Rob Riggle Goes to China

All week, Rob Riggle of The Daily Show has been acting out his exuberant American routine in China. Last night's interview with BizChina's anchor Rui Chenggang was a particular gem for China media watchers. Rui, who has interviewed a whole host of prominent American business leaders (not to mention Chinese ones), gives no ground to Riggle, parrying all Riggle's Daily-Show style ambushes. Unfortunately, the only available online clip is the entire episode of last night's show at Comedy Central (head here--the clip starts at 6:42, and you'll have to watch a short ad).

Learning English, Learning Chinese

By David Porter

"We are very proud to be Chinese!"

"We welcome everyone to come to China!"

Judging from recent interviews on Beijing streets that have been broadcast in recent days by American TV and radio journalists, these two phrases and others like them have topped the list of essential greetings in the city-wide cram courses in Olympics English that have proven so popular over the past year or so. A bit hackneyed, perhaps, but telling in the striking combination of hospitality and nationalism that has characterized Chinese self-presentation from the opening ceremonies to the China-US men's basketball match-up.

The current craze for English in China, where seven-year olds study the language daily and charismatic English teachers, as reported in the New Yorker, achieve the status of rock stars, reflects both these impulses. To speak a foreigner's language, even if it is only a few phrases, is to show due respect to a friend come from afar. But it's also a sign of increasing confidence and worldliness of outlook, a reflection not so much of China's opening to the world (speaking of hackneyed phrases) as of the world, at long last, opening to China.



A Chinese journalist covering the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 would have had a considerably harder time turning up a local resident who could offer so much as a cliche of cosmopolitan hospitality in the journalist's native Chinese. There seems little doubt that America's declining stature on the world stage has more than a little to do with its schools' systematic failure to engage the language acquisition neurons of young students through sustained exposure to any non-English language, let alone Chinese.

There have, however, been some signs of change. In a country where Chinese is now the second most widely used foreign language after Spanish, 200,000 students are learning Chinese at 1000 colleges, 300 elementary and secondary schools, and 600 Chinese language schools across the United States. These numbers have been rising rapidly: from 1998 to 2002 (the most recent year for which the statistic is available), the number of college students electing Chinese as a foreign language rose by 20 percent; more recently, the number of K-12 students studying the language increased eight-fold between 2000 and 2007 to approximately 40,000.

In some regions, the rate of increase has been even more dramatic: the number of Connecticut public school students enrolled in Chinese language courses recently jumped from 300 to 3000 in three years. When the first College Board AP exam was administered in 2006, 3260 high school seniors sat for the exam nationwide. With increasing frequency, local and national papers carry stories of proud (non-Asian) parents showing off their children's Chinese language skills, acquired courtesy of private tutors or, increasingly, enlightened public school districts.

This growth has been supported by the US federal government, which has designated Chinese as a "critical language," and has awarded 90 percent of foreign language development grants under the National Security Language Initiative to Chinese language programs. Senator Joseph Lieberman recently proposed an additional $1.3 billion allocation to improve the instruction of Chinese language and culture in American schools. States have begun to jump on the bandwagon as well: a recent law passed in Utah stipulates that all public middle schools in the state require Chinese language instruction beginning in 2007.

Current enrollment numbers, while increasing, are still miniscule compared to the numbers of Chinese learning English, or indeed to the number of people learning Chinese across the world, which China's Ministry of Education currently places at 30 million, with a projected increase to 100 million by 2010. Since the HSK Chinese Proficiency Test began to be administered by the Chinese government in 1990, 350,000 students have taken the test, and the number of participants is growing at 30 percent per year.

These students have clearly taken to heart the kinds of greetings we're now hearing from the streets of Beijing, and they are, much to their credit, determined to respond in kind.

The Right to Party, en Masse

By Haiyan Lee

The most clichéd way of referring to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in English-language media has been “China’s coming-out party.” The slightly condescending undertone is nonetheless mingled with well-wishing that the debutante will give the world a heck of a party, the glitches and disappointments in the run-up notwithstanding. For this precious moment, China chose Zhang Yimou, arguably its most talented film director, to chaperone itself onto the world stage.


By all indications, it was a good choice. The 50-minute multi-million-dollar extravaganza was so spectacular that the only appropriate response, it would seem, was a WOW! Or to wonder, like one American volleyball player did, “How did they do that?” Any more parsing would seem pedantic. But, alas, this is the age of “have computer, will blog.” So let’s begin with the New York Times piece that hails the event as a wild success with “signature Chinese touches.” There is no denying that the lavish ceremony was first and foremost about China. And the China it celebrated was ancient (the 5000-year history), civilized (the arts and crafts), inventive (the four great inventions), adventurous (the silk roads), hospitable (the Confucian chant about cherishing guests from afar), technologically accomplished (the astronaut), and innocent and hopeful (the school children). It wore love, peace, and harmony proudly on its sleeve. What more could the world ask for?

Dutiful commentators will likely remind us what this dazzling propaganda blockbuster conceals: the human rights abuses, the suppression of ethnic/regional autonomy, the rise of xenophobic nationalism, the environmental degradation, the widening gap between rich and poor, the unholy alliances with authoritarian regimes elsewhere, and so on. However, not every skeleton has been stuffed into the national closet. In fact, the ceremony openly paraded the specter of another China that should in theory jar the domestic revelers and besotted observers alike: Mao’s China.

Everything about the Beijing Olympics was meant to sweep you off your feet. But above all, it was the number of performers—15,000—in the opening ceremony that probably caused many an eye to pop and jaw to drop. Given how much of the “Chineseness” in the program belonged to the category of “invented” or at least airbrushed tradition, the surreally synchronized movements of thousands of people was perhaps the most “signature” of the Chinese touches. The antecedents are much closer in history and more vivid in memory: we need only recall the images of mass formations dressed in regulation garb, chanting in unison, marching in lockstep, waving the little red book, or doing what George Orwell calls “physical jerks.” To date, only the North Koreans can rival the Chinese in staging such spectacles of sheer numbers. It is the totalitarian aesthetic at its most beguiling and frightening. It is the power of ritual.


A new book called Ritual and Its Consequences argues that ritual is a quintessential human activity because it creates an “as if” world in which identities are made, boundaries tested, and human potentialities stretched. It can be used by rulers to solidify the existing order, or by the malcontent to imagine alternative worlds. The Chinese Communist Party, since its days of fighting guerrilla warfare in the countryside, has tapped the powers of ritual with consummate skill: it famously invented the ritual of fanshen (turning over) to denounce the ancien regime and the social order it presided over; and it mandated (and to some extent still does) mass participation in a numbing array of state-orchestrated rituals (such as mass rallies) to cultivate loyalty and conformity.

The Party understands well the transformative power of ritual: it can goad a timid peasant to point an accusing finger at a local despot, inspire saintly acts of self-sacrifice in an ordinary person, or make schoolgirls savagely beat their teacher to death. Zhang Yimou, too, has understood this well since his days as a cinematographer. The 1980s classic, Yellow Earth (directed by Chen Kaige, with Zhang as cinematographer), already gives us a good taste of Zhang’s passion for mass rituals leavened with bold colors and primal music. In a brief but powerful scene set in Yan’an, the Party’s headquarters during the war of resistance against Japan, a large assembly of men in peasant jackets and white turbans dance to the stirring beat of waist-drums, kicking up clouds of dust and a delirious atmosphere of festivity. They are sending off new Red Army recruits who file past with red ribbons tied across their torsos—after the bridegroom’s fashion at rural weddings. The scene is a potent reminder that it was the Party’s ability to absorb folk arts and rituals into its political theater, as much as its Marxist-Leninist ideology and military know how, that enabled it to sweep into power in 1949.

