AMUSING MUSEUM MUSINGS

Hunting for Witches: from Salem to the Lower Yangtze

2011-10-29T14:04:00.000-07:00

Thinking of witchcraft in history brings to mind images of hysterical bonnet-clad women having seizures and hallucinations in New England courthouses, poor European wenches being burned at the stake by righteous Inquisitors, and medieval Christians drowning pagans based on Monty Python-style logic. The more enlightened may picture solstice rituals at Stonehenge or the quirky lady at the New Age bookstore. And the more anthropological-minded would point out that people in cultures all over the world have and continue to use witchcraft to ostracize quirky, outcast, or otherwise undesirable people, often using them as scapegoats for disease, bad weather, acne, or bad traffic. While Chinese history is certainly no stranger to unorthodox religious movements, it generally is not the first place most people associate with witchcraft.

Of course, these modern concepts of witchcraft emerged in relation to Christianity and a concept of religion that cannot encompass the vast range of Chinese religiosities, rituals, and superstitions. Those who use supernatural means to harm others are described in culturally specific terms, but the widespread belief that such people exist and the dangerous panic that ensues when fear of them runs rampant both appear shockingly similar from Salem, Massachusetts to the Lower Yangtze Valley.

Traditional Chinese belief holds that the soul contains two parts: the po 魄 and hun 魂. The lighter hun can drift away while one is sleeping, and it sometimes wanders too far and needs to be called back to awaken the comatose. In 1768, a rumor circulated that certain heretical monks had developed a technique to steal these souls and force their owners to do their bidding. Some alleged that workers building a bridge were enslaving souls by attaching people’s hairs or even just a paper containing someone’s name to wooden pilings, using the unfortunate soul’s power to drive the pilings into the ground. Other master sorcerers reportedly were using hair and paper to make voodoo-like dolls of numerous people. Then, they would send these enslaved minions to steal for them. (Doesn’t seem like the most imaginative use of stolen souls, but it apparently made sense to people at the time…)

In several incidents, peasants accused begging monks passing through their villages of attempting to enslave children and unsuspecting villagers. Numerous wandering monks were rounded up and searched for scissors, hair or a “stupefying powder” used to temporarily incapacitate victims for a pernicious trimming. Of course, cutting off all the hair is part of initiation for Buddhist monks, so scissors and locks of hair kept as mementos were not uncommon among monks’ meager possessions.

Enough disorder and arrests resulted to draw the attention of the Qianlong 乾隆 emperor himself. Imperial involvement made this witch-hunt much more far-reaching than the one in Salem, but it functioned in an all-too-familiar way. People began accusing shady strangers and old enemies of witchcraft. Accused sorcerers were tortured into confessing and implicating others. Such forcefully obtained evidence portrayed a vast conspiracy led by an elusive master enchanter, which further exacerbated fear, producing more accusations, more arrests, more torture and more panic. Soon, kids were ditching school and blaming witchcraft. And eventually, after multiple deaths, numerous broken bones and countless damaged reputations, confessions were recanted and survivors released from prison.

It would be too easy to blame these events on the gullibility of the aging (and arguably senile) Qianlong who urged his magistrates to vigorously prosecute queue clippers and soul stealers and to root out the mysterious head sorcerer. But anything related to the hairstyle the Manchu rulers imposed on the populace was politically sensitive, and ridiculous-sounding movements have caused immense disorder and suffering throughout Chinese history. Indeed, a few decades later, a man claiming to be Jesus Christ’s little brother would found a “heavenly kingdom” provoke one of the bloodiest conflicts in world history.

Indeed, nightmare scenarios like this do not result from the frightening power of government run amuck or the eerie potential of the supernatural, it is the much more real, omnipresent, and terrifyingly powerful potential of humans to turn on each other. It would be nice if there were only a few isolated schemers murmuring incantations and hatching nefarious plans for petty theft and bridge building. Instead, whole villages of apparently decent people actually beat up and even killed poor and dirty outcasts, neighbors turned on each other over petty grudges, and courts founded on noble virtues became coercive instruments of false accusation. And if Joseph McCarthy (or the Cultural Revolution) taught us nothing else, it is that this can happen again, anywhere and anytime. So perhaps the real reason people are willing to believe that isolated pockets of unadulterated evil live among us is that it’s a comforting thought compared to the reality that real, diffuse evil lurks inside all of us, and it too easily and too frequently congeals us into an unthinking, intolerant, and violent mob. Scary, huh?

For more on the sorcery scare of 1768 and what it reveals about Qianlong and his bureaucracy read Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 by Philip Kuhn.

100 Years Later: The Difficult Offspring of Xinhai 辛亥的辛孩

2011-10-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

Portraits of Sun Yat-Sen adorned Tiananmen Square for this year's anniversary

This fall marks 100 years since the Xinhai Revolution 辛亥革命 brought an end to China’s millennia-old tradition of monarchy and began the Celestial Empire’s long slog toward modern nationhood. Anyone who lived through the ensuing decades of feuding warlords, brutal invasion, more civil war, and social upheaval would scarcely recognize the emerging world power that China has become today. But even though the strength and unity of China’s government and economy has increased dramatically since those early decades, many underlying tensions remain.

In Taiwan this year, they will celebrate the centennial of the Republic of China, while the mainland commemorates the end of Qing emperors’ feudal oppression.Both lionize Dr. Sun Yat-Sen 孫中山, as “father of modern China.” Both governments agree that there is only one China, but just which government is Dr. Sun’s rightful heir is the subject of intense and emotional debate. Sadly, Sun Yat-Sen died of cancer in 1925, when he was just 58. Two years later, a tenuous communist-nationalist alliance violently and enduringly ruptured. One can only wonder how modern Chinese history would have been different if Dr. Sun had lived to see old age.

In the 19^th century, China was plagued by bloody rebellions and humiliating conflicts with marauding foreigners. But the Qings’ hold on power really began to crumble after a military coup successfully took over the city of Wuchang 武昌 on October 10, 1911. To put down the rebellion, the Qing court summoned Yuan Shikai 袁世凱, the head of China’s powerful and modernized Beiyang army 北洋軍, wooing him out of retirement with the title of prime minister. He won substantial victories against rebel troops in the Battle of Yangxia 陽夏之戰 (pictured at right), and was poised to crush the leaders in Wuchang before agreeing to a ceasefire on Dec. 1. With the rebels still controlling the city of Wuchang and widespread uprisings leading 16 provinces to secede, Yuan controlled the only force strong enough to defeat the rebels and was in an ideal position to make demands. The general-turned-prime minister protected the Qing government from his northern base of power in Beijing 北京 (which translates to “northern capital”), while the revolutionaries began organizing a provisional government based in Nanjing 南京 (which translates to “southern capital”).

Although Sun Yat-Sen is recognized today as the major architect and fundraiser of the revolution, the uprising began without warning, and he did not return from exile until Dec. 25. His fame and prestige still led the provisional government to elect him as president of the new republic by January 1. The next day, Yuan Shikai perceived a threat to his power and called off peace negotiations. Fearing protracted civil war and the possibility of invasion since no foreign governments would recognize the republic, Sun Yat-Sen offered to resign the presidency in favor of Yuan if the general would persuade the royal family to give up the throne. Yuan informed Empress Longyu隆裕皇后, who was ruling as regent for her six-year-old nephew Puyi 溥儀, that the rebels would slaughter the royal family if she did not agree to the terms of abdication being offered. She signed the abdication agreement on Feb. 12, 1912, and the royal family continued to live supported by public funds in the Forbidden City until 1924.

This poster celebrates the ill-fated Yuan-Sun alliance

After the Nationalist Party won a large victory in the democratic elections of Feb. 1913, conspirators with ties to Yuan assassinated Song Jiaoren宋教仁, a nationalist party leader who vocally advocated an independent parliament and controls on presidential power. Shortly thereafter, the nationalist party was banned and its members ejected from the legislature. Sun Yat-Sen organized a second revolution, but it was no match for Yuan’s powerful army. In 1914, Yuan dissolved parliament and replaced provinces’ civilian leaders with independent military governors, sowing seeds for decades of warlord-fueled regional divisions and intermittent warfare. In late 1915, Yuan completed the return to autocracy by announcing his plans to become emperor. Widespread protests vociferously denounced this blatant power grab, and the southwestern provinces of Yunnan 雲南, Guizhou 貴州, and Guangxi 廣西 seceded in rapid succession. In light of this tremendous opposition, Yuan canceled his coronation and died of kidney failure three months later.

Warlords eagerly stepped into the power vacuum, forming cliques among themselves and contending for supremacy. Eventually, Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石, commandant of the Nationalist Party’s Whampoa Military Academy 黃埔軍校, reunited China with a military campaign known as the Northern Expedition that began in Guangzhou 廣州 and ended in Beijing in 1928. But warlords nominally loyal to the Nationalist regime maintained independent armies that periodically rebelled and fought with each other. And while the expedition began with an alliance between Nationalist and Communist forces, a brutal purge of communists in 1927 brought an end to such cooperation and foretold decades of insurrection and civil war to come.

Japan took advantage of China’s weakness to seize Manchuria in 1931, and the imperialist nation began a brutal campaign against China proper in 1937. Despite huge territorial losses, it took being kidnapped by a former warlord in 1936 to force Chiang into an uneasy truce with the communists. Still, the two forces jockeyed for advantage and sometimes openly fought each other during the war of resistance, and all-out hostilities quickly resumed after the Japanese surrender. Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist government eventually lost the civil war and fled to Taiwan in 1949, 38 years after the Xinhai Revolution. An uneasy peace ensued as both governments focused on consolidating control and quashing internal dissent; the two sides still have never reconciled.

In retrospect, some would argue that a more gradual transition away from absolute monarchy could have avoided much heartache and bloodshed. Others would claim that the tumultuous strife among warlords, ideologues, and aristocrats was a necessary, if horribly unpleasant, transitional phase between archaic and modern governments. And still others would claim that the Xinhai Revolution accomplished little and really fruitful change would not come until after the communist takeover, or later still, after the party veered away from dogmatic Maoism in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But virtually no one wishes for a return to autocratic monarchy, so even though we can all argue about its precise significance, we can all agree that this centennial is worth celebrating.

