MQR's China Issue

The current issue of Michigan Quarterly Review is all about China, with fiction, nonfiction, poetry, reviews and interviews. MQR is a print magazine, but you can read the summary of this issue here.

Another Chinese immigrant author, Yiyun Li, has a very interesting interview, in which she comments on William Trevor: "He doesn't carry a message in his writing, he's an observer, and I like that because I know so many writers who are not observers but who have an agenda. He doesn't have an agenda, he's very curious about human beings. I share this curiosity and I share his interest in the mysteries of human nature."

As a fiction writer I find this observer attitude without an agenda especially resonant. Coincidentally, I mentioned a similar attitude in an interview on Peking Duck early this month.

My memoir piece "On Becoming an American" also appears in this issue. It opens with the following passage:

I was six or seven and lived in a suburb of Chongqing, China. One day my big sister pointed a stick to the soil on the hill outside our yard and said, "If you dig a tunnel here through the earth, you'll get to America."

I believed it. It would be many years before I realized how common the tale is among American kids as well – only the country name is switched.

And ends with this paragraph:

Having lived half a life each in China and America, countries of opposites both geographically and politically, I am no longer easily excited by "-ist" labels, be it Communist, imperialist, or terrorist. I have learned there are people faces behind all those "-ists," with human communalities and differences, human weaknesses and biases. I have become an American with no more political hatred. That, I am proud of.

NBCC Members Judged 2008 MCC Grants

Jane Ciabattari, president of NBCC and one of the judges for the MCC artist grants in fiction/creative nonfiction (see post below), says on the NBCC blog yesterday:

"I was a judge for this category this year, along with NBCC members Robin Hemley and Natalie Danford, novelists Brad Kessler and Thisbe Nissen; we worked hard, reading sine 473 initial manuscripts, all with author's names removed, over a period of weeks, then meeting in Boston for several days of nonstop consideration. (Plus a good fish dinner!)"

Continue reading here: CRITICAL MASS: Friday Roundup

MCC Recognizes Artists for Exceptional Work

(From MCC Press Room)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 23, 2008

MCC Recognizes Artists for Exceptional Work
39 Visual Artists, Choreographers, Musicians and Authors Awarded $7,500

(BOSTON, MA) -- The Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) has recognized more than 60 Massachusetts artists for creating work of exceptional quality in a range of disciplines. MCC’s Artist Fellowship Program will award $7,500 unrestricted grants to 39 artists, and distinguish 24 others as finalists. These outstanding artists were selected from 1,800 applicants in the disciplines of choreography, drawing, painting, fiction/creative nonfiction, poetry and traditional arts.

Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellows include Steve Almond, author of Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America; Xujun Eberlein, author of the just-released short story collection Apologies Forthcoming; and Joan Wickersham, whose memoir The Suicide Index will be published in August.

Read more >>

Human Flesh Search: Old Topic, New Story

Yesterday, London's TimesOnline published a news story titled "Human flesh search engines: Chinese vigilantes that hunt victims on the web." The journalist, Hannah Fletcher, had contacted me a few weeks back, after she saw my article "Human Flesh Search: Vigilantes of the Chinese Internet" on New America Media. Two months of time has elapsed since I wrote that piece, and you might've thought the topic too old. Not so. Reality continued to provide new content for Ms. Fletcher's well-written and informative story.

Coincidentally, I saw another Chinese report a couple of days ago – thanks to the resourceful ESWN – with a humorous title "Human Flesh Search Recruiting Professional Army." You can read the original Chinese here. It reports that mop.com, the interactive entertainment website that first coined the term, is going to have organized "human flesh search" that would no longer target private matters, thus making such search no longer "senseless and vulgar." It looks like the story is still unfolding.

Since Ms. Fletcher generously quoted comments I emailed her, I thought I might as well share that email dated May 23rd in its entirety –

Dear Ms. Fletcher,

Thanks for the kind note. Indeed these are important questions. I tried to address them in the article you mentioned; let me try to expand a little bit.

I do believe that "human flesh search," in terms of its large scale and angry connotation, is unique to China.