To be sure, the film ends on a subversive note of skepticism, showing a huge gathering of peasants prostrating on the parched yellow earth in a rain-seeking ritual and then surging forth in a direction away from the far horizon where the protagonist and communist soldier Gu Qing reappears after a period of absence. The ending suggests that the Party saves neither the girl (Cuiqiao) from the fate of arranged marriage, nor the peasants in general from the blight of poverty and ignorance. Such discordant moments, however, are rare in Zhang’s later, martial arts epics. Beginning with Hero, Zhang seems enthralled by what Susan Sontag calls “fascinatin’ fascism,” or power dressed up as splendid spectacles. Repeatedly, he knocks us dead with glorious mise-en-scènes of ancient humanity, surprisingly agile in their quaintly cumbersome accoutrements not unlike those worn by portions of the opening ceremony performers, carrying out the will of a tyrant with unstoppable menace. These are the films that have at last turned a profit for Zhang and endeared him to the authorities. They are seductive in the same way that films about the Nazi aesthetics of pomp and violence have perversely held audiences’ attention worldwide for decades.


It is no accident that a New York Times profile of Zhang Yimou calls him China’s Leni Riefenstahl. Whether or not the analogy is fair, Zhang’s success owes as much to an iron-fisted regime that loves grandeur as to our irrepressible fascination with aestheticized and ritualized politics, particularly its ability to galvanize people to achieve the seemingly impossible. In comparison, democratic politics (unless it resorts to imperialist, shock’n’awe-style violence against a “rogue” nation) is hopelessly drab and tedious—how on earth does one turn C-Span into a visually stunning and emotionally arousing spectacle? The same book on ritual mentioned earlier asserts that modern western societies cling to the virtue of sincerity and authenticity out of a profound distrust of ritual. Ritual appears to many as empty formality devoid of genuine feeling. But this doesn’t mean that we are immune to its allures of creativity, theatricality, and communality, or its promise to lift us out of our private, atomized existence.

Somewhat reassuringly, China has chosen a sporting event, rather than war or conquest, as its rite of passage, transposing its mass rituals from Tiananmen Square to the National Stadium, affectionately known as the Bird’s Nest. Sports, along with cinema, pretty much remains the only legitimate domain where our appetite for grand spectacle can be safely satisfied. Hence the nearly universal insistence that the Olympics is not about politics and should not be politicized. But as the organizers and would-be protesters are well aware, ritual takes us to an “as if” world where there are as many dreams as there are people and where the joust to control meaning is nothing if not political.


So is not the motto for the Beijing Olympics, “One world, one dream,” a tad naive? It’s a beautiful ideal, but it ill prepares one for the inconvenient fact of human plurality and the inevitable clashes of desires and interests. Might not “Many dreams, a single planet” better serve China as well as the rest of the world?

Images from The New York Times.

Painting Over Mao: Notes on the Inauguration of the Beijing Olympic Games

By Geremie R. Barmé

The ancient city of Beijing was literally turned on its head to help achieve the effects of the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday August 8, 2008. Six hundred years ago the city was designed around a north-south axis that runs from the south of the old city through the Forbidden City and on north. Along this axis the spectacles of imperial times would unfold (including the imperial “Tours of the South” or nanxun that were a major feature of the reigns of the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors in the Qing dynasty). Since the 1910s, however, Chang’an Avenue, now a multi-laned highway that runs east-west through the heart of Beijing, became the focus for military parades. From the 1950s, mass rallies organized by China’s ruling Communist Party have paraded along the avenue past Tiananmen, the most recent of these grand demonstrations being held in 1999 to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic (see my essay “Let the Spiel Begin”).

As part of the makeover of the city in the last decade the long-disused north-south imperial axis has been revived with a rebuilt city gate far in the south and a new park at Yongding Men, as well as a lengthy shopping mall at Qianmen that abuts Tiananmen Square. On Friday night as a prelude to the start of the Olympic opening ceremony a line of fireworks exploded in a series of “footprints” along this axis describing a path to the Bird’s Nest National Stadium.

Far in advance of this the ceremony designers created a digital mock up of the fireworks so that TV viewers in China and internationally could see an idealized version of Beijing’s central axis. To achieve the desired effect they even edited out the pollution-haze that generally covers the city despite years of effort and billions of dollars. The show that followed was also one of canny artifice, stunning design and digital wizardry. Zhang Yimou, the renowned filmmaker and overall director of the show, used a quotation from Mao Zedong to describe the thinking behind the opening: “using the past to serve the present and the foreign to serve China.”

Most observers noted that Mao, the Party Chairman who founded the People’s Republic in 1949 and led the country until his death in 1976 (launching the disastrous Great Leap Forward in the late 50s and the decade of disruption of the Cultural Revolution from 1966) was entirely absent from this paean to China’s past civilization. Of course, they might have missed the pregnant absence of the dead leader in the heavily rewritten “Song to the Motherland” (Gechang zuguo 歌唱祖国), in which he originally featured, that was mimed by nine-year-old Lin Miaoke 林妙可 that opens the show (the real singer was Yang Peiyi 杨沛宜, who was excluded on the grounds that she was not suitably photogenic). However, in reality, the Great Helmsman did get a look in, if only obliquely.

On the unfurled paper scroll that features centre stage early in the performance, dancers trace out a painting in the “xieyi” 写意, or impressionistic, style of traditional Chinese art. Their lithe movements create a vision of mountains and a river, to which is added a sun. It is a something of a stock scene of the kind seen in countless Chinese ink paintings. However, to my mind at least, it is an image that also evokes the painting-mural that forms a backdrop to the statue of the Chairman in the Mao Memorial Hall in the centre of Beijing (another version of this image hung prominently in the Great Hall of the People from the 1960s). That picture, designed by Huang Yongyu 黄永玉, a noted artist persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, is, in turn, inspired by a line from Mao’s most famous poem ‘Snow’ 沁园春・雪 (February 1936) that reads “How splendid the rivers and mountains of China” (jiangshan ru ci duo jiao 江山如此多娇). The poem lists the prominent rulers of dynastic China and ends by commenting on how all these great men fade in comparison to the true heroes of the modern world: the people. The poem is generally interpreted as being about Mao himself, the hero of the age (for a discussion of this, see my book Shades of Mao, 1996).

In their opening ceremony design, what Zhang Yimou and his colleagues achieve (among many, sometimes too many, other things), be it intentional or not, is a rethinking of this reference. Eventually, the painting is colored in by children with brushes and the sun becomes a jaunty “smiley face.” In the remaining blank space of the landscape the athletes of the world track the rainbow of Olympic colors as they take up their positions following their entry to the stadium. Thus, a Chinese landscape, with its coded political references (after all, what does a sun usually mean in modern-style guohua 国画?), is transformed into something that is suffused with a new and embracing meaning by the global community. It offers a positive message for the future of China’s engagement with the world, not only to international audiences, but perhaps also to China’s own leaders, who, apart from Premier Wen Jiabao, for the most part sat stony-faced through the extravaganza. It is also significant that many of the high-points of the opening ceremony were the result of a collective collaboration of designers working closely with Chinese artists who have returned from long years overseas, as well as with British and Japanese creators.

But after the spectacular highlights of traditional China that feature the Four Great Inventions (the segment on moveable type, in particular, is a triumph), powerful images jostle with each other, or appear momentarily only to be crowded out as one mass scene after another presses in, or some vignette comes and goes in a flood of fleeting glitz. The Chinese voice-over on CCTV1 spoke repeatedly about traditional aesthetics and the language of understatement and elegance, but after an enthralling and uplifting introduction and paean to the achievements of dynastic Chinese civilization, as the show enters the present age a certain failure of artistic coherence becomes increasingly obvious.