The three flags of the early Republic of China

Happy 90th and 245th Anniversaries: Celebrating the Way We (Pretend We) Were

2011-07-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

It is an odd coincidence that the Chinese Communist Party was founded only July 1, 1921, almost exactly 145 years from the day the United States of America declared their independence. In the same week, the China and the United States both commemorated the anniversaries of a few dozen male revolutionaries gathering under threat of execution for treason in order to agree to fight for the betterment of their nation. Obviously, these meetings took place in vastly different historical and cultural contexts, and so they naturally expressed starkly different ideas about what constitutes an ideal nation, but it is key to remember that both anniversaries commemorate good intentions that spawned nations, noble ideas that inevitably degenerate when constructed out of messy realities.

Many Western observers have been unnerved by the fervent nationalism expressed in the CCP’s 90^th anniversary celebrations and the accompanying revival of “Red Songs,” propaganda classics that were all the rage in the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976. But are millions of middle-aged Chinese singing about socialist revolution and resisting foreign imperialists any more indicative of resurgent Maoism and militarism than Americans singing Yankee Doodle or Battle Hymn of the Republic over the holiday weekend represent a secret plot to storm the white cliffs of Dover?

While I hate to perpetuate stereotypes, my experience in both the United States, China (and any known establishment offering karaoke) has confirmed that Chinese people love to sing. And those who came of age during the sixties and seventies in China grew up singing “Red Songs.” They know every word, and these songs form the soundtracks to the days of their youth, the equivalent of Classic Rock for baby boomers.

But it is difficult for some to understand why people would want to recall a youth that was typically spent parroting propaganda, performing self-criticisms, criticizing and abusing arbitrary victims, and/or laboring in the countryside. Of course, these and other skeletons in the CCP’s closet are as big a part of this week’s patriotic celebrations as American skeletons like Thomas Jefferson’s lovechildren, the near-extermination of Native Americans, WWII-era Japanese-American internment, and, of course, slavery. National holidays call for some degree of collective amnesia and creative rationalizing, so both Chinese and Americans generally prefer to look past their flawed human governors to celebrate the noble ideas they claim to protect. The right to publicly discuss, dissect and even invent skeletons in the vast closet of political travesties happens to be an ideal Americans hold sacred, but this is not necessarily the case in China.

I overheard someone asking on the Fourth of July, “Doesn’t it feel great to be free?” But it is not as easy to imagine someone in China asking, “Doesn’t it feel great to be stable?" "Harmonious” fits a little better. “Prosperous,” maybe, for those who’ve been feeling the prosperity. Perhaps, “Free from foreign imperialism” is the best comparison and the closest to the party’s original rhetoric. But just as the Tea Party movement is appalled at how far the U.S. has strayed from Jeffersonian democracy, any orthodox Marxist would by aghast at today’s People’s Republic.

Perhaps the popular revival of Red Songs and Red Tourism (a new Red Classics Theme Park will open in Chongqing for next year’s CCP anniversary) indicates nostalgia for the days of economic equality and lifetime employment in light of the volatile markets and disparity in wealth in today’s China. Or maybe, it shows a popular longing for the sense of camaraderie and shared purpose that typified the mass rallies and mobilizing campaigns of high Maoism, in spite of the often-counterproductive end results. But it may be that the simple answer is what UCSD Prof. David Jordan claims people really mean when they talk about how much better things were in the good ol’ days: Things were better because they were young. It seems that this same longing for youth could apply on a national scale.

The CCP and the United States both long for the days when they were small, revolutionary entities with high ideals and oppressive monarchies to struggle against. It is no coincidence that each nation commemorates a day on which the revolutionary leaders had yet to establish firm control over the entire country. Ideals are great when one is powerless to apply them.

For whatever reason, it seems that citizens tend to long for a nation united in common cause and ideology. But large bodies of people are inevitably too fickle and troublesome to agree on where to get lunch, much less how to run a country. It seems that the only thing we all can agree on, optimist and pessimist alike, is that things could be better. And so we imagine our nations’ founding as this better time when we were led by noble paragons of virtue, united in common cause against faceless tyranny. Regardless of class, gender, or ethnicity, we were united in song, and everyone knew all the words. Although governments tend to support such mythmaking to various degrees, most reasonable individuals know that this time never existed, but we still know all the words, so why not sing along and let ourselves be carried back to a time when we were all naïve enough to believe?

How Now Gaokao? Ten Frustrated Imperial Examinees Agree: Failure IS an Option

2011-06-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

The cream of a nation’s youth is sequestered for days, placed under tight surveillance in rooms equipped with devices to jam radio signals. Millions of stressed parents grow grayer by the minute lingering outside the gates while their progeny toil under intense scrutiny. Dozens of local governments ban nighttime construction and restrict airport departures to avoid disturbing their precious labors. What Herculean labors could cause a nation to hold its collective breath in eager anticipation? This week is China’s dreaded gaokao 高考, the “high test,” the culmination of eighteen years of preparation, the one task that will determine the future collegiate and professional careers of 9.3 million ambitious Chinese teenagers.

The gaokao in modern Mainland China began in 1958, went on a hiatus during the Cultural Revolution, and then returned in 1977 when over five million students contended for 220,000 university slots. The expansion of China’s educational system 思since then will allow an estimated 72% of exam takers to earn a spot in one of their chosen colleges in 2011. The number of students taking the exam increased until five years ago when it began to decline. 9.3 million students may seem like a lot, but it actually is a decrease of 300,000 from 2010. Many students are applying to colleges overseas that do not require the dreaded gaokao, and others are choosing to take their chances in China’s burgeoning job market without first earning a college degree.

Despite this decline, success on a national exam has been the prime root to fame and fortune for Chinese scholars for millennia, and a college education still holds comparably prestigious connotations for some. One man, 44-year-old Liang Shu of Chengdu, is attempting the exam for the fifteenth time this year. Despite starting his own business that employs 200 people, Liang still dreams of studying mathematics at Sichuan University. This year, Liang and his son are taking the exam together, but Liang isn’t sure he will try again if he fails again.

Many complain that this examination system puts too much pressure on students and is not really an accurate predictor of students’ success in college or later in life. Indeed, a study of over 1,000 zhuangyuan 狀元 (a title for the exam’s highest scorer that has been borrowed from imperial times) between 1977 and 2008 found that virtually none of these outstanding test-takers have achieved a comparable level of success later in life. Like Heisman Trophy winners in American college football, the media fawns over these stars, and they are heavily recruited, but most often, high expectations lead to disappointment. A high suicide rate, lack of creativity, epidemic of cheating, and lost youth among workaholic students have all been traced to a system that places too much importance on a single test.

Of course, today’s students have it easy compared to those who braved the imperial civil service exam before it was abolished in 1905. Only about 1% of those who took the national exam administered every three years would actually pass, but those who did could be assured an official post and the enduring prestige it entailed. However, many failures at the exam also went on to lead extremely successful careers as teachers, physicians, authors, revolutionaries, businessmen, etc. And today’s struggling examinees should take heart, because some of these ‘failures’ are still renowned luminaries in the vast annals of Chinese history. Indeed, Mr. Liang from Chengdu seems to have done well for himself without a college degree, and some would say Confucius himself was a failure, since he never found a state to fully implement his philosophy of governance. So, I would urge any gaokao victims out there (and sufferers of the SAT, ACT, GMAT, LSAT, GRE, TOEFL, or other members of this alphabet soup of standardized hell) to step back from that ledge, pause before setting your sights on next year’s exam, and read through this brief and woefully incomplete list of ten notable figures from Chinese history who failed in examination, but found success in life. And remember all you failures out there, you’re in good company.

Du Fu 杜甫 (712-770): He and his friend Li Bai 李白 (701-762) are considered the greatest poets of the Tang Dynasty and all of Chinese history. Perhaps because of politics or his innovative style, Du failed the imperial exam both times he attempted it. While he was not widely respected in his time, his work’s stylistic excellence, concern for the poor, and loyalty to the state led it to be rediscovered in the Song Dynasty and widely loved through the present.

Luo Yin 羅隱 (833–909), born Luo Heng 羅橫, he gave himself the penname Yin, meaning “dormant” after failing the exam ten times. Nevertheless, he is still remembered for his straightforward and witty poetry. His most famous poem, entitled “Self Consolation 自遣,” should be a favorite of examinees everywhere:

得(dé)即(jí)高(gāo)歌(gē)失(shī)即(jí)休(xiū)，多(duō)愁(chóu)多(duō)恨(hèn)亦(yì)悠(yōu)悠(yōu)。

今(jīn)朝(zhāo)有(yǒu)酒(jiǔ)今(jīn)朝(zhāo)醉(zuì)，明(míng)日(rì)愁(chóu)來(lái)明(míng)日(rì)愁(chóu)

Gain produces high music; loss produces rest.

More worries bring more hatred, even in distant reverie.

Today there is wine; today is to be drunk.

Tomorrow worries will come; tomorrow is to worry.

Li Shizhen 李時珍 (1518-1593)- Although his father and grandfather were doctors, they encouraged Li to pursue a more prestigious scholarly career in public service. Li passed the county level exam at just fourteen, but failed the provincial exam three times over the next nine years. Finally, Li decided to dedicate himself to a medical career and became a renowned physician, earning a spot in the Imperial Medical Institute in Beijing before focusing on compiling, editing and publishing historically important medical texts. He is still revered in China today and an award given for accomplishments in traditional Chinese medicine is still named after him.

Wang Zhihe 王致和 (17^th century): According to legend, he was too ashamed to return to his home village after failing an imperial exam in the Qing Dynasty. So Wang stayed in the city and supported himself selling tofu until the next exam. When some of his tofu began to spoil in the summer heat, the inexperienced tofu peddler tried to preserve it by storing it sealed in a jar with some salt. When he opened the jar months later, the tofu smelled horrible, but he tasted it anyway (maybe there was a reason he failed the exam…) Surprisingly, it was delicious, so he began selling it labeled as “stinky tofu 臭豆腐,” a culinary singularity still loved by many Chinese and feared by most outsiders today.

Pu Songling 蒲松齡 (1640-1715) After spending most of his life studying for and failing examinations, he finally succeeded in the county level exam at the ripe old age of 71. However, Pu is better known today than any of the zhuangyuan of his time because he recorded numerous stories he learned during a life of teaching, which were later published as Strange Tales of Liaozhai 聊齋誌異.

Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹 (1715?-1763?) Little is known about this man who wrote Dream of a Red Chamber 紅樓夢, one of China’s four greatest classical novels. However, since his father, grandfather, and uncle were all high government officials, one can only assume that he attempted the imperial exam. And since his name is not recorded among degree holders, one can ascertain that he failed. This would account for the centrality of studying and examinations in the lives of his male characters who usually require supernatural assistance to succeed.

Jiang Chun 江春 (1721-1789) was one of the most successful and wealthy merchants from Huizhou 惠州 (now Huangshan黃山, Anhui安徽) in the Qing Dynasty. After failing the imperial exam numerous times, he turned to the salt business and made a fortune. He became a patron of the opera, architecture and his native cuisine. The Qianlong Emperor 乾隆帝 respected Jiang so much that he granted him an official title and salary when his business went sour later in his life. Centuries later, a descendant of Jiang, Jiang Zemin 江澤民, would become president of the People’s Republic of China.

Hong Xiuquan 洪秀全 (1814-1864): The founder and king of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace 太平天囯 failed the exam four times. Some would argue that stress from intensive study and repeated failure helped inspire the vision of Jesus Christ calling him little brother that would ultimately spark the Taiping Rebellion one of (if not the) bloodiest conflicts of the 19^th century. [Note to present-day ‘failures:’ Please don’t emulate this guy.]

Yuan Shikai 袁世凯 (1859-1916): The head of the Beiyang Army and first president of the Republic of China failed the exam twice before entering the military and later buying an official title. Perhaps if he had studied harder, he would not have made the ill-fated decision to crown himself emperor in 1915. [Note to ‘failures:’ You’re better off not emulating him either.}

Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879-1942): He passed the county level exam in 1896, but failed the provincial exam in 1897. He would become a key figure in deposing the Qing Dynasty, one of the founders of the Communist Party in 1921 (with which he later parted ways), and a prolific writer, philosopher, and educator.

Why Ban Time Travel? Intentional Inscrutability and the Return of the Sage King

2011-05-04T14:31:00.000-07:00

Just a few days before the arrest of artist Ai Weiwei 艾未未, the CCP issued a statement on popular culture that nearly escaped the eyes of the international press. The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television announced a decision to discourage Chinese television and film companies from producing more “time travel dramas” 穿越剧. Cinema and television shows set in classical China have been popular at least for several decades, but in the last year, numerous new series have shared a plot device in which characters from the modern era travel back in time. Generally, they initially have a difficult time adjusting, but soon fall in love and decide to stay in the past. The edict accuses producers of these dramas of distorting history, creating frivolous myths, and even promoting superstition and feudalism. Western media picked up the story a week or two later and enjoyed trumpeting the misleading headline, “China bans time travel!” but if one looks beyond the apparent absurdity of this decree, it can reveal something about the cunning strategy by which the Chinese Communist Party maintains a hold on sovereignty.

There’s little doubt that some CCP officials wince upon seeing their fictionalized subjects escaping into an idealized feudal past, but I doubt anyone believes these serials will inspire Chinese engineers to turn their backs on the Three Gorges and start wrenching on old DeLoreans. I’m sure the elders of the CCP are aware that China’s wistful TV time travelers threaten party hegemony just as much as the oversexed doctors on Grey’s Anatomy threaten to bring down the American health care system. But this is only the most recent such admonishment for Chinese broadcasters. When I was in China during 2002, the extremely popular Meteor Garden 流星花園 TV series starring Taiwan’s Flower Four boy band was banned for inciting materialism and frivolity in the nation’s youth (but unstated charges included taking too much market share from domestically produced series and being based on Japanese manga). In 2007, images of pigs were banned from CCTV’s airwaves in order to avoid offending Muslims during the Year of the Pig. So why does the party exert its power and influence through pronouncements on such apparently trivial issues, inciting begrudging compliance at home and derisive ridicule abroad?

The answer lays in the paternalism endemic in Chinese governance that, contrary to many Western expectations, is showing a strong continuity, if not resurgence, amidst economic liberalization. Just as the Great Wall historically protected China from marauding barbarians, the Ministry of Propaganda and its Great Firewall valiantly protect Chinese citizens from the barbarous excesses and foreign encroachments of free market capitalism. The fact that these dramas are produced domestically makes them all the more dangerous to the people’s morality. Anyone who believes that stability trumps freedom can perceive the threat in public protests or popular demonstrations, but it takes the expert tutelage of the party to recognize incipient moral decay being transmitted across the domestic airwaves. After all, the party is not criticizing the mere existence of time travel on the air, but its excessive promulgation and degeneration. Indeed, if not for the obvious constitutional implications, a moratorium on reality TV in the US (Sixteen and Pregnant? Really?) might seem tempting… Just as the US government justifies a broad array of actions as necessary to combat the shadowy force of terror, the Chinese government claims the need to protect its people from the amoral and omnipresent private interests. This moral critique of the market is virtually the only remnant of Communist ideology the CCP still puts into practice, but its perseverance is not surprising as the basic connection between sovereignty and moral guardianship it shares with Confucianism can be traced back through the imperial era to the mythical age of sage kings. This idea creates a thin string of rhetorical continuity connecting all Chinese sovereigns from Yao 堯 and Shun 舜 to Mao 毛 and Hu 胡.

Time travel seems an odd place to make a moral stand, but the ability of the CCP to point out danger where most Westerners would never perceive it has become a useful strategy for asserting its relevance in the modern world. And the international media’s mockery and puzzlement at Chinese inscrutability, rather than shaming the CCP into an international dialogue on human rights issues, plays a crucial role in maintaining distance between the moral realm within China and the neoliberal rationality of outsiders. The Chinese people are immersed in a world of moral admonishments that most can blithely dismiss for themselves, while hoping less civilized countrymen take them to heart. But seeing such pronouncements mocked and misrepresented on a global stage only lends credence to xenophobic CCP rhetoric about Chinese historical particularism and the nefarious distortions of Western media. The party manages to portray international criticism of its actions, from banning time travel to imprisoning dissidents, as attacks on China, leading people to rationalize and even defend its government’s actions in the interest of saving face. Broadly glossing media maelstroms over obscure media guidelines and alleged criminals/media darlings as foreign attempts at meddling in domestic affairs renders the Western humanitarian critique inscrutable.

To the outsider, the arrest of Ai Weiwei, the shutdown of the Internet in Xinjiang, and other apparently autocratic actions are indicative of a party clinging to questionable legitimacy, but bans on heterodox religion and other moral pronouncements just seem bizarre. However, when inordinate government attention to perceived problems such as TV time travel incites mockery in the international press, it allows the party to paint overt challenges to its authority as similarly trivial issues that have been blown out of proportion by ignorant or malicious foreigners. The befuddlement and criticism these latter interventions draw only reinforces the amorality of the West as opposed to the internal realm, which is focused on preserving a sense of virtue that no outsider can fully grasp because of its indefinable, but all-important, ‘Chinese characteristics.’

Tang Dynasty Twitter

2011-04-02T15:54:00.000-07:00

Those who follow the museum on Twitter, Facebook, etc. have probably noticed recent updates featuring lines translated from Tang Dynasty and other classical Chinese poetry. These are often inspired by other translations around the web, but I’ve had to develop shorter translations in order to fit the original Chinese characters (for the benefit of speakers and students of Chinese) in the same tweet. To a certain extent, this is certainly a bastardization of ancient classics, but all translations of literary Chinese into English tend to be either too cryptic to mean anything or so verbose they destroy the original prosody. Perhaps, in my amateurish and dictionary-dependent translations, the constraints of Twitter actually might be forcing a fruitful compromise between two unsatisfactory means of translation to produce one that conveys more (and more ambiguous) meanings in less words.

Chinese poetry is notoriously inaccessible to the roughly 80% of the world that cannot read or speak the language. And classical poetry from the Han 漢朝 or Tang dynasties 唐朝 uses enough obscure words and allusions to render it nearly incomprehensible to many Mandarin speakers as well. Not to mention the fact that pronunciation of Chinese characters has changed enough over the years to render ancient rhyme schemes moot, except to interested academics.

Yet China has a longer literary and artistic tradition than just about anywhere else, and its poetry conveys a uniquely austere, melancholy aesthetic with a deep reverence for the natural world. Each character conveys in a single syllable centuries of accumulated meaning and connotations, the ambiguity and richness of which cannot be fully translated. And this depth of meaning is conveyed in only a few spare words, producing an austere rhythm of carefully balanced verses. This aural simplicity is frequently cluttered and lost when one adds the meaningless mechanical articles and conjunctions necessary to stitch English phrases together.

Thus, there are two fundamental styles of translating Chinese poetry: a literal translation of each word that preserves the spare cadence but is often too cryptic to be meaningful (like translating a web site with Google), or a more verbose translation of the meaning into English that either lacks any sort of rhythm or creates an arbitrary one (with an often simplistic rhyme scheme and inappropriate singsong tone). Numerous translations are available online, but the website http://www.chinese-poems.com/ does a good job of conveying the best of both worlds (thankfully, without imposing English rhymes) by presenting both approaches together. Here’s an example of an untitled poem by Li Shangyin 李商隱: (c. 813-858).

來是空言去絕蹤，

月斜樓上五更鐘。

夢為遠別啼難喚，

書被催成墨未濃。

蠟照半籠金翡翠，

麝熏微度繡芙蓉。

劉郎已恨蓬山遠，

更隔蓬山一萬重。

Come be empty word go without trace

Moon slant tower on fifth watch bell

Dream be far part call hard call

Write reason hurry achieve ink not thick

Candle shine half cover gold emerald

Musk vapour tiny degree embroider lotus

Liu young already regret Peng shan far

More separate Peng shan ten thousand times

Her promises to come were empty words, she's gone without a trace,

The moon is slanting on the tower as I hear the fifth watch bell.

In my dream we were far apart, I found it hard to call,

Hurriedly I try to write, but find the ink too thin.

The candle's radiance covers half the gold and emerald bed,

A tiny hint of musky scent remains on embroidered lotus.

Young Liu already regretted that Pengshan hill lay far away,

We two are separated by ten thousand Pengshan hills.

