Terracotta Ambassadors, the First Emperor, and the “Cursed” Farmers

In honor of the current exhibit of Terracotta Warriors in China Beat's own backyard (in other words, Orange County, California), we asked contributor Xia Shi if she would visit the Bowers Museum where the warriors are on display and reflect on the exhibit and the warriors' history.

By Xia Shi

About twenty terracotta figures are currently on display at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, California in an exhibit scheduled from May 18 through October 12. Later, the exhibit, including statues of ten warriors, court officials, an acrobat, a bare-chested strongman, musicians, a stable boy, chariot horses and bronze water birds, will make stops in Atlanta, Houston, and Washington, D.C. It is said that this exhibit not only includes pieces of the highest quality, but is also the largest collection of the figures ever to leave China.

“As China gears up for the 2008 Olympics, it’s a debut timed to the Beijing Olympics that was millions of dollars and four years in the making,” says Peter Keller, Bowers president. Last year, a similar exhibit attracted 500 people per hour at the British Museum. At the Bowers, there are about 250 visitors per hour, according to staff.

The Underground World
Life-sized, over two thousand years old, but only unearthed since 1974, these soldiers are generally believed to be the guardians of the mausoleum of China’s first emperor—Qin Shi Huang (r. 246-210 B.C.), which is located in Lintong, Shanxi province. The terracotta army has been regarded as one of the grandest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century and is ranked as the Eighth Wonder of the World.

It was the emperor’s belief in eternal life that brought the necropolis into being, reputedly a vast underground palace that took about 700,000 conscripted workmen more than 36 years to complete. The first great Chinese historian Sima Qian (145–85 B.C.) left a record that allows us to imagine this mysterious and still not fully excavated underground world:

“The laborers dug through three subterranean streams, which they sealed off with bronze to construct the burial chamber. They built models of palaces, pavilions, and offices and filled the tomb with fine vessels, precious stones, and rarities. Artisans were ordered to install mechanically triggered crossbows set to shoot any intruder. With quicksilver the various waterways of the empire, the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, and even the great ocean itself were created and made to flow and circulate mechanically. With shining pearls the heavenly constellations were depicted above, and with figures of birds in gold and silver and of pine trees carved of jade the earth was laid out below. Lamps were fueled with whale oil so that they might burn for the longest possible time.”

Scientists have repeatedly found that the mercury concentration in frozen earth samples from the mausoleum is much higher than that of areas nearby and that the mercury map surprisingly matched the shape of the Qin empire and its waterways. However, since the site has not been fully explored (archaeologists say they are delaying some exploration until preservation technology is better developed) there remain at least nine major questions about Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum, such as how many precious treasures are in the underground palace and whether there is really an automatic ejector on site.

The First Emperor
The arrogant, Chinese-inflected voice of the museum’s audio guide makes the visitor even more curious about the ancient strongman who built the tomb. Qin Shi Huang, who lived for about fifty years, has been a controversial figure over the past two millennia.

Chinese have largely remembered him as one of two things: a unifier of commendable achievements, or a brutal tyrant who favored legalist policy. It could be said that both of these images have greatly impacted the political mentality of Chinese rulers and subjects for two thousand years. His unification made the concept of “oneness” take root in Chinese people’s minds and led to the preference of a unified empire over separate states competing with each other. Since his death, all rulers of China have prioritized unification; for their subjects, unification also became an important criterion of a ruler’s political achievements. Accordingly, Qin Shi Huang ranks among the greatest rulers in Chinese history, and he is often mentioned alongside other powerful emperors, such as Han Wudi, Tang Taizong, and Kangxi of the Qing dynasty. Almost all these emperors were greatly admired by the populace and in recent years history dramas in which they feature as the protagonists have been a favorite for both the general public and the central propaganda machine, to the degree that some commentators have coined the phrase “the great emperors drama fever.”

However, Qin Shi Huang’s second deeply entrenched image—that of a ruthless tyrant—apparently troubled some Chinese political leaders and made for special treatment even of his historical dramas. Unlike other great emperors’ dramas, the handsomely sponsored CCTV show “Qin Shi Huang” was “hidden” for six years after it was finished and was said to be repeatedly re-edited to cut or alter some scenes which did not “accord with history.” When it was finally shown on CCTV, it was not scheduled at prime time, for although its eulogizing of national unification is a politically correct theme, one of the central anxieties was that the First Emperor’s popular image as a tyrant might incite agitation and stir social conflicts as opposed to promoting the social harmony that was so carefully nurtured in the difficult and crucial reform period of 2001.

The power of Qin Shi Huang’s image as a ruthless despot is not only witnessed in the case of this history drama. Over the past two thousand years, rulers have been learning from his lesson based on Confucianists’ view and often remind themselves to “give people rest” (与民休息). On the other hand, the populace also gradually began to use the name “Qin Shi Huang” to accuse rulers of being a tyrant and justify their rebellions. This kind of accusation usually worked, until they met Mao Zedong, who as a ruler displayed not even a single tinge of fear of being compared to the First Emperor. Reviled for his persecution of intellectuals, Mao reputedly responded: “He buried 460 scholars alive; we have buried forty-six thousand scholars alive...You [intellectuals] revile us for being Qin Shi Huangs. You are wrong. We have surpassed Qin Shi Huang a hundredfold.” Even with regard to the First Emperor’s achievements, Mao also hinted that his aspiration was even greater than his and that of all other revered emperors. After the victory of the Long March and the establishment of his control of the Communist Party, in high spirits, the later “Great Helmsman” wrote a dashingly ambitious poem titled “Snow” in 1936, later published in school textbooks in the PRC, with the following key lines:

But alas! Qin Shihuang and Han Wudi,
Were lacking in literary grace;
And Tang Taizong and Sung Taizu,
Had little poetry in their souls;
And Genghis Khan,
Proud Son of Heaven for a day,
Knew only to shoot eagles, bow outstretched;
All are past and gone!
For truly great men,
Look to this age alone.

As we all know from later history, in China communism found its most iconoclastic leader, whose ambitious idealism stirred red China into fervent revolution. A similarly controversial unifier who also preferred Legalism to Confucianism, Mao still retains his reputation as the ruler who most resembles the First Emperor in China’s thousands of years of history.

So far, readers may wonder how cruel the First Emperor truly was, that his tyrant image has lasted so long? Interestingly, recent history research suggests that few verifiable actions can testify to his presumed ruthlessness in implementing his decisions. The well-known stories of the burning of the books of Confucianism and burying scholars alive have already been discredited by modern scholars. Perhaps it is helpful, when thinking about this question, to keep in mind two key points. First, Qin Shi Huang was an emperor who strongly favored Legalist policies, the philosophical basis of which is that people are bad by nature and so need to be controlled by the government. Second, the historical commentaries of most far-reaching influence were primarily written by Confucian scholars under the rule of Qin’s overthrowers—the Han emperors. Recent research has also noted that probably the most controversial parts on Qin Shi Huang of Sima Qian’s the Historical Record were actually later additions to it, judging from the language used in them.