Thus, one could argue that the extraordinary landscape painting contains another, quite unintended, message. The “xieyi” style of Chinese art particularly values emptiness or lacunae (kong 空 or xu 虚, the spaces in paintings are also known as liubai 留白): those pregnant spaces untouched by the brush that bring the composition to life, the “vacuum” in which meaning finds full expression. In the second half of the show that inaugurated the XXIXth Olympiad with its increasing number of rapid highlights—the problematic use of the intense close-up drowned by the massing of performers—there is scarce room and an unsteady rhythm in what could have been, and in parts still is, a breathtaking work. The exciting promise of the opening sequences remains sadly under-realized.

While Zhang Yimou had overall directorial authority for the design and staging of the opening ceremony, Zhang Jigang 张继钢, deputy minister of propaganda in the PLA General Logistics Department who had worked on the Chinese ceremony at the Athens Games, was in charge of the first half of the show. The second half (including the entrance of the athletes and the torch-lighting ceremony) was overseen by Chen Weiya 陈维亚, artistic director of the generally stodgy Song & Dance Ensemble of the East (东方歌舞团). He has also designed the closing ceremony. Chen is known for the designs he has made for Tiananmen Square mass gatherings, the 2001 World University Student Games and the opening ceremony of the 2005 East Asia Games. Apart from the push-and-pull of directorial intent created by this leadership team, there were other expectations that had to be met. For example, the Beijing Olympic Games is also a vehicle for the promotion of the au courant Party line of ‘harmony’ (hexie 和谐), be it local or global. The original show was to feature a scene comprising a massed army of huge “piying” 皮影 (screen puppet) Terracotta Warriors made in the style of Shaanxi Qinqiang 秦腔 Opera puppets. Images of these figures featured in the media following the first rehearsal of the show in July this year. Recalling not only the era of the First Emperor of the Qin, but also Zhang Yimou’s 2002 film “Hero,” the phalanx of puppets was designed to perform a victory march in the stadium. They were cut from the show on advice from the Beijing Olympic Committee who deemed that they were too martial in tone. The internationally recognized Qin Warriors were replaced at the last minute by puppets made up as Beijing Opera performers. They feature in a lacklustre scene that has been widely derided by Chinese bloggers and Beijing viewers.

So, to my mind, while there was much to commend the performance in terms of scale and synchronized collective performance, after we leave the retrospect on pre-modern China (one in which the narrative about millennia of peace, exchange, harmony and friendship is problematic in other ways) coherence is sacrificed for the sake of a number of designed-by-committee themes. Meanwhile, the sardonic wit, irony and general raffishness of Beijing humor are noteworthy for their complete absence from the festivities.

The general busyness of the action and the overall bling that detract from the moments of magic in the show contain perhaps a significant cultural message in their own right. Quotations from Confucius or the repeated talk of harmony do little to disguise a paucity that is not about either “xu” or aesthetic restraint, a vision in which less is allowed to be more. At least China has the wherewithal to talk about the value of pregnant pauses and the richness of the empty space, in previous Olympic opening ceremonies, such as those held in the US and Australia, there was simply too much clamour and horror vacui.

Immediately after the Beijing ceremony one Chinese web blogger commented, “We’ve been waiting for this banquet for a long time. Instead what we got was hot-pot in which all the flavors have ended up confused.” People will debate the contents and significance of this particular visual banquet for some time to come. Despite all this, what does remain is a Chinese painting in which the whole world, through its athletes, has helped co-create.

Geremie R. Barmé is a professor of Chinese history at The Australian National University. His latest book is The Forbidden City (Harvard University Press, 2008). A shorter version of this article appeared in Sydney Morning Herald on August 11, 2008.

How to Talk to Strangers: Beijing's Advice

After her recent publication of the piece, "China Expands Its Courtesy: Saying 'Hello' to Strangers," in the May 2008 issue of the Journal of Asian Studies, we asked Mary Erbaugh if she might consider writing a short related piece for us. Herewith, her advice on greetings for those currently in Beijing--and we urge you to track down a copy of the current JAS issue and read the longer piece as well.

By Mary S. Erbaugh

US parents warn their children, “Don't talk to strangers!” But Chinese adults traditionally avoid even superficial greetings to strangers. This preserves a distinction between insiders and outsiders (nei wai you bie) which honors insiders but deflects con artists and unwelcome requests. People remain wary until they know someone's title, surname, and background through networks of connections (guanxi) with kin, classmates, and colleagues. People do not say “hello” even to neighbors on the street. In stores, restaurants, train stations, taxis, post offices or clinics, customers request service without pleasantries: “Pork chop noodles!,” “To the east bus station!” Good service focuses on a quick but silent response. Strangers remain lonely and vulnerable to rudeness, as any Chinese bus rider knows.

Mandarin classes and phrasebooks for foreigners stress phrases which are supposed to be equivalents to English “hello,” “please,” “sorry,” “thanks” and “good-bye.” But surprisingly, such phrases are not universal. The Mandarin versions turn out to be very recent, unfamiliar translations from European languages. Using them can sound as awkward, conversation-stopping, and potentially sarcastic as saying bon jour in a Mississippi gas station.

Yet the Beijing government has launched the biggest propaganda campaign since the Cultural Revolution to press people to use exactly these “five courteous phrases” (wuge limao de ci): “hello” (nin hao), “please” (qing) “sorry” (duibuqi), “thanks” (xiexie) and “goodbye” (zai jian). This deliberately innocuous effort repudiates the painful political labels of the Cultural Revolution in hopes of a public sphere that is depoliticized, harmonious, hygienically free of trash, spitting, and public urination, and internationally recognized as a world-class “civilization’ (wenming limao). (For details, see Erbaugh 2008). In the propaganda poster in Illustration 1, even zoo monkeys urge garbage-throwing visitors, “Could you please act more civilized!”

The shift toward using the five courteous phrases fills a historically recent gap in greeting foreign visitors. But the phrases are beginning to catch on locally to bridge a gap in Chinese social relations. Hundreds of millions of Chinese have suddenly found themselves as strangers in new factories and high-rise neighborhoods where 40 percent of people surveyed don't know the names of their neighbors. Self-help best sellers, arguing that talking to strangers can be good business, coach readers on how to use the phrases. Illustration 2 shows readers how to say an honorific “hello” (nin hao) to someone they know.


Adding the phrases onto traditional insider courtesy is a slow process, especially outside the metropolis. Each phrase carries problematic historic overtones. English “hello” or “hi,” translated as nin hao, sounds closer to “Greetings to the honored people,” adapted from ceremonial group greetings, e.g. leaders reviewing the troops from Tian'anmen Square or students greeting their teachers. “Please” (qing) is a verb, traditionally restricted to superior making an offer to an inferior, “might I invite you to do X.” Customers who say qing sound contradictory. Service workers are reluctant to say it, for it risks both cheekiness and assuming responsibility for situations which are often out of their control, e.g. running out of stock.