Notice that in order to convey meaning in English, the translator essentially doubles the length of the text and inserts the narrator as an active protagonist. Of course, one eventually realizes the poet is longing for his love, but the stream of consciousness style and initial ambiguity of the first couple lines is lost in the second translation. In contrast, the first translation shows how the English language is not flexible enough to convey the full ambiguity of Chinese while still remaining meaningful. For example, the first two words “come be” sound like an invitation to the English reader, but they also could be translated as “What is to come/has come/is coming” or even “her promises to come,” which makes more sense when the next two characters are included in the translation: “Coming was empty speech/words/promise.”

However, Chinese speakers have told me multiple times that Chinese poetry is not about words’ meanings; it is more focused on conveying or creating a mood or feeling. In keeping with this idea, I would argue that ambiguity should be preserved as much as possible, especially in the initial verses. For example, the first line of this poem conveys a sense of emptiness and sudden departure without any physical referent. Thus, the verse appeared on Twitter as, “Coming from emptiness, words suddenly go.” In retrospect, “Coming was empty promise, gone without trace” might be more accurate given the context. In classical Chinese, there were no commas (or any other punctuation) to clarify.

Now, I don’t claim to be an expert translator, and there are roughly 1.3 billion people who could probably do better. Perhaps I have enraged the spirits of Li Shangyin and other sages of yore by reducing their elegant odes to choppy, ambiguous, and misinterpreted sound bytes. But these cryptic verses make up some of the foundations of a Chinese culture that some Westerners still see as unspeakably bizarre and altogether inscrutable. Reducing poems to a series of disconnected English words or translating them into detailed descriptions of blooming flowers, moonlight, and mountains only threatens to reinforce the alterity of Chinese culture. I hope that introducing vague, provocative, and decontextualized, yet still meaningful translations of these verses can help the most ignorant of Westerners to feel elements of the Chinese aesthetic, provoking introspection rather than confusion or condescension. For better or worse, Twitter and its unforgiving 140-character limit has inspired a new slant on ancient classics, and (hopefully) helped to recover some of what is always lost in translation.

Drs. Chuang and Lee: Transnational Brothers in the Chinese Diaspora

2011-03-05T15:20:00.000-08:00

“學而時習之，不亦說乎？有朋自遠方來，不亦樂乎？

Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance?

Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters? -Confucius

During the Spring Festival, a friend from distant quarters arrived bearing gifts for museum and staff, and he was also prepared with a list of everything he would like to share and discuss. Dr. Lee 李大夫 had several useful donations and interesting ideas, but the most poignant part of the conversation was when he pointed out how recent newsletter articles by our director, Dr. Chuang 莊博士, about his childhood in war-torn China and his creative problem-solving in the museum’s early days inspired a remarkable sense of affinity despite his very different background as a second generation Chinese American who grew up in a New York City Chinatown laundry.

With a subtle New York accent, Dr. Lee recalled how he initially had felt Dr. Chuang exuded the refined aura of the Chinese gentleman scholar, a far cry from his own experience growing up on welfare as the child of poor immigrants. And it’s common knowledge that Chinese immigrants to the U.S. in the second half of the twentieth century were predominately upper class and well-educated Mandarin speakers as opposed to the initial wave of immigrants made up of Cantonese speakers from the impoverished countryside of southern China. But reading about Dr. Chuang’s boyhood experiences, moving from Nanjing 南京, to Changsha 長沙, to Chongqing 重慶, to Kunming 昆明, cowering in ditches as Japanese bombs rained down, and at one point losing all his luggage, including his coat and shoes, in a chaotic train station full of refugees made him realize that they had both led lives of deprivation at one time.

Dr. Lee observed commonalities that went beyond the fact of shared suffering in the other article about how the museum became recognized as one of the top ten in San Diego without the benefit of a full-time, professionally trained staff or anyone with education or experience in the museum business. (The gracious Dr. Lee even proclaimed it the best Chinese/Chinatown museum he has seen outside China). In the article, Dr. Chuang recalls many unexpected obstacles and unusual solutions like refinishing donated display cabinets by hand, paying garbage men $20 to lend a hand with a huge crate, or installing flag stones to protect koi fish from a marauding heron. In these episodes, Dr. Lee recognized and identified with the sort of hands-on dedication and resourcefulness typical of those who have had to make do with meager resources.

A combination of economic struggles and Confucian values led both culturally and artistically minded men to pursue advanced degrees in science and engineering at the behest of their families. The somewhat suspect nature of psychiatry in the eyes of the traditional Chinese parents is a subject for another day, but both men recognize the sacrifice their parents made for the sake of their present careers and status. Indeed, the roots of Chinese culture run deep. And both men share surnames with ancient Daoist sages; Laozi was surnamed Lee (Li 李) and Zhuangzi was surnamed Chuang (Zhuang 莊).

The good doctor even told us that museum newsletters are like “letters from home.” In this sense, Chinatown anywhere could be home, and all overseas Chinese are one big family. Of course, anyone familiar with San Diego’s Chinatown knows that it is a faaaaaaar cry from New York or San Francisco. But the recollection of a community that has long since dispersed, of rundown buildings that have long ago fallen to redevelopment, in many ways captures the quintessential transient aura of Chinatown. Just as one would not and cannot turn back the clock to the bound feet and imperial despots of old China, one hopes we will never return to the days when Chinese and other Asian immigrants were deprived of basic rights and secluded into crowded ghettos and unsavory red-light districts. One can never step into the same river twice, but one can and should gaze thoughtfully upstream and ponder the river’s source.

Our museum may be physically located in San Diego’s historic Chinatown, but it is by no means solely dedicated to preserving our local community’s history. Of course preserving and sharing our unique history is essential to our mission, but like other Chinatown-based museums, our community and the experience we preserve is innately transnational. The shared plight of families fleeing the chaos of dynastic decline or foreign invasion, the struggle to survive in a new and unwelcoming nation, and the common values that enable perseverance in spite of adversity serve to unite communities of fellow sufferers, regardless of separations wrought by space, time, language, and class.

To read Dr. Chuang's articles, see "My Childhood" in the Summer 2010.3 issue and "How We Achieved Top Ten in San Diego" in the Fall 2009.4 issue. Both are available on the museum web site here.

Hope Springs Eternal in the Year of the Yin Metal Rabbit

2011-01-22T13:29:00.000-08:00

The idea of yin 陰 and yang 陽 – the opposites that create, become and contain seeds of each other – permeate Chinese philosophy and astrology. According to the latter, the state of the world is currently moving from yang to yin as we transition from the year of the yang metal tiger to the yin metal rabbit. After consulting Internet astrologers and psychics, my own random inclinations, and other completely arbitrary sources of unsubstantiated new-agey wisdom, I can definitively pronounce that there is a distinct possibility that we can look forward to a more civil, peaceful, prosperous and productive year ahead.

Dragon dancers perform in front of the museum at the 2010 New Year Fair

The New Year Festival starts Feb. 3, but lasts for fifteen days, so come out and celebrate the auspicious year ahead at the FREE Chinese New Year Food and Cultural Fair Feb. 12-13 at 3^rd and J St. downtown, and/or buy tickets to our 15th Annual Banquet, Feb. 19 at Pearl Restaurant in Rancho Bernardo.

In addition to the well-known twelve animals, each lunar year is also associated with one of five elements (metal, water, wood, fire, earth) that changes every two years. For example, 2010 was a yang metal tiger, so 2011 is a yin metal rabbit, and 2012 will be a yang water dragon. This makes a 60-year cycle, which Wikipedia lays out nicely here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_zodiac

Museum volunteers write calligraphy during the New Year Fair

Rabbits are cautious, social, cooperative, they have a good eye for detail and a tendency towards domesticity. They are the epitome of the yin nature, and rabbit years traditionally are said to be the luckiest year for girls to be born, whereas the dragon is the perfect yang sign and ideal for male children. If one extrapolates stereotypical feminine rabbit qualities to world events as a whole, one can expect dialogue and conflict resolution to prevail over saber rattling and hostility.

The last yin metal rabbit year was 1951, when most nations concentrated on rebuilding from WWII. Of course, the globe was not entirely peaceful, and the Korean War raged on, but most conflicts were focused on domestic security, like the rise of McCarthyism and the Rosenberg trial in the U.S. and China securing control over Tibet. Artistic pursuits also tend to thrive in rabbit years; 1951 saw the premier of The King and I on Broadway, I Love Lucy on TV, and J.D. Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye.

Rabbits have a tendency to take care of the domestic sphere first, so one could see an increase in protectionism, isolationist tendencies, and even xenophobia as nations look inwardly to repair their economies and secure their borders. But these and other efforts may be successful as the element of metal is often associated with money, and the metal tiger year did see the technical “end” of the recession…

According to modern science, rational thought, the idea of free will, and all that modern jibber jabber, one shouldn’t put too much stock in these predictions. But 2010 met many predictions for a tumultuous year, and it is interesting that calls for a shift in the rancorous tone and violent metaphors of American political discourse have come just as the yang tiger year is ending…

So, with the utmost faith in the power of irrational optimism, I hereby proclaim that in 2011 the people of Earth will finally learn to live in peace and harmony. And (why not?) in the words of the traditional Chinese New Year greeting, we’ll all get rich and be happy 恭喜发财, too.

Xu Jiatun 許家屯: From Revolutionary to Refugee

2010-12-01T11:15:00.000-08:00

It is with great pleasure that the Chinese Historical Museum welcomes the bonafide Communist revolutionary who became the highest member of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党 CCP) to defect to the United States.

Xu Jiatun joined the party in 1938, rose through the ranks of the People’s Liberation Army in the wars against Japan and the Nationalists, suffered denunciation and demotion during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s, was rehabilitated and eventually appointed head of the Xinhua News Agency 新華通訊社 (and the underground CCP) in Hong Kong in 1983, and fled to the U.S. in 1990 after sympathizing with Hong Kong people demonstrating in solidarity with pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square 天安門廣場.

It boggles the mind to think of all the history Xu has experienced in his 94 years. Not only can he offer an insider’s view on twentieth century mainland Chinese politics, but he also can share the gut-wrenching transition from citizen to refugee, cadre to dissident, East to West, and the realization that one can never go home again.

The general story of exile will be familiar to many of our Chinese American museum members whose families fled the communist regime, but most of them left for Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States as the Nationalist forces were being pushed off the mainland. Indeed, this will be the first time the museum has hosted a speaker from the other side of this conflict.