The standard Confucian judgment of the emperor and his short-lived empire was that of a Han Confucian scholar and statesman called Jia Yi (贾谊，201 BC-169BC). In his political essay The Faults of Qin (过秦论), he condemned Qin Shi Huang’s ruthless pursuit of power, harsh laws and unbearable burdens placed on the population in projects such as the Great Wall. Admired as a masterpiece of rhetoric and reasoning, this classic illustration of Confucian theory has been extremely influential upon Chinese political thoughts—quoted often by later Chinese intellectuals almost any time they evaluated Qin Shi Huang. It also seems that the imperial patronage of Confucianism received under Han Wudi (140-87 BC) symbolized to the world who was the final winner of the longtime struggle among different schools of thought, and especially signaled the victory of Confucianism over the once predominant Legalism, as represented by the “cruel” Qin Shi Huang. However, it is better not to forget that historian Ho Ping-ti has already pointed out that, after the founding of the Han Empire, the various schools of thought—particularly Confucianism and Legalism—began to merge.

It seems that it would be wiser to cast a doubtful eye on some of the historical records on Qin Shi Huang, especially those compiled by Confucian scholars. In this sense, any archaeological evidence already presented or to be discovered from his tomb is of great significance.

The Terracotta Ambassadors
The minute they emerged from Qin Shi Huang’s over two thousand-year-old underground palace, his terracotta soldiers stunned the world with their unique charms. Each and every one of the thousands of soldiers has a unique face. It has now been shown that the manufacture of the army was an early feat of mass production instead of individual portraits in clay of actual soldiers. People are also amazed by the detail and accuracy of their creators: dozens of individual rivets on their plate armor; shoes sculpted with delicate shoelaces; or soldiers sporting strands of hair that delicately curl over their foreheads.

Charming enough to arouse national pride and attract foreign admirers, the soldiers have been frequently dispatched by the Chinese government on important diplomatic missions. Since open reform, these military men have become ambassadors of Chinese culture and friendship. The majority of them remain in Xi’an, where they have received more than 50 million visitors and 130-odd foreign leaders since 1979, according to People’s Daily Online. Meanwhile, a small, carefully selected group has been sent to more than 30 countries and regions with more than 20 million people having had a glimpse of China’s past imperial glory. Handsomely sponsored by the government, it is hoped that they might display the “great Chinese civilization and its splendid history.”

Obviously equipped with superb work ethic, these warriors had been patiently and lively explaining to hundreds of Bower visitors per hour of their imperial duties, despite the fact that they are not in great shape. After the large fire set by general Xiang Yu to the wooden structures that once housed the Terracotta Army, only one kneeling archer survived intact. However, these cultural ambassadors decided that they would never let people down. In Britain, the protagonist was the First Emperor, so they dutifully played their supporting role, to testify to the vast territory he controlled and the enormous power he wielded. In the US, they learned that this is a country without a monarch and were happy to know that the focus of the Bowers Museum exhibition would be on them. After their initial excitement, they were told that they were required to speak English—the international language of the 21st century--with a deliberate Chinese accent to “authentically” tell their stories via audio guide. Being military men for two millennia, they were not so good at rhetoric; however, they tried their best to present an impressive display of the greatness of China, especially since they heard that their hosts—the museum curators—hoped their show would “pique the interest of Americans who are inundated with news of lead-contaminated Chinese toys, human rights violations in Tibet and rapid economic expansion—but who know nothing of the nation’s ancient and storied past.” Mixed in with public interest in them, they also found, are several reports that go beyond the mission of their visit. For instance, their trip to the U.S. was used by an American Express delivery company named UPS as an advertisement to boast their “incredible” capability of “planning and logistics,” in the words of the president of UPS Airlines. Even for those who are still in China, they are used as witnesses to remind people the world over how bad China’s air pollution is nowadays and to show their deep concern for them as victims who are suffering from “nine different kinds of mould.” Confused as to whether the report is due to foreigners’ genuine concern about their health, they decided to focus on the satisfying idea that they have been continuously attracting the world’s attention since they were dug out of their common grave.

The “Cursed” Farmers
In terms of the attention they have received so far, they are indeed lucky, especially compared to the seven farmers who first found them but have been continuously denied their proper recognition as the discoverers of the Eighth Wonder of the World. Since the moment in that dry spring of 1974 when these seven farmers were digging a well on their communal farm in Yang village stumbled across “the most priceless archaeological discovery of modern times,” until today, they still find it difficult to say whether this event was a curse or a blessing. Thanks to the Western media’s curiosity, we now know that one of them committed suicide, two “died in their 50s, jobless and penniless” and the four remaining men “earn £2 a day sitting in official souvenir shops at the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor and sign books for tourists,” after spending three months learning how to write their own names.

If the act of “discovery” can only be applied to “an intelligent action of recognizing what the objects are,” as some officials once claimed, these farmers are indeed a far cry from Indiana Jones. Assuming that the statue head they accidentally dug out was a head of Buddha, they were afraid to touch it for fear that the Buddha would punish them. Someone even hung the head on a tree to expose it to the scorching sunshine to pray for rain. Their fellow villagers regarded the seven as inauspicious and kept a fearful distance. Before long, they learned that archeologists “discovered” that what they found was a big treasure related to Qin Shi Huang and magnificent enough to be called “the Eighth Wonder of the World.” They also saw how subsequent “pioneers” utilized these clay figures to make money, and heard about the new local popular saying: “to be liberated, you need the Communist party, to get rich, you need Qin Shi Huang” (翻身要靠共产党，致富要靠秦始皇). Perhaps out of an elusive consciousness of their rights of discovery, or maybe just to get a share of its benefits, they petitioned the government for compensation, but were denied and got nothing. Disappointed villagers believe that “almost all the compensation paid by the government was siphoned off by officials” according to the report.

It is also said that one particular farmer, after pondering over the superstitions that surrounded their discovery, “has vowed never to set eyes on the Terracotta Army again.” The farmer is afraid “they might have brought misfortune in some way,” and still wonders “if maybe the soldiers should have been left beneath the ground.” In sum, the report links the reasons why the famous Terracotta Army brought wealth and glory to many but not to the poor villagers who first found them, to “the brutal pace of development in modern China.”

Emperors, soldiers, and farmers: stories behind the Terracotta statues are admittedly complicated. Back to the exhibit itself, it is lively and creative, as demonstrated by those personal stories in the audio tour. It is reasonable to predict that these Terracotta ambassadors’ American debut would be a success.

All photos for this story taken in Xian, China by Matthias Merkel Hess.

Nobody (?) Likes A Spoiler

By Miri Kim

On July 31st, SBS, a major South Korean broadcast network, aired a short clip showing details of the carefully guarded rehearsals for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics (the video clip has now been removed from all major news and video sites). As the news (and the clip) spread on the web, Chinese and Korean news, portal sites, and users on blogs and message boards expressed, to put it mildly, consternation. On popular Chinese portals like sina.com and 163.com, polls show that a large percentage of the respondents support revoking the offending station's broadcasting privileges, or investigating who bore responsibility for the leak and levying a heavy fine on the station (presumably, the other two major South Korean networks covering the Olympics this summer, MBC and KBS, would be unaffected by such sanctions).

Korean reactions on blogs and comments that I have seen range from dismay, embarrassment, and strong (and often vicious, as par the course in online discourses) condemnation of SBS, to defensiveness and indifference (basically, 不关心), and even to excitement at the promise of the beauty of the opening ceremony captured by the footage. In what is one of the most tech-savvy societies in the world, South Korea's wired citizens, or "netizens," can be found at the cutting edge of any controversy, and the SBS incident is no exception. Furthermore, Korean users are just as, if not more mindful of developments on Chinese-language sites than internet users in predominantly English-speaking countries like the U.S., and true to form, are following this issue very closely on both international and home fronts, though for how intensely and for how long remains unclear at this point in time.

