China Events: DC and Boston

We've published a few pieces lately on China's coming water crisis, including Ken Pomeranz's "China's Water Woes" (2/12/09). Tomorrow (April 22 from 9-11 a.m. EST), the Wilson Center will host a roundtable on "Asia's Next Challenge -- Securing the Region's Water," for those interested in learning more. For those who aren't in the DC-area, the talks (by Saleem Ali, Geoff Dabelko, Suzanne DiMaggio) will be webcast live (so you can log onto the above link to watch).

Readers in the Boston area might be interested in this upcoming event on Chinese media at the Fairbank Center:

Does the Party Still Control the Message?
Media in Chinese Politics: A Roundtable Discussion

4:30 – 6:00 PM
April 25, 2009

Harvard University
Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Belfer Case Study Room (020)
CGIS South Building
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Event is free and open to the public.

More information is available here or here.

Tiananmen Moon: Excerpt

Part II
(Read Part I here)


By Philip J. Cunningham

“Tiananmen,” whispers Chai Ling.
“What?” I ask, comprehending without comprehension.
“I'd like to see Tiananmen, one last time.”

We skip the turn to the train station—she and Wang Li had been talking about catching the first train out of Beijing-- and instead continue east on Chang’an. As the car approaches the familiar student-controlled zone around Tiananmen Square, I try to make sense of what we are doing.

I had just delivered to the international media a candid interview with a wanted student leader who said she is going to run away, while speaking forthrightly about imminent bloodshed and the desire to overthrow the government; if she was at risk before the interview, she’s at even more risk now. What was the right thing to do?

It wasn’t just a question of abstract journalistic ethics; I suffered from the vague sense that I was the one being taken for a ride. I had no objections to being a partisan in principle, but the behavior of those I was trying to help was confusing me.

The car putters slowly in deference to the thin but irregular flow of pedestrian traffic as we cut across the largely empty north face of the square.

Chai Ling peers out the rear window, studying the scene of her rise to fame in silence. The precipitous drop in the number of protesting bodies is offset somewhat by the profusion of new tents. The bright tarps and canvas from Hong Kong made the student command zone at the monument look busy with color, if not people.

It seems crazy, taking this confused fugitive, alternately frightened, alternately fearless, to the place most likely to get her in trouble. Then again, Tiananmen was still more or less under the control of her people. Have I lost my faith in people power? Reluctantly, I told the driver to swing to the south when we get to the Great Hall.

Traffic is light and what protesters there were, were widely dispersed. The thinning ranks of student volunteers serving as traffic police did not demand to know our business today.

Waved on by a weary student sentry standing on the northwest corner of the Square, we head south, halting when we reach the nearest point to the monument. All at once, Chai Ling seems to have second doubts, expressing a reluctance to get out of the car. She asks me to run over to the Monument, to see if I could find her husband.

"Tell Feng Congde I need to see him right away," she says in a grave whisper, leaning on me lightly.

"Where is he?"

"I’m not sure." She hands me another one of her little cryptic notes. "Please give this to him, my husband. He will know where to reach me."

"But how am I supposed to find him?"

"I think he is still on the Square," she says.

"Where?"

"Probably by the Broadcast Tent," she clarifies.

"I'll go with you," Patricia volunteers, switching to English. "You and me, we can get out here and walk. They are in danger. They need the car, don't they?"

"Why don't you wait for us at Kentucky Fried Chicken? It's walking distance for us, the driver can park there, and I think it will be safe."

"Kentucky?" The fugitives consider the idea. "Okay, Kentucky."

I paid the driver the meter fare plus some extra in case they need to make a quick escape.

"Be careful, you two," I say in parting. "Keep the car as long as you need to, it might be hard to find another one."

"Thank you, Jin," says Chai Ling, biting her lip, at once coquettish and shy about all the trouble.

"See you in Kentucky!"

Patricia and I ford a path through the thick but listless mass of day-trippers on the perimeter of the Square who give way to die-hards, student wardens and hardcore operatives as we get closer to the student HQ. Unwittingly imitating the government they speak of overthrowing, the student elite had become super paranoid about security. Undercover police were undoubtedly a problem, I had noticed men taking my photograph ever since May 4 and many of the photographers were older than the students, but so was I. Did that make me a spy in their eyes?

Latecomers to the cause from the provinces, for whom a mere claim of student status was initially sufficient to get access, were subsequently banished to the east periphery, though they now started to squeeze closer to the center, vying for prestige by seizing high ground.

Access to the Martyr's Monument is still tightly restricted, however, with security at the southeast corner being unusually tight, roped-off and zealously guarded for the exclusive use of the current pick of student leaders only. The center is bustling as before, but the surrounding crowd is a skeleton of its former self. The array of tents encircling the student command and control center stand open to passersby, once tightly guarded university camps are violated by passing foot-traffic. Worse yet, for one who still carries the after-image of a million souls gathered peacefully and purposefully, large swaths of the Square are empty.

As we wend our way through the depressing litter and mess, Patricia and I are stopped and questioned by student wardens and vigilante types, though the security is less comprehensive today. The burden of suspicion falls more often on Patricia, who flashed her Hong Kong press ID to get through. As for me, I had no press pass but an unusual and familiar profile --the Chinese-speaking laowai in the indigo shirt—and that generally suffices to let me move about freely.

***

As we neared the student-controlled inner perimeter, I turned around to check on the taxi, but it was gone. Once inside the inner zone, the security tightened, and we had to laboriously pass two more security rings before getting to the broadcast tent where influential students still congregated. Patricia was immediately turned away, flatly told that the inside of the tent was off-limits to journalists. To get cross the frontier of this final inner sanctum I had to produce the personalized all-points security pass signed by Commander in Chief Chai Ling.

The signature of “the leader” scribbled on a piece of cardboard did the trick and we were free to step inside. Gone was the tidy, homey atmosphere I remembered from earlier in the week. The inside of the tent was a mess, awash with litter and upended equipment, the mood chaotic if not frantic. Nobody seemed to be in charge.

There was no hospitality corner. There were no smiles, no offers to have a drink or take a seat. No one was willing to help us find Feng Congde, and no one seemed to care that I carried an urgent message from Chai Ling. It suddenly occurred to me I might be dropping the wrong names at the wrong time. What if there had been a student coup? Perhaps she and her husband had fallen from grace with factional infighting flaring up. Maybe that's why she came to see me in such a hurry; maybe that’s why she was on the lam.

Sensing political fortunes had changed, I play it coy, the Wang Li way, asking if anyone had seen student commander in chief Chai Ling. The response was underwhelming. Although a few people paused long enough to show familiarity with the name, nobody seemed to know what was going on. There was an undisciplined, free-for-all, anything-goes atmosphere.