Of course, the museum welcomes members of all political leanings, but we resolutely avoid the treacherous waters of modern Chinese politics. I could not imagine hosting a party apparatchik nor an anti-communist crusader, nor any lecture related to the acrimonious issues surrounding Taiwan, Tibet, nor even the smallest rock in the South China Sea. However, the combination of Xu’s party membership and his defection allow him to reflect on both sides of the issues and, hopefully, help to soothe the ongoing ideological strife through the dispassionate lens of historical hindsight.

Arriving in the United States at the age of 74, one can only imagine the adjustment Xu went through after being denied a request for a quiet retirement in his native Jiangsu Province. In the first weeks after his arrival, Xu claimed that he was in the U.S. to conduct research, and the CCP announced that he was vacationing. Both agreed that he had not defected and would return home.

After scrupulously avoiding the media for two years, Xu published a memoir advocating political reforms just before the three year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protests. But even as he aligned himself with the CCP’s opponents, Xu only called for adopting some Western and capitalist-inspired ideas in order to save Chinese socialism, a process he compared to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which he and others credit with preserving the American capitalist system through publicly funded social programs. In 1997, he joined others in appealing to the party congress to reassess its condemnation of the 1989 protests, and his criticism of the regime has grown ever since.

There’s no doubt that some would find it hard to understand Xu’s 62 years of service to the party, in which he must have at least tacitly supported Mao’s policies that resulted in famine, violent purges, and mass indoctrination. Even today’s CCP agrees he was 30% wrong. But if shaking hands with protestors led to investigation and arrest in 1990, opposition would be virtually suicidal during the height of Maoism. Some naysayers could attribute his defection to political expedience and l his subsequent criticism to opportunism. Regardless of whether either of these positions contain elements of truth, what I find most remarkable is Xu’s courage in changing and speaking his mind. It is easy to stubbornly stick to one’s guns, but real courage is required to reconsider and criticize the ideals and institutions one has spent a lifetime upholding.

Unrequited Patriotism: From Yue Fei 岳飛 to the USA

2010-11-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

Despite decades of legal and social discrimination that included the Chinese becoming the first ethnic group to be excluded from immigration to the U.S., the percentage of Chinese Americans serving in WWII was nearly twice that of the population as a whole. And nearly half of them were not even citizens.

Patriotism is easy for the privileged, but why would these people risk life and limb for a country that had treated them and their ancestors with distrust and hostility? As is often the case, a story from Chinese history can help deepen our understanding…

Yue Fei 岳飛 (1103-1142 CE) is the iconic figure of patriotism in China. When he was a baby, Yue’s parents legendarily saved him from the flooding Yellow River 黃河 by encapsulating him in a clay jar. Yue grew up working the fields as a peasant’s son and joined the army at age nineteen. His skill in archery was unsurpassed and he eventually received the highest score in the imperial military exam at the Southern Song capital of Kaifeng. But one year later, the Jurchen 女眞 people to the north (ancestors of the Manchus) conquered Kaifeng 開封 and took the Qinzong 欽宗 Emperor prisoner, ending the Northern Song Dynasty 北宋. Thus, the emperor’s half brother proclaimed himself the Gaozong 高宗 Emperor and established the Southern Song 南宋 capital at Lin’an 臨安, the modern city of Hangzhou 杭州.

A painting at Yue Fei's tomb in Hangzhou

Yue Fei became one of the principal generals leading the Southern Song armies to push the Jurchen back north of the Yangtze River 長江. During this tumultuous era, many turned against the new emperor, but Yue Fei famously had the four characters “盡忠報國 serve the country with the utmost loyalty” tattooed across his back, some say by his own mother.

Just when Yue had scored a string of victories and was poised to attack Kaifeng, corrupt ministers advised Gaozong 高宗 to sue for peace and recall Yue, lest his success in battle win freedom for the Qinzong emperor, who would depose the upstart Gaozong. The great patriot obeyed the imperial order and reluctantly returned to the capital where the notorious official, Qin Hui 秦檜, had him imprisoned for treason, and later, executed. Today, one can visit his tomb in Hangzhou, where visitors spit upon and revile kneeling statues depicting Qin Hui and his wife.


San Diego Chinese youth enlist in the Army Air Corps, 1942

Yue Fei expected no reward for serving his country, and indeed, he received the opposite. Had he vanquished the Jurchens and freed the Qinzong Emperor, he would have been a hero at the time, but his fame likely would have faded within a couple generations, and I wouldn’t be writing about him in San Diego today. It is precisely the tragic fact that Yue Fei sacrificed himself for an undeserving ruler that makes the story so compelling. Many claim that so many Chinese Americans and, even more so, Japanese Americans served in the U.S. Military to prove their loyalty to their adopted country. While this may be partially true, the lives of 57 San Diego Chinese American veterans recounted in Through the Eyes of Heroes: A Tribute to San Diego’s Chinese American Veterans― to be released Saturday, November 13, 2010―do not include any recollections of justifying or rationalizing the decision to serve. Indeed, the majority were enlisted rather than drafted, and none of the veterans interviewed mention any debate or hesitancy about fighting for the nation that had sought to exclude them and restrict their rights.

Guests at the 14th Annual Veterans Day Luncheon, 2009

Indeed, Chinese and other immigrants from Asian cultures share the Confucian values of duty and loyalty that have been ingrained through generations of retelling stories like that of Yue Fei, and it would appear that these patriotic values were readily transferred to a new nation. Thus, decades of exclusion and discrimination did not dampen Chinese Americans’ love for their new homeland, and they eagerly professed their patriotism and acted on it. The lessons of history had taught them that regardless of what this country had done or would do to them, it was still their duty to do all that they could for the USA.

The Trans-Pacific Phenomena of Ghoulish Extortionists: from Halloween to the Ghost Festival

2010-10-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

Hungry ghosts in a traditional painting

There is no trick-or-treating in China, but each summer the Chinese celebrate an eerie holiday not unlike our Halloween. While Americans permit their children to don disguises and extort candy from strangers, the Chinese offer edible treats and other bribes to ancestors and other hungry ghosts in the hopes that the former will grant blessings and the latter will return to Hell without inflicting any infernal “tricks” on the living. In both cases, the living get to enjoy treats while experiencing a sometimes uneasy flirtation with the netherworld, but the fact that the American holiday focuses on youth and the Chinese holiday focuses on ancestors portrays an important contrast between the two cultures.

Long before All Hallows’ Eve (the day before the Christian feast of All Saint’s Day) merged with pagan traditions to form Halloween, Chinese Taoists and Buddhists both recognized a day when the dead walked the Earth. The Hungry Ghost Festival 盂蘭盆, or Zhongyuan Jie 中元節, falls on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, which places it in mid to late August, or August 24 in 2010.

On this day, the gates of Hell are thrown open so that the dead may walk the Earth. Thus, families set out feasts for the deceased to enjoy and burn incense, special “spirit money,” and other flammable offerings that will be useful in the afterlife. In Chinese tradition, the dead require all the same things as their living brethren, and tombs often are filled with miniature houses, farm animals, servants, and entertainers. Indeed, boredom must be a big problem in the eternal hereafter; so Chinese operas held during the Ghost Festival traditionally leave the front row of seats empty, reserved for otherworldly spectators.

However, this is not to say that all Chinese ghosts are kindly grandmothers come back as Casper to sip tea and pinch cheeks while taking in an opera. Ancestors can grant boons to the living in exchange for offerings, but souls of unfilial sonsand corrupt officials, those who died a violent death, had an improper burial, or have not received the offerings they crave, come to this world in search of vengeance. Those who deserve punishment for earthly misdeeds become “hungry ghosts,” and they traditionally are depicted with huge stomachs and tiny throats, so they are perpetually hungry but cannot eat.

A ghost marriage in Singapore,
courtesy Singapore Paranormal Investigations

When young people die before marriage, their families sometimes arrange a “ghost marriage" toappease their spirits and incorporate them into living families who will give them offerings. Since women traditionally become part of their husband’s family, they would not receive offerings if they died before marriage, and their spirits may cause illness or misfortune for the family of their betrothed or their own family that failed to find them a spouse in life. To alleviate their ill-fortune, such families must find a groom, living or dead, sometimes employing a matchmaker specializing in such marriages. After the families exchange the dowry, they conduct a typical wedding feast with paper effigies in place of the dead bride and/or groom, and afterwards they burn the effigy(ies) (but not a living bride or groom) along with real marriage clothing, paper attendants, paper dowry items, paper gifts, and spirit money.

The Ghost King and offerings, flanked by attendants

In Chinese custom, burning things is one sure way to transport them to the netherworld. The finaleof the festival is often the burning of a giant paper effigy of the Ghost King, so he will gather his minions and lead them back to the afterlife, making Earth safe for the living once again. In a similar vein, people set paper lanterns afloat in water the night of the Ghost Festival, to guide mischievous phantoms back to the realm of the dead.

At other times during the festival, the superstitious will avoid water as ghosts of people who drowned can avoid their torment by dragging a living replacement to his or her watery grave. Many Chinese and other believers will refuse to schedule weddings or other celebrations during this time. It is also a risky season to undergo surgery, make major purchases, or move into a new house, and many parents keep their children indoors at night lest a wayward spirit choose to possess them.

It’s an odd contrast that Chinese tradition requires parents to keep their children indoors, while American kids take to the streets for several hours of interaction with strangers. But Americans are just as (if not more) afraid of razor-filled caramel apples or poisoned candies as Chinese parents are of ghosts. As a child in the ‘80s, I remember being warned not to eat any goodies before my parents had a chance to inspect the annual haul, and throw away anything not securely wrapped in impermeable plastic, foil and/or cardboard. Most people now realize that diabolical Halloween candy tainters were largely an urban legend, and no one ever hears about a surge in demonic possessions each August, but the fear of unknown dangers from this or other worlds is a theme that pervades both of these holidays and makes all of us appreciate life while it’s still here, even as we tremble with trepidation at what lurks beyond…

Ghosts of China's Past (and Present)

2010-10-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

Ghosts were one of the few things that Confucius refused to discuss. But in spite of the tremendous influence his ideas have had over Chinese culture, stories and superstitions about specters from the netherworld have proliferated from his time into the modern day.