For one thing, China's population makes it easy to mobilize a large number of netizens to participate in such a search, especially considering that there are many smart and reasonably well educated people in China who are intellectually underemployed.

For another, privacy is not a traditional Chinese concern, and there is no clear law to punish exposing someone's personal information on-line. Chinese also believe that "the law does not restrict the masses." Combine this with a culturally based inquisitiveness that does not have any strong tradition of respecting privacy, and you get people who are willing to go out (or stay in) and gather information to be propagated to others.

On top of all this I think there is some pleasure in the idea of making information available when there has been such significant suppression of both thoughts and facts over the previous five decades.

Several other cultural elements are also at play here. On one hand, China's law is imperfect, and the law enforcement does not respond to morality issues. On the other hand, "righteousness" is one of the five virtues in Confucian tradition. With the convenience of the internet, in the case of non-responsive law, the righteous people tend to take matters into their own hands.

The communist tradition of deploying "people power" to carry on the Party's tasks might also have facilitated the birth of "human flesh search," though in this case it might be another case of backfire.

Is it a force for good or bad? Ancient Chinese wisdom believes everything has two sides and that's my way of thinking as well. In any mass action, regardless its motive, things can get ugly and this has proven to be the case time and again in history. The Cultural Revolution is one big example. Some recent human flesh searches in China have gotten the targets wrong and harmed innocent people.

However, instead of targeting individuals, if this force turns itself to government monitoring, I think it will help reduce the corruption that is commonplace right now.

In the end, it will depend on which characteristics of the trend dominate – nosiness or the desire to get information out. The latter would be a good thing, and I do think there is some indication that things are trending that way. (One of my recent blog posts touches indirectly on this).

In any case I expect there will be lots of undesirable activity mixed in. It would be interesting to compare this to something like Wikipedia, which is another venue for harnessing spare intellectual capacity.

I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if you need any further information, and when your article comes out.

Best wishes,

Xujun Eberlein

Jiang Qing (蒋庆) on Women and Confucianism

Note: A reader asked, under guest blogger Larry Mongoss's post "Confusion Democracy for China," whether Jiang Qing had written about the role of women. I forwarded the question to Miwan, a student and friend of Jiang Qing's in Beijing, and Miwan pointed me to the transcript of a speech. Jiang Qing seems to take a view that is very consistent with traditional Confucianism. He says somethings that I agree with, and others that I disagree with. I’m posting this for discussion.

The following is my translation of an excerpt from the speech Jiang Qing gave on April 16, 2005, during the "Cultural Dialogue and the Development of Contemporary Academy" forum in Shenzhen, China. The speech was titled "Liberty, Democracy, Three Cardinal Guides, and Feminism." The "Three Cardinal Guides" referred to in the text are: the sovereign guides the subject, the father guides the son, and the husband guides the wife. – Xujun

[In translation] Jiang Qing:

In his speech just now, Professor Tu Weiming views the Three Cardinal Guides as uni-directional, because the sovereign's authority is higher than the subject's, the father's higher than the son's, and the husband's higher than the wife's. Professor Tu asks whether I think the Three Cardinal Guides can be developed further. I think this needs some specific analysis.

Though Confucianism talks about heaven-father and earth-mother, about yin-yang harmony and unity, there must be an absolute, leading role, otherwise the universe would be in disorder.

From the viewpoint of highest philosophy, I-Ching affirms heaven's leading role. But that does not deny the role of the earth. Heaven is the source of the universe's vitality and creation, while earth is life's carrier and undertaker. This is not our subjective assumption; this is the natural order of the universe.

When this natural order of the universe runs through societal and familial relationships, it becomes the Three Cardinal Guides. The relationships are indeed uni-directional, which is the greatest, most positive characteristic of the Guides. We all know that as far as morality is concerned, a moral principle is an absolute command on the actor. It is not a reciprocal or symmetric interpersonal demand. There is no negotiation on morality. To follow the Guides is not to obey a particular person; it is to obey one's own absolute moral obligation.