When I finally find a student willing to spare a few seconds to humor the foreigner, he states that I must go "upstairs" to the second level of the marble platform, just above the tent. When we try to go that way, we are stopped at a rope barrier. Adjacent to the checkpoint is a wooden table shaded by a canvas tent.

“This is the student information center,” I am told. Although the tent is open to the elements on one side and flimsy in appearance, it had the dank bureaucratic air of a Chinese government office. Student who needed to consult the leadership solemnly queued in line, impatient and irritable, hoping for "official" assistance.

Among those who waited in the sun, there erupted shoving matches and shouts, like desperate travelers trying to snag seats on a sold-out train. Some of them were looking for lost friends, much as we were, passing back and forth notes scribbled on little scraps of paper, hoping to win the attention of a “responsible person” inside student information bureau. This bureau is not only inefficient, but redolent of a bureaucratic arrogance. It is the holding pen one got sent to when student guards when unimpressed with one’s credentials. Trying to get an audience with the student leadership was an act in frustration, like petitioning Li Peng on the steps of the Great Hall a month before.

Impatient, like everyone else on line, I resort to shouting out my request, hoping to get some immediate assistance. Whether it was my blond hair or amusing foreign accent that managed to catch the “responsible authority’s” attention, I don’t know, but at least I got an answer.

“We are not clear about that.”
“But where is he?”
“His location is unknown,”
“But…”
“Not clear about that.”


Philip J. Cunningham was a participant and observer of the events in Beijing in 1989. Now a professor of media studies at Doshisha University, Cunningham has a forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989 (Rowman & Littlefield, May 2009) that details his story of the events.

In honor of the 20th anniversary of 1989, Cunningham will be sharing selections from his book at China Beat over the coming months. You can read more at the Tiananmen Moon website. Cunningham also blogs at the group blog, Informed Comment: Global Affairs.

In Case You Missed It: Uncle Ho and Uncle Sam

By A. Tom Grunfeld

Uncle Ho and Uncle Sam, Produced by Richard Bradley, BBC/Arts and Entertainment Networks co-production, 1995. 50 minutes. A TimeWatch film. [BBC documentary series]

During the wars in Indochina, Americans exhibited little interest in the histories of the nations their country was ravaging. This is not so dissimilar from today, as the United States wages wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without any discernable uptick in the sales of history books which would allow for a greater understanding of current events in a broader historical perspective.

The vast majority of Americans remained ignorant of the history of Vietnamese-American relations; especially of one of the most fascinating and improbable events - the brief period when the Vietnamese nationalist and communist leader Ho Chi Minh worked for the US government.

During the war the US wartime intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), was operating in southern China and Southeast Asia out of Kunming in Yunnan province. Their activities in Vietnam consisted of collecting reports from French agents then living under loose Japanese rule. In March 1945 the Japanese took full control of Vietnam and arrested all French citizens, including the OSS contacts, leaving American intelligence blind in that region.

Just about then a group of Vietnamese nationalists emerged out of the jungles escorting a downed U.S. flyer to safety in Kunming. The group was led by Ho Chi Minh who had been agitating, in one way or another, for Vietnamese independence for 25 years. The OSS knew from their counterparts on the French side that Ho, a leader of the nationalist Viet Minh, was a communist but instructions from Washington were to ignore that as he was too valuable at that moment and communists, after all, were wartime allies against the Japanese.

Ho and his band of patriots had similar goals to the United States: defeat Japan and support, rhetorically at least on the American side, independence from colonial rule. The OSS decided to work with Ho and he became, in official OSS parlance, Agent 19, code name Lucius.

During the summer of 1945 seven Americans parachuted into Ho’s jungle base on the Vietnam-China border after Ho had returned from Kunming accompanied by Frank Tan, a Chinese-American OSS officer and a Chinese OSS radio operator from Hong Kong named Mac Shin.

The goal of this alliance was to have Ho’s group provide weather information, vital intelligence for the air force at a time before weather satellites, to interdict Japanese troops, rescue downed American flyers and to provide whatever intelligence about the Japanese that they could obtain.

The war ended soon after and the joint OSS-Viet Minh operation was never fully engaged. OSS officers were in Hanoi when Ho declared independence in September and were, in fact occupied in developing their own intelligence service in Vietnam, separate from the British and French. These activities caused considerable friction among the allies as did American sympathy for Vietnamese independence at a time when the British and the French were trying to re-establish French colonial rule in Indochina.

This unlikely and little known relationship is the subject of this extraordinary film. Jointly produced by the BBC television program, TimeWatch and the American Arts & Entertainment Network in 1995, the film’s strengths are its use of rare footage (including Ho washing his clothes and demonstrating hand-to-hand combat, Ho declaring independence in Hanoi) and interviews with Vietnamese, French (who, astonishingly continue to spout colonist rhetoric four decades after losing their southeast Asian colonies), and American participants.

The film traces the history of this relationship between the OSS officers and their Viet Minh counterparts. The film also addresses the post-war rivalries among the allies. We hear a little about the motivations of the French and far more about the political disputes on the American side, but nothing about the thinking on the Vietnamese side apart from the most obvious. It will be a long time, I would think, before we have sufficient access to the Vietnamese archives for this period. Unfortunately the film ends in 1945 and does not mention the repeated attempts by Ho in the years immediately after the war to reach out to the United States for assistance and support in his anti-colonial struggle. He wrote several letters to Harry S. Truman and the Department of State; letters that were not only not answered, but never even acknowledged.

It is clear that the American participants in these events believed that the United States lost an opportunity in Vietnam. The unspoken, but pretty obvious conclusion they draw is that if Washington had been more accommodating to Ho in the 1940s, there would have been no Vietnam War years later. The OSS officers were quite fond of Ho and his band of rebels and believed that Ho was a nationalist more than a communist. Their superiors in Washington felt otherwise.

In 1995 the living participants met in Vietnam for an oral history project sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the Vietnam USA Society. Then, in September 1997, they met again in New York City culminating in a public one-day conference on September 24 at the Asia Society. It was at that event that “Uncle Ho and Uncle Sam” was shown and it may have been the single public viewing in the United States. The film was shown in 1995 on BBC television in the United Kingdom and on the A&E Network in the United States as part of their “Investigative Reports” series.

You can see an annotated list of who participated in the oral history and the New York City reunion at this website.

This is a wonderful and compelling documentary, an important historical document in itself. It should have been shown widely and should be shown, especially in schools and colleges. Instead it saw the light of day ever so briefly and has disappeared from memory and marketplace. I could not find any traces of it on the BBC or A&E websites, nor is it on sale commercially or on eBay. This a valuable documentary record which needs to be resurrected and widely distributed.