The Zhou Dynasty 周朝 (c. 1046-256 BCE) thinker Mozi 墨子 (c. 470~391 BCE) was a big proponent of ghosts, writing several chapters citing them as a powerful tool to keep people in line that has been employed since the reigns of the legendary sage kings who founded the Xia (夏朝 c. 2070~1600 BCE) and Shang Dynasties (商朝 c. 1600-1046 BCE). For Mozi, these spirits form a sort of omnipresent, invisible, and inescapable morality police: “Even in solitary caves, big ponds, woods and valleys, the ghosts and spirits are watching. And the punishments from ghosts and spirits cannot be evaded.” The roughly contemporaneous philosophies of Daoism and Confucianism largely eclipsed Mozi’s extremely pragmatic ideas, but when one delves into Chinese folk beliefs and popular stories, ghosts are lurking everywhere.

Ghosts are nearly as crucial to Chinese detective stories as snappy one-liners are to today’s TV crime dramas. In The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee 狄公案, a novel first published in the 18^th century and translated into English by Robert Hans van Gulik, the hero, based on an actual Tang Dynasty (唐朝 618-907 CE) judge who investigates crimes and also tries the perpetrators, frequently consults with ghosts in dreams and graveyards

After all, who needs forensic science when you can just interview the murder victim?

An even more famous collection of stories from the Qing Dynasty (清朝 1644-1911 CE) Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio 聊齋誌異, by Pu Songling 蒲松齡 is filled with tales of both noble and nefarious ghosts, demons in the guise of women or animals, cannibalistic highwaymen and other supernatural oddities. Indeed, everyone loves a good ghost story; no matter what language they speak.

But belief in ghosts is not confined to China’s past. I distinctly remember the shocked expressions of rural Sichuan residents when I told them I had spent the prior night camping alone in the woods: “You guizi! 有鬼子” they said, meaning, “There’s ghosts!”

But even many urban, modern, educated, and atheist Chinese of today still burn incense and give offerings at their ancestors’ tombs. For many, this is more about respect for family and cultural traditions than actual religious belief; they expect boons from their ancestors like Americans expect groundhogs to predict the weather. However, if they hold onto the comforting idea of ancestors watching over them, then perhaps they have to accept the slight possibility that less benevolent phantoms also lurk in the shadows.

Indeed, the words of Mozi still haunt us today, “If from antiquity to the present, and since the beginning of man, there are men who have seen the bodies of ghosts and spirits and heard their voice, how can we say that they do not exist?”

Chang E 嫦娥: Heroic Moon Fairy or Spoiled Frog Princess?

2010-09-17T15:47:00.000-07:00

Traditional China was not known for its liberated women, but its people envisioned a woman on the moon long before the “man in the moon” was conceived in the West. The legend of Chang E (a.k.a. Chang Er, Ch’ang O or Heng O, but pronounced “Chang Uh”) is still prominent enough for the Chinese government to name moon landers after her, but did the ancient Chinese really mean to lionize a woman who betrayed her husband and fled to the moon to live as a spinster with a bipedal rabbit and a delinquent lumberjack?

At the museum Moon Festival 中秋節 celebration each year, we recruit youngsters to re-enact the story of Chang E and Hou Yi 后羿, but we sacrifice a certain amount of nuance for the sake of simplicity. The tale as presented in the museum garden goes like this:

The people once suffered under the unbearable heat of ten suns until the heroic archer Hou Yi shot down nine of them with his bow. The people were so grateful that they proclaimed him king, and he married the beautiful Chang E. But Hou Yi began to abuse his power and made the people suffer. In a bid to rule forever he traveled to the Kunlun Mountains 崑崙山 and persuaded the Queen Mother of the West 西王母 to give him an elixir of immortality for he and his wife to share. However, Chang E seizes the elixir and drinks it herself to save the world from eternal tyranny. Hou Yi watched as this overdose caused her to float up to the moon, but he could not bring himself to shoot his love down. So he would gaze up at her on each full moon (Other endings to this version have a repentant Hou Yi build her a palace on the moon and/or deliver her pet rabbit, which becomes the Jade Rabbit 月兔).

This version always leaves me feeling a little sorry for Hou Yi. Sure, he engaged in some sort of vague tyranny (actually, one particularly colorful version has him making the elixir out of babies), but he did save the world from certain death by ancient Chinese global warming (and his methods were more exciting and efficient than Al Gore). Regardless, it’s unusual for a Chinese heroine to stab her husband in the back, even if he had it coming. But Chang E looks decidedly less heroic in other versions of the tale:

Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 portrays Chang E in the Chinese Opera

One version claims that the two were a divine couple sent down from heaven to dissuade the ten suns from all shining at once, but they were not allowed to return after Hou Yi shot down the suns that were actually sons of the Jade Emperor. Other versions cast Chang E as a maid in heaven who broke a porcelain vase, for which the Jade Emperor banished her to earth where she married the hero Hou Yi. In either case, Chang E (and sometimes Hou Yi) was not entirely satisfied with ruling Earth as an aging mortal, so Hou Yi sought the elixir of immortality. In giving it to him, the Queen Mother warned that a year of fasting and mental preparation is necessary before taking it. Half would make one immortal; all of it would cause one to float up to the heavens. In some versions an evil villain (who sometimes kills Hou Yi) tried to take the potion and Chang E had to drink it to prevent him from stealing it. In others, she took the potion out of hiding against Hou Yi’s command. She was discovered, hid it from Hou Yi in her mouth and accidentally swallowed it. And a final version claims that she willfully took the whole potion for herself because she could no longer bear mortal life. But she never made it back to heaven, because she didn’t do the necessary preparations; or the Jade Emperor was still mad about his vase, her unfaithfulness, or failure to bear a grandson… Or the romantic version says she just wanted to continue gazing longingly at Hou Yi. Some also say she was transformed into a frog that swallows the moon during an eclipse as punishment for her theft.

Of course, it’s futile to try to distill the “true” story out of all this, but it’s equally futile to try to coach little kids into acting out all these different versions. To me, it makes more sense that she’s being punished. Any student of Chinese history can name several evil temptresses, but I can’t think of any Chinese heroines who are celebrated for betraying their husbands. Actually, it seems Americans would be more likely to prefer the first version in which a brave and independent woman takes the initiative to bring down The Man.

Furthermore, look at the other inhabitants of the Chinese moon: The woodcutter, Wu Gang 吳剛, is a Chinese version of Sisyphus, condemned to endlessly chop away at a regenerating cassia tree because of a past affront to the gods. There’s also the Jade Rabbit, who supposedly was sent to the moon as a reward for self-sacrifice, but is always depicted pounding away with a mortar and pestle to make the elixir of immortality (or mochi in Japan). I don’t claim to know what rabbits do for fun, but this hardly seems like a heavenly award, and the moon is starting to seem rather tedious and unpleasant…

So perhaps Chang E, who has become renowned as the “moon princess,” “moon goddess,” or “moon fairy,” could be better labeled “lunar temptress,” “wicked witch of the moon,” or “the princess frog.” I know, women in traditional China, and mythology in general, tend to get a bad rap, but there are usually more than two sides to any myth, and I, for one, feel it’s important to embrace all of them. As to which version of the story we’ll decide to present at this year's Moon Festival, feel free to recommend one here, but you’ll have to come to the museum Saturday, Oct. 2, 2010 to find out!

The Sinophile’s Dilemma: from Yellow Face to Angel Island

2010-08-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

Several museum staff members recently enjoyed a Sneak Peak of Mo’olelo’s production of Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang, the comedic story of a playwright who accidentally casts a Caucasian in an Asian role, which leads the actor to claim a fictitious Asian ancestry and launches his career as an Asian American actor and activist. Both actor and playwright then become embroiled in the campaign finance controversy of 1996, in which Chinese Americans’ loyalty was called into question. Such accusations are reminiscent of the days of Chinese exclusion and the “yellow peril,” and make studies like Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America by Judy Yung and Erika Lee (who will be speaking at the museum September 11) all the more important today. Comedy is an effective means of addressing this unfortunate legacy and dealing with uncomfortable questions like whether it is possible to move past a heritage of racism, to what extent (if any) a white man can understand the experience of minorities, and what a post-race society would look like.

I’m not Chinese, nor do I pretend to be, but I did feel a strange affinity with the character Marcus, who is a white imposter in the Asian American community. I speak Chinese, run the education department at a Chinese history museum, and often lecture to groups of Chinese Americans about their own culture and history. Marcus and I are both white males who participate in and even represent Asian American culture, but neither of us has experienced the involuntary plight of a minority.

I was once called the N-word. I’m not sure why. I have dreadlocks and a tan, but I'm not that tan. Someone just yelled it out the window of a passing car. The novelty made it absolutely hysterical; I couldn’t stop laughing. So, not your typical reaction to being slurred…

All over the world, and especially in the United States, skin color is inseparable from notions of race. Despite loud and often-violent outcries about Irish, German, Italian, Polish, and other European immigrants, the Chinese were the first ethnic group to be legally barred from immigration with an 1882 ban that was later extended to all immigrants from the “Asiatic Barred Zone.” While Europeans passed through Ellis Island in New York, Asians were detained, interrogated, and often deported at Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay. In examining immigration records, oral histories, and inscriptions on detention center barrack walls, Erika Lee and Judy Yung address some of the same issues as Yellow Face. One would hope that most people today (at least outside of Arizona) realize one’s appearance does not reveal national loyalties or likelihood to assimilate, and Yellow Face brings up the possibility that racial identity can even be adopted or fabricated.

Curly blond hair and a full beard make me look even less Chinese than Brian Bielawski (the actor who ably plays Marcus), but people still ask if I’m part Chinese all the time. I used to dress up in a Chinese-style jacket when going to teach at local schools, but I stopped wearing it because it got too hot when performing the animated gesticulations necessary to hold children’s’ attention. Now that I think of it, I was not far from dressing up in “yellow face.” When students call me “the Chinese guy,” I try to use it as a teachable moment to tell them it’s acceptable and enjoyable to explore other cultures, but some people (who haven’t seen me teach, of course) actually have said they would prefer someone more “authentic.”

As a white male, I have no room to complain, but it gets a little tiresome having museum visitors tell me that I’m not Chinese (although it was entertaining when one stated unequivocally that I was Chinese in a former life). On the other hand, the museum’s Japanese American graphic designer Jessica has to deal with people asking her why she doesn’t speak Chinese, and then, why she’s allowed to work here in light of the acrimonious history between Japan and China. Likewise, I recall pitying my poor Chinese American classmates at Nanjing University who sometimes were treated like illiterate halfwits because of their poor Chinese language skills, while I received effusive compliments for saying “Ni hao” (hello).

