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Published: December 11th 2010
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Awards to the disabled artists
I was invited to the opening of the Disabled Artists Exhibition, held to coincide with the 2010 Para-Asian Games her in GZ. This ceremony evoked the Jerry Lewis Telethons of old, "let's hear it for the fabulists disabled people" One of the opportunities afforded to those who live in a foreign locale for some time is the chance to have some revealing conversations with people not in our usual daily flow. A week or so ago we had one such talk with a faculty member here. I will change some of the details as we have been recently reminded that a quick search yields access to this blog. One of our friends searched on himself and one of the first hits was a reference I made to him in the blog. No harm done in this instance but you never know!
Z is a full professor here in Guangzhou and has been here for the past 15 years or so. She is of the ’68 generation, meaning that she came of age during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Her family was professional and she suffered greatly during that period. She described ritualized beatings she endured in high school at the hands of classmates who just weeks earlier had been her good friends. The frenzy she described still evoked great emotion for her and she neither volunteered great detail nor did we have the temerity to press her. After some
Dance Performance
One of the highlights of the event was this dance performance by children in special education (apparently kids with Down's Syndrome and autism predominantly. I spoke with the choreographer afterwards and was moved by the focus and concentration he was able to help engender among the students time she joined the “sent down youth” and toiled in the countryside for some years.
This should not be confused with a pleasant journey to a rural retreat; the work was unending, the environment was harsh and she was cut off from the tropes that had marked her relatively privileged life in the city. Many of the “sent down” gave up hope of ever returning to the cities and made a life for themselves, after a fashion, in the harsh environment of the countryside. Z finally returned to the city and was able to resume her education in the late 1970’s, when the universities re-opened. Her story is not an exceptional one here and the body of so-called scar literature fully documents the madness and chaos that gripped China at the time. What is of interest to anyone who wants to understand China today is the various paths people have taken since the end of that earlier era, although none were left unaffected. Some, as mentioned, remained in the rural areas, marrying locally and losing contact with their earlier urban life. Of those who returned to the cities, some resumed their education and are today in positions of influence
Shower of paper
The ceremony was held in a four story high atrium; at the conclusion of the dance there was a blizzard of hand cut and designed colored paper that littered the stage and privilege. For many of these, hints of instability evoke the time of their youth and this makes them wary of changes that would undermine the authority and centrality of the government. They view any steps to diffuse the power of the central government warily. Other members of this cohort, having also entered the world of the intelligentsia, see the lack of transparency and the deep dive into the pool of neo-liberalism as the leading threat to stability; therefore they embrace fundamental change now in order for the government to maintain credibility and legitimacy..
The shared theme between these latter two groups is the fear of upheaval. This often leads to a jaundiced view of democracy and its inherent conflicts. One China scholar I have known for years believes that the experience of the Cultural Revolution has strengthened a pre-existing cultural bias against democracy, a bias that is richly described in literature, religious tradition, and social values. In any event our host clearly feared disorder more than she craved political freedom and was certain in her assessment that things had improved in China, materially, over the past 20 years. With that improvement came problems, as she saw it. A
small example can illustrate.
In China it has been traditional to respond to a compliment by answering “nali, nail” which literally means “where, where” and is designed to deny any positive attribute that may have been alluded to in the compliment. Z was quite upset that now, if you were to comment favorably on a student’s work they are more likely to answer “xie xie” (thank you) than nali nali. To her that represented a serious decline in manners and good taste; modesty is at the forefront of personal interactions in China and accepting the compliment with a thank you is considered impolite. It also shows a certain internationalization of the Chinese, at least among the intellectual elite.
She also castigated the quality of food in China, repeating a narrative we have heard from others or all ages: the food is grown with all sorts of nasties and you cannot trust what is offered. Nonetheless, food is consumed in great quantities, leaving an opening for the development of organic food production. Unfortunately, given the widespread distrust that permeates any "certification", any government organized organic standards would lack credibility.
Z was also adamant in stating that she never
The change in weather...
has ushered in a marked deterioration in air quality. This shot illustrates the problem. Government figures on pollution are not credible and the US Embassy in Beijing maintains its own monitoring that documents the real level of pollutants refers to Mao-Tse-tung as Chairman Mao, she always uses only his name. She said nothing more about this but had a look of revulsion on her face, almost as if she was worried that the conversation, which took place in her apartment here on campus, was being overheard.
The Seasons Change
There are some indicators of the change in seasons, as we approach the start of winter. Most obvious is the bundling up evident in people’s dress. Once the daytime highs reached only the high 60’s, out came the wool caps, the down jackets, and the babies that resembled nothing less than tiny sausages, they were swaddled so. It has always been hard for me to comport this apparent great sensitivity to the cooler weather with the universal behavior for throwing open the windows upon entering a room. Not that the windows are great barriers (they are hardly sealed against the elements) against the outside, but every bit helps when there is no heat.
Other seasonal indicators center on food availability. Last week, for example, kiwis AKA Chinese Gooseberries appeared. What is curious is that they are not available in the fruit stands but only out of
Everything is getting a good scrubbing
This water spraying truck is followed by a team of workers with long-handled brushes on the promenade. the back of small trucks that apparently bring them in from the nearby countryside. Pineapples also made a brief re-appearance only to disappear after a few days. Roasted sweet potatoes and chestnuts are also a winter time favorite here; the chestnuts remind me of my youth and visiting New York on cold winter days to visit one museum or another. No such trip was complete without the roasted chestnuts, proffered from steaming carts on 5th Avenue. Here they are roasted in large woks that are filled with small, round, black, black pebbles and handed to you in a plastic bag. Very tasty treat!
Chinese News
I just finished watching the English news on CCTV, the state owned broadcaster. The program was dominated by economic news, reporting that the inflation rate reached 5.1% in November, with an 11.7% increase in food prices. The talking heads, representing various government sponsored institutes, stressed the importance of getting the situation under control AND their confidence that the “authorities” would do so. There was then a break and the interregnum splash shouted “Soaring food prices, unaffordable housing, rising inflation, how can the government respond while making income more equal”. This is either dishonest
Bicycle service center
This one was on the center of the bridge crossing the Pearl River; with the increase in bicycling he is likely going to be kept very busy. People here would not consider servicing their own bike. rhetoric (inequality has been rapidly increasing in China the past 5 years) or a commitment on the part of government to actually do something about the problem, one that it constantly points to as a source of potential instability. The lack of any discussion about inequality in the US mainstream media is duly noted here, without additional comment.
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