Therefore, under the requirement of the Three Cardinal Guides, even if the sovereign is unkind, the subject must be loyal; even if the father is unloving, the child must be filial; even if the husband is unjust, the wife must be faithful.

However, the traditional Three Cardinal Guides proscribe the uni-directional morality requirements mainly to the subject, the son, and the wife. From a modern point of view this is a deficit, it is incomplete. The Guides should be supplemented with the uni-directional morality requirements proscribing to the sovereign, the father, the husband as well. This is to require that the sovereign be absolutely kind, regardless whether the subject is loyal; the father be absolutely loving, regardless whether the son is filial; the husband be absolutely just, regardless whether the wife is faithful.

Another layer of the Three Cardinal Guides is that, in each relationship, the guiding party also bears the responsibility. For example, if the son has behavioral problems, the main responsibility is the father's, not the son's.

Confucianism speaks about different roles of husband and wife, but not equality between them. This means man and woman each have a particular role in the social and family order, and that each should realize his or her own value of existence. I really don't understand Western feminism; I think feminism is actually poisoned by masculinism. Why? Because when the universe was created everything was not equal. Absolute equality is not possible and does not exist. Differences and unevenness are natural. A woman's role in family, as in society, is different from a man's. This bears natural rationale.

But Western feminists want everything to be equal between men and women, like the earth fighting the heaven for equality. How can this be possible? If men can do something, women must want to do the same. What is the measurement here? It is men. Feminism uses men's standards to measure women. The feminist is adopting a male value system; she is trying to realize her value by male standards. This disregards the importance of "difference." If a woman really wants to achieve her potential, she should instead realize her unique, particular female value, and not aim at the abstract, general, so-called "equality" that imitates male values.

Confucianism opposes both masculinism and feminism, but advocates gender differences under an orderly heaven-earth universe and harmonious yin-yang unity. Feminism is to be commended for its historical role in opposing overbearing masculinism. However when it goes to the extreme, Confucianism does not agree.

TNYRB Review of Beijing Coma by Ma Jian

In today's The New York Review of Books

Beijing Coma by Ma Jian

Casting a Lifeline
A Review by Francine Prose

Sixty pages or so into Ma Jian's novel Beijing Coma, the hero, Dai Wei, is troubled by the memory of a harrowing anatomy lecture that he attended as a university student. Taught by "a celebrated cardiovascular specialist," the class observed the dissection of the fresh corpse of a criminal whom the government had just executed (in celebration of National Day) and whose organs had been speedily harvested for transplant.

Dai Wei's moral revulsion was tinged with personal anxiety, for this was not the first time that politics had placed a serious strain on his love life. In high school, he had been interrogated and beaten by the police for meeting his girlfriend in a cement culvert, the only place they could be alone. And now the distressing physiology lesson reminded his college girlfriend of why she had been so reluctant to obey her parents' wish that she cross the border from Hong Kong to study medicine in the brutal, unenlightened People's Republic. How she longed to go to Canada...
Read the entire review

"Collision Puts Taiwan and China in Same Boat"

New America Media, News Analysis, George Koo, Posted: Jun 19, 2008

"Last week, a Japanese frigate on patrol, Koshiki, collided with Lien Ho, a deep-sea sports fishing boat from Taiwan. The incident was virtually ignored by the media in the West. Yet future developments from this provocation will bear close watching." Read the complete report here>>

PIF Magazine Interview on "Apologies"

Steven Wingate, whose story collection Wifeshopping won the 2007 Bakeless Prize from Bread Loaf, interviews me for PIF magazine. This is one of the more fun interviews I've had since the publication of Apologies Forthcoming. Wingate asks some very interesting questions, and once again the topic of cultural differences is touched upon. You can read the complete interview here.

Confusion Democracy for China

by Larry Mongoss, guest blogger

Xujun’s recent article on The China Beat and the comments it engendered made me think a little bit more about the whole concept of democracy. I can’t help but admire Jiang Qing, he really is a man who believes in his cause, and his cause does seem worthy. His epic search for good governance is reminiscent of both the spiritual search that Siddhartha undertook in search of enlightenment and the adventures of Odysseus.

