A Few Anecdotes about My Hexagonal Pavilion

On its last day, let me end 2011 with a personal note.  After two laborious years, the hexagonal pavilion (六角亭) Bob and I started in September 2009 is finally finished (actually, I can only take credit for the inspiration, design and quality control; Bob is the one who built it):

To compare, here is a photo of it in the first winter:

From the beginning I racked my wits trying to come up with a good name for the pavilion. After many failed tries, the name arrived without effort. In December 2009, I emailed the above photo to a friend, Wang Yan, in China. He replied:

宋人当年每起一亭，必做文以记之，如“喜雨亭记”，“黄州快哉亭记”等，皆吾所爱。但最爱者，为苏东坡“超然台记”。

In translation:

In the Song Dynasty, whenever a pavilion was built, notes were written to record it.  I love such notes as those for "Happy Rain Pavilion," "Huangzhou Pleasure Pavilion," etc, but what I love the most is Su Dongpo's "Notes on the Terrace of Transcendence."

Terrace of Transcendence,  Shandong

I had forgotten all about it: The Terrace of Transcendence (超然台), in Shandong Province, was where the great Song Dynasty poet Su Dongpo wrote his eternal verse "Bright Moon, When Was Your Birth" (明月几时有). (Some translate the poem title as "When Will the Moon Be Bright," which is clearly incorrect to me as the poem itself indicates that it was written during a full moon.)

The word "超然," besides "transcendence," can also be translated as "detachment,", "aloof," and so on.  "Transcendence" seems to fit our mood the best and, on reflection, it must be more than coincidence that we live in the area where the 19^th century "transcendental movement" originated.  It was sitting by Walden Pond one day in 2010, for example, that Bob wrote his letter of resignation to the company where he had worked for two decades. (Later, when discussing the pavilion name, I asked him, jokingly, what we are transcending, and he said, "The chaos of office politics." In that case, I “transcended” seven years earlier than him, when I quit my job as an algorithm developer with steady income and became a writer with two sleeves of clear wind (两袖清风). :-))

Looking back, my whole life seems to be a struggle between aspiration for some sort of transcendence and failure in achieving it. No matter.  Don't you know a classic Chinese saying, "Though unreachable, my heart longs" ("虽不能至，心向往之")?

Thus we settled on the name for our pavilion:  超然亭, or "The Pavilion of Transcendence."

The last touch to complete the construction requires an engraved plaque, or 匾 (bian), with the name inscribed.  I decided to use seal script (篆字) for the inscription, and easily found an on-line generator for the three characters. But the color combination for the background and the characters was a bit difficult to figure out, even with computer simulation.  I asked around for opinions among Chinese friends, but they were as varied as our own.  Alas, one friend convinced us that "only black characters on a wooden background would match the meaning of the words."

I sent the specification for the plaque to my sister and solicited her help to have it made in Shanghai. She took my request seriously.  A few days later, she wrote back (in translation):

At first I thought this would be simple, because on Puxi's Fuzhou Road there are all kinds of culture and art stores that make anything and everything. When I went to the store that made frames for my paintings, however, the wood-master who has worked on this 'culture street' for more than 30 years told me no store makes bian (匾). 

I didn't believe him, and walked through the entire Fuzhou Road to look. I found several engraving shops that make metal or plexiglass seals.  The workers, all young men in their 20s, had their mouths gasped in the shape of the question mark on hearing the word bian (匾), clueless as to what kind of thing it is. A nice young man called the storeowner for me. The owner asked, 'What is bian?'  I had no choice but say, 'It is a piece of wood engraved with words.' 'Aha,' he said, 'store sign!' I was speechless.  He then said if I provided a piece of wood he could engrave the words for me, 60 yuan a character.  Well, where do I go to find the wood?  Not to mention the wood for a bian requires certain machine processing.

I called directory information asking where to find a store that makes bian.  The operator was even more amazing. "Bian?" she said, 'you mean shoulder pole (bian dan 扁担)?'

I hadn't thought that Shanghai, the so-called international cosmopolitan center, would be so culturally ignorant.

I searched the internet with no results. An entire day was wasted.

The next day, my sister (who lives in Pudong) went to Puxi again and randomly looked around.  When she almost gave up, she ran into an auction store, above its door hanging an antique plaque with the inscription of "青莲阁," looking cultured.  She ran to the third floor asking if anyone knew where that plaque was made, and everyone thought her absurd. Fortunately she ran into a passerby, Mr. Dai, who said he knew which contractor made the plaque, and he helped to find their phone number. The very kind Mr. Dai also advised her that elm would be the best material for making a bian.

My sister then called the number Mr. Dai gave her, and found a Mr. Shen, who said he wasn't the right person and provided another number. Through that number my sister reached a Ms. Li, who told her to meet at a far place, nearly an hour's subway ride away. It turns out Ms. Li is a Fujian migrant worker in the business of antique imitation. My sister had finally found someone who is not a Shanghaies and knows what a bian 匾is.

And certainly, the bian is made of elm, just as Mr. Dai advised:

I can't wait to hang it up on the pavilion next spring.

Btw, Bob is writing a series of posts on the process of building this beautiful monster.  His first post is already up here.

Christmas in Shanghai

by Maple, guest blogger,  December 25, 2011

[in translation， 中文原文附后]

At Jing'an Temple in Shanghai

I don't know when it started, but my Chinese countrymen have increasingly lost feeling for traditional festivals and become more and more heated up by Western holidays. Even economic depression and "End of the World" panic can't hold back Shanghai's fervor to welcome Christmas.