“Sorry,” translated as duibuqi, is literally “I cannot rise to face you,” closer to “I beg you to forgive me. How can I make it up to you?” It takes responsibility for serious wrong doing which demands reparations. For minor lapses, people often say “[I'm] embarrassed” (bu hao yisi) or borrow the widely understood Cantonese phrase for “[I] shouldn't / sorry / excuse me / please / thanks” (m goi). In the US people say “sorry” or “excuse me” to request attention. In Mandarin, “may I ask...” (qing wen) is often less confusing. “Thank you,” translated as xiexie, comes from “[I] refuse [it],” and the necessity to refuse any offer three times. Waiters and clerks find it confusing. “Goodbye,” translated as zai jian, sounds more like “farewell” or even bon voyage, to people you never expect to see again. Family, friends and colleagues do not tempt fate by saying it; they simply say “[I'm] leaving” (zou le).

What are you supposed to say instead of the five phrases? The title (“teacher,” “manager,” even a fictive kinship title like “grandpa”), plus surname, plus a situational comment: “Have you eaten?,” “You must be busy,” “Where are you going?” US visitors often feel their privacy has been invaded, but respond literally: “Well, I had breakfast rather late” or “I'm going to my friend Lee's house.” But situational comments are usually merely pro forma efforts to establish a connection. Only a vague response is needed: “I've eaten,” “Very busy,” “Going out.” The less people have seen foreigners, the more curious they are. Decades ago as a student in Taipei, passers-by exhausted me by yelling, “Foreigner!” “How old are you?” “Are you married?” “How many children do you have?” “Where do you live?” “What did you pay for those socks?” A recent propaganda poster in the Beijing neighborhood near Tian'anmen Square lists “Eight ‘Don't Ask’ Topics for Foreigners”: age, marital status, occupation, income, health status, as well as politics or religion.

Chinese do ask each other specific questions both from curiosity and to establish common ground when they are first introduced, especially hometown, school, and employer. Even the politest Chinese try to establish a connection with questions that US visitors may react to as annoying or clichéd: “What country are you from?” “How long have you been in China?” “Can you use chopsticks?” “What do you think of China?” China values the right phrase for each situation. Americans can grow impatient when a Chinese says “I'm happy to be in... the Big Apple / the Windy City / Nanjing, one of China's ‘three furnaces’ of hot weather / Hangzhou by the beautiful West Lake / at the Hai'er Company, China's biggest maker of home appliances.” But to Chinese ears, conventional comments show sensitivity to where you are and what to say. Americans relish political debate. But Chinese are unlikely to exhort Americans to close Guantanamo, free Puerto Rico, or pay reparations for African-American slavery. Ironically, Olympic sports talk offers situational comments with a very simple vocabulary: team names, nationalities, scores, and good wishes.

Mary S. Erbaugh is Courtesy Research Associate in the center for Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Oregon.

Illustration 1 Credit:
于保勋。‘招我急哪？’ 中央文明办秘书组和中国科普作家协会。2003。改陋习，讲文明。北京：华夏出版社。第23页。
Yu Baoxun. 'Are you trying to make me mad?' In Zhongyang Wenming Ban Mishu Zu and Zhongguo Kepu Zuojia Xiehui {Central Secretariat for Civilized Behavior and Chinese Writers’ Committee for Popularizing Science}. 2003. Gai chou xi, jiang wenming (Change Ugly Customs, Emphasize Cultivation). Beijing: Huaxia chuban she. P. 23.

Illustration 2 Credit:
潘顺琪。 ‘与熟人打招呼’ 。靳羽西。2000。魅力何来：做一个有风度，有品位，有修养的现代人。上海：上海文艺出版社。第79页。
Pan Shunqi. 'Greeting someone you know'. Kan, Yu-sai [Jin Yuxi]. 2000. Meili helai: Zuo yi ge you fengdu, you pinwei, you xiuyang de xiandai ren (Etiquette for Modern Chinese / The Source of Beauty: Become a Poised, Refined, Cultivated Modern Person). Shanghai: Wen yi chuban she.

From the US to China, By Way of Israel

This is the fifth installment in our series on the Olympics around the world. Here Berkeley grad and assistant professor at University of Haifa Shakhar Rahav shares how Israeli media is covering China and the Olympics.

By Shakhar Rahav

I have recently returned to my native Israel after a long sojourn in the USA. One of the things I have been looking for here is the way in which China is covered and portrayed in the Israeli media, and what images of China arise in local discourse.

As elsewhere, there is much media coverage of China these days--most of it fed by economic and commercial interests on the one hand, and by interest in the Olympics and the Olympic-hype on the other.

Indeed, most interest in China is generated by commercial interests and as such reflects our globalizing world, where economic opportunity determines interest in geography. Appropriately perhaps, most media coverage that I have seen tends to be “borrowed” [I suppose in fact purchased] from other media outlets, either the large press-agencies like Associated Press and Reuters, or respectable, and for the most part pro-market, American and British newspapers such as The Economist, Bloomberg, or The New York Times (often from the business section).

[Why these newspapers and not others deserves an inquiry in itself--is it propelled simply by the power relations between the countries? Are we partial to British newspapers because of the British Mandate that ruled historic Palestine between the end of WW I and 1948?]

Most presentation of this kind therefore emphasizes China’s economic growth and its market potential. Occasionally, this coverage is punctuated by original pieces that mainly address questions such as, why haven’t Israeli firms established a more significant presence in China? Why are we not yet profiting ourselves from the bonanza of China’s economic growth? And so forth.

There are no Israeli China correspondents who report from the country on a regular basis. The occasional articles about the destabilizing and deleterious effect of economic growth are translated from the international press as well and do not justify holding a regular China correspondent. The economic logic of this is clear, yet absurdities may arise. The attack earlier this week on Chinese security personnel in Kashgar that claimed 16 victims was prominently featured, even supplying a huge front-page photo for the country’s elite liberal daily paper, Ha’aretz. The reporting was mainly a summary of foreign outlets. Yet The New York Times reporting on the incident, if one read it in detail, also quoted an Israeli expert on China and Xinjiang. When the expert appeared in Ha’aretz the following day it was only because the paper translated en bloc an entire article from The New York Times.

Yet the Olympics have of course prompted some independent coverage. The country’s best-selling newspaper Yedi’ot Aharonot devoted its entire front page to a huge photo of rehearsals of the Olympic opening ceremony. The pages are now full with talk of “the Chinese”: “The Chinese” are waiting impatiently for the games, “The Chinese” are worried about security, “The Chinese” like harmony--and so forth. Most prominent, of course, is television coverage, and the indigenous TV reporters who, as part of their media mission, are required to fill the time with incessant chatter.

Most talk centers on the sports and the competitors, and also on “our athletes.” Yet during the ceremony coverage some remarks betray a fascination with the host country and anxiety about it. “The nightclubs” have been closed report the reporters, referring to the Sanlitun centered scene (not a word about recent roundups of dissidents and gadflies). The machine-like precision of the opening ceremonies made some reporters anxious, and they spoke of the kind of state, and regime that is necessary to produce such a highly-disciplined performance (echoes of Nazi Germany and the USSR to these reporters’ minds). More contemporary concerns emerged as a former Israeli athlete who is now a TV commentator said that she hopes the exposure to the West will bring some positive advances and advance human rights. And the funniest remark, covering one of the duller moments in the ceremony, was the TV anchor who remarked on the huge amount of restaurants in the city, and then added, “they have a huge appetite.” So it is, evidently--large countries produce large appetites.

And it is appetite that brings me to the most striking presentation of China that I have encountered here. A McDonald's ad campaign presents a George W. Bush look alike, who in a commercial clip is surrounded by American-speaking security personnel dressed in suits and dark glasses, who hurry the president to a McDonald’s at an undisclosed location in Israel. After the president satisfies his urges by ordering a Big Mac, he offers a couple of Israeli children tickets to the Olympic Games in “Beijing.” The American president consequently adorns posters in McDonald’s and holds out two tempting tickets at the customer. And so, “America,” the agent of globalization, the major force and cultural ideal, presents us with food and with entertainment. It is via the USA that we the customers are invited to China. The USA, and China are thus mixed, both representing perhaps the larger international community, and the “cool” of our globalized age. The images are enhanced by McDonald’s clever agreements with the film "Kung Fu Panda," and with the Olympic Games it sponsors. McDonald’s now opens the door to an internationalized China offering Kung Fu, noodles, and burgers.