The majority opinion of Koreans regarding the SBS broadcast might be expressed with the following phrase: "쪽팔린다"--roughly equivalent to "losing face." But with this incident as with others like it, the reactions of Korean netizens have already covered a seemingly infinite array of opinions. Comments from Korean users run the gamut from SBS-bashing, finger-pointing at Chinese security measures, anti-China rhetoric and nationalistic calls for the return of unrelated landmasses to sighs of disappointment. And no matter how clear-cut a point being debated may appear on screen, an observer is sure to notice a contrarian, off-the-wall, or downright inflammatory voice in a comment thread; if you have braved internet fora of any linguistic and national type, this won't sound like anything new. The level of connectivity and breadth of involvement of Koreans in online discourse, however, still outpaces that of a number of other countries.

The Korean media's coverage of the leak has so far tended to reflect one subset of sentiments expressed by individual netizens in various discussions--regret, and concern over the possible loss of respect from other nations at this perceived breach of media etiquette--not only in relation to China, but to everyone who will be participating and tuning in to the Beijing Olympics. (For examples, in Korean, see these reports at Star News, Sports Seoul, Dalian, and dongA.)

China's economic growth in recent years has brought both opportunities and worries domestically and internationally. Many countries around the globe share a similar sort of anticipation where China is concerned, but particularly in South Korea, there is a widespread feeling that the Beijing Olympics may decisively raise China's international profile, perhaps to the effect of marginalizing its East Asian neighbors. There are precedents for the first notion--the Tokyo and Sapporo Olympics in 1964 and 1972 and the Seoul Olympics in 1988 also served to showcase the economic and political development of Japan and Korea on an international stage.

For now, feelings are running high, but internet firestorms have proven to be unpredictable in the past, and international relations between China and South Korea will probably be able to weather this incident, barring further negativity. Will things cool off before August 8? Will governmental investigation and censure bring resolution? Will another controversy soon take the place of the SBS debacle in the wilds of the net? Hard to say. Some netizens may be scoffing at rumors that South Korean athletes will be shut out of the Olympics (not likely) or booed or given the silent treatment at the opening ceremony by irate Chinese spectators (somewhat more likely). Other, scattered voices are asking for restraint and civility, and that spirit of goodwill may prevail. But certainly, if the mood of many Chinese and Korean internet users are any indication, SBS's leak is a faux pas on a grand scale indeed.

Miri Kim is a graduate student in Chinese history at the University of California, Irvine.

Chinese in Cambodia

By Caroline Finlay

Foreigners travelling to Phnom Penh in the mid 19th century didn’t find a sleepy Khmer fishing town. Instead, they happened upon thousands of bustling Cantonese traders. Their legacy in the Sino-Khmer population continues as these long settled immigrants dominate the oil and tourism industries and own countless shop fronts in Cambodia’s cities, while newly arrived mainland Chinese invest in garment production and construction.

In the 1800s, French colonials allowed Chinese-run businesses to flourish. William Willmott, a mid-century expert on Chinese communities, claimed the ethnic Chinese controlled 92 percent of Cambodian commerce in the mid 1900s. They traded in urban areas and worked as shopkeepers, moneylenders and traditional healers in rural areas, while Chinese farmers controlled Cambodia’s lucrative Kampot pepper industry.

The golden Sino-Khmer era came to an abrupt end when the Khmer Rouge sent urbanites to the killing fields and the ensuing economic collapse destroyed the businesses of rural Chinese-Khmers. The Vietnamese, who were invaded by China in response to their ousting of the Khmer Rouge, were deeply suspicious of the Sino-Khmer population, and although ethnic Chinese Cambodians made up a tiny fraction of the population of Cambodia, they accounted for half of Cambodian refugees fleeing to the US in the 1980s.

The tides have turned, though, in the wake of Hun Sen’s bloody 1997 coup and the subsequent severing of diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Chinese investment has soared, with Chinese nationals opening up hundreds of garment factories, construction projects and mines, and are often seen by Cambodian businessmen as preferential to Western investors who tend to push human rights issues and transparency.

Ethnic Chinese-Khmers are making a comeback as well, establishing a council of “Oknha,” or Lords, a title purchased from the Cambodian Royal family and often bestowed on Chinese-Khmer businessmen. The two most influential Oknha are Sok Korn, the president of Sokimex, and Sorn Sokna, his vice chairman. Together they control at least 35 percent of Cambodia’s petroleum industry and ticket concessions at the Angkor Wat, among other huge tourism and development projects. New generation Oknha Kith Menh is challenging old attitudes on Westernization and has partnered with Australia’s ANZ bank. He also owns telecommunications company Mobitel and the only legal football gambling outfit in Cambodia, Cambo Six.

In an article published two years ago in The Cambodia Daily, Chinese Chamber of Commerce president in Cambodia, Jimmy Gao, said Chinese investment is “a question of what Cambodia needs now,” and that the Chinese “are suitable to a tough position, because we were so poor 20 years ago,” and acknowledged that Sino-Khmers can act as a bridge between the two communities.

The good has come with the bad, though, as the Chinese mafia is apparently investing in Cambodia, famous for providing foreign tourists with easy access to drugs and sex. In 2004 Pierre Legros, then director of the NGO Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances, said that the “Malaysian-Chinese mafia” are behind the sex trade in Cambodia, and that “organized crime is applying pressure on the Cambodian government.”

Good or bad, the Chinese are on the rise in Cambodia, and Chinese language study is increasing in Phnom Penh, with the subject recently added to the national curriculum at the university level. As reported in the Phnom Penh Post earlier this summer, the Duan Hoa Chinese School, for primary and secondary students, has 7,000 mostly ethnic Chinese pupils. Ethnic Khmers and Vietnamese also study there “to learn Chinese so they can join the family business or find work in a private company—especially working in factories or in the tourism industry as many Chinese investors are coming to Cambodia now,” school administrator Kim Hean told the paper.

“The Chinese New Year is the busiest time of the year in Phnom Penh because foreigners come to Cambodia from Korea, China and Vietnam to escape the holiday,” says Jim Heston, a long-time Phnom Penh resident and bar owner. How much longer they can flee by coming to Cambodia, no one can say.

Caroline Finlay is a writer for Southeastern Globe, an English-language publication in Cambodia, and has also written for Global Voices.

FAQ#7: Why were Chinese people so angry about the attempts to seize the torch in the international torch relay?

I have just returned from five days in the earthquake disaster zone in Sichuan province, where I was a member of the “People’s Olympic Education Promotion Team” that visited Deyang city to conduct “Youth Olympic Games Re-enactments” at six local primary and secondary schools. There I realized that for the people we encountered, The Torch is a sacred object. I call it The Torch because that is what they called it – 火炬 – as if there were only one, and no further adjectives were necessary.