At a mall in Shanghai

In a place that always leads the fashion trend and where there is no shortage of foreigners and foreign enterprises, it may not be so strange for some people to take this ride for a bit of fun, but when an entire city collectively goes crazy for a foreign holiday, it is a different matter indeed.  Here is the humility that goes with Christianity—such respect for others' cultures must be an overwhelmingly pleasant surprise to the 0.5% of the population in Shanghai that is foreign. So harmonious.

In Shanghai's Zhengda Square

 Each year, when Christmas approaches, the joyful atmosphere seeps to every corner of the city like overflowing water. When nights fall, the city is ever so gorgeous with lit-up trees, silver flowers and colorful embroideries of light, while Christmas music incessantly drones on. Excited young people dress exquisitely, like flowering branches vying for attention. No matter a big department store or small supermarket, no matter a bank or restaurant, no matter a foreign-invested or domestic enterprise or even a government organization, at every building's door there is a Christmas tree fully decorated with neon lights and bags of  presents. Even small residential enclaves and ordinary hospitals are not spared. So what if you are a Buddhist or Muslim, when you go home or go to the hospital, you get to celebrate Christmas.

In Shanghai's hotel

A while ago there was a joke circulating on the internet: in a contest for the most enigmatic department on the earth, the winner is China's "relevant department" ("有关部门").  I suspect, to place Christmas trees in every corner of Shanghai is the glorious mission of a "relevant department."

In a residential enclave of Shanghai

Perhaps people so exhaust their enjoyment during Christmas, that when it actually comes time for our own spring festival, the reaction from both businesses and the populace is fatigued.  Besides the dull red lanterns, sausage and smoked pork, plus the CCTV Gala Show that gets worse and worse every year, there is nothing else. Compared with people's enthusiasm for Christmas, spring festival no doubt is cast in the shadows.

In Shanghai's supermarket

Nowadays when commenting on something interesting, the Shanghai idiom goes, "That has some tunes" ("老有腔调的").  Is it because we Chinese are so insipid and constrained in nature that our traditional festivals are spent with fewer and fewer tunes?  Otherwise why, when the fun and relaxing foreign holidays such as Halloween, Valentine's Day, and Christmas are introduced,  do we progress from fascination to enthusiastic talk  to glad acceptance?  As to why Halloween involves masks, where Valentine's originated or whose birth Christmas is celebrating, no one cares as long as there are big meals to eat, discount goods to buy and colorful decorations to see.

But let's cut the cackle. On Christmas day, real Christians go to church to hear sermons, sing hymns, and read the Bible. There you will again run into situations between laughter and tears.  At the gate of the following church, for example, a bunch of Henanese sit there begging—

On Christmas Day, beggers at a Shanghai church

Even beggers in Shanghai know today is Christmas. That adds some tunes. They must have their simple logic – merciful Christians probably won't refuse to give charity on this special day.  That is why they deploy the most primitive ruse of bodily suffering:  on a frigid winter day, sitting on icy cement ground, wearing patched clothing and a faint smile, they languidly chant to the church goers: Please do something kind, bosses, please do something kind!

The foreigners pass by unfazed, but how can the fellow Chinese bear it? One digs into his pocket and hands money to a begging woman.  The woman takes the bills and says loudly, Thank you, you the good heart! You really are a living Buddha!

The Good Heart sighs looking up to the heavens, Oh my Lord!

"Grandpa Mao, I don't miss you at all"

By Maple, guest blogger

[in translation]

Only a week ago I had thought that Shanghai, the so called cosmopolitan city, wouldn't be so off the beam as Chongqing. 

Last week I went to the Shanghai Library and discovered the entire hall was decorated red: on walls were full of Party history file photos; from the broadcast came the song "the sun is the reddest, Chairman Mao is the dearest"; offered to patrons for free were red rice and pumpkin soup (Red Army food – Xujun).  Very ostentatious!

Many people left comments under the "red" photos; of course those were politically conscious old comrades who extolled the Party. Very interestingly though, below the photo of Comrade Mao Zedong was a line of childish writing:

"Grandpa Mao, I don't miss you at all, because I see you on RMB every day."

I was going to take a photo of it with my cell phone; immediately a staff member came to stop me, class struggle written all over his face.  I smiled at him: "I just want a memento of your propaganda. What's the big deal?"  He asked back directly, "What is your work unit?" I had to "run away with my tail between my legs."

(Note:  1. RMB is Chinese banknote; 2. "Imperialists ran away with their tails between their legs" is a line in the red song "Socialism Is Good." – Xujun)

中文原文:

一周以前我还以为上海这样的所谓国际大都市不会像重庆那样离谱。

      上周去图书馆，发现整个大堂都布置成一片红了，满墙贴的都是党史资料照片，免费供应红米饭南瓜汤，放着“太阳最红，毛主席最亲的歌”。阵仗得很！

       那些红色照片下有不少人留言，当然都是有觉悟的老同志在歌颂党啦。但在毛泽东同志的画像下有一行稚气的文字很有意思：毛爷爷，我一点都不想你，因为我天天在人民币上看见你。

       我拿出手机想拍照，马上有工作人员来阻止，满脸的阶级斗争。我笑言:你们搞宣传，我也作个纪念，有什么关系呢？工作人员就直接问：你是那个单位的？我只好夹着尾巴逃跑了。

My Block Booking for a Red Movie in Shanghai

by Maple, guest blogger

[Note:  July 1st this year marks the 90th birthday of China's Communist Party. To celebrate it, "red" movies and TV shows are sweeping the country, to the extent that popular spy shows are banned May through July. The biggest film made especially for this occasion is "The Great Cause of Founding the Party" (《建党伟业》), which, in the China-made English ad, is translated as "Beginning of the Great Revival." Its release day was June 15th.  Here is the experience of an ordinary moviegoer on June 17th. -- Xujun]

[in translation， 中文原文附后]

(Shanghai, June 17) I went to a movie theater this afternoon, to give myself a break after a week of intense painting. A French movie festival was ongoing, but I would have to wait until evening to see it. The 3D "Kung Fu Panda" was on, but that kind of fad is for teens with high-tech addictions and would only daze me.  