America opens the door to China. It was perhaps an understanding of this wisdom that gave basketball player Yao Ming the symbolic role of flag bearer for the Chinese Olympic delegation. The athlete, whose stardom is derived from his success in the American NBA world, leads the symbol of national pride, and so America paves the road to China, even, perhaps, for Chinese.

Shakhar Rahav is assistant professor of modern Chinese history in the Department of Asian Studies at University of Haifa.

President Bush Wanders Onto NBC Set

George W. Bush was interviewed live on NBC by Bob Costas just a few hours ago. A short but wide-ranging interview, the President covered China's human rights record ("America better remain engaged"), China and religion ("once religion takes hold in a society it can't be stopped"), Georgia ("I was very firm with Vladimir Putin"), Sudan ("Joey Cheek has just got to know that I took the Sudanese message [to the Chinese government] for him"), and doping in sports.

The interview was enormously casual--to Costas's question if Hu Jintao was "receptive" to Bush's message on Sudan, Bush responded "It's hard to tell."

For a full transcript, see here, or watch below.



It's unclear from the interview whether Bush ever did his assigned reading, but we're guessing not.

What Happened to the Women?

The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was so magnificently awe-inspiring as to prompt the NBC anchors to declare that, if there were a trophy for the opening ceremonies, then it must be retired. Vancouver and London certainly have their work cut out for them.

Yet as I watched a string of stunning performances of Chinese men—banging on brass drums, doing quasi-qigong dance, executing a shanshui painting with their bodies while dancing on the world’s largest LCD screen, etc., etc., all capped by the 7’6”-tall flag bearer Yao Ming—I wondered, where did China’s 640 million women go? Sure, a 9-year-old girl sang the national anthem, and another 9-year-old girl floated over the mixed-gender group of children from the 56 recognized nationalities. The group of schoolchildren in the end was also mixed gender, but adult women were minorities in the evening’s performance. I kept squinting at various performers in an attempt to ascertain their gender, but the fact that I had to look so hard indicated that something was wrong.

Many gorgeous women floated around the stage in modified Tang costume, moving very delicately, as if they actually were dolls made of porcelain (or perhaps as if their huge dresses were unbearably hot and heavy). A single woman floated out on a magic carpet-type platform supported by dozens of people beneath her, and her entire performance of swirling colored scarves around herself while she “floated” lasted maybe 2 minutes. Another handful of women actually did float like angels over the 90,000 spectators in the Bird’s Nest, with lights illuminating their ever-smiling faces of serene beauty. But that was about it. In his world-class exposé of pre-packaged Chinese culture, Zhang Yimou cast women as docile, delicate, and demure pin-up girls.

I’d never be one to say that China—or any nation in the world—has full gender equality today, but neither would I dismiss the very real advances that China has made in that direction. Shouldn’t that be recognized and celebrated on the world stage? Apparently Zhang Yimou does not think so. He lost a very wonderful opportunity to challenge the stereotype of submission that plagues Asian women everywhere. Yet China’s 639-strong Olympic team has already won 6 gold and 2 silver medals. One of the gold’s was won by 48-kilogram Chen Xiexia, who lifted 117 kilograms, more than twice her own body weight, seemingly without even breaking a sweat (US’ers can see the video on nbcolympics.com).

This intrigues me given that I recently finished Andrew Morris’s book, Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China, in which he goes against what many scholars have said—including Fan Hong in her agreeably uncritical book Footbinding, Feminism, and Freedom, and Wang Zheng in her portrait of women’s physical educator Lu Lihua in Women in the Chinese Enlightenment—to assert that the world of Chinese athletics from the late Qing through the early Communist era was expressly male-centric. Morris argues that even the well-executed attempts of many Chinese women to re-define physical culture to be more inclusive failed because “women were still disproportionately blamed for their lack of attention to physical fitness and were stereotypically described in terms of a history of weakness and sloth” (p. 118). In other words, men policed the boundaries of “their” world of physical activity to keep women out, and they continually defined the aim of sport to be ridding China of the ignominious title of “Sick Man of East Asia,” a male-centric geopolitical goal of proving Chinese masculinity to the imperialist nations whose Orientalism cast Asians as passive and weak. Morris says that, although some advances for women were made through physical culture, in reality it was just a shift from Cherry Coke to Vanilla Coke—women’s bodies, first defined and controlled by Confucian patriarchy, were in the Republican and early Communist eras defined and controlled by nationalist patriarchy.

I’m going to be optimistic and assume that things are at least slightly different in Chen Xiexia’s China, despite the sometimes violent persistence of nationalist patriarchy (there and everywhere!). I’m going to let a 106-pound woman who easily lifts 258 pounds over her head represent today’s Chinese women, despite the fact that Zhang Yimou’s testosterone-filled celebration pulled on my heart strings.

Big and Small Nation(alisms): A view from Aotearoa-New Zealand

This is the fourth installment in our series of views of the Olympic Games from around the world. Here, Paola Voci, a senior lecturer in the Chinese Language Programme at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, reflects on her mixed national affiliations, and how they affected her viewing of the opening ceremonies.

By Paola Voci

And so it was. All as expected; all that is indeed the stereotypical China: the long civilization, the characters, the Confucian traditions, the big inventions, the huge number of people, and of course the fireworks. Zhang Yimou copied and pasted it all together so that the audience—both “them” and “us”—could safely enjoy familiar images, saturated with spectacular effects.

And there I was watching it all on TV like billions of others, an Italian “sinologist” turned into a Chinese film and media researcher in the USA, who ultimately landed in New Zealand five years ago to teach about China in Dunedin, at the very bottom of Aotearoa’s South Island.

China and the Olympics have not been particularly big in the Kiwi news—only the New Zealand Herald and the Dominion Press have put it on the front page as the main event today. But of course, yesterday night TVONE had to cover it all and from 9:30 pm until 4:30 am New Zealand turned its attention to China as “she was taking over the world stage” (as one of the commentators, the Chinese-born Sophie Zhang, mentioned).

China is still strangely a remote country here. I say “strangely” not only because Prime Minister Helen Clark was the first “western” leader to sign a free trade agreement with China, but also because Chinese are the first minority in Aotearoa and are likely to surpass Maori in numbers in the next few years. Yet, multiculturalism and intercultural communications are still slow to grow in a country where biculturalism, although officially embraced, is still very much contested. For instance, despite their growing presence—especially in Auckland—and their impact on national culture and economy, the Chinese in New Zealand have not yet found a strong diasporic voice in Kiwi culture (with very few exceptions in the world of the arts: the poet/writer Alison Wong or the filmmaker Roseanne Liang). In NZ media, Chinese and Asians more broadly are seldom visible. In other words, yesterday was quite an exceptional day, as China literally occupied national media as a mighty protagonist for several hours and the Olympics literally acted as a rush introductory course on Chinese culture (as the TVONE commentators themselves declared: “that has truly been a learning experience”).