The project expressed the mission of Donnie Pei, a professor at the Capital Institute of Physical Education and Zhou Chenguang, a primary school p.e. teacher, to take the Olympics to the grassroots (discussed in my previous posting). Pei could not come with us, so our team leader was Zhou. The member who attracted the most attention everywhere was Sun Yiyong, songwriter and a torchbearer during the Inner Mongolia torch relay, who was called simply The Torchbearer （火炬手）。 The other members, who paled next to his luminance, consisted of Wu Ji’an, China’s “King of Games,” who creates and collects games and teaches them to schoolchildren and teachers nationwide; Zhou’s son Bowen; myself; and three support staff. We came from Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Deyang and were self-funded but for the “soft implements” (discus, javelin, hammer, hurdles, and epees made out of flexible packing foam) funded by the Haidian District government in Beijing. Thus, we were a determined “people’s” （民间）group and not an “official” （官方）group. As Zhou put it to the local city officials, we were the three “have nots”: have no organization, no discipline, and no funding. Such a group had probably never been seen in the area before in this form, although the earthquake relief effort had accustomed the locals both to NGOs and to roaming foreigners.

We were received – initially, as we realized, with considerable skepticism – by the Education Bureau of the Deyang city government as part of its current work in “psychological intervention.” As the reality of post-disaster life is setting in, children are realizing that they have no parents for whom to study hard, parents whose lives revolved around their one child feel that have no reason to live, people who lost limbs are realizing that they are a burden on their families, and volunteers are suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome from what they saw. And so there are starting to be suicides. As a result, a major initiative in psychological intervention is being carried out in the schools and communities, utilizing Young Pioneers counselors, visiting expert psychologists (including foreign experts), and others.

Our assigned task was to bring the Olympic spirit into the schools in order to aid the recovery. When we arrived, we were received by the Chief of the Students Section, Mr. Zeng. He told us with intensity, “I hope that we can do our best to solve the conflicts as fast as possible. Of course we cannot solve all the conflicts. But let us do our best to solve the ones that we can solve.” As we concluded our dinner, he told us, “You cannot fail.”

The next day we drove to the disaster zone and saw the site of the collapsed school where 50 of 200 students had survived, pile after pile of brick rubble, acres of newly-created pre-fabricated communities, and the clocktower in Hanwang whose clock had stopped at 2:28. We spontaneously stopped at one of the schools that had been relocated into a pre-fab complex because their school building had collapsed, and there I first observed the power of The Torch.

Each torchbearer gets to keep the torch that he or she carried, minus its internal mechanism. Because it was a National Treasure, Sun Yiyong carried it with him everywhere he went, inside its special box cradled in a yellow silk case sewn by his mother, which he slung over his shoulder. As he told us, “When I got my own torch it was not at all like the others. It’s like your own child – you feel differently toward it compared to the others, it’s special.” When we introduced ourselves to some of the students standing in the concrete walkway between the pre-fab classrooms, they wanted to see The Torch. Sun Yiyong took it carefully out of its box and the students began to crowd around to touch it. They started streaming out of their pre-fab classrooms. To allow each student a chance, Zhou asked them to line up and pass it from hand to hand until each student had touched it. Because we were taking them away from their classes, we apologized to the teachers who came to see what was up, and left as they asked us to come back.

The next day at the sports field of the Oriental Power Primary School we conducted our first Youth Olympic Games re-enactment for 1,000 of the 3,000 students at the school, building on the model developed by Pei and Zhou at Yangfangdian Primary School in Beijing. We played our “meet song” – “Pass on the Flame’s Spark,” which Sun had written as a eulogy to the Olympic torchbearers, and conducted a little opening ceremony, following the protocol common in China. My role was to be the International Person. I delivered a short address in Chinese, in which I said that the Olympic spirit is a spirit of mutual respect, mutual understanding, fair play, and the pursuit of international friendship and world peace. As a member of big family of the global village, I sincerely wished them success in rebuilding their happy homes, and hoped that the Olympic spirit of “swifter, higher, stronger” would help them in their effort.

After the flagbearer entered the stadium bearing the Olympic education banner designed by Zhou and Pei, the Olympic Angel, Zhou’s son Bowen, entered in a white robe adorned with real feather wings and a green wreath on his head. The Olympic Angel was an inspiration of Donnie Pei, who wondered how to reduce the philosophy of Olympism to a level understandable by primary school students. He believed that Olympism should make you into a good person, and that an angel embodies goodness. Also, the white robe and wings recall the figures of Nike, winged god of victory, in the athletic scenes on ancient Greek amphora. For him, the angel symbolized ancient Greece and was not a Christian symbol. And so as our Olympic angel entered the stadium carrying a cardboard reproduction of the Olympic torch, it was announced that it was bringing the flame, symbolizing hope, from Mount Olympus in ancient Greece to China.

Finally, The Torchbearer entered the stadium, wearing his red-and-white official torchbearer’s shirt and shorts and carrying the real Lucky Clouds torch, images that were easily identified by the children because the real torch relay was being broadcast daily on Chinese TV as it passed through China. Deyang had originally been scheduled for a stop, but it had been eliminated after the earthquake, a source of great regret to local residents. Sichuan had been moved so that it was the last province on the relay before the torch returned to Beijing. As a result, ours was the first Torch to reach Sichuan. But the local education officials were looking forward to the fact that after the relay left Sichuan, Deyang would have its own Torches, since several locals had been designated to carry it.

What happened next took us all by surprise. A high-pitched cry of excitement rose into the air as the children recognized The Torch, and one thousand children began spontaneously streaming toward it. They surrounded Sun Yiyong as he rounded the field and for a while they were allowed to follow, but they began pressing so hard to get near and touch The Torch that it became difficult for him to move and he was afraid he was going to step on a child. The situation was rapidly becoming dangerous. The school’s p.e. teacher (p.e. teachers are the ones who keep order in Chinese schools, since they lead the recess exercises) grabbed the microphone and began shouting, “Children! Maintain order!”

Eventually order was restored, and Sun Yiyong walked the periphery of the crowd while the students looked without touching. But we had learned a lesson. At subsequent events, a group of four boys clothed in red and yellow T-shirts jogged with him and acted as bodyguards for The Torch, as had the Blue Men who were so maligned in the Western media during the international torch relay. For these boys it was an honor to protect The Torch. But in the following five events, each time The Torchbearer appeared at the entrance to the sports field, the high-pitched cry would go into the air and the children would start moving toward it like metal shavings being pulled toward a magnet. The idea of allowing large numbers of children to touch the torch was abandoned, and at subsequent events about 10 to 20 “outstanding students” were invited to stand at the front of the crowd. First they passed the reproduction torch down the line, and then they passed The Torch along. Finally the reproduction torch was used to “light” The Torch (neither was actually aflame, though the reproduction torch had red construction-paper flames coming from its top), and they exited the scene.

After a reading of Pierre de Coubertin’s Ode to Sport, Zhou conducted the activity called “We are all Torchbearers.” He asked, “Who is a Torchbearer?,” answering, “I am a Torchbearer! You are a Torchbearer! We are all Torchbearers!” Each child had been asked to bring a textbook and had been given a square of flame-red crepe paper. By rolling up the textbook and sticking the crepe paper into the top of the cone, each child had a little torch which she or he waved in the air. Zhou explained, “Take your knowledge and your strength and twist your book to make it into a torch, then put your torch into your heart.”

On our second night several members went to a school that had been cobbled together from students from several different schools and relocated into pre-fab buildings. Unfortunately I missed it - it turned out to be one of the most moving events of the trip. As they told me later, the curfew arrived and the electricity was cut off as they were in the midst of passing around The Torch. Zhou said to the students, “Are you afraid?” and they said, “Yes.” He said, “Don’t be afraid. Remember The Torch. The cinders are in your heart and will always be there, even when it is dark.” They concluded by signing autographs to the light of a flashlight, and then Zhou let them in shouting, “Go China! Go Sichuan! Go Deyang! Go School!” One of the children added, “I tell myself to go!” (我为我加油)，which Zhou considered to be one of the most inspiring events of the trip, because it showed the child had taken the Olympic spirit inside himself, and made it his own.