Coincidentally, the movie "The Great Cause of Founding the Party" (《建党伟业》) was about to start in 5 minutes. I bought the ticket, as if guided by a deity. Entering the screening room, I was stared at by the theater staff. They were whispering about me -- did they suspect my head was crushed by the door?

It turned out that,  in the whole screening room, with more than 400 seats, I was the only audience member, the only person who voluntarily dug into my own wallet to receive the "red" education.

To be fair, the movie is well made. The plot is tight, some details are moving, and the actors are high quality.  But to put more than a hundred of the most famous stars into one movie, that seems like a practical joke.

Last time when "The Great Cause of Founding the Country" (《建国大业》) was made [in a similar fashion], many people went to theaters driven by the urge to "identify famous faces." From the beginning to the end, every time a face appeared on the screen, the hundreds of audience would roar in one voice: "Tang Guoqiang!" "Liu Yiwei!" "Liu Dehua!"  For two hours, all were engaged in identifying, shouting, and guessing; identifying, shouting, and guessing. No one knew what the movie was about.  To call it "great education for all people" is not as precise as "great entertainment for all people."  Perhaps this was the leaders' real goal after all? Educating by entertaining?

Now once again the great entertainment comes, but the masses are tired, they don't want to play anymore. They have left me alone doing the identification and guessing. I still don't understand why Zhao Benshan (赵本山) would wordlessly stand in Yuan Shikai's (袁世凯) shadow, with an expression half laughing half crying, and why Liu Yunlong (柳云龙), an actor I admire, would be half hiding in the left lower corner like a shadow. This was too distracting! I identified this face and then that, couldn't hear at all what Zhou Runfa (周润发) was saying. What was the director's motive? I couldn't enjoy the movie itself, I was only thinking: Why is Wang Xuebing (王学兵) so haggard? Who is playing Xiaofengxian (小凤仙), so beautiful?

      

The most far-off thing was that all the scenes of Tang Wei (汤唯) were removed. She was acting Mao Zedong's first love (not Yang Kaihui), but because she had been all nude in "Lust, Caution," someone thought she would tarnish the great man's image.  Yet Liu Ye (刘烨), the man who plays Mao himself, had starred in the most well-known homosexual film "Lan Yu" (《蓝宇》), with many shots of him all-nude in bed. If the same logic were used, wouldn't he tarnish Mao's image more directly? If we were back in the Cultural Revolution, the director would certainly be executed twice.

My only consolation is that, as a big screen lover, I enjoyed 135 minutes of exclusive block booking of the theater all by myself. I sat there straight to the last minute, until all names of the actors, workers, and musicians ascended beyond the screen.

For a moviegoer like me who's sick beyond cure, the staff member at the door was very sad. He slowly shook his head, like an owl.

(Continue to read the Chinese text / 继续阅读中文原文)

Pleasure and Pain at Shanghai World Expo

by Maple, guest blogger

[in translation; 阅读中文原文]

SHANGHAI, China – Before the Shanghai Expo began, a friend and I made different predications on which month would be the most crowded. She said May, because it'd start with the three-day labor-day holiday period. I said June, because everyone would think the same way my friend did and thus try to avoid May. I was unfortunately right, but because of a chance circumstance, I myself ended up going there in the peak month.

My husband and I planned on a three-day visit: one day each to the Asia Square, Europe and America Squares, and the Urban Best Practices Area, respectively.

Friends who had been there before told us, if you don't want to wait for hours in line outside the Expo gate, noon is a better time to go. Indeed, we arrived at the security point around 11:30 am, and there was almost no line. When asked, a staff said that since 9:00, over 400 thousand people had gone in. My heart tightened: what a rumpus would 400 thousand people kick up inside! But when we reached the square, it was surprisingly empty. Where had all the people gone? Standing in lines all over the world.

Lines at Expo gate (photo by Maple Xu)

The "Beefiest" Translation

The Chinese internet is a melting pot of popular creations, where new expressions (even new words/characters) constantly emerge like an endless stream. This presents a continuous challenge to a translator like me.

One popular adjective created and becoming fashionable in the new millennium is '最牛'. It is a mocking term that can mean, in humorless translation, "boldest" or "hottest" or "most awesome" or "formidable," depending on the object it modifies. The following image, borrowed from a Chinese blog called 西交虫, might help illustrate the meaning of '最牛':

最牛的司机  "The most [ ] driver"

I've left the English translation for '最牛' blank in the caption above, because none of the English adjectives I mentioned earlier can convey the mocking tone of this Chinese term. Furthermore, "awesome" is a commending word while '最牛' could be used with either positive or negative connotation. The other modifiers might be neutral enough, but they do not bring laughter.

When in doubt, I find that often the best solution to such a challenge is go for the literal, or verbatim (直译), as opposed to free translation by meaning (意译). In this case, because '牛' means "cow," and an associated adjective is "beefy," I'm inclined to translate '最牛' as "the beefiest." The (invisible) driver in the above image thus becomes "the beefiest driver."