Of course most people who go off in search of something don’t end up being noticed, let alone becoming Buddha. Much of the trick in making an impact is finding the right stopping place. Had Jiang Qing decided he liked Christianity, or gone on to become a libertarian it is unlikely any would have heard his name again. But, as it happens, he stopped on Confucianism and that does seem to strike a chord with many in China.

While the article itself seems to be more about the man and his journey, the comments all seem focused on his landing point. Few of those who commented embrace the idea of a Confucian state, deriding it as a quaint but impractical, if not simply bad, idea. I share in that skepticism, though not the derision, but it is worth pointing out that what is proposed is quite similar to the evolution of democracy in England and so is not without precedent. Perhaps, if there hadn’t been that pesky communist revolution, Confucianism would have been a nice path to democracy for China, but the cards have changed.

What did strike me strongly in the things Jian Qing said was that popular will alone is not sufficient for good governance. To put this in a more western turn of phrase, how do we protect democracy from the voters?

While that may seem like a tongue in cheek questions, it really is worthy of pretty serious consideration. Iran, Iraq, Russia, Venezuela and Gaza all have governments that have been voted into power by what appear to be a legitimate democratic process. Yet none of those governments behave in a way that most people in the US and Western Europe would think of as democratic.

It is not simply that the people voting don’t understand what is being asked of them. The voting processes in the United States, Japan and other stable democracies are also driven by lots of irrational impulses. Good governance demands more than, and does not really depend upon, good elections. Most, in the US, would point to the constitution as the basis for both governance and law that keeps things right. By that argument, China should also be a thriving democracy. So maybe the constitution has to be strictly adhered to, so that Canada, until 1982 was not really a democracy.

To get good governance, even political stability, you need a clear set of rules that people, by and large, will adhere to. For a democracy with individual freedom, those rules are pretty complicated since they have to let people do mostly what they want but not anything they want. The wealthy democracies have all found their own mix of freedom and restraint managed by both the force of law and social custom. I guess, when you reflect on it, all of this is painfully obvious, and was well understood by people from Cromwell to Jefferson. It was also well understood by Lenin, Mao, Tito, Hussein and Amin who put emphasis on force, though certainly channeling it through social conditioning.

So what does that imply for China? I think the implication is actually that the social conditions for democracy (or perhaps something even better) need to be in place before the new system will work. Those conditions, based on Confucianism or not, need to be engendered by a government that is definitively not democratic. That may seem like an unlikely prospect, but then the current degree of economic and information freedom would have been unthinkable just two decades ago. Let’s just hope that the release of the old state apparatus is timed right – for Mikhail Gorbachev it was too soon, for Saddam Hussein much too late.

Another Review for "Apologies Forthcoming"

Read it on From the Cheap Seats

"A Sichuan Family and Tibet’s Future"

A friend alerted me to this interesting article on the NY Times website. The friend has an indirect connection with the author, and I heard that it was not easy getting the article published, despite the author's credential. It seems anything from a Chinese perspective is a lot harder to get in than the opposite views. Still I applaud the NY Times for eventually getting it out. Balanced reporting is important for a renowned paper like NY Times.

The comments below the article are also very interesting to read as a whole.

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

The Endless Knots Blog

by Jessica Lipnack

Introduction: Today I'm talking about writing and gardening (and you'll see where my blog header comes from) on Jessica Lipnack's Endless Knots, an eclectic blog. (She explains the title here.) Jessica is an intelligent, hard-working, and energetic woman expert in the design of virtual teams and network organizations. She has published a pile of nonfiction books on the subject. She has also written a novel haunted by the ghost of Margaret Fuller, the great 19th-century futurist. Since our friendship began in 2004, we have helped each other in our writing careers and also fought over sensitive topics such as Tibet's relationship with China. We disagree on things and we agree on other things, yet our friendship continues.