At each stop, people wanted to touch The Torch, and the teachers and officials were more aggressive about it than the children. They wanted to take photos of themselves holding The Torch, or of groups of people each with one hand on The Torch. They seemed to feel, at least at some level, that touching the Lucky Clouds Torch would bring them good fortune. The undisputed star of our group was The Torch. After that, The Torchbearer. And after that, the International Person (me).

I also got mobbed for autographs and had to be rescued by a bodyguard.

I learned that in Chinese, a flame is a living thing with an anatomy like a plant. At its base are the “seeds of fire” (火种), or cinders, which represent hope, and are the thing that one holds in one’s inner heart. Out of the seeds come the “sprouts of fire” （火苗）or tendrils of flame. It grows into a full flame （火焰）. It sends off “star fire” （星火），or sparks, which symbolize the passing of inspiration from one person to another. All of this was metaphorical – our torches did not have fires, because that would be too dangerous for children.

We organized Olympic re-enactments at two schools per day for three consecutive days, a total of six schools and over 3,000 children. Our status in Deyang increased each day. Local education officials held a meeting midway through our second day to assess our achievements. The head of the Deyang Education Bureau, Mr. Mao, observed, “The Olympic spirit is the spirit of conquering the disaster. Could we recover so quickly without the spirit of ‘swifter, higher, stronger’? This is also our spirit… Our students’ psychological wounds are serious. We will organize our students to get into motion. We humans cannot stop, our spirit cannot stop.” After three days and six schools, we were completely exhausted. At our farewell lunch, Section Chief Zeng observed that we had accomplished psychological intervention on a large scale. The standard psychological intervention reaches people one by one, so the experts who had been brought in could only reach about 1,000 people per week. We had reached over 3,000 students in three days. Zhou later explained, “Psychological intervention opens up a hole in your body and then sews it up again. It takes a long time to recover. We don’t open up a hole to do surgery. We let the sun shine on them and they absorb it into their bodies and keep it there. Chinese medicine is not in favor of doing operations, so this method is appealing.”

* * *

When I first began studying anthropology, I took part in the famous seminar of Victor Turner, one of the most influential anthropologists of his time. He was then experimenting with ritual re-enactments, which we conducted in the seminar. He believed that ritual action and the handling of symbolic objects function to channel human emotions like a laser beam. He believed that rituals could have this affect on humans even when the rituals were not their own and our re-enactments tested his theory. He was also interested in the use of rituals in healing processes. Like many of his former students, I have carried on this tradition in my own teaching. Every year my theory class repeats the experiment by re-enacting a ritual of their choice. Without further belaboring the complicated theory behind this, I will just note that I regularly see and feel the transformative power of ritual re-enactments, which seem to be able to exert at least some effect on some people no matter how impromptu they may be. It was in this spirit that I entered into our Youth Olympic Games Re-enactment. Did we “solve the conflicts that could be solved”? Hard to say, but I do think that we made a small difference. For the theoretical background, see Turner’s The Ritual Process, The Anthropology of Performance, and From Ritual to Theatre.

In my classroom re-enactments, I am often surprised at the effect on myself, and in Deyang I experienced the sudden insights into my own culture that Turner says are a potential of ritual (a product of “liminality”). Against the background of the furor over the international torch relay, observing the reverence and emotion for The Torch and The Torchbearer made me suddenly see how cynical we are, more often than not, in the West, as a product of our secularized, rationalized society in which there are only small spaces in which it is acceptable to express reverence for symbols. A picture appeared in my mind which is an exaggeration but perhaps with a kernel of truth: In China, the majority of public expressions take place in a vast field of rituals and symbols, while the protest zones that were recently announced for the Olympic Games are the small, circumscribed spaces where critical analytical thought is expressed. In the US, the majority of public expressions take place in a vast field of critical analytical thought, while ritual expression takes place in small, circumscribed places like churches and, arguably, sports events. I realized that at least part of the anger that many Chinese people felt at the disruptions of the international torch relay was the result of the (to them) appalling and uncivilized lack of respect for a nearly-sacred object.

In the West the Olympic Games have struggled with a loss of idealism due to challenges like commercialism and doping. The ChineseOlympic organizers and many Chinese people held an idealistic faith in the transformative power of the Olympic Games, believing that they could facilitate China’s integration with the world and benefit its future development. The West duly regarded this with skepticism. According to Turner, a balanced social process requires rituals. The global village needs its ritual and the Olympic Games are currently serving that function. But also according to Turner, ritual has the potential to either increase solidarity or initiate irreparable schisms.

In Deyang it was possible to foresee the closing of this cultural gap between China and the West. Everyone agreed that our final performance at the elite Foreign Languages Middle School in Deyang was the “most orderly” – and all but myself and the artist Sun Yiyong considered this a good thing. The children did not mob The Torch or me. They spoke very good English and they paid 40,000 yuan per year in tuition. Apparently for such privileged children The Torch and The International Person had already lost some of their lustre.

星火相传 （火炬手之歌） 星火相传在你我之间 看和平友爱的接力多么壮观 星火相传刘动着激情 愿和谐之旅永没有终点 神圣的火种被阳光点燃 升腾起无比光荣的火焰 全人类将记住这一瞬间 五大洲让空天闪耀着五环 燃烧的火炬把星光点亮 连接起无数圣洁的心愿 全世界传递着同一梦想 每个人都有精彩表现 作词作曲：孙义勇 演唱：单待 汤子星 2008青少年模拟奥运会会歌 民间奥林匹克教育执行团队对歌 北京奥运会火炬手之歌

Pass on the Flame’s Spark (The Torchbearer’s Song) Pass the flame’s spark, from you on to me Grand relay of peace and fraternity Pass the flame’s spark, let passion flow on Its unending journey of harmony Sacred fire’s seeds, lit from the sun’s rays In matchless glory, your flames leap up high All will remember this twinkling day Five lands below, five rings in the sky Hot blazing torch will light up the stars Linking countless hearts’ desires The whole world is passing on one dream All can see the great acts it inspires Lyrics and melody: Sun Yiyong English translation: Susan Brownell Singer: solo Shang Zixing Song for: 2008 Youth Olympic Games Re-enactment, People’s Olympic Education Promotion Team Beijing Olympic Torchbearers

Smoke and Mirrors: China and India

After reading a short excerpt from Pallavi Aiyar's new book, Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China, at Danwei.org, we wanted to ask her a few questions about her experience as a journalist and writer working in China (Danwei has also posted an interview with Aiyar, asking for her insights on the relationship of and comparisons between China and India; and additional reviews of the book have been posted at the WSJ China Blog and The International Herald Tribune). Here are her answers to our questions, followed by a short excerpt from the book. Smoke and Mirrors can be purchased at this website, and, according to Amazon, will be available in the US in September.

China Beat: Did you expect to end up spending as long a stretch of time in China as you have?

