't allowed anywhere near the story.” He strongly criticized the government’s decision to prevent journalists from traveling to Lhasa, a sentiment echoed by Lindsey Hilsum.

Raymond Zhou took a different view, arguing that Western media coverage of China has in general been far too negative and ignores the positive aspects of China’s development. “A farmer in the (American) Midwest, reading only the western newspapers, would get the impression that China is a dreadful place,” he said, responding to a question I asked regarding the differing role of journalists in the PRC (cheerleader for the government) and in Europe and North America (watchdog media).

Mr. Zhou has a point, except that the negativity of the media in Europe and the United States isn’t just directed at the CCP. The Bush administration constantly laments the lack of ‘positive coverage’ for the Iraq War. The front pages of the New York Times, Le Figaro, and The Guardian are filled with stories that would seem quite ‘negative’ when compared with the front pages at my local newsstand in Beijing, and as a daily viewer of the morning and evening CCTV news, I’ve noticed that this compulsion to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative stops at the water’s edge: CCTV never hesitates to trumpet the latest murder statistics, school shooting, natural disaster, or political scandal from America, not to mention the Chinese state media's almost gleeful reportage on the ongoing US disaster in Iraq. (By way of recent example: A montage of Elliot Spitzer headlines, including those from the New York Post and New York Observer, occupied a prominent place in the morning newscast a couple of weeks back.)

I’m a historian by training, and as I’ve written elsewhere, history is a slippery ally in contemporary political disputes so I'm frustrated by the extent to which the historical record has been twisted and warped by both Chinese state media and the free Tibet crowd. But the truth is that history education in the PRC is highly politicized, and the state uses it to shape public opinion and to preserve the legitimacy of the government and the Party. The netizen response is a reflection of this, and this response has also received (at the very least) tacit official support from the traditional state media. I see a parallel here to the anti-Japanese internet fervor of a few years back, which was also given a pretty free rein and tacit official support until it threatened to hurt Sino-Japanese relations and the government stepped in and shut it down.

At the same time, while the Chinese-language online world is bursting with harsh condemnations of foreign media treachery, almost all opinions or ideas expressed in opposition to the official line are quickly blacked out, blocked, or deleted. There is little incentive for the government to allow open discussion of the Tibet question, and the curriculum of ‘patriotic education’ in the schools means that alternative perspectives on history or politics get short shrift.

The government line that China is becoming stronger and all this negative attention is mere jealousy also works on a basic level because it is a psychologically comforting response to a complex situation. Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “One of the best ways to enslave a people is to keep them from education. The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but also by controlling all the ways in which ideas are transmitted.” When you have young people who grow up in an environment with a single point of view that is both psychologically palatable and which ties self-esteem to national pride, it’s not surprising that you get the “fenqing (愤青) phenomenon,” angry young Chinese who make up the bulk of these online demonstrations against the foreign media.

At the Danwei session, Steven Lin, argued that the role of the online forums was as a psychological release valve for these angry young people (actually the metaphor was a little more scatological, but you get the point). Raymond Zhou concurred and said that 99% of what is posted on the BBSs is "garbage." That may be, and certainly the fenqing are more extreme than mainstream Chinese views on the subject, but not by much and their anger suggests that disruption of future events, not the least of which the Beijing Olympics, will be treated with the same indignant fury as the riots in Lhasa. These past few weeks, many young Chinese responded on BBSs with anger, natural enough given the brutality of some of the attacks on Han Chinese in Tibet, but it was anger tinged with real hatred. Sentiments such as "Forget the Olympics, ignore the Western critics," "restore order at all costs," "strike hard," and "smash the Tibetan ingrates" reverberated in cyberspace, as well as more moderate views that called for foreign news organizations to issue retractions and apologies. A fax sent to several news organizations this week had "Shameless CNN! Shameless America! One day we Chinese will be strong!" written in a scrawling hand.

It's true that following the outbreak of unrest on March 14, many in the foreign media dropped the ball, in some cases due to lazy or mistaken reporting, in others as the result of preconceived notions of the situation and a misunderstanding of the complexities in the Sino-Tibetan relationship. Meanwhile, coverage in the Chinese state media was little better in its histrionic attempts to portray the Dalai Lama as a demonic mastermind bent on splitting China and “re-imposing a slave society” on Tibetans. Chinese netizen response was sparked by outrage at flawed reports and a perception of bias in foreign coverage of the event, but i was also the product of an environment where the Party line is the only possible interpretation of either historical or contemporary ‘reality.’ Unfortunately, I fear this is not the last time in this Olympic year that competing expectations and perceptions, by the Chinese state and public on one side and the foreign media on the other, will result in unpleasantness. Stay tuned.