I asked Jessica about her motivation for blogging, interesting things that happened to her blog, and the evolution of Endless Knots, and here is what she tells me. – Xujun

I began my writing career as a reporter when I was sixteen, working for a daily newspaper in my hometown, churning out as many as seven or eight articles a day. That experience, gained over four summers, gave me the training to grab facts and turn them into something readable. Shortly after I got the job, the editor gave me a column, which is where I learned how to explore single topics in more depth - and have fun with it.

When I first went online in 1979, I quickly became addicted to posting to online conferences, originally on EIES (housed at the New Jersey Institute of Technology), and then on many other online networks, listservs, and eventually websites. Soon, I found myself posting similar things in multiple places (the reporter in me has the irrepressible urge to share what I see), writing similar emails to multiple people, and wearing out my keyboard with repetitive strokes.

In early 2005, I had a fortunate request. Because I'd written many books about networks, a client who trusted my opinion asked me to attend a conference on the rising phenomenon of social networks and report back on what I'd learned. There, a blogger described his experience with his blog in such compelling terms that by the time I got home, I'd drafted the first post for what would become my blog (a too-long essay, in fact, to be a real post) that I distributed to my network. Then a few months later, I attended Solstice Summer Writers Conference (at your suggestion, for which I'll always be grateful) and realized that this event deserved to be blogged. The writers at the workshop – Dennis Lehane, Roland Merullo, Meg Kearney, Manette Ansay, just to name a few – were fascinating ... and saying things that I thought others would want to hear. Thus was born Endless Knots. And Solstice took! I finished the novel I was working on in nine months in midst of three work trips to Europe.

Some bloggers choose particular topics as their sole focus, a common practice that I regard as absolutely wrong-headed. One of the joys of blogging is that there are no editors pounding on you to stay out of areas where you are just in the infancy of understanding. I'm interested in a lot of seemingly unrelated topics, which means I wander into fields where I'm a complete novice. One brought unexpected gifts. Last December, I did a post about reducing the carbon impact of team meetings, suggesting that "we," meaning anyone reading, develop a checklist to use before traveling endless miles to attend the next face-to-face meeting. The Content Economy, a blog in Sweden written by people I didn't know, picked up on it and drafted a checklist, which a blogger in New Zealand (whom I did know from speaking to his group when I visited there last year) turned into a flow chart, and the whole stream of blogs has been widely referenced on other blogs. So that was a wonderful, practical outcome of a speculative post.

Some other, completely unexpected and unusual things have come from my blog: I was asked to teach "The wisdom of bloggers," a course on blogging for creative writers in an MFA program, have had a number of invitations to talk to executives about the power of new social media, and been asked to write a monthly column for The Industry Standard.

You ask how my blog is evolving: I'm still having fun with it. In a few moments, I'm leaving for a morning meeting with a group of bloggers whom I've invited to join me on a panel this week at a technology conference here in Boston. The panel's topic is "What blogging brings to business." The move from the online world to the real one continues to fascinate me as I meet new people and develop new friendships with others around the world. I deeply believe that by expressing our most fundamental beliefs we build bridges across cultural, political, religious, and ethnic divides that ideologies and fear cannot bring down. Writers bear responsibility for spanning our separateness, especially when so much of the world is fragmenting.

A Conversation on PekingDuck.org

You can probably call Peking Duck one of the China blog tycoons, together with Danwei, ESWN, and China Law Blog. If backlinks are of any measure for their popularities, here are the statistics:

Danwei - Age: 6 years 6 months; Backlinks: 5290
ESWN - Age: 8 years 4 months; Backlinks: 4,530
Peking Duck - Age: 4 years 10 months; Backlinks: 4,540
China Law Blog - Age: 2 years 4 months; Backlinks: 3,900

I'm having a conversation about Apologies Forthcoming with Lisa, an e-friend, on Peking Duck today . Because of the blog's large readership and outspoken, sometimes nasty, commenters, I expect interesting and contentious responses there.

Reader Feedback on Political Confucianism

Confucianism as a State Ideology? I Don't Think So....

China: Democracy, or Confucianism?