Pallavi Aiyar: Not at all. I came to China only reluctantly, following my then boyfriend who was a Sinophile. I was at the time, a typical middle-class Indian with an Anglophone education so that “abroad’ and “the UK/US” were almost synonymous for me. China might have been next door to India geographically but conceptually it was a black hole. I spent my first year in the country teaching something called “English journalism” (which turned out to be mostly English) to students at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute while learning Chinese myself. At the end of the year, I felt it would be a waste not to stay for at least another year and recoup the investment of that first year in China. And so it went, year-after-year. With hindsight, moving to China was the best decision of my life. Not only did the boyfriend become my husband, but the timing was right and ripe for an Indian in China. Bilaterally, relations began heating up and internationally as well the China story increasingly became the China-India story. An almost bottomless appetite for China news was to evolve south of the Himalayas and I was one of the very few people in a position to sate that hunger. Given that China and India together account for almost 2.5 billion people, the fact that when I first began writing from Beijing I was one of only two Indian correspondents in the country is a profound comment on how disconnected these two neighbors were. There are now four of us Indian correspondents in China (compared to some 125 American journalists), but I remain the only Mandarin-speaking one.

CB: What was the single thing that surprised you most about China during your time there--the thing that jarred most with the image of the country you had formed by reading about it ahead of time?

PA: To be honest I hadn’t done much purposeful advance reading about China. What I knew about it was primarily based on random articles I came across from time-to-time in Indian and foreign media. I had a vague understanding of the fact that after some two decades of reforms China was generally thought to have pulled well ahead of India economically but wasn’t quite able to visualize what this would mean in terms of the visceral difference in the physical experience of being in say New Delhi and in Beijing.

In my immediate impressions of the country I was very much the average Indian. What really “shocked and awed” was thus Chinese infrastructure. Beijing’s roads seemed impossibly smooth, its airport impossibly efficient, given that despite what I had read about China’s material progress it was still designated as a “developing” country.

Once I was able to look beyond the razzle and dazzle of China’s infrastructure, what jarred most was the homogeneity of the country. I had read much about the diversity of China, its foods, its fifty-plus minorities, its linguistic multiplicity, etc. But in fact I found it remarkably similar in architecture (from the “historic” pagoda-style buildings to the more modern bathroom-tiled atrocities), language (all the dialects shared the majority of written characters so that in fact the diversity really existed only in spoken form and the country was knit by hanzi) and most of all attitude. It was really strange how no matter whom I was speaking to—taxi driver, economics professor or the bicycle repairman round the corner—the moment I said I was Indian, the response consisted of how wonderful Hindi movies were, how Indian women had such large eyes, and how the dancing and singing was simply fantastic. The whole country seemed programmed to reproduce the same answers to the same questions.

I must stress that my reaction was conditioned by my Indian-ness. India was a country of 22 official languages and over 200 recorded mother tongues. Far from being bound by a common script many of the languages in India did not even belong to the same linguistic group. In my “Hindu” country, there were more Muslims than in all of Pakistan. India’s cultural inheritance included fire-worshiping Zorastrians, and Torah-reciting Jews. With no single language, ethnicity, religion or food India’s diversity was on a whole other plane to China’s.

CB: Do you see particular advantages or disadvantages you have working as a reporter in China due to being Indian? Or due to being female? And if the latter, do you feel this is dramatically different than the advantages or disadvantages a Chinese female reporter would have in India or, say, England, where I see from the web you studied for a couple of different graduate degrees?

PA: On the whole, being an Indian helped me gain access as a reporter because I did not automatically fit into the “foreign/western media = anti-China” equation. The fact is that as an Indian journalist my agenda was different than that of many Western colleagues. The audience in India was rarely interested in the usual human rights/corruption issues that the US media, for example, focus a lot on.

Given India’s own human rights problems and abysmal levels of corruption, the idea of having me write about China was not for me to serve as a watchdog on Beijing. It was rather to explain a changing China to an audience that knew very little about its neighbor, in addition to suggesting ways and means by which the Indian establishment might learn from China regarding economic policy, foreign policy power projection, poverty alleviation, etc.

Moreover, over the course of the time I spent in China, the Chinese authorities gradually began to take India a lot more seriously—especially after the likes of Goldman Sachs and McKinsey started to mention India in the same breath as China. They were as a result increasingly keen to reach an Indian audience.

Being a female reporter in China was a liberating experience. I felt free to travel and report in even relatively remote parts of the country without my gender being an issue. India is a far more difficult place for women in general. Even in big cities like New Delhi it’s hard for women to walk on the streets free of harassment or what Indian law rather quaintly calls “eve teasing.”

While I don’t think being female brought any particular advantages to reporting in China what struck me most was how it did not bring any disadvantages. I never felt patronized by male interviewees or sexually threatened in any way.

Regarding England—let me just say that I spent three months back at Oxford last year as a Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. At one of the very first seminars organized for the term, the presenter (an eminent German foreign correspondent) bemoaned the decline of “serious” journalism in the West, attributing this to “sensationalization, simplification and feminization”!

CB: If you could convince academics to do more work related to a topic in Chinese history or contemporary China, what might that be?

PA: The impact of model worker Shi Chuanxiang on the profession of manual scavenging. The difference in attitude and circumstance between toilet cleaners in China and India struck me strongly and is something I write about at length in the book.

CB: What do you feel is the most exciting part of covering China?

PA: Trying to penetrate and understand well enough to explain to others a society that is so perfectly self-contained that its language requires even proper nouns to be translated. China, I would hold, has been the least outward-oriented of all major cultures, in recent centuries. To be a link or bridge, however minor, in the new process of connecting this civilization outwards is exciting. It feels pioneering in a way that, say, reporting from Brussels or even Moscow wouldn’t.

CB: A lot has been written lately about comparisons and contrasts between China and India. Is there anything you've read lately that you found particularly insightful on that topic?

PA: My book!

Immodest humor aside the answer would be: not really. As you say there is so much out there at the moment that I’ve almost made it a rule not to read anything with “dragon” “elephant” or “chindia” in the title!

India and China are not only different in their modern political avatars, but have historically been very different cultures. India’s philosophical and cultural underpinnings were steeped in metaphysics, ontology and epistemology forming major intellectual planks of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, etc. Territorial integrity and notions of empire were much less central to India’s image of itself. As a result, the Indian civilization was more of a conceptual rather than geographic entity; less united territorially and politically than the Chinese empire. In contrast, China was always more coherent territorially. Its empire was moreover underpinned by philosophies like Confucianism that tended less to the metaphysical and more to the practical, legalistic and political.

The point to remember is that while the two countries share superficial similarities they are very, very different, often making comparisons unhelpful and on occasion even disingenuous.

***

From Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China, by Pallavi Aiyar, HaperCollins India, 2008.

Five years was a decent slice of time to spend in a country and I had used it relatively well: travelling and asking questions. But as I geared up to draw a curtain across my China-life, I was increasingly being called upon to answer a few questions as well.

“Where was China heading?” people would ask me when I travelled outside the country to Europe or the U.S. Was the CCP doomed or would it continue to be a formidable political force in the coming decades? Would China implode in the absence of a democratic revolution? Was its economic growth sustainable without fundamental institutional reform?

In India, the key question was different. From newspaper editors to the maid at home the most common query I encountered was a deceptively simple one: what could India learn from China? What should India be doing that China had already been doing? For China the U.S remained the ultimate benchmark when it came to its self-assessment of national power and achievement. But for India, it was China that had emerged as a commonly used yardstick to evaluate its own progress.