The origin of '最牛' seems no longer traceable. In fact, I noticed on the Chinese internet that several such origin-seeking questions had met with mocking answers like "you've posed the beefiest question!". I remember one of the first times the term caught my eye was when bloggers named the Chongqing nail house "the beefiest nail house" and brought it to the attention of the public and the media (even NYT) in early 2007.

More recently, this seemly harmless mocking expression has been frequently applied to bad behaviors of government officials. For example, when a judge tried to force Zhang Hui, a victim of Shanghai hooks, to drop his lawsuit and Zhang did not agree, the judge angrily yelled at Zhang as if to a child, "Be obedient!" ("你要听话!") Immediately that judge surnamed Huang was termed "the beefiest judge" on the internet.

"The beefiest official line" occurred in Guangzhou two weeks ago on Oct. 30^th. In a public hearing on traffic jams, attended by several departments of the city government, a reporter asked whether the traffic police should first notify the public before closing a road. A middle-aged man replied, "Do I have to tell you whether I'm going to shit or not? Do I have to tell you whether my shit stinks or not?" These words quickly became a catch phrase on the internet, which in turn led to the man's public apology and job suspension.

The term has become so trendy that even main stream media can't afford to not use it. On Nov. 11^th, xinhuanet.com reported "The Beefiest Developer Sentenced to Death," about a Chongqing developer who tried to get rid of a nail house owned by an old couple, by hiring thugs to kill their only son.

"Beefiest" is only one of many new slang words coming into being with the internet. I don't view this as simple folk language evolution; rather internet slang symbolizes a new popular culture, providing for the first time a viable means for Chinese people to publicly make fun of officials. I would be curious to know how those officials who are named "the beefiest" something feel when they see their new title. Perhaps they will step a bit more gingerly next time.

Related post: "The Beefiest" (最牛) and "It Sucks"

The Legal Crime of Shanghai Hooks

If you are searching the Chinese internet, a new high-frequency keyword is 钩子 – "hook." It was an innocent young man's blood that brought this word to the media's attention.

(image from xinhuanet.com)

In the evening of October 14^th, a tearful 18-year-old man named Sun Zhongjie (孙中界) chopped off his little finger with a kitchen knife, while grieving after being framed by a government "hook."

Sun Zhongjie was a new driver employed by a construction company in Shanghai, and October 14^th was his second day at work. That night, on a work-related trip, his car was stopped by a man standing in the middle of the street. The stranger, shivering in the cold weather, climbed into Sun's car uninvited and told Sun that he had something urgent to deal with but couldn't find a taxi or bus. Sun was sympathetic. Considering that the man's stated destination wasn't too far ahead along, he gave him the requested short ride of 1.5 kilometers. The man threw Sun a 10-yuan (=US$1.47) bill, which Sun hadn't asked for. But instead of getting off, the man grabbed Sun's car keys and stepped on the brake pedal. Dumbstruck, Sun's first thought was that he was being robbed.

Only it was not a robbery, but a government scheme, and the hitchhiker was a "hook." A hook's task is to entice a non-taxi driver to provide a ride, so that he'll be able to accuse the driver of operating a "black taxi" without a license. In each successful hook case, the hook gets paid several hundred Yuan, while the driver is fined 10,000 or more, by the local government's Traffic Management Bureau.

While Sun was struggling with the "hook," trying to grab back his car keys, the conspiring traffic police arrived. They dragged Sun out of his car and held him in their van for a couple of hours without showing any ID. Sun was released only after being forced to sign three receipts, which he did not even get to read. He learned that he had been accused of "black taxi" operation afterward, from several others who were also being "hooked" and brought to the police van.

The injustice and agony Sun felt was unbearable. Though newly employed and poor, his first concern wasn't the big fine or the seized car, but that he was unjustly wronged. He was innocent. He gave the stranger a ride for kindness, not money. Now his clean name was tainted by the hook. But where could he go to prove his innocence? When he was being held in the unknown van, he had shouted that he wanted to call the police, but his captors laughed and told him "We are."

After returning home, Sun picked up a kitchen knife (the big, heavy kind we Chinese use) and chopped off his left pinkie. The 18-year-old was in so much emotional distress that he did not even feel the pain. He then threw himself in bed and cried, while his severed finger bled unattended. If it were not for his older brother living upstairs, who heard the unusual sound and took him to the hospital immediately, Sun might have bled to death that night.

The next day, on October 15^th, young migrant worker Sun Zhongjie appealed to the media for help getting back his good name, and reporters interviewed him in the hospital where he went through an operation to reconnect the severed finger. (A question remains: had Sun not chopped off his finger, would the reporters pay as much attention to his case as they do now?)

Under public and media pressure, five days later, on October 20^th, the Traffic Management Bureau of Pudong New District issued an official report of their "investigation results," claming that everything the traffic police did in Sun's case was legal and Sun was truly an illegal taxi driver. The Bureau said their witness was not a hook but a "society member with a sense of righteousness."

The public was unsatisfied. Sun told a reporter that what the government bureau did was "having the father investigating the son," as the traffic police team belonged to the Traffic Management Bureau, and of course it wouldn't be truthful. Sun requested a face-to-face confrontation with the "witness," which did not happen. Even CCTV and People's Daily declared their suspicions with the "investigation."

The case caught the Shanghai City government's attention and a new investigation involving independent lawyers was ordered. The investigators discovered that the name of the "society member with a sense of righteousness" had appeared as a witness in other similar cases before. Eventually the man's identity as a paid "hook" was verified.