Selected Bibliography:

Dixee R. Bartholomew-Feis, The OSS and Ho Chi Minh. Unexpected Allies in the War Against Japan. University Press of Kansas, 2006.

William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life, Hyperion, 2001.

Gary R. Hess, "Franklin Roosevelt and Indochina," The Journal of American History, 59:2, September 1972, 353-368.

Walter LaFeber, "Roosevelt, Churchill, and Indochina: 1942-1945," American Historical Review, 80:5, December 1975, 1277-1295.

W. Macy Marvel, “Drift and Intrigue: United States Relations with the Viet-Minh, 1945,” Millennium - Journal of International Studies, 4:1, 1975, 10-27.

Archimedes Patti, Why Vietnam? Prelude to America's Albatross, University of California Press, 1982.

For a story of the Vietnamese honoring surviving OSS member, Mac Shin, in 2008, see here.

A. Tom Grunfeld is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at Empire State College and is the author of many works, including The Making of Modern Tibet.

Intellectuals and the Nation in China and India: A Public Roundtable

The China Beat is very slowly beginning to co-sponsor real events. Our first is this coming Friday.

Friday April 24, 2009, 2:00—3:30, in HIB [Humanities Instructional Building] 110 on the UC Irvine Campus

Sponsors:
UCI’s International Center for Writing and Translation
“The China Beat,” a UCI-based Group Blog

Co-sponsors:
The UCI History Department, the Center for Asian Studies, and the UCI Bookstore

Speakers:
Wang Chaohua, an Independent Scholar, the editor of One China, Many Paths, and a leader of the Tiananmen movement of 1989.

Pankaj Mishra, writer-in-residence and guest instructor UC Irvine (April 20-24), author of Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond (among other works), and a frequent contributor to many British, American, and Indian periodicals.

Perry Link, Chancellorial Chair for Innovation in Teaching Across the Disciplines, UC Riverside, author of Evening Chats in Beijing (among other works), and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books.

Vinayak Chaturvedi, Associate Professor of History, UC Irvine, author of Peasant Pasts: History and Memory in Western India and editor of Mapping Subaltern Studies.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom (moderator), Professor of History, UC Irvine, co-founder of “The China Beat,” and co-editor of China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance.

(Note: Some books will be available for sale and signing after the event)

This year has seen or will soon see the arrival of many important anniversaries in the history of Chinese and Indian nationalism—and the history of intellectual life in those two countries. 1909 was the year of the publication in India of two influential books on themes of independence (one of them by Gandhi), for example, while 1919 witnessed the May 4th Movement (China’s first great student-led mass movement), as well as India’s Amritsar Massacre, and 1989 saw the Tiananmen protests and June 4th Massacre take place in Beijing. This roundtable will use these and other 2009 anniversaries—e.g., the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising of 1959 and the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China—as a starting point for a wide-ranging consideration of the changing contours of intellectual life in Asia’s two largest countries, and for reflections on the role of nationalist sentiments of varied kinds in the ideologies that have held sway and struggles that have occurred in each land.

Advances and Advance Notice

We were delighted to come across a piece by Friend of the Blog Michael Meyer (called "About That Book Advance...") in last week's New York Times Sunday Book Review section. We figured, based on the author's track record as a writer (and the insightfulness of his comments when talking about his work), that this piece would be lively and offer some illumination on an interesting topic and that it might also have some China tidbits. Well, it was not just illuminating (explaining how tough it can be for an author to live on what sounds at first like a very good advance, once the agent's cut and self-employment taxes come into play) but also entertaining (a favorite part: how in literary circles advance amounts are sometimes "coyly described like cigarette brands — the 'mid-fives,' the 'low sixes,' the 'mild sevens'").

But as for China tidbits... there were only two. We learned how much of an advance Meyer got for his book, The Last Days of Old Beijing (as in the spirit of disclosure he tells us precisely: $50,000), and even better we learned that his book will be coming out in paperback next month (take note all those in book groups, as it would work nicely in that setting). What kind of advance, you may be wondering, did we receive for China in 2008? Rather than tell you a number, let's just say it was in the "barely fours"--so barely that with just a dollar taken away, it would have been a three figure advance (albeit one of the "mighty threes"). Of course, Rowman & Littlefield basically doubled their up-front lay-out by giving each of our contributors a free copy.

After reading the piece, some of us had two thoughts. First, that academics trying their hand at writing for general audiences are lucky to have day jobs to cover the bills. And, second, that it would be nice if the New York Times Sunday Book Review section editors liked Meyer's essay as much as we did, in which case they might commission a sequel, in this case demystifying the high amounts paid for translation rights. A good starting point might be that famous $100,000 reportedly offered to bring out the English language version of a certain Cry of the Wild with Chinese characteristics, boy meet wolf tale that was criticized and celebrated by different China Beat contributors last year (and incidentally inadvertently helped China Beat earn its first mention in the New York Times' excellent "Paper Cuts" book blog).

**

As an addendum, we wanted to mention this upcoming event with Michael Meyer in New York:

The Last Days of Old Beijing - A Conversation with Author Michael Meyer
May 7th 6:30 - 8:00 pm New York Asia Society and Museum, Auditorium, 725 Park Avenue, New York
Cost: $7 students and members, $10 nonmembers

A longtime Beijing resident, Michael Meyer has, for the past two years, lived as no other Westerner – in a shared courtyard home in Beijing’s oldest neighborhood, Dazhalan, on one of its famed hutong (lanes). As Meyer describes in his book, residents' bonds are rapidly being torn by forced evictions as century-old houses and ways of life are increasingly destroyed to make way for shopping malls, the capital's first Wal-Mart, high-rise buildings, and widened streets for cars replacing bicycles.

Meyer will be joined in conversation with Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society. Click on the above link for more information.

Jokes from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)

(Part One)

Understanding jokes in another language is often the highest test of fluency, based as they often are on puns and insider cultural knowledge. When Guo Qitao, professor of Chinese history at University of California, Irvine, mentioned to us that he collects clever Chinese jokes, we asked if he might share a few at China Beat. Even better--he offered to translate and gloss them. The first set we offer here are of jokes from the Cultural Revolution, a period when political rhetoric and in-fighting predominated in the public sphere. Through these jokes, we see the way that Chinese people skewered national political campaigns by punning their dogmatic rhetoric.

Translated and Glossed by Guo Qitao

(1) Something Is Missing

During the Cultural Revolution, all kinds of “bad elements” were punished for no reasons, and the ordinary people suffered a lack of necessary goods (food or materials). In the midst of the absolute poverty, the following rhyming couplet was posted:

One, two, three and five,
Six, seven, eight and nine.

