Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land
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Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land
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Overview
These are the exciting and saddening, humorous and confusing stories of utterly ordinary people who are living through China's extraordinary transformations. The immense variety in the lives of these Chinese characters dispels any lingering sense that China has a monolithic population or is just a place where dissidents fight Communist Party loyalists and laborers create goods for millionaires.
Chinese Characters is a collection, as Pankaj Mishra writes in his foreword, "to herald a new golden age of journalism about a ceaselessly fascinating country." Contributors include a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, a Macarthur Fellow, the China correspondent to a major Indian newspaper, and scholars whose depth of understanding is matched only by the humanity with which they treat their subjects. Their stories together create a multi-faceted portrait of a country in motion and an introduction to some of the best writing on China today.
With contributions from: Alec Ash, James Carter, Leslie T. Chang, Xujun Eberlein, Harriet Evans, Anna Greenspan, Peter Hessler, Ian Johnson, Ananth Krishnan, Christina Larson, Michelle Dammon Loyalka, James Millward, Evan Osnos, Jeffrey Prescott, Megan Shank
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780520954137 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 09/28/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 244 |
| File size: | 338 KB |
About the Author
Angilee Shah is a freelance journalist. Her work has appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review, Mother Jones, TimeOut Singapore, Global Voices, and AsiaMedia, among other publications.
Read an Excerpt
Chinese Characters
Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land
By Angilee Shah, Jeffrey Wasserstrom
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2012 The Regents of the University of CaliforniaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-95413-7
CHAPTER 1
The North Peak
IAN JOHNSON
The "voluntary" insurance at the entrance had cost just two yuan, about thirty-five cents, but I had been fleeced all the way from Beijing and somehow this was the final straw. Why did everything have to be so crass and commercialized? I whined to myself. I knew the answers—all the nuanced reasons why so many religious sites in China had been reduced to a carnival—but was in too foul a mood to be rational. The view didn't help either. Once one of Taoism's holiest mountains, Mount Heng in Shanxi Province was a denuded wreck, seeming to consist of nothing but broken slate. I grumbled epitaphs as I climbed the steep trail wondering why I had bothered to come.
Then he appeared on the ridge above me, like something out of a Chinese kung fu thriller: a Taoist priest clad in a blue robe, white breeches, his hair up on his head in a bun. I hesitated for a second. He was moving so quickly that he was almost gone before I could blurt out: "Master, have you seen the priest known as Mysterious Forest?" He stopped, looked at me, and said the priest had moved on.
I didn't really care about Mysterious Forest. I had come to Mount Heng to meet Taoists and here was one. I told him I was researching Taoism and asked if he knew anything about the mountain. He didn't answer but immediately strode down the slate slope to my path, oblivious of the mini-landslide he was causing. "I can help you," he said, turning on his heel. "Follow me."
I rushed to catch up, trying not to let on that I was in un-Taoist-like bad shape, barely able to keep up with this man who must have been twenty years my senior. As we walked—it felt like cantering—he kept looking back and talking, as if his steady stream of chatter could lasso and draw me toward him.
"Have you noticed that Taoism has a lot of temples to Laozi?"
"Yes, sure," I said. "He's the religion's founder and wrote the Daodejing, which is a great work."
"Correct. Then tell me what is the second-greatest work of Taoism?"
"Zhuangzi. It has many colorful stories and is maybe even more profound than the Daodejing."
"Exactly! Well put. It's even better than the Daodejing. It is better. It is much better. But have you ever noticed that there are no temples to Zhuangzi? There are hundreds of temples to Laozi but not one to Zhuangzi. Why is that?"
I shook my head. Both Laozi and Zhuangzi were mythical figures. Who knew why Laozi got all the incense burned in his name and Zhuangzi only got a book named after him.
"So here's my idea," he said, stopping at a bend and locking his eyes on mine. "We build a temple to Zhuangzi. You and I. We have met here on this road. It is fate. Foreigners can fund it. It will be China's first temple to Zhuangzi."
My heart began to sink. Not another con.
"It will be cheap," he said, continuing. "Zhuangzi is from my hometown in Henan Province. I know people there and we can get the land for free. The gate receipts can pay back the investors. The officials there are very interested."
Another cockamamie scheme. No wonder Taoists have a reputation for being slippery. I argued to myself that I was being unfair. Then I got a grip; no, I wasn't being unfair, and I started to walk ahead quickly. I needed to find some real Taoists and ditch this guy. But he followed me, talking incessantly as I tried to block out his voice. "It's the twenty-first century. It's the century of Zhuangzi. Last century was Laozi's century but this is Zhuangzi's." Shut up, shut up, I countered in a loud internal voice. Where can I find a real Taoist?