On October 26^th, twelve days after Sun Zhongjie was "hooked," the government of Pudong New District issued a public apology to Sun, returned his car, and revoked the fine. The government also announced the cessation of the "hooking" practice in crashing-down "black taxis."

This quick reversal brought out tears from Sun Zhongjie's eyes. He has since left Shanghai and returned to his home village in Zhejiang Province. Before his departure, he told the media that he probably would go out again as a migrant worker, but not likely to Shanghai. When asked if he'd pick up a stranger who needs help in the future, he evaded the question.

According to reports, 99% of the so-called "black taxi" drivers have been "hooked" before, and among the hook victims also are many innocent people. On September 8^th, Zhang Hui, a white collar driving his private car on the way to work at a high-paying foreign-invested company, "in a moment of soft heart" picked up a man who complained of a stomach ache and persistently begged for a ride. The man was a hook. Despite the fact that Zhang had refused the man's offer of taxi-price payment, Zhang was arrested and fined 10,000 Yuan on the grounds of illegal-taxi operation. Zhang has been blogging about the case and received broad support on the internet. Meanwhile, media coverage on his case was sparse, and the local government that wronged him kept ignoring his request for justice.

A month after he was framed and two days before Sun Zhongjie's encounter with a hook, on October 12^th, Zhang Hui brought his case to the court. Probably helped by Sun's case, on the same day Sun's name was cleared, Zhang's fine was also refunded. However, the next day a judge from the court that accepted Zhang's lawsuit came to his office and shouted at him, because Zhang did not accept the judge's request for withdrawal of the lawsuit. This story is still unfolding.

Hundreds more hook victims who received big fines are requesting their money back now.

In light of Chongqing's "crashing-down on organized crime" storm, Chinese netizens are inquiring whether the government scheme of hiring hooks, now termed as an "illegal form of law enforcement" by the media, should be considered organized crime.

Chang Ping, a well-known journalist and social commentator, says in a blog post titled "上海钩子" that not only should the hooks bear legal responsibility but they should also sue their government bosses who brought them into a criminal career.

(Update: I just saw that the quick and thorough ESWN has posted and translated a bunch of earlier Chinese reports on this case, providing good references.)

Book Review: Global Shanghai, 1850-2010

Global Shanghai, 1850-2010
by Jeffrey Wasserstrom

BlogCritics, book review by Xujun Eberlein, published: May 08, 2009

1.

Shanghai is not just a city; it is a breathing creature with multiple spirits – depending on who's talking about it. Under the classy pen of Wang Anyi, one of the foremost novelists in contemporary China, Shanghai with its mundane gossipy longtang ("an immerse blanket of darkness") possesses the soft Yin of a refined female. In the Chinese textbooks I grew up reading, on the other hand, Shanghai appears to have the vigorous Yang of a revolutionary male, charging valiantly at the frontline against imperialism and feudalism. As if those images are not contrast enough, now Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor of history and China specialist, describes another Shanghai through Westerners' eyes in his informative and thought-provoking new book, Global Shanghai, 1850-2010.

Unusual for a historical discourse, the book takes the structure of a photo album, collecting snapshots every quarter century over a period of 160 years. Such a structure has the benefit of tracing a clear, though rough, contour of the city's trajectory. The focus is on Shanghai's early "globalization" (long before this term was created) and current re-globalization, that is, how Shanghai became a cosmopolitan city and where it is going as one.

A cosmopolitan city – what a celebrated label! Surely neither the Chinese nor Westerners have any objection against it. Yet within its historical connotation lies the water-and-fire contradiction in the ways different sides view and feel about it. Even today, reflecting on this history risks bringing out hasty jingoism from all sorts of people. Given the existence of such divergent perspectives, it is Wasserstrom's unswerving and non-judgmental treatment of the subject that interests me the most about the book.

The disparity begins with Shanghai's birth as an urban center. China's official view is that this occurred in 1291, while Westerners think of it as 1843 – the year the city opened to foreign trade. That's a gap of 552 years, not a trivial one, yet each view has its own basis as Wasserstrom eloquently presents. It is, again, more a perspective gap than a technical one, and the foreigners' view certainly goes with the definition of a "cosmopolitan city."

Starting from there, Shanghai's globalization history is full of large and small conflicts, at times bloody, and viewed differently by various parties. Was Shanghai's transforming into an international "treaty port" in November 1843 a national humiliation (a consequence of China's failure in the Opium war), or a turning point toward commercial prosperity and the advancement of civilization? In 1875, was the killing of a British interpreter named Margary by local Chinese in Yunnan a heroic anti-imperialist action as assessed in Chinese publications, or a senseless murder resulting from xenophobia, as viewed by the "Shanghailanders" (Britons and Americans residing in Shanghai)? In 1900, did the Boxer Rebels' siege of the foreign legations in Beijing cause significant setback in Shanghai's technological development? In 1925, was the blood-shedding May 30^th movement – strikes and demonstrations against foreign-run factories in Shanghai – a national struggle, or an isolated assertion of rights by the local citizens? And what can be said about the leading roles of cosmopolitan nationalists, foreign-educated Chinese who were anything but parochial or xenophobic, in that movement? Was the 1950 the dawn "from a nightmare of oppression" as Song Qingling put it, or a beginning point for the "multiple Shanghais collapsing into a solitary entity" as memoirist Lynn Pan experienced?