Horizontal coda: South & North

What’s missing?

“Four and ten” (sishi) and “east and west” (dongxi)

Translator’s notes: The last phrases are puns on shishi, meaning “facts,” and dongxi, which as a compound also means “things.” The implication is that “bad elements” are being punished based on groundless assertions (without “facts”), while people are deprived of basic consumer goods (“things”).


(2) “You’re Late!”

Once, the Central Political Bureau convened an expanded meeting. Several founding marshals including Chen Yi, He Long, Xu Xiangqian, and Nie Rongzhen were notified to attend.

The time for the start of the meeting had already begun, but after waiting and waiting, the several marshals still had not made an appearance

Finally, the marshals all arrived together. Wang Hongwen (the youngest member of the Gang of Four who was promoted from a factory worker to the vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party) pointed an accusatory finger at them and said: “You’re late! How can you be so lackadaisical?!”

Marshal Chen Yi explained, “You dropped in suddenly from Shanghai via helicopter lift; we came from Yan’an riding “Mao” donkeys—how could we possibly get here as fast as you?”

Translator’s notes: There is a pun at work in the reference to “furry donkeys from Yan’an.” The “fur” or “mao” is a subtle reference to Mao Zedong. The implication in Chen Yi’s retort is that “we have been with the revolution (with Mao) from the Yan’an years,” whereas “you (Wang Hongwen) are just an upstart from Shanghai who has been ‘lifted’ to power quickly through your connections with Jiang Qing.”


(3) Nothing Can Stand without Destruction

Wang Hongwen went to see Marshal Zhu De, requesting him to hand over power. “You may take over, but only if you can make this egg stand upright,” Zhu said, while handling him an egg.

After trying for several days, Wang was still unable to make it stand, so he went to see Deng Xiaoping for help.

“This is easy,” said Deng, and he forcefully smashed the egg down into the table.

“Ai ya, it broke!” Wang exclaimed.
“Chairman Mao has said, ‘nothing can stand without destruction,’” said Deng, “look, isn’t the egg standing upright now?”

Translator’s notes: The phrase “nothing can stand without destruction” was a revolutionary slogan that encouraged destruction of old, feudal things.


(4) Mao’s Statues

The Lin Biao clique drafted a directive ordering the erection of statues of Mao throughout the country. Mao intercepted it and refused to send the order out saying, “You all get to sleep, while I’m going to have to stand on guard no matter whether rain or shine. I won’t do it!”


(5) From Sun to Son

During the Cultural Revolution, all middle schools stopped offering classes in Russian (to show opposition to Soviet revisionism), which were replaced by English. All of sudden, the country became notably short of English teachers. One school had to select someone with little English to teach the language. As it turned out, one day in class this teacher misspelled the word “sun” as “son.” Right then and there, a student pointed out the mistake. As a result, the teacher was publically accused of having “venomously belittled our Great Leader, Redder than the Sun,” and dismissed from the school.

Translator’s notes: Mao was likened to the Red Sun during the Cultural Revolution.


(6) The Color of the Sun

A woman poet had to do physical labor while being investigated for her reactionary words and deeds. One day, after working in the fields, she wrote in her diary the phrase, “The golden-yellow sun casts forth its brilliant rays…” The diary was discovered by the Red Guards and became new evidence of her “venomous slander against our Great Leader.” The Red Guards organized a struggle meeting to criticize her at which they said: “Chairman Mao is the Reddest, Reddest sun in our hearts, but you dared to say that the sun is golden and yellow! What’s gold? Gold is the stuff of the capitalist class. As for yellow, it represents decadent and dirty things! If this isn’t an attempt to humiliate and vilify Chairman Mao, then what is?!”

Translator’s note: The color yellow is used to denote pornographic literature or matters, much the way in English we might use “blue” or “red” (as in a “red light” district.) In Chinese, that would be a “yellow district.”


(7) Go Ask Liang Shengbao

Liang Shengbao is the protagonist of Liu Qing’s novel Making History, and his lover, Xu Gaixia, is its female protagonist. At a struggle meeting, the Red Guards interrogated Liu Qing: “Why did Liang Shengbao dream about Xu Gaixia when he fell asleep at the Guo County railway station? When he took a break from cutting bamboo on Southern Hill, why didn’t Liang Shengbao organize the masses to study Chairman Mao’s works, instead playing the chess? When he served as a leader of a mutual aid team, why did he focus on peaceful competition, but not on the class struggle?”

To these questions, Liu Qing said, “I, too, am puzzled, you should go ask Liang Shengbao.”

A China Beat Reader: 6/4

Over the past year-plus, China Beat has run several pieces related to the 1989 protests. For readers who may have missed them originally (or wish for a refresher), here is a short list:

1. Par Cassel, “The Gate of Heavenly Pacification” (6/18/08): “Tian’anmen is by no means a peaceful name, but a name rather fitting to a fledging empire that anxiously protected its claims to legitimacy and busied itself with suppressing rebellion and dissent wherever they showed up.”

2. “Liu Si,” looking backward and forward (6/4/08): Two lists of suggested readings, one on the events of 1989 and another on the efforts to commemorate and remember 1989.

3. Tom Mullaney, Interview with Ian Hacking (2/25/08): An interview with Professor Ian Hacking, who was teaching in China in 1989.

4. Lauri Paltemaa, “When the Past Catches Up” (2/9/09): Though not a direct reflection on ’89, Paltemaa explores the legacy of the Democracy Movement in the recent Charter ’08; readers may find some of the issues relevant to the upcoming anniversary.

5. Though this is not a China Beat piece, readers may be interested in this piece about the importance of rock n’ roll and individualism to the ’89 protests, written by Jeff Wasserstrom for The Nation in 2002 (unfortunately only a few paragraphs are available to non-subscribers).

Tiananmen Moon: Preface

Philip J. Cunningham was a participant and observer of the events in Beijing in 1989. Now Cunningham has a forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989 (Rowman & Littlefield, May 2009) that details his story of the events. In honor of the 20th anniversary, Cunningham will be sharing selections from his book at China Beat over the coming months. You can read more at the Tiananmen Moon website.


By Philip J. Cunningham

If getting caught up in a popular uprising in China has taught me anything, it is that the past, present and future flow together as one with ferocious intensity. Looking back now at the eventful uprising at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989 makes it all the more clear that what happened there was shaped by things that came before; and today’s China, basking in a post-Olympic glow and new-found national strength, is still profoundly haunted by the seminal events of 1989, though the topic is strictly taboo in the media and still feared by influential people in the leadership.