Before the live coverage began on TVONE, as I was channel browsing I caught a bit of a popular news program “Campbell Live” (TVTHREE). The short reportage on the Olympics really captured the way that many Kiwi still relate to China. The correspondent in Beijing was an absolute parody of journalism. She, of course, did not speak any Chinese, but she was quite happy to advertise it as perfectly natural (why on earth would NZ Television have wanted to send to China a journalist who could actually speak Chinese?). She smiled and noted how nice it was that everybody spoke English to her and how great it was that in fact she did not need to speak Mandarin—that alien language that English-speaking people could not (or would not want to?) learn. And how grateful she was that even the taxi-driver could speak some English and even gave himself an English name! He took her around Beijing, in those “complicated” streets—because you know “it is so complicated here” (of course anybody who had ever been in Beijing would know in fact, that aside of the horrible traffic and the very few hutong now left in the city, BJ’s streets are quite “uncomplicated.” Has she ever tried to drive in any medieval-conceived town in Italy or to walk around Venice?

I was getting quite irritated with this correspondent and her coverage of the 160,00 registered marriages on the lucky Olympic day (I am not sure how many times I subsequently heard the wrong reference to how the number 8 “means” “wealth” in Chinese…Nobody, not even the “real” Chinese Sophie Zhang, bothered to gave the correct pronunciation of “8” and the explanation with the quasi-homophone character…).

I turned to TVONE where the before-the-ceremony programming included an interview with Edwin Maher (an Australian news reporter who used to work for NZ Broadcasting and is now CCTV English Channel news reader). He could not believe that from his humble beginnings he had now landed such a prestigious job. He dismissed accusations of being “a mouthpiece of the government” and noted that, yes, CCTV is state television, but greater freedom has been achieved by the Chinese media in the past few years. He quoted the coverage of the Sichuan earthquake as evidence of a changed attitude to news broadcasting in China. While I do tend to agree with him that the media coverage of the earthquake was remarkably truthful and literally mobilized millions of people both in and outside of China in the efforts to help survivors, when it comes to CCTV’s freedom I am less optimistic than Mr. Maher.

But Edwin Maher’s humble attitude is at the core of something else I wanted to note about the Kiwi perspective on China. Let me get to my point about big and small nationalisms. It is obvious that the Olympic opening ceremony was a proud display of nationalism for China. Every little detail in the choreographed spectacle was designed to emphasize the rhetoric of the one China with her many ethnic minorities, as well as the one China facing great challenges thanks to the solidarity and strength of its people. Among the challenges that the ceremony most directly referred to were the battles to achieve unprecedented economic growth and overcome terrible natural disasters (other human-caused disasters which in fact deeply wounded and divided the nation needed to be left out). The one China rhetoric was also well-reflected in one of the least noticeable choices of the Olympic organizers: as the 600-plus Chinese athletes finally walked into the stadium, the French and English speakers announced the arrival of the team of the “People’s Republic of China,” but the Chinese speaker simply said “Zhongguo – China.”

So while it is clear to me the type of nationalism that was shown on my TV screen from a Chinese perspective, I found myself reflecting on how “my” NZ commentators were both in admiration but also somehow suspicious of this grandeur. From a Kiwi’s perspective, such a display of spectacular nationalism is both impressive and at odds with some of the most defining traits of the New Zealand spirit: Kiwis’ dignified humbleness, and their friendly low-keyness.

Before the ceremony, an inside look to the International Media centre revealed to the Kiwi audience that the American NBC network just by itself had one entire floor – “3000 of them!”; the camera then took us down to the basement, where the small TVNZ team worked happily and humbly. They noted that in the Kiwi camp there is “no Starbucks or Mc Donald’s,” clearly distancing themselves from the American way of doing things and reclaiming a much more down-to-earth Kiwi way. On a similar note, before the ceremony, another news reporter interviewed Kiwi about the haka—should all the athletes perform them? It used to be only a trademark of the All Blacks, but increasingly other sport teams and individuals have adopted the traditional Maori haka. People smiled and overwhelmingly indicated that they would love to see more haka—this small but powerful display of New Zealand pride. No special effects, no sophisticated fireworks, just bodies and voices. (Among the many haka videos available on YouTube, here is one with Japanese commentators, another with French Commentators.)

After only five years, I can hardly call myself a Kiwi. Yet, I found myself thinking that if “we” were to host the Olympics, it would be really nice to welcome “you” with a huge, four million person haka. But of course Maori protocol would not allow women (or foreigners?!) to join in…

As the ceremony unfolded and New Zealand and Italy happened to walk into the stadium one after the other (that was done I am sure just for my benefit – thanks, Zhang Yimou!), I quickly abandoned my own personal moment of imagined Kiwi nationalism. As I was watching some of the Italian team members lingering behind and being pushed by the kind but firm organizers to move on, I said out loud (in Italian): “i soliti Italiani casinisti” (there, the usual chaotic Italians)…this time more “appropriately” recognizing myself as an Italian and allowing myself to laugh at one of “our” national stereotypes.

But it was too late for me to elaborate on this other nationalist thought with a more sophisticated analysis. Finally, the speeches began. No translation was given for the president of Beijing’s Olympic organizing committee’s speech—as if all Kiwis could in fact understand what he was saying. The commentators stayed silent. I guess they could not marvel at how great it was that everybody spoke English and that they did not need to speak Mandarin as the news journalist on TV3 had just done before. As Jacques Rogge’s speech began, they simply started to talk again, praising Mr. Rogge‘s warning against cheating and doping.

Then the hero’s (indeed a true Zhang Yimou’s Hero) finale. With no title credits, the show ended (and of course began).

Building Beijing

By Eric Setzekorn

Even before Beijing was awarded the Olympic Games in 2001, the pace of construction in the city was frantic and relentless. A combination of expansive central planning, low interest loans, and a real estate bubble have all contributed to the construction of hundreds of new buildings and massive infrastructure development. Lax regulatory and environmental laws combined with a desire by politicians to make Beijing a “showcase” have enticed dozens of the world’s best architects to experiment with new designs and new materials on a scale not possible in New York, London or Berlin. While some critics bemoan these new designs as “shock and awe” architecture and others point to the loss of culturally significant areas such as the hutongs, the scale and pace of development will likely continue well into the next decade as Beijing continues to grow in population and international importance. A more subtle but lingering problem will be integrating these massive center-pieces into Beijing life in a way that is natural and beneficial to residents struggling to adapt to the ever-changing city-scape.

For all Olympic tourists coming from abroad their first experience in Beijing is the massive Terminal 3 building of Beijing Capital airport opening this spring. As the world’s largest building at 10 million square feet (displacing the Pentagon from the top of the list), it overawes visitors with soaring ceilings and a full range of restaurants, shops and convenient services. The Norman Foster-designed structure cost just under $4 billion and went from proposal to completion in less than four years. In addition to its vast scale, the open building layout and obvious attention to diffusing human traffic flow makes the check-in, security and boarding process relatively painless and less like the rugby scrum atmosphere of LAX. This past week the airport express light rail system opened, linking the airport to the rapidly growing subway system. Gushing domestic news reports with riders saying boilerplate phrases such as “Riding it makes me proud to be Chinese” perhaps overstate the importance of the fairly basic light rail link similar to San Francisco’s BART system. However, with tickets costing 25 RMB one way it eliminates the need for a 100-150 RMB journey into Beijing by taxi, the only previous option. The airport link not only makes traffic sense but importantly, for foreign tourists, eliminates the potential for price gouging by taxi drivers on new arrivals which made many first experiences in China a less than happy one. Terminal 3 is not without flaws: food and beverage prices are high, limited electrical outlets and no wireless internet service hinders business travelers, and baggage service is slow. But compared to Heathrow or LAX, it is a comfortable airport.