Back in China the question I faced with greatest frequency was again different, at once the crudest and perhaps most difficult of all to answer. “Which is better? India or China?” taxi drivers in Beijing had asked me with monotonous regularity. “Do you prefer India or China,” my students at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute had often queried. “Do you like living in Beijing? Or was it better in Delhi?” my hutong neighbours enquired whenever they got the opportunity.

This last question in its various forms was one that I spent much thought grappling with and my answers were as variable as the day the question was posed. Following conversations with Lou Ya and other toilet cleaners in my neighbourhood I would think back to the wretched jamadarnis back home and marvel at the relative dignity of labour that China’s lowliest enjoyed.

In my hutong the refuse collectors wore gloves when picking up the garbage on their daily rounds. This single, simple article of protective clothing and the barrier it created between bacteria and skin leant them at least a modicum of self-respect. Their children almost always went to school. They may not have been well educated themselves but could usually read and write enough to avoid the worst kind of exploitation.

These were modest gains and not everyone in China could claim even such moderate progress. But were I one of the millions-strong legions of cleaners, sweepers, janitors or night soil workers in India, I would probably prefer by some twist of karma to have been born Chinese.

But on other days I felt differently. These were days when I spent hours hunting for a Chinese source amongst the country’s think tanks, universities and research institutes for fresh insight or an alternative point of view on an issue for a story I’d be working on. It was always such dishearteningly hard work.

China’s was a pragmatic society and over the years I met any number of people blessed with more than usual amounts of a canny, street smart, intelligence. As evidenced by the Zhejiang entrepreneurs, ordinary Chinese were masters of locating the loophole, of finding escape routes, of greasing the right hands and bypassing stifling regulations. If need be they could sell contact lenses to a blind woman and chicken feet to a vegetarian.

But while it may have abounded with consummate salespeople and irrepressible entrepreneurs, Chinese society remained deeply anti-intellectual. More a product of a political and educational system that discouraged criticism and encouraged group-think, than any primordial characteristic, this was the aspect of China I personally found most wearying.

It was the absence of a passion for ideas, the lack of delight in argument for its own sake, and the dearth of reasoned but brazen dissent that most often gave me cause for homesickness. When the Foreign Ministry interpreter Xiao Yan claimed in Tibet that China was different from other countries in that all Chinese must think the same thing, she was consciously overstating her case in light of Jes’ comments. Nonetheless a nub of truth in what she said remained.

In China, those who disagreed with mainstream, officially sanctioned views outside of the parameters set by mainstream officially sanctioned debate, more often than not found themselves branded as dissidents – suspect, hunted, under threat.

Thus a professor who misspoke to a journalist could suddenly be demoted. An editor who pursued a corruption investigation too zealously might find herself fired. A lawyer, who simply tried to help his client to the best of his abilities, could were the client of the wrong sort, ironically land in jail himself.

In universities like BBI the idea was drilled into students’ heads that there were right answers and wrong answers. While ambiguity and nuances may have been both sensed and exploited in practice, on a purely intellectual plane there was little space for them.

For an argumentative Indian from a country where heterodoxy was the norm, this enforced homogeneity in Chinese thought and attitude scratched against my natural grain[1]. There were thus occasions when despite all of India’s painful shortcomings, I would assert with conviction that it was nonetheless better to be an Indian than endure the stifling monotony of what tended to pass as an intellectual life in China.

But then I would return to Delhi for a few days and almost immediately long to be back in Beijing where a woman could ride a bus or even drive a bus without having to tune out the constant staring and whispering of the dozens of sex-starved youth that swarmed around the Indian capital’s streets at almost any given time.

Later on the same day however, I might switch on the TV and catch an ongoing session of the Indian parliament, not always the most inspirational of bodies but when looked at with China-habituated eyes, more alluring than usual.

China’s economic achievement over the last 30 or so years may have been unparalleled historically, but so was India’s political feat. Its democracy was almost unique amongst post-colonial states not simply for its existence but its existence against all odds in a country held together not by geography, language or ethnicity but by an idea. This was an idea that asserted, even celebrated the possibility of multiple identities. In India you could and were expected to be both many things and one thing simultaneously.

I was thus a Delhite, an English speaker, half a Brahmin, half a Tamilian, a Hindu culturally, an atheist by choice, a Muslim by heritage. But the identity that threaded these multiplicities together was at once the most powerful and most amorphous: I was an Indian.

India’s great political achievement was thus in its having developed mechanisms for negotiating large-scale diversity along with the inescapable corollary of frequent and aggressive disagreement. The guiding and perhaps lone consensus that formed the bedrock of that mechanism was that in a democracy you don’t really need to agree – except on the ground rules of how you will disagree.[2]

All of which being true still did not help to definitively answer the question, “If I could choose, would I rather be born Indian or Chinese?”

Perhaps part of my problem was that unlike how students were educated in China into believing there were right and wrong answers I had been encouraged to do precisely the opposite. “Always problematise,” my earnest, khadi kurta clad professor, Sankaran, used to thunder at us during class back in my undergraduate days as a philosophy student in Delhi.

But if forced to reply in broad brush strokes I would assert the following: were I to be able to ensure being born even moderately well-off, I would probably plump for India over China.

In India, money allowed you to exist happily enough despite the constant failure of governments to deliver services. Thus most Delhi households that could afford it had private generators for when the electricity failed and private tube wells in their gardens to ensure the water supply that the municipality couldn’t. The police offered little protection from crime and so many households hired private security guards.

Having developed the necessary private channels with which to deal with the lack of public goods one was free in India to enjoy the intellectual pleasures of discussing the nature of “the idea of India” or to enjoy the heady adrenalin rush of winning a well-argued debate.

These were real pleasures and freedoms and their broader significance was not merely confined to the elite. A tradition of argumentation was fundamental to India’s secularism and democratic polity, with wide-ranging implications for all sections of society.

On the other hand, were I to be born poor, I would take my chances in authoritarian China, where despite lacking a vote, the likelihood of my being decently fed, clothed and housed were considerably higher. Most crucially, China would present me with relatively greater opportunities for upward socio-economic mobility. So that even though I may have been born impoverished, there was a better chance I wouldn’t die as wretched in China, as in India.

This was not to deny the importance of the vote for India’s poor, which undoubtedly endowed them with collective bargaining power. Dislocating large numbers of people to make way for big infrastructure projects for example was an uphill task for any Indian government. As a result, the kind of wanton destruction of large swathes of a historic city like Beijing justified by the hosting of a sporting event would be extremely unlikely to occur in India.

In China on the other hand, not only did the poor lack a vote,[3] but the CCP was also adept at disabling the capacity of disaffected peoples to organise, thus depriving them of the influence of numbers that could pressure government policy through other means.

However, it was also patently clear that in India the right to vote did not necessarily or even usually translate into better governance. Fear of alienating a vote-bank might persuade a local politician to turn a blind eye to illegal encroachment by migrants on city land. But the ensuing slum would lack even the most rudimentary facilities like sewage or water supplies.

Citizens threw out governments in India with predictable regularity. The country’s vast poor majority dismissed on average four out of five incumbents, so that what was called the anti-incumbency factor was possibly the most crucial in any Indian election.

Often celebrated as a sign of India’s robust democracy what this state of affairs in fact reflected was a track record of governance that was so abysmal that even in regions where incomes had improved and poverty reduced, people believed this was in spite and not because of the government.[4]

So ultimately despite political representation for the poor in India and the absence of political participation in China, the latter trumped India when it came to the delivery of basic public goods like roads, electricity, drains, water supplies and schools where teachers actually show up.
This counterintuitive state of affairs was linked to the fact that while in China the CCP derived its legitimacy from delivering growth, in India a government derived its legitimacy simply from its having been voted in. Delivering on its promises was thus less important than the fact of having been elected.