The China Beat, Xujun Eberlein, published: June 3, 2008

Last October, when the CCP held its 17th congress, CNN reported the event with the headline "China rules out copying Western democracy." My first reaction to this headline was, So what? That spontaneous reaction might have been an unconscious consequence of my reading Political Confucianism by Jiang Qing (蒋庆), a contemporary Confucian in China. In this book, Jiang Qing draws a blueprint for China's political future based on Confucianism. It is the first such conception since the 1919 May 4th movement that denounced the traditional Chinese ideology as a feudal relic and began the age-old country's modernization efforts.

It seems typical of American thinking to regard either a republic or parliamentary democracy as absolutely the only right model for all countries. For a political system to succeed, however, it needs to be rooted in the particular country's cultural history. Throughout thousands of years, China has never lacked great thinkers, political or philosophical. Which poses an interesting question: why does China need to adopt a Western model for its political system, be it Marxist communism or capitalist democracy? Read the complete article on The China Beat

Serious Frolic in LitPark

I'll be having fun in the "park" today – the LitPark, where I'll talk about the first Chinese novel I read as a child, the artwork in my book, and other things. Susan Henderson, a talented and generous writer and editor, is the host of this outstanding literary blog. My book's namesake story, "Men Don't Apologize," was first published in Night Train when Sue was the managing editor there.

LitPark is an exceptional blog in that it has a lively, entertaining, compassionate, yet thoughtful design, and is participated in by a wide audience from the literary and art world. It is always a learning experience when I visit LitPark. If you are even peripherally interested in literary stuff or writing in general, take a look and you'll see what I mean.

I asked Sue a few questions about her blog and here is our conversation:

Xujun Eberlein: Sue, what motivated you to start blogging?

Susan Henderson: I saw too many writers tearing each other down, hording industry secrets as if it gave them an edge, and that was a part of it. The other was that I would regularly talk with writers via email or private rooms at Zoetrope, and the discussions about writing were so interesting to me, at some point it just seemed like a good idea to start having those conversations where others could listen. Not just to share industry secrets, but so others could hear the joys and struggles of writing, editing and trying to get published.

XE: What is the most interesting thing that has happened to your blog?

SH: A lot of really wonderful things happened from blogging, not the least of which is the community of writers, readers and artists that's come together. It's also been a real pleasure watching writers finally find some success, seeing the hard work and luck come together, that's the best. Also, blogging has taught me to be more spontaneous. I think I over-edited my thoughts before. I've definitely shifted from an unrealistic desire to reach some kind of writing perfection to a desire to communicate with others and create a dialogue.

XE: The last bit especially resonates with me. What's the one unusual thing that's come from blogging?

SH: Well, the weirdest thing was that I was contacted a year ago by a talent scout at Warner Brothers, and to make a long story short, ended up doing a (hopefully never to be aired) reality TV show. My "role" in the show was a frustrated, workaholic artist.

XE: I'd love to see that show! How do you envision your blog evolving?

SH: The real joy I have with blogging is that it is all about my whim. Sometimes I'll do a serious interview. Sometimes I just want to gossip with a masseuse to the rock stars or talk about Neil Gaiman's hair. Having a structure but no real agenda within that structure keeps it exciting and spontaneous for me.

"Having a structure but no real agenda within that structure" is indeed the fun of blogging for me as well.

Mayra Calvani Interviews 15+ Book Reviewers

Mayra Calvani, co-author of The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing, is interviewing 15+ book reviewers and review editors during the month of June on Blogcritics. The first two interviews have already taken place and they are quite interesting to read in comparison:

Interview with editor of Midwest Book Review
Interview with editor of Reader Views

For more info and the complete line-up visit: http://slipperybookreview.wordpress.com

On Chineseness

In his Perpetual Folly review of Apologies Forthcoming today, Clifford Garstang talks about the book's "unstinting authenticity" and its "Chineseness". The review is generous and insightful but not all rosy - and I appreciate its honesty. Apparently, Cliff has a mixed feeling toward the book's language. This is interesting and might be worthy of some discussion.