Tibet Reading 4

The coverage and dialogue about the situation in Tibet has continued over the past days, evolving largely (in great part due to foreign media's lack of access to Tibet and neighboring provinces where unrest has occurred) into a discussion on China's media clampdown and the way the Tibet riots and subsequent protests are being read in China and abroad. Here are some of the apropos things we've been reading in recent days.

1. On Danwei.org, an intriguing short piece on YouTube videos, which asks if this might be "the world's first international user generated propaganda war?"

2. When the crisis began, we were eager to see what Pico Iyer and Pankaj Mishra, both elegant writers who have penned thoughtful commentaries on Tibet in the past, would have to say, and we linked to pieces by each of them in earlier posts in this series. Now, on the New Yorker's site, as free content, at least for the moment, is a fascinating lengthy review by Mishra of Iyer's new book on the Dalai Lama.

3. The Shanghaiist has a good short piece (with accompanying video) on the varied ways that the lighting of the Olympic torch in Olympia on March 24 (and the disruption of the ceremony by protesters) was covered inside and outside of the PRC.

4. China Digital Times effectively brings its readers to date on issues such as a petition by Chinese critical intellectuals calling for, among other things, an end to what they see as Cultural Revolution-type rhetoric in the government's statements about the situation in Tibet.

5. "Riots" vs. "protests"? Outbursts of social unrest are often accompanied by battles over terminology, and Chinese bloggers have been complaining that the Western media has been using more neutral terms, such as "marches" to describe what in fact have been "riots" in Tibet and nearby areas. This piece in the BBC highlights a dilemma that Western journalists face, lacking direct access to the regions in question, and having only Chinese official reports to go on, which cannot be cross-checked easily with other sources--yet it does use "Tibetan riots continue in China" as its headline.

6. Several articles have been reporting on and breaking down the anger at the foreign media’s “bias” that has grown in China over the past week (fanned in a part by the government and its media outlets, and in part by nationalistic netizens). Read about its affects on foreign media and the atmosphere inside China here, or here. (There is also a piece in the Wall Street Journal, which requires a subscription.)

Coming Distractions: Wolf Totem

In just a few days, famed translator Howard Goldblatt’s latest book, Wolf Totem, will be released to eager readers of Chinese literature in English translation. Having proven his mettle as translator of Xiao Hong’s angsty prose and Mo Yan’s morbidly lascivious novels, Goldblatt has now tried his hand at a certain piece of nostalgic drivel that leaked from the pen of Jiang Rong, a newly acclaimed novelist whose original work, Lang Tuteng, appeared in 2004 after more than 30 years of labor and immediately shot to the top of the bestseller lists, selling two million bookstore copies and countless more pirated copies. Although he hid his unorthodox ideas behind a pen name, Jiang Rong’s endeavors earned him the very first Man Asian Literary Prize.

This semi-autobiographical novel follows the young Chinese intellectual, Chen Zhen, in Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution. Chen’s drunken admiration for the steppe leads him to kidnap and raise a wolf cub. The novel essentializes ethnic identity as utterly contingent upon nature, and identifies Mongols with the wolf (bold and brave), and Han Chinese with the sheep (meek and, well, sheepish). Despite its artless plot, Lang Tuteng appealed to millions of Chinese readers who found double happiness in its pages: romanticization of the Mongolian “wilderness” as the urbanites’ playground, and a symbolic reversal of the woes produced by internal colonization: wolves don’t lose to sheep. The novel’s closing scene underscores the limited capacity of this symbolic reversal, as Han immigration and resource exploitation turn the last of Inner Mongolia’s majestic grasslands to desert and a foreboding sandstorm shrouds Beijing. The ecological disasters of internal colonization come home to roost on Beijingers’ windowsills.

Jiang Rong is following in the footsteps of a veritable army of intellectuals who fanned out across “northwest China” in the first few decades of the twentieth century, most of them traveling on behalf of the Nationalist government. Their published journals evince the same mixture of admiration and befuddlement that makes Wolf Totem the latest literary expression of a long-lived Chinese political identity crisis in which fear of emasculation drives Han men to their nation’s cultural frontier in an existential search for virility and assertiveness, qualities believed to be more abundant among the ethnic minorities than among China’s Han majority.