Perhaps more than any other, the new CCTV headquarters currently being finished in Chaoyang is the most innovative of the new buildings. The lead architect, Ole Scheeren (partner of Rem Koolhaas; the two are in charge of the design), is a household name to many Chinese not only for his architectural work but as the boyfriend of movie star Maggie Cheung, who has reportedly settled in Beijing with him. The main feature of the design is an angled center section joining two towers and that extends dozens of meters at a ninety-degree angle out over the street without independent support. The towers are also angled counter to the joined section at 6 degrees which creates a unique and somewhat disorientating visual effect. A rigid exoskeleton provides support and gives the building the appearance of deep etches at odd, seemingly random angles which adds to the overall effect. At 234 meters in height with a space of 550,000 meters it is planned to hold over 10,000 personnel for China’s CCTV programs.


One of the most important areas of Beijing’s development is a massive investment in academic and educational infrastructure taking place throughout the Haidian University district. Research institutes for the Chinese Academy of Sciences are now scattered around Haidian and outside of town, in the northwest, a new “Space City” is growing as a center of training, research and experimentation for China’s extra-terrestrial ambitions. The new funding dramatically highlights the winners and losers of China’s education system as it enters the twenty-first century. International relations, finance, business and law departments work and study in modern, state-of-the-art facilities, while social sciences and humanities generally remain in drab, concrete boxes with poor lighting and unspeakable bathrooms that retain their mid-50s Stalinist charm. To take one example, the new business and law building at People’s University (Ren Da) is the centerpiece of that campus’s re-development. Towering seventeen stories over a central courtyard, it divides into law department on the east side and business department on the west. However, while the classrooms and offices may be new, the building is at best ill-suited and at worst blights the surrounding campus environment. The courtyard is paved with gray stone which is cold in the winter and hot in the summer. No vegetation of any kind softens the area and there are no benches for workers to eat lunch or students to read. The stark power of the design makes individuals feel insignificant in size and importance—a valuable effect for government buildings but not appropriate for a university campus.


As the capital of a country pegged by many as the next superpower, Beijing has also seen an embassy building boom as nations from around the world seek to bolster their presence and influence. The largest of the new embassies is the American embassy which, except for the Vatican City-sized monstrosity in Iraq’s Green Zone, is the largest American embassy in the world. Opening ceremonies for the embassy are due to be conducted by President Bush during his visit during the Olympics. Surrounded by a drab, sandstone colored blast wall, the mainly glass and silver coated steel embassy main buildings are in the center of the ten acre compound to protect against attack. On-site facilities include housing for much of the six hundred staff and the ambassador’s villa. The embassy is fronted by a water sculpture inside the security wall which serves both a decorative and protective function. Starbucks operates a small stand in the old embassy but will presumably have a larger facility inside the new grounds to compensate for the increased staff. South Korea, Canada, Australia, Iran, India and Germany have all opened new embassies over the past 24 months, mostly outside the traditional diplomatic area around Sanlitun. All the new embassy complexes feature high blast walls that, however necessary in today’s security environment, make the new embassy area a series of grey or beige bunkers standing apart from the city—a sharp contrast to the leafy quiet streets of the old Sanlitun diplomatic area.

The nerve center of the permanent construction revolution in the capital is the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning, which operates a large exhibition space south of Tiananmen Square that explains the larger agenda and program of building under their direction. The 16,000 square meter building draws more tourist than locals, mainly due to the 30 RMB entrance fee, and offers an antiseptic vision of future Beijing with all the hubris of Disney’s Tomorrowland. Vital issues to Beijing, such as completion of the water pipeline from the Yangzi river scheduled to bring 1 billion cubic meters of water per year to Beijing after 2010, are relegated to dark corners, while soaring models of shiny skyscrapers take center-stage. Lingering public health issues such as water safety, sewage treatment, and pollution, which were supposed to be part of Beijing’s pre-Olympic infrastructure modernization, are likewise dismissed with colorful charts and optimistic verbiage. The exhibition’s pride and joy is the 302 square meter model of Beijing in 2020 (much like another in Shanghai’s Urban Planning Hall) which, in contrast to “primitive” old Beijing, is a “modern Beijing of the future.” The attention to detail is truly impressive, with buildings that delight many visitors as they try to find their neighborhoods (which may or may not exist in 2020).

To be continued in Part 2.

Eric Setzekorn is a graduate student at UC Irvine specializing in military history and is currently finishing an exchange semester with the Beijing University history department.

Beijing Olympics 2008: The View from Vancouver (host to Winter 2010 Olympics)

By David Luesink

It is interesting to note the similarities between criticisms of Olympic preparation in Vancouver and Beijing. Although the famously beautiful city of Vancouver is still two years away from hosting the winter Olympics in conjunction with the mountain village of Whistler, we are already running into the standard problems and criticisms familiar to Olympic planners of the past few decades. While air quality and the national human rights record are not likely to be the major issues for Vancouver, other themes show up on a regular basis in the local press, including cost overruns, natural disasters, transportation problems, and the potential irreversibility of turning the city into a virtual police state. Last week’s closure of the highway and rail links between Vancouver and Whistler due to a massive landslide served to show the vulnerability of the “Sea-to-Sky Highway” which connects Vancouver to its world-class winter playground (map).

Although the Olympics claim to bring people together to celebrate the best in sport apart from politics, the clear links between corporate sponsorships and nationalism as a distraction from the increasing gap between rich and poor in countries like China and Canada are only too obvious in the difference between those who can afford tickets and those who must be content to watch events on television. As in Beijing, many Vancouver residents feel that the Olympics will only exacerbate the problem of housing prices for lower and middle-income earners. The city government reneged on early promises for increasing social housing, so some critics claim there will be more homeless people than athletes for 2010.

Perhaps the most interesting Olympic-related story of the past few days in Vancouver is the announcement by the head of Vancouvers Olympic Committee that Vancouver’s Olympics will not organize an international torch relay so they can avoid the kind of protests that marred China’s relay in London and Paris. Perhaps that is as it should be, given the rather monumental job of overcoming the apathetic attitude of many Canadians toward Olympic events unrelated to gold medals in hockey.

David Luesink is a Ph.D. Candidate in Chinese history at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Questioning the Olympic Project: Lessons from Seoul

By Sam Goffman

“You Americans look down on us—you think of us as low-educated and savage. I hope the Olympics can change all that.”

One could be forgiven for thinking the above statement is from contemporary China. In fact, the statement is from a South Korean travel agent, who said it on September 16, 1988, one day before the opening ceremonies of the 1988 Summer Olympics, held in Seoul.[1]

It is striking how many of the expectations regarding what the Olympics will do for China’s status in the world reflect earlier expectations in other East Asian countries that have hosted the Games—Japan in 1964 and Korea in 1988—and, to a lesser extent, other “developing” countries, such as Mexico in 1968. The most far-reaching of these is a yearning for international acknowledgement of the country’s status as a major economic power, and confirmation from Western countries of China’s equal standing as a modern nation-state. This expectation has been covered extensively in foreign media, so much so that it has become almost requisite for stories about the Beijing Olympics to include a line about China’s efforts to appear “modern” to the outside world.

As Susan Brownell noted in a recent essay, China’s view of modernity tends to be about 100 years out of date—based on an evolutionary model of history, it focuses on economic achievements and leaves out more recent, Western-centered additions to the ideal of modernity, such as human rights. The Olympics, in its role as stage on which modernity is performed, certainly plays an important role in this broad historical arc. However, the Olympics act as more than a mere passive demonstration of historical progress: it can also act as a destabilizing event, forcing us to investigate the meaning of “modernity” itself.