* * *
Chinese religion is so different from Western belief systems that some experts have argued that for most of their history, the Chinese have been a people little concerned with the spiritual. Nothing could be more wrong. Up until the twentieth century, China was a land imbued with religion and the spiritual. The problem is that it wasn't rooted in and controlled by powerful institutions like a church with a clergy but instead consisted of a system of daily practices, including ancestor worship, veneration of mountains and streams, worship of famous people or local gods, belief in fate and fortune-telling, and techniques of physical cultivation like tai chi and qigong. For millennia, this amalgam of practices—often called "folk religion" or "popular religion"—dominated China's spiritual landscape. Organized religions existed but were imports: it was under the pressure of Buddhism, for example, that some of China's indigenous religious practices coalesced around the second century C.E. into an organized religion that loosely became known as Taoism.
For much of the next two thousand years, Taoism (sometimes written as "Daoism") ran a distant second to Buddhism, which was better organized and had a devout cadre of monks who zealously spread their creed around the empire. Buddhism was also a more intellectualized religion and more acceptable for high-ranking officials than Taoism, which seemed a hodgepodge of esoteric and earthy beliefs.
Many religions also combine high philosophy with simple rituals. Catholicism boasts the works of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas but also rosary beads and saying the "Hail Mary" to atone for sins. But Taoism might take it further than most. Laozi's Daodejing—The Classic of the Way and Its Power—is a work on governing written in such a spare, metaphorical style that it can be read as a way to conduct one's own life. The Zhuangzi is full of allegories and parables, including some of the most memorable in the Chinese language. But if one takes the entire body of Taoist writing—for example, the 1,400 texts gathered in a compendium known as the Taoist Canon—most are works of liturgy and ritual. These include how to summon gods, fast, cure diseases, extend the lifespan, purify vessels, pray, or channel energy around the body. In the West, Taoism has become synonymous with going with the flow (The Tao of Pooh) and maximizing pleasure (The Tao of Sex), but throughout most of its history it's been a religion that seeks union with the "way" through carefully scripted rituals and principled living.
I got interested in Taoism because I saw in it a way to understand many different parts of Chinese culture. Taoist principles underlie Chinese calligraphy, painting, poetry, and many great works of literature, such as Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West, which is ostensibly about a Buddhist's monk's journey to India but on a deeper level is a book on Taoist longevity practices. I thought of Taoism as the DNA of Chinese culture, and while I later learned that this was a bit of a stretch, I found I learned a lot about China by looking at its only indigenous religion.
I quickly realized, however, that Taoism had suffered the most of China's religions. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were brutal for China, with the country unable to ward off the West's and then Japan's unstoppable combination of science and advanced capitalism. The country was being carved up piece by piece, and the problem seemed to lie deeper than just in outdated military technology. Reformers began to cast doubt on everything Chinese, especially the country's religions. Influenced by Western definitions of religion and superstition, some Chinese thinkers decided that most Chinese belief was mere "superstition" and only a few narrow practices—basically more intellectualized and organized forms of Buddhism and Taoism—were real religions worthy of the name. The rest had to be destroyed.
What followed was one of the most sustained assaults on religion in modern history. Starting with the reform movement of 1898 and picking up speed when the last emperor was overthrown in 1911, a wave of violence was visited upon Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian places of worship. Islam and Christianity also suffered, but Islam is closely tied to specific minority groups, and Christianity was at times protected and at other times persecuted because of its close ties to Western colonialists. At the turn of the twentieth century, the best estimate is that China had one million places of worship. When the Communists took over in 1949, half of those had been destroyed, turned into schools, or commandeered for other purposes. As the most radical of the groups that advocated destroying the past, the Communists continued the attack with even more zeal. By the time radical communists were overthrown at the end of the 1970s, almost no place of worship was open. Priests, monks, imams, and nuns had been driven out of their churches and mosques and forced to work in factories or the fields. Many of those practicing celibacy were forced to marry.