So, to me, yellow face, means my amateur Mandarin appears much better than an equally incompetent Chinese American’s; it means Jessica gets more awkward questions than me, but people still will be confused when they walk into the museum and see me, and I’ll never be authentic (but I would argue there’s no such thing, anyway). Yellow face means that many people might never escape the legacy of racism, and that I might never fully understand some of the experiences I try to teach. But perhaps the fact that people like my colleagues at the museum, and even “ethnic tourists” like Marcus, are willing to study, embrace, and even adopt another culture means that we eventually can move past superficial prejudice to combine and integrate our cultures into a progressively more cosmopolitan and enlightened society.

Indeed, it may be that white Anglo-muts like myself and Marcus, who repeatedly says that his “background is so mixed up,” harbor an incipient desire to belong to a community with an ancient, continuous and comprehensive historical heritage. There’s no Scottish-Italian-Russian-maybe-some-Dominican community or New Year celebration for me to participate in, and trying to rediscover, combine and claim each of these identities would be no more authentic than me claiming to be Chinese.

Elite and Popular Culture: Struggling with Class in China

2010-08-10T15:12:00.000-07:00

Curating our current exhibition on The Elite and Popular Culture of Old China presented the unique challenge of explaining stark divisions in traditional Chinese society without tacitly or sarcastically endorsing the orthodox communist narrative about oppression of the workingman at the hands of feudal landlords and greedy capitalists.

Contrasting social classes could be a delicate matter in a staunchly apolitical museum with members from both Taiwan and the mainland, and many who fled the current communist regime. But the present day situation is a product of centuries of imperial rule, so it would be counterproductive to omit modern developments from a discussion of class in China. Even as Mao Zedong 毛澤東 sought to stamp out the “four olds” 四舊 of feudal Confucian culture, he employed the traditional arts of prose, poetry, and calligraphy that had helped elites maintain and justify power for millennia.

In many ways, Mao embodied the possibilities of the meritocracy he decried. He studied the master poets, wrote verse in the classical style, and practiced the traditional art of calligraphy. Pursuing education at Peking University 北京大學 helped him rise from a peasant family to the pinnacle of power. One wonders how history would have been different if the imperial exam still existed as a goal for young Mao, or if modern Western theories like Marxism had not become a viable challenge to Confucian orthodoxy.

Mao practices calligraphy in the 1940s

As I prepared my presentation for the exhibit opening, Mao kept creeping into the PowerPoint in unexpected places. There was a great propaganda poster of him writing calligraphy, and images of his family home in Shaoshan 韶山, Hunan 湖南 Province provided excellent (if somewhat stereotypical) illustrations of a simple farmer’s lifestyle. And the audience was particularly amused to learn that a large portion of the building was rented to another family, which means the Chairman himself came from a family of landlords. Technically, Mao was classified as a “rich peasant,” and this oxymoronic label itself reveals the impossibility of strict class categories and hierarchies.

The traditional Confucian hierarchy 仕農工商 begins with scholar-officials, next comes the overwhelming majority of agriculturalists, then a few craftsmen, and it ends with the despised merchant class. Farmers’ taxes supported local administrators who would settle disputes and provide a virtuous example, while the other trades existed in small numbers as a matter of necessity. Of course, many other professions didn’t fit into and often undermined this hierarchy such as entertainers, eunuchs and concubines, monks and religious leaders, and wealthy merchants who could buy official posts. While Confucian scholars demeaned these other occupations and dominated the elite arts, they had to contend with these other influences to maintain their superiority in the eyes of the populace.

Popular culture, whether embodied in stories, Chinese Opera or religious movements, provides an avenue for critique and resistance that complicates the simplistic narrative proffered by orthodox Communism. An official post may have been the aspiration of all young students, but villainous officials were also a staple of the Chinese opera. The greatest Confucian scholars, along with Buddhist and Daoist sages, shared a desire to retire to a simple wilderness retreat, but during periods in history when Confucian officials had grown too corrupt and dissolute, popular religious movements have caused several dynasties to crumble.

Traditionally, the emperor could only rule by Heaven’s consent, and famine, corruption, and natural disasters were signs that he had lost the Mandate of Heaven 天命 and should be overthrown. When the people unite behind a new leader, he is said to have the mandate. Thus, Heaven’s will is ultimately manifest in the actions of the common people, and wise rulers always pay heed to popular culture.

A Cultural Revolution-era propaganda poster

In founding the People’s Republic 中華人民共和國, Mao sought to circumvent Heaven as a source of legitimacy and tap directly into the power of the people. Modern technology allowed him to shape popular opinion to an unprecedented extent, but censoring literature, closing monasteries, and prohibiting or reinventing popular arts like the Chinese opera also closed traditional avenues by which the government could sense the mood of the people. Officials trained in Confucian morality had a duty to remonstrate with any emperor who would fling the nation into foolhardy schemes like the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution, but no one could question the gospel of Mao. In a way, the excesses of Maoism proved the necessity of the traditional restraints he dismantled.

Much has changed in the days since the height of Maoism, but the party still walks a fine line between controlling popular opinion and maintaining public support. Historically, dynasties retain the mandate as long as peace and prosperity reign. Divisions between elite and popular cultures persist, as do conflicts between nouveau riche businessmen and a new generation of scholars trained in everything from engineering to medicine. But just as scholar-officials and farmers coexisted in an economically and culturally symbiotic relationship, impoverished migrant workers and Beijing billionaires are integral parts in China’s recent economic success. In the end, the Elite and Popular Culture of Old China is not about class struggle, but the power of Chinese culture to maintain peace, cohesion and continuity in spite of a tremendous gulf between rich and poor.

San Diego had a Chinatown?

2010-07-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

Read an exclusive interview with Murray Lee, our Curator of Chinese American History over at Voice of San Diego!

*Due to the popular demand a follow up article was posted on July 8th!

Museum Education: From Connoisseurs to Convicts

2010-06-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

Springtime at the museum always features a plethora of educational presentations, and this year was no exception. In addition to reinventing the compass countless times and leading virtually every sixth grader in Escondido through the Qin 秦 emperor's murderous exploits, the museum has brought educational programming to some unconventional locales this year.

Most members have enjoyed PowerPoint presentations at the openings of our many temporary exhibits, but now we are making many of these lectures available on demand and even off-site. That's right, now you can experience our rotating exhibits from the comfort of your own classroom or auditorium. The lecture accompanying our Five Dynasties of Chinese Pottery exhibit, Chinese Pottery: from Potsherds to Porcelain already proved a big hit with the Mingei International Museum docents and the Asian Arts Council of the San Diego Museum of Art. Of course, we will not always be able to offer lectures about exhibits on loan from collectors and other institutions, but all the really good ones are curated by the museum anyway (not that I'm biased or anything).

It’s truly a rare privilege to be welcomed into the renowned museums of Balboa Park, but this May we learned that it could be equally rewarding to work with those languishing on the margins of society. On May 13, Agnes Chuang and I drove nearly an hour to give a calligraphy presentation at Barrett High School, a division of the Juvenile Corrections Intervention Program. Nestled in an isolated Alpine valley, it could be mistaken for a resort if it weren’t for the razor wire fences and armed guards.

Stepping into a classroom filled with tattooed teens incarcerated for minor offenses was only briefly intimidating, because it soon became clear that they were filled with curiosity and really appreciated our presence. At most high schools, there are a few spoiled students who think they are too cool to attempt the singsong tones of Mandarin, but these alleged troublemakers eagerly imitated every Chinese word I spoke. After Agnes had written each of their names in Chinese, they even presented each of us with a bouquet of flowers, something that’s never happened even at the elite private schools we have visited. When we had answered the last of several questions about China (unfortunately, I didn't have an adequate translation for "thug life"), guards came to escort the young men back to their dormitories, and they had to turn their pockets inside-out to show that they had no weapons nor contraband, but they still reverently carried their packets of Chinese characters, carefully protecting the wet ink on their new Chinese names.

In like a tiger...

2010-02-04T15:59:00.001-08:00

The lion may hold the title elsewhere, but the tiger is king of beasts in China. It rules the earthbound creatures, just as the dragon dominates the waters. Children of a tiger year are said to be courageous, adventurous and outgoing. Those born in 1998, 1986 and other increments of twelve years can look forward to an exciting year, but what about the rest of the zodiac? What can monkeys, dragons, cocks and the rest of the celestial menagerie expect in the year ahead? As one might expect from the imprecise science of astrology, the answer is far from certain.

Most laymen don’t know a star chart from a bagua and fail to realize that, in addition to the well-known animals of the zodiac, each year is associated with one of five elements: earth, water, fire, metal, and wood. (If only the periodic table were so simple.) This year will be a metal tiger year, also known as the white tiger, as metal corresponds to the color white. In ancient China, long before the days of Sigfried and Roy, the white tiger was one of four mythical animals guarding each of the cardinal directions. This legendary beast is said to be protector of mankind and the teachings of Buddha. Traditionally, mothers would sew tigers into children’s shoes and hats to ward of demons and bad luck. The tiger is also a constellation, and like the mythical qilin 麒麟, is said to appear on earth only during times of peace and virtuous leadership. But tigers are also associated with warfare and generals, who often would wear a jade tiger emblem. According to most of these associations, one would think that we would be in for a good year, and indeed, some associate the element of metal with gold and wealth, but many astrologers are predicting otherwise...

Tigers are adventurous and prone to taking risks, which might not bode well in these tumultuous times. And tigers generally conflict with snakes and monkeys, so people born in those years (myself included) should be wary this year. Furthermore, tigers generally are associated with the elements of wood, earth, and even fire, but they tend to conflict with metal. A commonly cited image of this is a tiger wearing uncomfortable armor, squirming and bucking to get it off. And as one might expect from a carnivore equipped for battle, this could be a sign of war. The last metal tiger year was 1950, when war broke out in Korea and the United States and Soviet Union were racing to build a hydrogen bomb. So is this tiger going to be a docile feline that will usher in wealth or a savage beast subjecting mankind to the rule of the jungle? All we can do is light firecrackers, hang some red lanterns, eat long-life noodles and hope for the best. Gong xi fa cai! 恭喜发财!