The legitimacy of democracy in many ways absolved Indian governments from the necessity of performing. The CCP could afford no such luxury.

Footnotes
[1] See Sen Amartya, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity, Penguin, 2005
[2] See Guha Ramachandra, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, Macmillan, 2007
[3] 40 million peasants have been forced off their land to make way for roads, airports, dams, factories, and other public and private investments, according to China: the Balance Sheet, Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Institute of International Economics: Washington, DC, 2006
[4] Aiyar Swaminathan, A vote against misgovernance, The Times of India, 15 May 2004

China Beat Contributors around the Web

1. Jeff Wasserstrom was recently interviewed about the Shanghai NIMBY protests for a Danish newspaper.

2. For visitors heading to the Olympics, Wasserstrom also recently published a few suggestions at Outlook India for a Beijing itinerary for “culturally-minded tourists.”

3. Contributor Richard Kraus was referenced recently in a New Yorker article on the classical music scene in China.

4. Pankaj Mishra (oft-referenced in these pages) published a short piece a few weeks ago in The Guardian on inter-war travel writing. Mishra mentions off-hand that, in contrast to the quickly seen and sketched travel writing of the 1930s, “the best non-fiction books about foreign countries today…are products of prolonged engagements”—and Mishra cites China Beat contributor Peter Hessler as a prime example of this.

5. If you are curious about Cantabs among the China watchers, take a peek at Harvard Magazine’s recent list of alums on the China beat. These include one writer actually on our China Beat, Leslie Chang as well as several regularly referenced here, like James Fallows and Evan Osnos

Susan Brownell Around the World

China Beat contributor Susan Brownell is showing up all over the web these days, as her special knowledge on Olympic and Chinese sports history is in high demand. Here is a list of some of her recent media appearances:

1. On PRI’s “The World,” Brownell talks about some of the differences between Western and Chinese notions of body and sports; the report also includes a short excerpt from Jonathan Spence’s Reith Lecture “The Body Beautiful,” which Xu Guoqi blogged about at China Beat earlier this month.

2. Brownell has also been cited in several NPR reports, including these two by Louisa Lim: “Sporting Fame Comes with Limits in China,” and “China Trains Cheerleader to Rally the Masses.”

3. In this AP report, Brownell comments on the Chinese allocation of protest zones, an idea she discussed earlier in her #4 and #5 Olympic FAQs, originally posted at China Beat.

4. Brownell has talked about the Chinese Olympic training program in several places recently, including The Christian Science Monitor, The Macau Daily Times, and The Los Angeles Times.

5. Brownell has also been quoted in a number of pieces abroad, including papers in France, Hungary, Spain, and Sweden.

Securing the Olympics

Security has been a major issue and challenge at all recent Olympic Games and failures of that security (as in Atlanta in 1996) surely weigh heavily on the minds of Olympic planners. However, the Beijing Olympics have been marked not only by their incredible security preparations, but also by foreign scrutiny and suspicion because of China's international reputation as a heavily-policed state. Here, Eric Setzekorn shares what he is seeing on the ground in Beijing.

By Eric Setzekorn

More than any state-of-the-art sports complex or amazing athletic performance, many visitors will remember the Beijing Olympics as the world’s largest security event. In an effort to squelch any sort of protest or more serious terrorist act the government has instituted strict new rules and enforced many existing but hitherto disregarded laws. Estimates of total security personnel range from 250,000 to 500,000, depending on the criteria, but visitors should be either alarmed or comforted to know their every action is monitored and scrutinized.

The epicenter for Olympic security is Tiananmen Square. Since 1989 and even more so since the Falun Gong crackdown, Tiananmen Square has boasted a comprehensive security plan based on numerous security cameras backed by scores of uniformed and plainclothes police. New checkpoints have been established at all entrances to the Square and are equipped with larger than average cameras, most likely biometric scanners, and all bags are thoroughly searched. The level of scrutiny is high--after inspecting not only my bag but a folder of articles inside, I was asked by the polite but stern officer why I carried several papers regarding Chinese politics.

Above, Security Checkpoint in Tiananmen Square

In the square itself much of the large area has been subdivided and occupied with space-filling decorations. A large area of plants and trees has been constructed in the northeastern corner between the Square and Chang’an Avenue. Large barriers block direct line of site from Mao’s Mausoleum toward the Forbidden City. While this ruins much of the stark beauty of the square it makes sense from a security and crowd control perspective.

Barriers north of Mao’s Mausoleum

Olympic Garden In Tiananmen Square

In a smart public relations move, most police and military officers patrolling the square are unarmed except for pepper spray and a taser. Long black vans parked nearby hold SWAT teams if there is any real trouble and the lack of overt weapons makes the police presence less intimidating to ordinary visitors than the AK-47-carrying soldiers that typically inhabit the Square.

Leaving the square and walking along Chang’an Avenue long rows of local university students line the road at 40-foot intervals. Given a t-shirt, fanny pack, and sun umbrella (teal for boys, purple for girls) they stand motionless unless approached to ask for directions or information. Given only a small stipend for meals and transportation, they volunteered because of a genuine desire to help the Beijing Olympics but also to practice their English.

Student volunteers along Chang’an Avenue outside Raffles Hotel

In less commercial areas, this type of duty is relegated to older residents who are given an orange and white Olympic shirt and a red armband saying they are a “public safety officer,” and who then sit in front of their buildings on low stools chatting and fanning themselves in the heat. These “officers” have no real duties to perform, schedule to maintain, or uniform to wear. For men, rolling their shirts up above their stomachs seems to be popular, as is wearing large sun hats for the women. While it does appear somewhat comical with small groups of retirees sitting every 50 feet they are probably the best monitoring system imaginable. Although given no training, having no English skills, and bringing their own cell phones to call the local patrolmen directly if there is “trouble,” they are an extremely cost effective and numerous auxiliary force. As a secondary benefit, for the price of a t-shirt, sponsored by Yanjing Beer, they are made to feel they are part of and responsible for the success of the Olympic games.

Retiree volunteers outside their apartments

Outside the second ring road, security decreases with an emphasis on regular patrols by foot and car. Police are now much more visible directing traffic at major intersections and assisting traffic wardens to clear accidents quickly. When motorcades or VIPs are on the move, small groups of heavily armed military police occupy strategic intersections in full uniform with helmet, body armor, and assault rifles. Due to stringent housing laws that were previously un-enforced, private housing areas have also increased security and tightened regulations. These rules are designed to limit a large floating population of foreigners and domestic tourists that could be hard to track during the games.

Private security checkpoint in housing area

Most housing areas have installed gates manned 24 hours a day to separate residents from any potential guests who must proceed to the local police station for a temporary residence permit. Large police sweeps of twenty to thirty officers going through housing blocks for any unauthorized visitors seem mainly to inconvenience the large floating Korean student population in the Haidian district and stops landlords from renting apartments at huge mark-ups for the month of August.

While there is clearly a need for a comprehensive and large security presence at obvious targets during the Olympics, for many visitors the true symbols of the Beijing’s Games could be the 6th and 7th Fuwas, JingJing and ChaCha (jingcha being the Chinese word for police).