(Before going further into the later chapters, I must clarify that the above questions are not addressed by the author directly. Instead, taking an interesting stance, the author sides with neither the Chinese nor the Westerners. In other words, he displays more interest in factual accounts rather than interpretations. He lays out facts and different perspectives, and teases out interesting details, while leaving the conclusions to the reader. As such, another reader might see a totally different set of questions raised.)

Thus globalization, as shown in Shanghai's early history, is not a harmless concept or process. It is a struggle between different sets of interests. Had Shanghai not been located by both the South China Sea and the Yangtze River, convenient for transportation into, and out of, China, it would not have attracted the foreign businessmen as early as the 1840s. Globalization at that time was about capitalist expansion and colonialism. The invasive nature of it inevitably resulted in the local people's resistance, thus the constant clashes.

Every coin has two sides. Globalization, then as now, isn't purely evil either. I was surprised to learn from this book that Shen Pao, one of the oldest and most prominent Chinese newspapers, was created by a Briton in 1872. The paper's historical significance is summarized in Baidu.com (the leading Chinese search engine for websites and a cultural discussion forum) as: "In Shen Pao's 78 years of history, it recorded from late Qing Dynasty through ROC all sorts of political, military, economic, cultural and societal information, whose very high historical value resulted in the name 'the encyclopedia of modern history." Furthermore, "Shen Pao's layout was divided into sections of news, commentary, art and ads, which laid out the foundation for the 4-section base structure of modern Chinese newspapers."

Another significant thing brought in by the early globalization was Western architecture. While the old Shanghailanders are long gone, their architecture remains. In fact today it is often cited by foreign residents that, one major attraction of Shanghai is the many old buildings designed by the Britons, French, Americans, etc. Together (and in contrast) with the traditional Chinese longtang, Shanghai is a modern city that preserves an enjoyable diversity in style and "the texture of daily life" (as journalist James Fellows put it), a feature making Shanghai distinct from, say, modern Beijing.

2.

A major problem with globalization is that it forces the uniform development from the "advanced" economy's point of view, regardless the hugely varying conditions and cultures in the so-called "backward" nations and places. Ironically though, in Shanghai's case it was the de-globalization that was to deprive Shanghai of much of its diversity.

As we read on in Global Shanghai, Wasserstrom's chapters for 1950 and 1975 depicted a history more familiar to my generation of Chinese. The foreigners were driven out in early 1950s. Here, the Chinese were supposed to feel elated, having been librated from imperialist oppression. While the latter part was true (as China became a closed country for more than two decades), people also experienced the gradual singularization of the once multiple Shanghais. The uniformity reached its extreme in late 1960s when "All mountains and rivers are a vast red," as a then-slogan read. During the Cultural Revolution, Shanghai again played a leading role: it was the first to set up the "Revolutionary Committee" that replaced the city government, and it became the nation's adjunct political center.

“The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.” So goes the opening of the Chinese classic Three Kingdoms. After President Nixon's visit in 1972, Shanghai was one of the first cities in China that allowed Western tourists. Gradually China reopened to the outside world, and here comes the re-globalization. In the area east of the Huangpu river, Pudong is now built up in a modernized, futuristic style, with its famous high-speed meglev being the envy of other developing countries. Meanwhile, Puxi, west of the Huangpu, keeps its traditional charm. Shanghai is divided: old Shanghai residents love Puxi nostalgically, and Chinese newcomers with no connection to Shanghai's past prefer Pudong. When I visited Shanghai this February, I was amazed by how dissimilar the two sides look. Yet they co-exist in peace, their differences adding only the attractiveness of diversity.

Still, Shanghai's change is not without irony, and Wasserstrom borrows a line from a book about post-socialist Budapest to describe this aptly: "The boredom of the socialist cities is gone, but so is their safety." No period is perfect.

Meanwhile, foreigners swarm in. According to the Chinese Wikipedia, at the end of 1843, the year Shanghai was established as a treaty port, there were only 25 foreign residents – English missionaries and businessmen registered with the British Consulate. Now the number has exceeded 100,000, the largest among all Chinese cities. A 2004 statistic shows that Americans made up 13.4% of the foreign workforce in Shanghai. In internet discussions, many foreigners even enthusiastically joined the once Chinese-patented oral fight, "Is Shanghai better or is Beijing?"

But Chinese media and academic publications still grumble about how few foreigners there are. It's only 0.67% of Shanghai's total population, too much lower than the 5% world average of big cities, they say. They might have a point, since "Shanghai's natural destiny is to be a global city." The Shanghai government has explicitly stated that, during the 11^th "Five-Year Plan" (2006-2010), enhancing international competence is the city's main development line. One hundred and sixty six years after the treaty port opened, globalization is no longer a foreign imposition; it has become the Chinese government's own pursuit.

On the other hand, a writer friend and Shanghai native views that as only the city leaders' pursuit of official career achievements, for which the common residents feel little relevance. "Shanghai's internalization has been a natural process because of its geography, and it does not have much to do with any local man-made effort," the friend said. From 1843 to 2009, Shanghai has opened, closed, reopened and is poised to embrace the outside. Wasserstrom’s book, by chronicling this evolution, shows Shanghai in its natural light, from which I again see Shanghai as a living, breathing, sometimes bruised, creature.

Shanghai International Literary Festival Live Blogging

Shanghai's international literary festival does an impressive live blogging, which provides real time transcripts of author talks and audience interaction. I found several of the China-related conversations quite interesting:

James Fallows: "People in the U.S. would generally like to think, 'well is China good or is it bad?' and the answer is of course that, like the U.S. it is good and it is bad. You have to embrace the good and work on the bad."