I initially got involved in the demonstrations because of my interest in Chinese history, the abstract study of which I had pursued at college and in graduate school. Then I moved to China. Trying to be a little more Chinese and a little less foreign, I immersed myself in Beijing campus life and cultural activities, mostly with Chinese friends. In the time it takes for a new moon to grow full and then wane back into blackness again, I was pulled so deeply into the vortex of living, breathing history-in-the-making that my life would never be the same.

More than any history book I ever read, or any period film I ever worked on, being on the streets of Beijing as history was being made was the most profoundly moving and eye-opening experience of all.

The Tiananmen demonstrations were crushed, cruelly, breaking the implicit pact that the People’s Liberation Army would never turn its guns on the people and burying student activism for many years to come, but not before inspiring millions in China and around the world to push for reform and change, heralding the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The uprising at Tiananmen, though highly controversial in China to this day, would shape many of the choices of the Chinese leadership and has been an unacknowledged inspiration for much of the change that has swept China ever since.

While residing on a Beijing campus in the late 1980’s I found myself up against the rigid social rules, regulations and racial exclusions that dampened the joy of living in an otherwise cordial and engaging environment. In times of stress, I found cycling to Beijing’s most central location a great way to get away from it all. Especially memorable was a bitterly cold winter night in early 1987 when I discovered the beauty of Tiananmen in the moonlight.

The evening started at a local dance hall. I had bicycled there in the company of someone I was fond of but didn’t get to see often. She and I happily danced the night away, sipping nothing more potent than orange soda pop, every fast dance followed by a slow one, as mandated by the cultural commissars of the time, until eleven PM, when we raced back to campus to beat curfew. We got through the side gate of the Shida campus without trouble but by the time we reached our respective dorms they were closed for the night, padlocked shut.

**

Afraid that waking up the guards would bring unwanted attention to our late night tryst, we got back on our bikes and plunged back into the inky blackness of Beijing. We cycled up and down empty windswept streets, breathing steamy breaths, working up a sweat despite the winter chill. Hotels, which had convoluted rules about who qualified to register for a room were not a serious option. The cold night air, cold as it was, was far more welcoming.

Gliding down quiet boulevards in the quiet of the night proved unexpectedly invigorating. Having nowhere to go gave us a vicarious sensation of freedom, the feeling that by keeping on the move, we could avoid the inevitable walls and guarded gateways. When the cold got unbearable, we huddled at a makeshift noodle stand that was throwing up clouds of steam into the frigid night sky. We did our best to be unobtrusive, quietly slurping on noodles on a bench in the company of burly, chain-smoking truck drivers whose view of an exotic inter-racial coupling was probably not too different from that of a hotel clerk, except they seemed to be cheering us on. There was no heat in the noodle shack to speak of, other than vats of boiling liquid, but the hot air and general merriment of the earthy drivers helped warm things up a bit.

From there we ventured back out into the cold to cycle up and down Beijing's main east-west thoroughfare of Chang’an Boulevard under a brilliant full moon. It was so cold and clear and bright that the moonlight could be mistaken for a thin coat of snow on the pavement.

Beijing was a city of few lights, so the great glowing lamp in the frozen sky was our only guide. We followed the moon the length of Chang’an Boulevard or perhaps I should say it followed us. When we got to Tiananmen Square there was not a person in sight, just a sea of flagstones reflecting an ethereal glow. The monumental buildings that surround the Square were monochrome monoliths, squat tombstones boxing in the luminous diamond-studded sky.

We parked our bikes and lay down in the middle of the Square, staring at the moon straight above. It was so quiet and isolated we could have been in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Huddling close for warmth, we whispered, joked and told stories. It was the most intimate moment we had ever had. Inspired by the impossibility of our togetherness, I made up a song, which goes like this:

Midnight moon of Tiannamen,
When will I see you again?
Looking for you everywhere,
Going in circles around the Square...
Riding with you down Chang’an Jie,
Memories I'd like to share...
Shadows dancing in the dark,
Lovers talking in the park...
Follow you here,
Follow you there,
Bathing in your
Sweet moonlight everywhere...
Midnight moon of Tiananmen,
When will I see you again?

Our midnight reverie ended abruptly when a team of policemen patrolling on bicycle spotted two unauthorized bodies napping on the ground near the central monument and ordered us to leave. We did so reluctantly, going in a big sweeping circle around the Square to demonstrate our attachment to the location. The memory lingers, the two of us huddled together on a bitterly cold night, under a towering sky so vast that it brought to mind a boundless universe.

A few months after our midnight ride, I was a guest on "English on Sunday" a national radio program produced at the massive Soviet style headquarters of China Central Broadcasting. The bilingual host of the program, Shen Baoqing graciously asked me if she could use the lyrics of my song in one of her English publications. We got in a discussion about Tiananmen and we went over the words I had written in English and Chinese. She invited her boss, the branch secretary of the Communist Party, to discuss it with us.

"Well, it's very nice," he said, pausing to grimace. “But, tell me, why do you use such dark images, the moon, night?" he asked. "We Chinese associate Tiananmen with brightness, with the sun!"

"My gracious, he couldn't very well use the sun," Shen Baoqing offered helpfully. "The sun over Tiananmen might be mistaken for Mao."

Not surprisingly, the branch secretary got the last word. "The song should be more positive," he said. "For example, why not change it to ‘Under the blue skies of Tiananmen'? It's a much better line."

Not long after that, I rode my bike back to Beijing Normal University under an intensely gray, overcast sky, which I took note of because it accorded so well with my cloudy mood on that particular day. When I watched the evening news that night on CCTV, I heard the announcer repeat a familiar line: "And today there was glorious celebration in the Great Hall of the People," the voice intoned earnestly, "under the blue skies of Tiananmen."

The Chinese belief in the incantatory power of words is such that saying something often enough is almost enough to make it seem almost true.

This has to be one of the motivations for all the lies that have been told about Tiananmen since 1989. Much of what the Beijing authorities have repeatedly said about the “counter-revolutionary riots at Tiananmen” is not true, and they do not believe it, even though they must pretend to. Perhaps worse yet, worse than the devious sloganeering that became so counterproductive it was quietly abandoned, was the subsequent silence, a soul-chilling silence that only gets louder with each passing year.

I have written this book to challenge that silence. It is a personal account, at once subjective and idiosyncratic, partial and incomplete, but it aspires to elucidate what modest truth might reside in subjectivity. It is the story of a serendipitous traveler finding himself on the inside of a major uprising, marching shoulder to shoulder with young Beijing rebels and sleeping on Tiananmen Square under the open sky. It is the story of the friendship between a foreign student and his local friends at a time of great upheaval. There are shocking discoveries and humorous asides, journalistic scoops and partisan advocacy, resulting in police troubles and political intrigue. It is also a love story, the chronicle of an affection that speaks to the love of a people, and also a tragedy, for that love ends in heartbreak, when the people’s dream is destroyed.