Ten of these early twentieth-century journalists—nine men and one woman—will be featured in my presentation at the upcoming Critical Han Studies conference organized by Tom Mullaney. Among them was the famed intellectual Gu Jiegang, who in the late 1930s stated matter-of-factly that the idea of the Han people as a unified “race” is a mere fiction—an argument that later appeared in Mao Zedong’s 1956 speech, “On the Ten Major Relationships,” and which was of course used to gloss over the
very real exploitation of minority groups in the construction of a “unified” nation with the vast majority of power and wealth in Han hands.

Although the Republican-era intellectuals’ prose would put Jiang Rong to shame, none of their journals ever sold two million copies or sparked a pop-culture revolution with global proportions—Penguin is simultaneously launching Wolf Totem in the US, the UK, and Australia, with the Indian and South African editions hot on their heels. Their travel journals also may not have had the ability to spark thousands of blogger debates on the bestial origins of the Chinese race—dragon or wolf?

Despite Goldblatt’s best intentions to enhance Western understanding of China by introducing a Chinese bestseller to an English readership, Wolf Totem is likely to appeal to an Orientalist audience. It is already hailed on Amazon.com as “an epic Chinese tale in the vein of The Last Emperor.” We know where that leads. Now that China’s eastern seaboard is packed to the gills with people, congested roads, and belching factories, it seems that we can all locate our nostalgia in Mongolia and Tibet (protests and their violent quashing aside, tourism in the Dalai Lama’s homeland is on the rise). At least in this regard urbanites the world over can be united.

It's Still the Economy, Stupid

Ma Ying-jeou's convincing victory in Taiwan's presidential election shows that the politics of fear are no match for the politics of the pocketbook. While the sight of four KMT legislators trying to force their way into the DPP campaign headquarters raised the specter of a return to the dreaded days of the White Terror, a majority of voters seem to have been convinced by the slew of apologies that followed, and assumed that Ma's victory would end eight years of government gridlock that had contributed to Taiwan's economic slowdown. While Ma's hesitancy to explain whether he had formally renounced his green card might have caused some to wonder if he might jump ship in a crisis, most people do not appear to have considered this a legitimate issue in today's hard times. And, while images of Chinese troops suppressing Tibetan uprisings brought back bitter memories of the 228 Incident (see my previous blogpost), voters appear to have reasoned that the benefits of KMT rule far outweighed any risk of seeing the PLA marching through the streets of Taipei in the future.

For his part, Frank Hsieh and his allies proved unable to overcome disappointment with DPP rule, while corruption scandals contributed to a "throw the bums out" mentality. The DPP may also have engaged in a bit too much negative campaigning against Ma and his family, while not placing enough emphasis on the substantial achievements made while in power (including the completion of the High Speed Railway, the reform of the banking system, etc.) as well as their vision for Taiwan's future.

In the end, the people of Taiwan voted for Ma in hopes that this would lead to greater stability and prosperity in the future. His new government, supported by a nearly three-quarters majority in the Legislative Yuan, will have an opportunity to enact its policies that the DPP never enjoyed, but little excuse should campaign promises go unfulfilled.

What the KMT's return to power means for Taiwan's future remains to be seen, but one should give utmost credit to the maturation of its democratic system. Unlike what happened following the presidential election of 2000, when the KMT lost power, this time there were no protests or riots, just tears and concern for what may lie in store. The day after the election, my family and visited the venerable Huang Kunbin 黃崑濱 (affectionately known as 'Uncle Kunbin' or Khun-pin peh 崑濱伯 in Southern Min) at his some in Tainan County. The star of the touching documentary about Taiwan's farmers entitled "Let it Be" (Wumile 無米樂), Khun-pin-beh is a symbol of all that is good about Taiwan. He was philosophical about the results, noting that: "When the curtain comes down, it's time for the play to end." We also hung out with a group of college students who were active Hsieh supporters. They had ridden over on their motorbikes to comfort Uncle Kunbin, managing to keep their spirits up despite their disappointment.

It is time to move forward, and Taiwan is ready.

China Travel: Finding the "Real" China

I recently received two new travel books (of sorts) in my mailbox, one of which I wrote a few short bits for. Beijing Time by Michael Dutton, with Hsiu-ju Stacy Lo and Dong Dong Wu, (due out in May from Harvard University Press) and Urbanatomy: Shanghai 2008, edited by Nick Land (published by China Intercontinental Press in 2007) fall at opposite ends of a rather loosely envisioned “travel book” spectrum, but both promise an on-the-ground look at “new” China.