Stella Dong: "In Shanghai the taxi drivers come out and put your luggage in the back of the trunk. They want to do what you want and help you out. In Beijing, people argue with you and you're treated, well, there's this certain attitude like, make me do it. "

Jeff Wasserstrom: "There are so many differences and rivalries between Shanghai and Beijing. When I told people I was writing about important student movements like the May Fourth movement, they said 'but that happened in Beijing!' But I point out that although the protests started in Beijing, they peaked in Shanghai."

Jen Lin-Liu: "Nevermind that I clearly informed the administration of this information. 'Miss Lin is a Chinese-American writer and she wants to spread propaganda to the Chinese people...unsurprisingly, they thought I was retarded.'"

Valentine's Madness in Shanghai

by Maple Xu

[in translation]

On Valentine's Day, Shanghai went mad! No parking available at squares, restaurants or karaokes; to eat out one had to wait in a long line; streets were unbearably jammed by cars.

Strangely, since the financial crisis began, it seems my countrymen's consumption power has been growing intensely. In the past years on Valentine's Day, at most the price of roses went up and Western-style restaurants got more customers. This year, the old and the young all came out to join in the merry-making. Even Chinese-style restaurants had long lines. Movie theaters were explosively filled. Rose prices surged from 2 yuan to 15 yuan a stem; people still grabbed them like a free-lunch, buying 99 stems at a time.

I suspect my countrymen are having the fin-de-siecle anxiety, smashing the pot that has already cracked. Why wait for inflation, why not indulge in flowers and wine now and buy that one-time happiness. But most of my friends think this is because Chinese have bank deposits; in addition, people are irritated by the American financial crisis, so they spend just to show you they can spend.

In this year's Spring Festival Gala, Zhao Benshan (note: a famous skit and sitcom actor) had a stage speech "we are not short of money; give me whatever is good." Now people around me often say "not short of money!"

Jeff Wasserstrom on Lijia Zhang's Memoir

Today on The China Beat, Jeff Wasserstrom, professor of history at UC Irvine and a reknowned China expert, comments on Lijia Zhang's memoir “Socialism is Great!” - A Worker’s Memoir of the New China, and reflects on his own experience in 1980s Shanghai. In his post, "A Soulful Memoir of 1980s China," Prof. Wasserstrom also has a few nice words about my book Apologies Forthcoming, in which several stories are set in the 1980s China.

Now I must get Lijia Zhang's memoir and Prof. Wasserstrom's new book, Global Shanghai, to read.

Is Olympic Investment Vanity Spending?

– Letter from Shanghai by Paul Armstrong-Taylor

Hi Xujun,

I guess this email will be shorter than usual, but I often think that. Let's see! :-)

(Quotes from your post "The People's Republic of Capitalism = Chongqing (3)")

The Chinese government remains very strongly focused on urban development, and seems to think the way to help farmers is to make it easier for them to get to the city. To me, it is not at all obvious that this is true. It seems like redirecting just a small amount of the urban investment to rural areas could have a much more profound impact. This is clearly not a simple topic to come to grips with, but I do think it should have received more attention in the series.

This is interesting. I went to an excellent conference on Inequality in China at Harvard Law School three of four years ago. There were several interesting presenters, including a professor of economics from MIT. I forget his name, but he was Chinese. Anyway, the main point of his research was that the rate of return on investment in the underdeveloped areas of China was higher than in the developed areas. If there was a truly free economy, you would expect the capital to flow to the areas where it earned the higher returns - in other words you would expect capital to shift from developed areas to underdeveloped areas. If this was not happening, it must be because capital was being channeled away from the underdeveloped areas to the developed areas by other factors. His argument was that this was being driven by government policy. He argued that the 1980s were much freer from an economic perspective than the 1990s. As a result, there had been a great deal of investment in underdeveloped regions (e.g. the west of China) during this period. However, in the 1990s, the state owned banks focused lending in the coastal cities, there were tax breaks for certain special development areas, etc. In short, government policy was clearly biased to promoting growth in the developed areas at the expense of the underdeveloped areas.

This is not exactly the same as your point as he was arguing at the regional level - e.g coastal versus central provinces vs west - rather than urban versus rural, but I think similar points hold. In fact, I guess the urban-rural difference maybe even starker than the regional difference.

Just to digress a little bit: From this point of view, the Beijing Olympics really are a big waste of resources and destructive to the environment. I understand the Chinese government and people who take the event as a way to boost China's international image and view it as a matter of national bride. But, while I was disgusted by those violent attempts to damage the torch relay, one good thing I learned from twenty years of living in America is a practical attitude over vanity. To me a better life for people is the ultimate way to improve a nation's image.

I agree with this. I think if you look at democracies, there tend to be fewer "vanity projects". Projects that are spectacular but ultimately have small benefits to ordinary people relative to their costs. Of course, there are some such projects even in democracies - e.g. the Channel Tunnel for UK / France. Of course, you might argue that the ridiculous level of military spending in the US also falls into this category. But I think you tend to see more in non-democracies. Having said that, I am not sure if the Beijing Olympic investment is all vanity spending. Just this evening, I saw a brief news segment on London's preparation for the 2012 Olympics. Sebastian Coe who is organizing the London Olympics emphasized that they were following the Beijing example in making sure that all the facilities developed for the games would be designed to be useful after the games were over. He also mentioned that this has been a focus of the Olympic committee when choosing a city to host the games. I am not to familiar with the Beijing investment, but I guess some of it will be useful after the Olympics. For example, the improved subway infrastructure might help slow the growth of car ownership. I heard they are planning to turn the Olympic village (where the athletes will stay) into a hotel and conference center. Maybe that will not have direct benefit to ordinary people, but at least it will not be wasted. Hopefully some of the sporting facilities will be open to the public and / or used to host other sports teams or events. If so, maybe the Olympics investment is not too bad.