Looking back on the one month period covered by this memoir, it is striking how often the mood on the ground corresponded to the movements of the moon in the sky, though few of us were fully conscious of it at the time.

**

The full moon over Tiananmen marked the lyrical and literal apogee of the peaceful protests in May 1989 when the citizens of Beijing flocked to Tiananmen Square a million strong to celebrate what was hoped would be a brilliant new chapter of Chinese history.

The demonstrations faltered and stalled out as the moon began to withdraw its protective nighttime illumination, while the army delayed its crackdown till the darkest night of the month, the night of no moon.

Tiananmen Moon is divided into four sections reflecting the ebb and flow of the lunar illumination that fateful month.

The narrative that follows is a testament to the beauty and wonder of a popular uprising that went better than anyone had a right to expect before tragically going awry. It is a commemoration to all who ever marched in peaceful protest or engaged in civil disobedience or waved the banner of rebellion and sang songs evoking the eternal hope of building a better tomorrow.

The story starts out at Tiananmen under skies that were truly blue, skies that eventually cloud up and turn to gray. More startling, though, is the transformation of Tiananmen, which in the course of a few weeks goes from being the grandiose place that deserved nothing less than an arching blue sky, to a synonym for cruelty, from a talismanic word to a search engine taboo, from a monument dedicated to remembering past glory to a memory-draining black hole in the heart of Beijing.

This book is dedicated to the wonderful things that once were, and to all the residents of Beijing who took part in the protests of 1989, most especially to those martyred souls who didn’t live to see the fruits of their great sacrifice.

Twenty Years: Preparing for the 6/4 Anniversary

Some China Beat contributors have mentioned to us that they’ve been receiving requests from journalists and teachers for resources to turn to in writing and teaching about the up-coming twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen protests. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be posting lists of resources—some online, others in print.

This first list of readings is based entirely on a single website, “Tiananmen: The Gate of Heavenly Peace,” which presents varied perspectives on China's 1989, with info about an important Long Bow Group film (The Gate of Heavenly Peace, 1995) and diverse online readings, available full-text. China Beat views the film, for which the website in question was created, as a major interpretation of the events of 1989--but we aren't impartial where this is concerned, as frequent China Beat contributor Geremie Barmé was the main academic consultant for and chief writer of the film (that was directed by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon and had a roster of scholarly advisers that included this blog's co-founder Jeff Wasserstrom), and Barmé was also the main creative force behind the very innovative (especially for its time--in went up in the 1990s) website.

The site has so much material that it can be overwhelming. Here are a few places to get started:

1) A detailed chronology of events.

2) Background on the film and the controversy it generated.

3) Eye-witness accounts by academic China specialists, mostly based outside of the capital that year (though there's also a piece on Beijing by Geremie Barmé).

4) Western coverage of the events.

5) Chinese official accounts of the events and other miscellaneous readings, such as a piece by Tiananmen activist and a Charter 08 drafter Liu Xiaobo.

Unfortunately, if your local library does not have a copy of Gate of Heavenly Peace on hand, it is a little tough to get hold of. Distribution information is available here, but Netflix does not even have the documentary in its catalogue and Frontline has not added the film to its online archive.

Beijing Sixty-Six: Portrait of a Lost Generation

A friend of the blog forwarded to us information about a current exhibition in Shanghai, "Beijing Sixty Six," which features startling photographs of the Cultural Revolution by Solange Brand. The curator of the show, Jean Loh of Galerie Beaugeste, kindly agreed to write a piece for us about reactions to the exhibit, as well as allowing us to share a few of these recently-uncovered photographs. You can learn more about the exhibit at Facebook, City Weekend, or about Galerie Beaugeste (located on Taikang lu) at its website.

By Jean Loh

In 2002, the cofounder of the Pingyao International Photography Festival, Alain Jullien, invited an unknown amateur photographer to participate in the annual visual feast that went on to become the landmark of Chinese photography today. Solange Brand, then the Art Director of the newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique, mentioned in passing to Alain that she had been in China from 1966 to 1968, and had not set foot on the Mainland since. When Alain asked if she had taken any pictures of China; that innocent question turned out to be a major discovery: Her Agfa color slides and prints buried in a shoe box for all those years emerged to become an award-winning book.

That same year in Pingyao I was privileged to be in Solange's hotel room where she first showed her sensational pictures on my laptop screen. Everyone in the room was awestruck. And I was captivated by the freshness of the images as if they were snapshots made just the day before. Later during the al fresco projection, many of the Chinese photographers were moved; all were fascinated by this very rare natural portrait of “Beijing '66,” and in color! The projection was accompanied by revolutionary songs Solange has collected during her stay and a tape she made from the demonstration at the gate of the French Embassy. The commotion amongst the Chinese photographers was incredible: after the show some of them marched on the main street of Pingyao singing aloud the Red Sun Rising on the East and other vintage revolutionary hymns before settling down for baijiu and huangjiu at the main tavern where Marc Riboud’s pictures were hanging on the wall.

John Lennon said (in “The Beatles Anthology”); “The sixties saw a revolution among youth, not just concentrating in small pockets or classes, but a revolution in a whole way of thinking; the youth got it first and the next generation second. The Beatles were part of the revolution.”

Far from the Beatles in Beijing 1966 there was another King of Pop, another Idol who had millions of teenagers rocking and rolling.

Solange Brand was 19 or 20 years old, the same age as these young Red Guards, when she was sent to work as a secretary at the French Embassy in Beijing. Unknowingly, with her Pentax she captured the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution.

What, with indescribable emotion, the Chinese photographers in Pingyao saw was perhaps a “self-projection” or “self-identification” with the faces of these young men and women, even children, who could have been themselves from a long lost memory.

Here lies the power of photography: What the Chinese viewers experience is like taking a swab of reality—an operation of “cut and paste”—and transposing it to fill in the void in our imaginations, to fill in the empty place in our collective memory, to fill in the absence as in our absentmindedness. We are confronted again by Roland Barthes’ famous “Ça a été—that has been.” Photography's immediacy acts to set up an instantaneous observation of the experience of its author. As a result of the cut and paste, this transposition becomes an affirmation of “I have seen this” or “I have been there.” Hence the excitement we feel in the possibility of scrutinizing each face in the crowd and asking of ourselves: Was that how we looked at that time?