In my English writing I sometimes like to invoke Chinese adages or direct translation of Chinese expressions. A Chinese adage is often both pictorial and metaphorical, and I feel that, when rendered it in the right place, it adds freshness and color. While many native English speakers seem to enjoy this aspect of my writing, it is curious that the mixed feelings come mostly from those who know the Chinese language. Cliff is one example - he has worked on World Bank projects in China and his Chinese is quite good.

Another bilingual friend, Carma Hinton, after reading the galley of Apologies Forthcoming, called me to say that although she felt the stories filled a void in the English literature on the Cultural Revolution, she found my rendering of some Chinese proverbs awkward. One particular example Carma gave is the Chinese expression 徒费唇舌 - meaning idiomatically to waste time on explanations, which I used in the story "Second Encounter" as follows:

If he says Chongqing, he will have to spend too many lips and tongues in explanation.

Those reader comments interest me very much. What is the appropriately apportioning of an immigrant writer's native language idioms, that is the question.

On a related note, a reader of Peking Duck, schtickyrice, made the comments that my work "examining the complexities of the CR from an apolitical, humanistic perspective fills a major void in this subject in the English language medium." It is comforting to know that some English readers have seen through to this.

Apologies Forthcoming Triggers Discussion on Cultural Differences

Last December I met with the director of our town library and set up a reading from my new book Apologies Forthcoming. She was happy to accommodate me but warned that it was hard to draw a crowd, that even well-known authors have shown up to empty rooms. She was, thus, pleasantly surprised when a roomful of people showed up and, she told me afterwards, very impressed with the animated discussion.

The event took place this week. I ended up not doing a reading, instead giving a short description of my motivation for writing the book, and some history on a couple of the stories, before opening up the room for questions and discussion. The conversation that followed ranged from questions like what the Dalai Lama would think of the book to whether Chinese or Americans are more judgmental and one-sided.

An important theme that emerged was the value of fiction in keeping social and cultural knowledge available to outsiders and new generations, and whether my stories would make such readers understand the cause of the Cultural Revolution. My take was that, as fiction, the stories depict human nature across cultures and times rather than providing an analysis of events. In general, fiction is more engaging, thus can reach a broader audience than scholarly nonfiction, and helps to increase inter-cultural understanding in a perceptual way; though in order to thoroughly understand an historical event, a reader would need to look at other research on the subject.

We also spent a good deal of time on trying to explain cross-cultural differences. Many of the people in attendance were Chinese immigrants who moved to the US as adults. One difficulty they face is having to explain to their friends in China why Americans behave the way they do. One example given for this was a woman who had been asked “Why on earth would Americans elect Bush twice?” (The question triggered uproarious laughter from both Americans and Chinese.) Her answer was that "it's too complicated to explain." That question, it seems, is an epitome for the assumption that people in a foreign country are homogeneous in their beliefs, one of the cornerstones of cultural misunderstanding.

After the discussion I signed books – delighted to see so many people were interested in reading Apologies Forthcoming.

Sichuan Earthquake Relief Update

• Beijing – I was surprised to learn that the Chinese government has requested, or is at least discussing logistics for, earthquake relief from Japan. If this happens it will be the first time the Japanese military has entered China since WWII. It is significant for two reasons. First it shows that the governments of both countries recognize the importance of helping people in need. Secondly, it shows that the Chinese leaders are finally coming to grips with how to behave sensibly on the world stage. This latter is very important because there have been so many things said, and done, by the Chinese government to promote its international image that have had exactly the opposite effect. Somehow, China's top leaders have begun to understand that asking for, and receiving, aid can be viewed as a sign of strength in the eyes of much of the world. This time, they are not "dropping the stone to crash their own toes."

• Chengdu – The Chengdu Area Military Command, Earthquake Relief Headquarters gave a press briefing on May 29 at 5:00 PM. The following was reported: Through 6:00 PM on May 28^th the total number of people rescued from collapsed buildings by the army was 3,666. There were 305,000 wounded people treated and 656,000 victims relocated. There have been 44 temporary schools built, including 14 middle schools and 30 primary schools, as well as 148 temporary residence buildings constructed. There were 506,000 tons of relief goods delivered by land and 5,360 tons air dropped. There were 4281 kilometers of road repaired and 139 million square meters of polluted ground sanitized. There were 119,000 tents erected and 2,000,000 cubic meters of rubble removed. This was done with a total of 133,000 troops coming from military commands all over China.