The Olympics reveals itself as a stage on which modernity can be performed when it is hosted by what is widely considered to be a developing country. In the run-up to the 1988 Seoul Games, as in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Games, much foreign reporting mentioned that the Olympics gave Seoul a chance to demonstrate its “progress” to the world. What exactly constituted progress in the context of the Games, however, was hardly set in stone. Infrastructure was an obvious consideration—the charter of the International Olympic Committee requires its members to select a host country that shows a clear ability to supply the necessary infrastructure to support the Games. In practice, however, “progress” in the context of the Olympics has been much more ambiguous than merely the capability of building roads, telecom equipment, stadiums, hotels, and other physical necessities.

For the Korean government, as well as the Chinese, progress had an economic meaning more than any other. For protesters who have labeled the 2008 Games the “Genocide Olympics” or who have demonstrated against Chinese treatment of Tibetans, human rights hold a more prominent position. Journalists from Western countries have generally shown that, when it comes to China, progress means more than skyscrapers and expressways. Similarly, reportage about the 1988 Korean Games mentioned poverty, the conflict between North and South Korea, and historic national wounds in the same breath as accolades for Korea’s economic progress.

This essay explores the ways the Olympics can encourage us to think about the meanings of “modernity” itself. Rather than focusing on the 2008 Olympics—which are currently being covered to a huge extent—the essay looks back at the Seoul Olympics. An investigation of this earlier entrance onto the modern world stage of an East Asian country will highlight trends that are once more making an appearance in China.

The 1988 Seoul Olympics: Glitter versus Squalor
As in 2008, foreign media in 1988 generally recognized the importance of the Olympics for Korea’s entry into the club of modern nation-states. Brian Bridges, writing in International Affairs ahead of the Games, noted that “the Olympics do symbolize for the Koreans the international recognition of their country’s desired transition from the Third to the First World,”[2] and the majority of articles about the Games as a whole—as opposed to articles about specific sporting events—expressed this idea.

When writing about the frenzy and excitement surrounding the 1988 Olympics, most foreign journalists first set the scene by describing the vast preparations taking place in Seoul. The larger context of the Olympics was Korea’s meteoric economic rise, and the rapid changes there were indeed remarkable. In 1987, Korea’s gross national product increased 12 percent from the previous year. One article expressed admiration of the range of products Korea exported, “from cars to semiconductors,” and a work force that puts in 57-hour weeks.[3] Another noted that the government had “spent billions of dollars to create a showcase for visitors drawn here by the 1988 Summer Games, and has touted the international event as a symbol of South Korea's advancement as a modern nation.”[4] The apparent anxiety of Korea to seem modern, as noted by these foreign articles, was borne out by the persistent emphasis by Korean officials that their country’s status as “modern” was on par with Western countries. As one official on the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee said, “The world is seeing Korea as an advanced, modern nation.”[5]

Korea’s effort to put its modernity on display was a recurrent theme in foreign reports on the Seoul Games. The emphasis on the Olympics as performance of modernity in these articles has several effects that resonate with today’s coverage of China. First, it immediately marks Korea as an outsider to modernity. Korea had previously been relegated to the realm of the Third World or the Second World; now, it appeared to be rapidly remaking itself into a modern nation-state. The modernity that Korea was attempting to achieve, however, was not homegrown or “natural,” but reflected Western-influenced preconceptions of what modernity should look like. Despite Korean pride in these changes, foreign media frequently presented such efforts to replicate the Western experience as superficial and even phony.

Second, the media’s emphasis on the Olympics as performance encouraged a questioning attitude regarding what it takes for a nation-state to become “modern.” This skepticism about Korea’s claims to modernity revealed itself in the foreign press through a focus on human rights, protests, and especially poverty. In the lead-up to the Games, there was considerable controversy over what role North Korea would play (it ultimately boycotted the Games). The South Korean government’s handling of the situation led to several protests by South Korean students, which many Koreans feared would harm their image during the Olympics. The government’s stance was unwavering: protesters would be sternly dealt with because protests would spoil the atmosphere of the Games and humiliate South Korea in the eyes of the world.[6]

Korean poverty provided the handiest counter-image to the false glitter of the Games, and encouraged several Western news articles to question the modern project as panacea to a nation’s ills. Journalists criticized Korea’s almost exclusive focus on economic achievement as the core of “progress.” In the midst of the Games one reporter traveled to a small Korean town not far from Seoul:

Here in Taejon, signs of the new prosperity also exist. But a visit to this town a little more than an hour south of Seoul also reveals a different picture of the much-touted Korean economic miracle, one in which many people have fallen by the wayside in the march toward progress.[7]

In comparing Seoul’s shining symbols of modernity to the squalor of a nearby town, the author challenges a central precondition of modernity: the uncritical acceptance of “progress,” here narrowly defined as economic progress, as vital for the success of the nation-state. The author notes the disjointed nature of Korea’s modernity, in which poverty can exist alongside wealth and the catchall of “progress” does not include every member of the country. The author also notes the official silencing of conflicting experiences that clash with the overriding narrative of the nation-state’s advancement.

The Olympics, which Korea seized as an opportunity to display its modern progress—a “grand spectacle so carefully orchestrated by government authorities,”[8] as another journalist put it—provided the impetus for Western journalists to question the modern project. That they rarely extended this questioning attitude to their own societies, or explored the historical conditions of Korea’s acceptance of that project, perhaps indicates some willful disregard on their part in addition to the single-minded intensity of the Olympic spotlight.

Looking forward to Beijing
The performance of the Olympics on the world stage seeks to concentrate the nation-state’s achievements onto a relatively localized area; in China, this area is Beijing and several other major cities; in Korea, it was Seoul. Both Korea and China have sought to use the Olympics as a way to situate themselves, by means of these cities, alongside other modern states by putting their progress on display. The Chinese slogan of “One world, one dream” is a fitting précis of this idea.

However, any attempt for a non-Western country—or, more specifically, a country that is widely perceived to have not yet achieved modernity—to enter the club of modern nation-states increases anxiety about whether the country is “ready” to become modern. The Olympics is not merely a screen on which these anxieties can be projected. It serves as a catalyst that forces us to investigate the symbols and values that constitute the very idea of progress. Just as Western reporting about the Seoul Olympics focused on problems in Korea that proved it was not “modern”—human rights, the difficulty of staging protests, problems of poverty—coverage of China has followed a similar path, leading readers away from the Games themselves into a critique of a nation’s position in the world. The Olympics, in its role as world stage, invites a public reexamination of what it means to be modern, thus revealing deeply held tensions in the term, and bringing to the surface its intrinsic ambiguity.

Sam Goffman received a Master's degree in East Asian Studies from Duke University and works for Interfax-China, an economic news service.

[1] New York Times. September 16, 1988.
[2] Bridges, Brian. “East Asia in transition: South Korea in the limelight.” International Affairs. Vol. 64, No. 3. (Summer, 1988), pp. 381-392. P. 382.
[3] New York Times. September 29, 1988.
[4] “Beyond the glitter, some Koreans strive to survive.” Jon Funabiki. 25 September 1988. The San Diego Union-Tribune.
[5] “Korean Official: TV, Not Tourists, Counts.” Associated Press. 24 September 1988. The San Francisco Chronicle.
[6] New York Times. August 16, 1988; August 17, 1988.
[7] “Beyond the glitter, some Koreans strive to survive.” Jon Funabiki. 25 September 1988. The San Diego Union-Tribune. 1,2, A-1.
[8] “South Korea and the Games – on eve of Olympics, survival is more a concern for poor.” Lewis M. Simons. The Seattle Times. 16 September 1988.