With incredible conviction the Chinese public of a certain age - those who were at least 6 years old in 1966, and who have never set foot in a gallery or a museum – came to our exhibition in Shanghai and proclaimed in front of the enlarged print: “I was there! Exactly at this spot!” One former Red Guard asked me to specifically take a picture of him standing by the enlarged print as if to finally own a picture certifying he had been there. They all told the same story: it was the most exciting years of their youth; UNFORGETTABLE - that was the word they keep mumbling. With agitation they pointed to the Mao pin and said everyone had at least a few pins, later on even giant size pins, that some of the most fanatic pinned directly on their flesh.

Below is the Baidu Encyclopedia definition of the “Great Rally” (Da Chuanlian):

In 1966, the Central Committee of the Cultural Revolution expressed support for students throughout the country to come to Beijing to exchange revolutionary experiences, and also supported the Beijing students to carry out the revolution throughout the Great Rally. On September 5, 1966 "The Notice" was published, and the Great Rally activities developed rapidly.

Between June and July around the country the "Rally" between teachers and students was formed. Many of those coming from the provinces came to Beijing to receive the "Bible of Cultural Revolution Rebellion" and to take part in Chairman Mao’s reception for teachers and students. Those who left Beijing were to carry out the revolution and to fan the flames around the country for the “Destroy the Four Olds” movement. There were mainly teachers and students, the Red Guards, "the External Red Circle" and ordinary high school students, but some were also primary school students accompanying their brothers and sisters.

Chairman Mao Zedong received the Red Guards on eight occasions in 1966: August 18, August 31, September 15, October 1, October 18, November 3, November 10, November 26. From all over the country, young people and students of more than 13 million people came to salute Mao. Teachers and students of the Great Rally traveled by all means of transport; accommodation and meals were all free of charge. That was a very special moment of the "Cultural Revolution."

Diane Arbus had the conviction that there are things people would never have noticed had she not photographed them. Thanks to Solange Brand we relish the opportunity to take in every detail of the clothing, of every particle in the air, of every expression on the faces in this "Beijing Sixty-Six," and ask ourselves: Where have all these heroic faces gone? The students with their uniforms; those “lake hero” figures (Jianghu Renwu) with their fur coats of another age; those dancers on the train expressing their revolutionary fervor with a martial choreography; and those pilgrims on the road beaten by sandstorms but bravely carrying the icon of the holy idol on their backpacks. Where have all these Red soldiers gone?

Exhibition of Solange Brand’s Beijing Sixty Six through May 22 in Shanghai Taikang Road Lane 210 Building 5 Space 519 Beaugeste Photo Gallery (Tel: +86-21-6466-9012).

From Mumbai to Beijing: China for Indian Readers

By Angilee Shah

In the land of news-meets-the-Internet, China has been fertile soil for very interesting blogs by journalists. There's Evan Osnos' Letters from China at the New Yorker, the China Journal at the Wall Street Journal, Pomfret's China (John Pomfret, that is) from the Washington Post, James Fallows' often-China blog on The Atlantic, Peter Foster and Richard Spencer at the Telegraph, The New York Times reporter Howard French's non-New York Times' blog, and last but not least, Tim Johnson's long-standing China Rises for McClatchy Newspapers. Though this list is long, it is not exhaustive.

Perhaps what is most interesting about these blogs is the opportunity to get a greater picture of reporters' perspectives as foreigners living in a new country. But if the recession -- and the seating arrangements at a G-20 summit dinner -- tells us anything, it is that the West's perception of the East is not all that counts. How emerging powerhouse economies see each other is of great importance, and lucky for us is incredibly interesting. An excellent entrée into Asian takes on Asia is a Hindustan Times blog, Middle Order, written by the newspaper's first China correspondent, Reshma Patil.

Just a few months and 13 posts old, Middle Order brings to the table a fresh take on the "foreigner in China" story. The introduction to Patil's musings is tempting: "Find out why this vegetarian is still staying on, a few floors above a restaurant that serves bullfrog, and in an apartment where the DVD remote control to the fax machine has Chinese instructions that she cannot read." Patil's posts about her life in China are engaging and interesting, as varied as her ten-year career. She was a special correspondent for the Indian Express until 2006, when she joined the Hindustan Times as an Assistant Editor. As she explains it, she was working on stories that "could be anything from politics to floods in Gujarat to spending a night at a morgue after terror attacks in Mumbai." It was that hectic variety, she explains, that prepared her the most for becoming a one-woman show in Beijing. It also helped that she had been studying Mandarin in weekend classes for six months when the Hindustan Times approached her about a job in China. "But I had never planned to relocate to China. It just happened," she writes in email. "I was told I had the job one hour after the interview in Delhi, and I said yes immediately. If I hadn't come to China, I would probably be covering the Indian elections right now."

Instead, she is filing news reports, writing a Friday column called “Inside the Dragon,” and posting one blog entry every Sunday night from her Beijing apartment. And spending a bit of time typing out answers to questions from a curious China Beatnik.

Angilee Shah: How did you prepare for working in China?

Reshma Patil: My preparation was more about mentally strategising how I would cover China to make it fresh and relevant to Indian audiences. I don't push in India comparisons in every China story. But here's an example: In a latest page one interview with Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, we focus extensively on his India expansion plans that got only a mention in his interviews with the other international media organizations. The western media calls him China's Bill Gates. I called him China's Narayana Murthy (both started their companies out of their apartments) so Indian audiences instantly make a connection. [N. R. Narayana Murthy was one of the founders of Infosys Technologies.]

I did read some books, especially to brush up on the India-China border dispute. I also read or sifted through a literal carload of China stories in international news magazines to hone in on the stories that were already reported and stories I needed to keep an eye on as they unfolded. (The carload of magazines were brought in by my editor one day from the office library). I made a recce trip for a week last March, and found my apartment that houses the Beijing bureau on my second morning in Beijing.

AS: Do you think the paper has taken a greater interest in China news than before?

RP: Yes, the greater interest is reflected in the fact that I am the paper’s first China correspondent. The newsroom in Delhi and Mumbai is very interested in the stories and they are given high visibility. Some stories have made it as the front page leads. Since China’s urban planning is of interest in India, sometimes the newsroom asks for a comparative China story. An example: The paper carried a series last year on Gurgaon’s urban planning and infrastructure problems and one package included a short piece on how China got Pudong’s infrastructure right, since both places began developing in the nineties.

AS: How did the blog start? Was it something you wanted to do from the beginning?

RP: The blog was launched on Jan. 26 with a set of new blogs from HT writers. The editor of our website in Delhi asked me to write a China blog, and the only request was for lighter material than what goes in the paper. I was keen to write a blog as well. I think the paper's interest in launching a China blog also kicked off after I filed a daily China column during the Olympics in August, in addition to Olympics news stories. The Olympics marked the beginning of our extensive China coverage in the paper and we received enthusiastic feedback from readers. Readers have also pointed out that they are interested in our reports because they are looking for news about China that is not just academic political and trade analysis.