Beijing Time, by Goldsmiths, University of London Professor of Politics Michael Dutton and independent scholars Hsiu-ju Stacy Lo and Dong Dong Wu (the advance copy I read did not clarify how research and writing was split between them), is a theory-driven investigation of Beijing as both location and symbol. The authors explore Beijing through layout and buildings, investigating how Beijingers interact with their city’s built environment, and asking, ultimately, what that interaction says about the city’s (and by extension, China’s) past and future.

The book begins from a premise that has almost achieved the level of trope in writings about China: the idea that contemporary China is full of strange juxtapositions—from the linguistic to the economic—and that out of these ironies a deeper truth and meaning can be excavated. For instance, in describing a series of buildings along Changan, the authors write that “in a very Chinese way they are examples of what Mikhail Bakhtin might have called ‘grotesque realism’—that is, the absurdist, carnivalesque ‘turning of the tables’ on the good-taste aesthetic realism of the ruling elite.” That China does indeed mirror Bakhtin’s dreamscape/nightmare carnival vision is apparent to anyone who has spent more than a few days in China.[i] But I feel that not only has this idea been extended almost as far as it can go, but that, in its worst forms, it veers toward an Orientalist celebration of China as so potentially “other” as to be incomprehensible.

Dutton et al., clearly familiar with the city, manage to avoid such an extreme, as the goal of this book is—in a pursuit that will certainly be replicated in many different media as this summer’s Olympic Games draw closer—to uncover a “hidden” Beijing. To that end, the most interesting section of Beijing Time is the final two chapters, in which the book considers the varied meanings of authenticity and inauthenticity in Beijing. This is a theme others have explored as well: Peter Hessler, for instance, deployed this same theme in Oracle Bones (2006). “Authenticity” does not take quite the same manifestations in China as it does in the West, and this is indicated here through various illustrations of the authentic and the inauthentic in China. This is a topic with clear room for further work, however, as the many Beijing Olympic stories that litter publications these days have at their heart a narrative of trust/distrust and authenticity (Will Beijing have clean air, as the government promised? Is the government trying to hide the real China behind glossy new buildings and freeways? Etc.). This tension deserves more thoughtful consideration than it is currently getting in the popular press, and requires a heavy dollop of self-reflection in addition to articulation of these issues as they play out in China.

Urbanatomy: Shanghai 2008 guidebook is just the thing backpackers might make room for (particularly those who are planning to stay in the area a while). I wrote two very brief historical pieces for this book last year—one on the author Ding Ling and another on May Fourth in Shanghai—though I have absolutely no financial stake in whether any of you buy it. (Jeff Wasserstrom, another China Beat contributor, also wrote for the guidebook, as did a number of other scholars and journalists.) The book is thick—almost 600 pages of glossy type and pictures, so it’s not easily toted around during the day (my favorite for this is an old standard—the Lonely Planet Shanghai City Guide—if you have favorite guidebooks, please feel free share your suggestions).

One of the nicest features of the book is its breakdown by neighborhoods, with an occasional listing of shops, museums, and hotels along their respective streets. Most guidebooks, of course, organize their materials in this fashion—but 600 pages leaves room for a lot of detail, and the historical background and interviews with prominent Shanghai figures (both expat and Chinese) sets this one apart. As those who have visited and lived in Shanghai know, its neighborhoods do have distinct characters, and it is refreshing to see that reflected in a guidebook, both in text and in image. Moreover, many of the guidebook’s writers are based in Shanghai (those familiar with Shanghai’s English-language That’s Shanghai will recognize a number of names in the guidebook, including the book’s editor, Nick Land; That's Shanghai is one of Urbanatomy's publications) and the book’s features reflect this easy familiarity with the city’s young expat life, from an interview with Chinesepod’s Ken Carroll to recommendations for yoga studios and fashion boutiques.

[i] This is a reference to the lively book by Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, which was originally published in 1965 and published in English translation in 1993. The book analyzed the novels of French Renaissance author Francois Rabelais and defines in them two strains of thought that Bakhtin believed had been overlooked in previous readings: “carnival” (a time during which European masses felt free to subvert the hierarchy through humor), and “grotesque realism” (basically, scatological and sexual humor; the main means by which subversion of hierarchy was accomplished).