That is it for now!

Paul

(posted with permission )

Social Pressure, or Humanity? - Letter from Shanghai

by Anonymous

Introduction: I received this letter last week from an English reader in Shanghai. I'm posting it with permission, because he has some very interesting points. Either you agree or disagree with him, I'd love to hear your thoughts. – Xujun

Hi Xujun,

I came across your blog today and am interested in your ideas. In the blog post "Heroism, or Humanity?" you talk about the response of the Chinese people to the Sichuan earthquake. You noted that this was dramatically different to the responses to previous natural disasters and how it seemed to be based more on humanity than the Chinese concept of heroism. I found this very interesting and would like to share my thoughts.

One thing I can add is that, in China, there was enormous social pressure on people to support the earthquake victims. I am not sure whether this feeling existed in previous cases (e.g. Tangshan earthquake), but from your writing, I suppose not. Whether this is a good thing or not is an interesting moral question, but I want to look at why / how it happened rather than the ethics of it.

(slight sidetrack here, but will be relevant eventually, I promise!)

My own personal feeling is that culture is less a reflection of the psychology of a people and more a response to the environment in which they find themselves. For example, I am not at all sure that the low-level Nazi prison guards during the Holocaust or the Japanese soldiers at Nanjing are so different from us. In most cases, before and afterwards they lived normal lives. Is it plausible that so many people simultaneously changed from normal to abnormal and then later changed back? I don't think so. More likely the environment changed and they changed in response. The famous Milgram experiment supports this view.

I haven't read any of your writings, but it seems you view the Cultural Revolution somewhat similarly. There were no fixed groups of victims and victimizers, but people moved between groups depending on circumstance.

This also works in less dramatic ways. The concept of "guanxi" is often said to be a core part of Chinese culture - especially business culture. However, my belief is that this is not due to some fundamental characteristic of the Chinese, but is just a response to the fact that the legal system in China makes it hard to enforce your rights. If you do business with someone and they cheat you, it is much harder to sue them successfully in China than in the US. As a result, business people rely more on the relationships and personal knowledge than on the law to protect themselves. Recently, the legal system has begun to improve in some areas of China, like Shanghai, and people tell me that guanxi are far less important in Shanghai than in certain other areas. I guess the decline in the importance of guanxi will continue as the legal system in China improves.

Which environmental forces affect culture or behavior? In modern societies, I think the social forces have the most powerful effect. Most people like to belong to a group. Even so-called rebels normally conform within their group. People who truly differ from their peers are often treated with suspicion or contempt. Although some people might say the group thinking is stronger in China than the US, I am not sure this is true. Look at the response of the US to 9/11 and the run up to the Iraq War. I was in the UK at that time and the new there clearly showed that it was unlikely Iraq had weapons of mass destruction - hence you had one million people protesting against the war in London before it started. Meanwhile, in the US such news was suppressed and very, very few people opposed the war. In other words, I think people everywhere feel and mostly respond to the pressures to join groups. This effect will tend to be greater the more uncertain and risky the environment. Being part of a group is a safe choice, opposing the majority is risky.

I think a lot of the stress people felt during the cultural revolution was because the "right" groups to belong to kept changing. People tried to fit in with the dominant group to be safe, but then the political wind changed, and they were in the subjugated group and had to try to change again. Therefore, it was very difficult to find any safety of security.

(back to the point)

OK. So what does this have to do with the Sichuan response. Let us look at the difference between the Tangshan earthquake and the Sichuan earthquake. If I am right, the difference in public response should be attributable to a different environment.

In 1976 the cultural revolution was just ending and, I suppose, Chinese people felt very insecure. They had seen others (and maybe themselves) suffer for not being part of the dominant group and did not want that to happen again. I do not know much about the situation after the Tangshan quake, but I do know that the government tried to suppress information about it. Most people probably interpreted this to mean that the government did not want them to make a big deal about the earthquake, so they didn't. I am sure they felt sad, but they did not act because it might be dangerous - who knows if people trying to support the earthquake victims would be seen as next target for the cultural revolution? The social pressures forced people to look away.

Now the Sichuan case is very different. The Chinese government's response was very open. Coverage of the earthquake has been constantly on the TVs and there was even a three day mourning period where no other news was shown. Supporting the earthquake victims is seen as a duty. Instead of the social pressure working against contribution, it works for it. In order to be part of the group you must contribute. For example, around where I live, people collect money from neighbours and then post the amount donated by people in the apartment buildings. So people can see who has donated how much. If you do not donate, you lose face. In some companies, I have heard contributions are compulsory. Even as a foreigner, I can feel a strong social pressure to contribute, and I am sure it is more powerful for the Chinese themselves.

So I guess my point of view is this: there is no fundamental difference between Chinese people now than in 1976, but the environment is very different. I am sure many people then felt sadness for the victims at Tangshan, but there were strong social pressures not to organize support for them. Now, the opposite is true. Even those you may not want to help the victims are under pressure to do so. I would be wary of using the comparison between Tangshan and Sichuan to deduce some change in the humanity of the Chinese because powerful social pressures are working in opposite directions. I think the response to Tangshan dramatically underestimates the compassion felt and the response to Sichuan may actually overestimate it.

Of course I have only been in China a couple of years, so I do not have the same depth of understanding that you do. Therefore, I would be very interested in your thoughts.

– Anonymous