Yet what followed was a dramatic revival of religious life. China was still run by a Communist Party that is officially atheist, but starting in the 1980s, religion was tolerated. Communist leaders saw this as a concession to mainly elderly worshippers who, they thought, would die out anyway. What happened shocked authorities: young people began to believe, and religion, far from dying out, flourished. The best guesstimate is that China today has one hundred thousand places of worship, although many of these are simply informal meeting places. That's still just 10 percent of the figure at the end of the nineteenth century, but a significant change from the late 1970s. Opinion polls also reflect a return of belief. Over two-thirds of Chinese say they believe in a higher being, while a quarter say that over the past year, they have experienced the presence of a deity. Those are figures similar to those for Western countries like the United States or Britain.
Why does the government tolerate this revival? One reason is the recognition that belief alone does not threaten the Communist Party's rule. Many government officials also realize that the country suffers from a lack of public morality—for too many people, all that matters is the prosperity of immediate family and the acquisition of riches. Religion, even Party officials grudgingly admit, can instill values. And then there's money: for local governments, holy mountains and temples can help fill coffers, aiding an area's tourist industry. Entrance tickets—and even insurance—are sold, and the local government siphons off a good chunk of the profits.
This was the case at Mount Heng, also known as the North Peak, one of the five holy mountains that marked the extent of civilization in very early Chinese history. The mountains were seen as pillars holding up the Chinese world; even the emperor worshipped them at the Temple of the Earth in Beijing. But when I made this trip to visit it in 2000, the North Peak had only been officially open for a year and was mostly in the hands of greedy government officials, who sold tickets and tourism "insurance" policies and harassed the few Taoists who tried to live there. Soon into my trip, I was pretty sure that the rich Taoist traditions I'd come searching for had been extinguished.
* * *
We soon arrived at the main halls, one of the most down-at-heel temple complexes I'd seen at a major Taoist site. I hadn't expected much. My friend Brock, an American businessman who runs a charity devoted to helping renovate Taoist sites, had visited a few years earlier, and he told me it was a wreck. Still, this was one of Taoism's holy mountains, and I thought something might have survived the past century's tumult.
"This is the North Peak," the Taoist announced as we looked at the temples, which were so weather-beaten that they seemed to sag under some enormous historical weight. I generally like old buildings, but these were sad, more like corpses than relics of a glorious past. The Taoist began to talk again but my inner voice blocked him out. Taoists, I thought; there must be some real ones here like Mysterious Forest. Brock had met him, and they meditated together. That seemed like a real experience. This seemed like a waste of time. But my Taoist's voice was loud and persistent. I glanced at his name card: Xianfo Shengren.
"Shengren means saint," I said. "Is this a title?"
"It's a goal," he said, waving off my question. "Some people call me that."
I stifled a laugh as we stepped inside the main hall, an unimposing building about thirty feet long and twenty feet deep, with a ten-foot-high ceiling. The cramped feeling was reinforced by red ropes that kept us in a small area directly in front of the altar. Most temples allow visitors to walk around, but this limited access to the front of the main altar. It seemed annoying, but as I stood there I began to see why. The altar had only three statues, but the central one was a Ming dynasty sculpture of the god of the North Peak. The statues of the acolytes flanking him were new, but the main deity was a genuine piece of art, covered in dark gold leaf, at least 400 years old. That made it a rarity for a Chinese temple—over the past century, anti-religious zealots had singled out statues for destruction, acting as if they were missionaries eager to wipe out pagan idols. But, somehow, here was the real thing, a dark, brooding god that could stand up to any piece of religious art I had seen. It was protected by glass, and the ropes made sure we kept our distance. A single stick of incense smoldered. The trip was beginning to feel more worthwhile.
Xianfo pointed to the statue. "During the Cultural Revolution, a Red Guard tried to smash the god, but he broke his arm when he struck the statue. Another Red Guard fell to his death ascending the mountain. After that, everyone fled, and the god was saved."
I wondered what really happened and imagined something very dramatic: angry villagers pushing a Red Guard off the sheer precipices or beating one of Mao's fanatics before his club could strike the statue. Maybe locals simply told the Red Guards the most dangerous way up the mountain, which in places can be treacherously steep. Some had died and the rest had given up. Stories about temples in the Cultural Revolution often involved miracles. For the Maoists, their leader himself was nearly a god, and they began circulating miraculous stories. Following Mao's thoughts could increase production, cause fruit to stop rotting, and even raise the dead. His "Little Red Book" of quotations was treated like a religious text, and young believers undertook what can only be described as pilgrimages to see him, even just for a split second.