Merry Christmas Ape Man

2009-12-16T13:23:00.000-08:00

In 2002, I visited a site near Datong 大同 in Shanxi 山西 Province where archaic Homo sapiens bones had been discovered. The cave and the casts of bones were not especially interesting, and the all I really remember from the visit was the English sign advertising China’s “ape man” outside and ascending into the cave’s main chamber to see colored lights arranged to spell, “Merry Christmas” in English. This was April, in a nation with few Christians, in the home of the ape-man. Not to be a scrooge, but what the humbug does any of this have to do with Christmas?

Each year, many Americans decry the rampant consumerism that has come to typify Christmas celebrations. However, its manifestation as a secular, market-driven excuse to buy stuff has helped Christmas become a global holiday. Despite the fact that only one or two percent of China’s population is Christian, Christmas decorations, music, and, of course, sales, are ubiquitous in all of its major cities. Has producing millions of glowing reindeer, plastic snow men, and artificial pine trees finally gotten to the Chinese people or is this just a natural outgrowth of China’s embrace of global capitalism?

It appears that Christmas first entered China through hotels (including many Western chains) that cater to Western tourists with holiday decorations and traditional Christmas dinners. Then, department stores hoping to extend the holiday shopping season to Asia adopted Yuletide regalia as well. Indeed, it seems the number and general shininess of decorations is redoubled in China due to a general affinity for all things that flash, sparkle, or jingle; See pictures of the splendiferous tackiness of it all here.

Speaking of excess, China is now home to the world’s largest snow sculpture of Santa Claus 聖誕老人 at 56 feet tall and over 260 feet wide in Jingyuetan National Forest Park 净月潭国家森林公园 in Changchun 長春, capital of Jilin 吉林 Province, see pictures here. The writers over there at Danwei note that since few in China know the “true meaning of Christmas” anyway, there’s no ridiculous hubbub over the proper season’s greeting or religious displays on public land. Indeed, there is no “Christ” in the Chinese word; 聖誕節 translates to the more ambiguous, “saint’s birthday.”

While it is definitely not discouraged, Christmas is not an official state holiday, and many rural residents only know of it from Hollywood movies. Since people have to work on Christmas day, any celebrations generally take place on Christmas Eve, with young people hitting clubs and restaurants and others flocking to malls and shopping districts to take in the holiday cheer. And, like any Chinese holiday, it’s mostly about eating lots of good food.

In a 2007 article called, “A Chinese Christmas Story “ Gary Sigley argues that Christmas has evolved as a sort of counterweight to the traditional big holiday of the year, Chinese New Year. While the latter is focused on familial obligations and Chinese tradition, the former has become about young people, modernity, cosmopolitanism, and partying with friends. But this dichotomy makes the association of Christmas with an “ape man” excavation even more confusing. As an archeological site, perhaps it is associated with Western science, and Western tourists just love Christmas (even in April?). But as humans, we are all attracted to shiny objects, and maybe Christmas is just a great excuse to put shiny things everywhere while telling ourselves we’re cool, cosmopolitan, religious, or just doing our part to stimulate the economy.

Further reading: Sigley, Gary. 2007. A Chinese Christmas Story. In Discourse as Cultural Struggle ed. Shi-xu. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press

Year of the Tiger Shoes

2009-12-10T15:59:00.001-08:00

It's almost the end of the solar year, so that means it's time to start thinking about the Chinese New Year. This year will be 4708 in the lunar calendar: Year of the Tiger. In China, the tiger is known as king of the beasts, but it's also featured on lots of little kids' hats and shoes, so here's a little story explaining why:

Long ago in Yangzhou, there lived a virtuous but lonely ferryman named Big Yang. Even though he was not a wealthy man, he would allow his passengers to pay in any way they could. One day, an elderly woman paid him with a beautifulpainting of a woman embroidering a pair of shoes shaped like tigers. Yang wasthrilled as it was worth far more than the price of the trip across the river,but he loved it so much that he decided to hang it on his own wall above hisbed. To his surprise, the beautiful woman in it came to life and offered tohelp him with chores around the house. Over time, they fell in love, married andhad a son.

Years later, a corrupt official heard about the magic painting andseized it for himself. However, he was quite disappointed when the beautifulwoman would no longer come to life. Meanwhile, the poor boy missed his mother,and as he would never believe the true story, Yang told him his mother had goneon a trip far to the west. Unable to live without his mother, the boy ran offto look for her. After weeks of traveling, he found her frolicking with fairiesin a distant forest. He begged her to come home, but she told him that shecould only return after he entered the official’s bedroom wearing a pair oftiger shoes that she had sown for him.

The boy quickly returned home and told the official he could make his painting come to life. The official brought the boy into his bedroom, and he called out to his mother. The woman immediately emerged from the painting and embraced her son. When the two tried to leave, the official blocked their path and demanded that the woman remain as his concubine. When they tried to push past him, the greedy official attacked the boy, but his shoes came to life and devoured the greedy official. Ever since then, Chinese women have sown tigers into their children’s shoes, hats, and clothing to protect their children and keep their families together.

Mooncakes: A Culinary Adventure

2009-10-07T13:12:00.000-07:00

To Western taste buds, Chinese sweets can be as somewhat startling departure from the ordinary. Though moon cakes may be an expensive delicacy, they are something of an acquired taste for Americans. Among the highlights of each year's Moon Festivities at the museum is watching kids try their first taste of moon cake. Perhaps translating the name as something besides "cake" would temper their shock at finding a salted egg yolk or bean paste inside a colorful pastry. Indeed, how does one translate any of these flavors into English without inciting revulsion in the uninitiated?

Mung bean paste, Taro paste, White lotus seed and egg yolk?

Perhaps it would be best to eliminate the word "paste" as it sounds more like something we encourage children not to eat. But the word "mung" also is no more attractive than the dirty green color of the legume. Although I have enjoyed various deserts made from mung beans and taro, no children and few adults at our festival will be able to identify either one, which may be a good thing. And I don't think calling taro, "sweet potato" or "purple yam" would be much better.

"White lotus seed" actually sounds somewhat attractive by comparison, until you add "egg yolk" into the mix. Of course, Americans eat eggs just as much if not more than Chinese, but the problem is that the yolk is not in the mix, but left intact inside the pastry. While Chinese see a symbol of the full, yellow moon, most Americans see a monstrous mixing bowl failure.

Locks, love, and wishes

2009-09-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

A heart-shaped lock in our Cantonese Family Locks exhibit brings to mind a modern Chinese phenomenon that has spread around the world, meeting with much fascination, and some disdain.

Atop numerous mountains and at other scenic locations, it is common to see padlocks engraved with lovers’ names. People commonly attach these locks to safety railings on China’s famous mountains, and then they cast the keys into the valleys as a symbol of their undying love.

Some say,that each over is supposed to hold onto a key to the lock (which would at leastcut down on the litter). If one desires a divorce, he or she must climb back tothe peak, unlock the lock, and return it to his or her former beloved torequest a divorce. If the person’s desire to end the affair is justified, he orshe will easily recover the lock among the thousands littering the mountain.However, if his or her motives are impure, the god of the mountain will causethem to fall to their death.

Anotherstory, set in the beautiful Huangshan Mountain 黄山, tells of a boy and a girlwho were deeply in love, but the girl’s father disapproved and would not permitthem to marry. The couple ran away to Huangshan, climbed the mountain, andlocked two locks together at its summit. Then, as those familiar with Chineselove stories may have guessed, they both jumped to their death.

Even if this custom has itsorigins in a hokey romance, it has captured imaginations all over the world.The government of Lovelock, Nevada recently installed chains near its city halland renamed it Lover’s Lock Plaza in an attempt to draw tourism to the townwhose other claims to fame are possessing one of only two round courthouses inthe country and hosting O.J. Simpson at Lovelock Correctional Center. This isalso a somewhat unorthodox way of honoring the history of Chinese immigrationto the railroad town.

However, government officials arenot always so keyed up about the practice. In Rome, young people almost causeda lamppost on the Milvian Bridge to collapse when they began locking their loveto it and throwing the keys into the Tiber River to imitate a scene in thepopular film, Tre Metri Sopra Il Cielo (Three Meters Above the Sky).With a few more attractions than Lovelock, the Roman government felt that theycould ban this love-laden vandalism without detracting from tourism. However,sweethearts found a new place to prove their affections on a church railing bythe famous Trevi Fountain, which became a receptacle for their keys. Not inlove with the idea, the parish priest had them removed.

Young people in Taiwan have put anew spin on this tradition. They have begun locking padlocks inscribed withwishes to a chain link fence on a railway overpass in Fengyuan 豐原, Taichung County. Supposedly, the train passingunder the walkway generates a magnetic field that infuses the locks with energyto fulfill wishes for success on exams, money and, of course, love. Authoritieshave removed the locks, but they keep reappearing. Perhaps they need to attacha lock of their own, wishing for no more locks, as it seems that all otherattempts to eradicate them inevitably fail.

The locks in our exhibitrepresent a variety of wishes, heart-shaped locks for love, cranes for long life,slogans for success, and fish for prosperity and protection. Whether thesewishes could be granted by mountain gods, electromagnetism, or a complicatedsplitting spring mechanism, or if curmudgeonly officials can foil them withbolt cutters is anyone’s guess. All that we wish for here at the museum, is foryou to come see them before it’s too late.

Myface? Spacebook? Help the Museum Conquer Cyberspace

2009-09-16T13:27:00.000-07:00

It is sometimes a challenge for our museum to preserve the past without being left behind. In an attempt to be of history, but not in it, over the past two years the museum has embarked on a foray into the brave new world of online social networking. This summer, we have discovered that we are not alone, and numerous other nonprofits are getting their digital feet wet in the tumultuous waters of Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube and an ever-increasing morass of other platforms. A big part of this is getting to know one’s target audience, its needs, and where it hangs out online, so we encourage any and all suggestions. We will be continually experimenting with new media, so be sure to tell us what you like. The goal is to open up new ways for members and friends to participate online through sharing pictures, videos, and websites. You can already check out a few of our favorite sites at http://delicious.com/San_Diego_Chinese_Historical_Museum.Please join us on your social networking platform of choice and let us know what else you would like to see there. Find us at myspace.com/sdchm, facebook.com/sdchm, www.linkedin.com/in/sdchm or www.twitter.com/sdchm.