AS: It seems like the blog focuses on showing how India is portrayed and seen in China, whereas your goal in news is to show China's relevance to people in India. What role do you see Middle Order playing in your work as a reporter?

RP: Middle Order was not planned as an ‘India-China’ blog and I wouldn’t categorise it that way. It has evolved into a mix of posts about my life as an Indian expat and reporter in China and stand-alone China posts as well. It is barely a dozen posts old and still evolving. It is a space to engage readers’ interest in China with the voices and flavour from the ground that can go unreported in the paper’s news reports due to limited word space. It is also a space for readers to make a personal connection with the reporter and give feedback. As a reporter, I enjoy using the blog as an open space to experiment with new and fun ways to tell a China story or drive home a point through a narrative.

That's why this blog post is my favourite: "A wild tiger chase behind Beijing’s invisible India bus". It started as a spontaneous idea to ride Beijing’s first Incredible India bus, with no expectations of the reactions I would get aboard the bus or whether the ride would be worth blogging about. The post ended up as the result of three days of legwork that required as much effort as chasing a news story.

And "At a Slumdog afternoon in China…‘is this real?’" -- this post was a spur of the moment idea. I was looking for a more interesting way to record Chinese reactions to Mumbai and Slumdog Millionaire than through a routine news report.

AS: Your latest post is about going back home after one year in Beijing. Is living in China what you expected it to be? Are there things about China that you weren't expecting?

RP: Life as an expat in China is easier than life in Indian metros in terms of essential infrastructure like power supply and transport. I think Beijing’s traffic moves superbly compared to Indian metros, so I find it amusing when foreigners and locals complain of traffic jams. But simple things that I took for granted in India take much longer in China, partly because I don’t have the support structure of a full-fledged office with a Chinese assistant. I had no idea until I landed that tax and banking paperwork would be only in Chinese, despite opening a foreigner's account.

AS: Do you think Indian people understand China well enough? What do you think are the biggest strengths and weaknesses in India-China relations, both on political and cultural levels?

RP: I think these two questions are answered in some of my posts. For too long, India-China relations were defined by the border dispute and unresolved political issues. It's only over the last few years that the focus shifted to optimise trade and cultural ties. It’s evident in the fact that the India Tourism office in Beijing is just one-year-old and faces a huge task in convincing the Chinese to visit next-door India. There is a lot of ongoing effort to improve ties at the diplomatic level and within pockets of Indian-Chinese groups across certain professions, but not at the mass level in either nation.

India’s strength lies in skilled English-speaking manpower while China has leapt ahead in infrastructure and city building. I regularly meet Indian and Chinese professionals who talk about the great potential for collaborations between the two nations using their respective strong points. And the slow, tricky progress in making these collaborations work primarily because of a lack of information and understanding about each other’s work culture, language and bureaucracy.

AS: And -- I have to ask -- what did you think of Chandni Chowk to China?

RP: I didn't enjoy Chandni Chowk to China at all. I found it ridiculous and ended up fast forwarding through a DVD a friend brought from India in 30 to 40 minutes.

Of Books, Bloggers, and the Buddha

With the anniversaries of the 1959 (and 2008) Tibetan Uprisings just past, Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism has been much in the news in the past few months. But Buddhism more generally has been popping up in world news. A few readings on the topic…

1) “Six episodes” are distilled from Donald Lopez’s new book Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed at University of Chicago Press’s website. Here’s one:

Although hailed in Victorian Europe for its rejection of the Indian caste system and its championing of the spiritual potential of all social classes, Buddhism also played a role in the science of race during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1914, the Sinhalese Buddhist Anagarika Dharmapala described the Buddha as ”the great Aryan Savior,” while explaining that ”the life of the Nazarene Jew was not of cosmic usefulness.” In 1937, the Chinese Buddhist monk Taixu wrote a letter to Adolf Hitler, recommending Buddhism as the ideal religion for the Aryan race.

Lopez also took the "Page 99 test" on the book for Campaign for the American
Reader.

2) Pankaj Mishra did an intriguing interview about “the Buddha in the World” for the NPR show, Speaking of Faith.

3) At the Washington Post last month, Maureen Fan reported on the increasing pull of Tibetan Buddhism among Han Chinese:

While statistics are hard to come by, monks, followers and experts say that growing numbers of middle-class Chinese are turning to Tibetan Buddhism, driven by the perception of a spiritual vacuum in society and aided by the voluminous information available on the Internet. Communist Party officials and celebrities alike have embraced Tibetan Buddhism, despite having to worship at home, meet their lamas at night and run the risk of attending officially unauthorized events, such as the fish release and "fire sacrifice" at Huangsongyu Reservoir.

China's Communist Party tightly regulates religious activity, especially the banned Falun Gong sect, but allows wide latitude for many law-abiding Catholics and Protestants who meet in unofficial house churches. Tibetan Buddhists however, are in a different category…

For now, most Chinese who practice Tibetan Buddhism are able to worship under the radar because their numbers remain comparatively small and their movement is not organized. Followers meet in private homes to recite sutras and compare knowledge or gather in apartments where wealthy benefactors have set up elaborate shrines. Many appear to be unaware of regulations intended to restrict their worship.

4) Tsering Woeser, the brave Buddhist blogger (and poet), turned up in many stories over the past month. The London Times ran a nice profile of her:

By birth, upbringing and education, Woeser should be a Tibetan at ease in the Chinese system, a successful member of the Tibetan elite. But this vivacious woman, who looks much younger than her 44 years, is the most outspoken Tibetan voice in China, a fierce critic of Beijing rule in the deeply Buddhist Himalayan region. Her views have won her widespread fame among Tibetans in exile - and, not surprisingly, the attention of the Chinese security apparatus. These days, her books are banned and her movements are monitored. She was detained by police last year during a trip to her birthplace to see her mother. None of this deters her. “If it happens, it happens. I write what I write.”

What she writes is not only poetry but a blog that openly criticises Chinese rule in Tibet. It is already in its fifth incarnation. After it was closed down repeatedly by the authorities in 2006 and 2007, she posted it on an overseas server. Then, after the riots a year ago in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, in which 22 people were killed - mostly ethnic Han Chinese - and unrest spread across Tibetan regions, the overseas blog was hacked and closed down twice. Undaunted, she resumed writing about “Invisible Tibet” on woeser.middle-way.net.

Figures compiled overseas show more than three million hits on her blog in the past year, mostly after the March unrest, when it was the main source of information for Tibetans looking for an alternative to propaganda. Now her account of the unrest, with photographs, is to be published in Taiwan to coincide with the first anniversary of the riots. “It seems that people look to me,” she says, humbly.