But the victims had their miracles too. I had visited a temple outside Beijing once and the groundskeeper had told me that when Red Guards were assaulting a statue, a ceiling panel fell and crushed the young attackers. Behind the panel was a carving of a dragon, and the story was born of the dragon god defending the temple. These tales are told privately and rarely recorded—part of the untold history of the rural, uneducated oppressed. The Party is willing to admit that its first thirty years in power were a series of disasters, but it doesn't want its face rubbed in it. Instead, one is supposed to forget its crimes and move forward. Most people do this. It is sensible, but it has caused a collective amnesia to settle over the country.
I felt Xianfo's gaze on me and realized my mind had wandered. "There are miracles," he said. "You have to open your eyes. Look in front of us. The god of the North Peak existed. He was a real person. He died, and his body didn't decompose. So people thought he was a spirit. His body is inside the statue," Xianfo said, lifting up his left arm with a flourish. He shook his sleeves so that his index finger, pointing at the statue, dramatically appeared out of the garments. I had to smile, but I knew he wasn't trying to be funny. He was being dramatic, because for him this was a truth that he was trying to make me understand.
"I can show you a lot of dead bodies in the mountains. Hermits go into the hills to meditate, die, and their bodies don't decompose," Xianfo said, turning away from the statue to look out of the door at the endless mountains stretching across the yellow plateau. "It's common."
"Yes," I said absently. "It's very dry here in North China." Then I caught myself. This was the wrong attitude. I was ruining it—the same game authorities played when they tried to distinguish between religion and superstition. He was trying to tell me something. He cast a glance at me and went on. "You have to know where to look. There are people in the mountains of the Central Plains who have gone to the hills for centuries. They die, but no one finds their body, just their staff. They have gone to heaven, immortal. This is my goal."
He fixed his eyes on me and said steadily, "You don't believe me, but I lived with them in the mountains. They were my teachers." Xianfo walked outside toward the mountains, and I followed. My eyes teared in the cold, bright light, and I furrowed my brow in concentration, for the first time trying to listen.
"Here's another strange thing," Xianfo said. A huge elm tree grew on the terrace in front of the temple, its roots sticking out of the ground. It had grown at such an angle that it was almost parallel to the earth and jutted out into the air above the slope below us. "It is named after Zhang Guolao, one of the Eight Immortals. We call it the Guolao Elm. During the Cultural Revolution, some people hacked at its branches and tried to uproot it," he said, pointing at the dead roots sticking out of the ground. "It seemed dead but then after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, it sprouted new shoots and leaves."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Chinese Characters by Angilee Shah, Jeffrey Wasserstrom. Copyright © 2012 The Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
ForewordPankaj Mishra
Acknowledgments
Introduction: "Who Are You This Time?"
Jeffrey Wasserstrom
PART ONE. DOUBTERS AND BELIEVERS
1. The North Peak
Ian Johnson
2. The New Generation’s Neocon Nationalists
Evan Osnos
3. Out of Tibet
Alec Ash
PART TWO. PAST AND PRESENT
4. Belonging to Old Beijing
Harriet Evans
5. Another Swimmer
Xujun Eberlein
6. Looking for Lok To
James Carter
PART THREE. HUSTLERS AND ENTREPRENEURS
7. The Ever-Floating Floater
Michelle Dammon Loyalka
8. King of the Road
Megan Shank
9: Painting the Outside World
Peter Hessler
PART FOUR. REBELS AND REFORMERS
10. The Road to a Better Life
Ananth Krishnan
11. Yong Yang’s Odyssey
Christina Larson
12. The Court Jester
Jeffrey Prescott
PART FIVE. TEACHERS AND PUPILS
13. The Great Wall of Education
Anna Greenspan
14. Gilded Age, Gilded Cage
Leslie T. Chang
15. Shredding for the Motherland
James Millward
Afterword
Angilee Shah
Notes and Reading
List of Contributors
Credits
What People are Saying About This
"Funny and touching portrayals are what give this book its bite. They also help accomplish what the book sets out to do. 'Chinese Characters' sidesteps hackneyed generalizations of China as a country of either great promise or perilous menace."—Wall Street Journal
"In reading these stories of how individuals make their way in this topsy-turvy, fast-paced society, enduring hardship, creating new businesses, challenging authority, struggling to maintain their identities and trying to create better lives for their children, it's impossible not to feel impressed—and connected."—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"An astonishing anthology."—Pacific Standard
"Whether one is interested in China or merely wishes to indulge in some well-crafted prose, Chinese Characters will not disappoint."—Asian Review of Books
"The essays cover a panoply of issues facing modern China, and the book's combination of scope and intimacy is central to its achievement."—Publishers Weekly