• Boston – Within two weeks, through May 28^th the Boston-Aid-Sichuan Committee has collected $613,000 toward the $1,000,000 goal set for June 14^th. The relief concert held at MIT on Sunday May 25^th alone collected $150,000. There will be a fund raising walk scheduled for Saturday May 31^st in the Boston Common. On site registration starts at 9:00 AM in the Boston Common, or for advance registration contact GBCCA (617) 232-0377.
  

"Why Do I Blog?"

by Jerry Waxler

(Jerry Waxler is obsessed with memory and remembering. For both literary and personal reasons he is intensely curious as to how events transform themselves into memories, and the process by which those memories become written works. Jerry has put together a tremendous collection of writing and thinking on this topic. Valuable stuff for anyone trying to write a memoir, or even record memories, and also for fiction writers. In his interview with me we touched on the relationship between memory and imagination, a pretty fascinating topic. More to this is that his Memory Writers Network blog is full of well-written, informative, and interesting essays. I asked Jerry about his motivation for blogging, and the following is his answer. – Xujun)

The television show, Grey’s Anatomy, is about a group of medical interns. Even though they seem to be clumsy, barely born doctors, their status as “beginners” takes place at the end of an arduous struggle through high school, college, and medical school. They are reaching the top of a mountain they have been climbing their whole lives. After much striving and competition, one of the interns wins a coveted spot scrubbing into her first surgery. She watches what to the rest of us looks like blood and guts, but to her is the dance of life, healing a body by cutting and reorganizing some of those messy tissues. She floats out at the end of the surgery, totally saturated with this peak moment, a climax of the endless desire that brought her to this point. She turns to a fellow intern and asks “Why would anyone do drugs?” I feel the same wonder after my first year of blogging. It is the culmination of a lifetime of desire.

For my whole life, I’ve been intrigued by the variety of human experience. I also love to write. Over the years, these two passions have persisted and grown. I want to understand people, and I want to write. But until recently, I have been unable to combine these desires into one, so I wrote about other things. My first two books were about writing. When I was 52, I received a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology. After imbibing this rich array of insights into ways that people could grow, I wanted to put it all in writing, but I didn’t want to just keep it in a drawer, and I didn’t think it would be a publishable work. So I wrote it on my first website, mental-health-survival-guide.com, which thanks to the magic of the internet is still out there.

I kept writing and learning about people, and a few years ago I stumbled on memoir writing as a system into which I could pour all my passions. Memoir writing turns attention inwards, where we can examine our own journey. And it also turns our attention outward, learning how to shape a story that makes sense to others. This is what happens in a therapist’s office. During therapy people authentically share their lives and in the process they improve their own self-understanding. I wanted to extend this from individual therapy to include everyone who is looking for deeper meaning within their lives.

I did not study the value of memoir writing in school. I had to develop the ideas myself, so I began to study, reading memoir after memoir. Each one teaches me two things: what it was like being that one person, and what it was like turning that life journey into a story. The lessons poured in, and I began to organize what I was learning. Again, I did not want my ideas to sit in a drawer, so I turned to blogging. At first I thought this would simply provide an easy way to publish my essays. That turned out to be only the beginning. I continue to find more and deeper rewards.

The longer I blog the more advantages I discover. By receiving comments and visiting other blogs, and finding people interested in memoir writing, I was both discovering and creating a micro-community of like minded individuals. The opportunity to write, then publish my ideas, and get feedback and community from others has been enormously empowering. Like the radicals who printed brochures during the American Revolution, I can put together and hand out my ideas, and I don’t have to stand on street corners.

What is the revolution I am fomenting? I suppose in one way, blogging itself is a revolution. Turning your individual, unique knowledge, passion, and wisdom into story and publishing it to the world is one of the neatest ways I have ever seen to incite deeper understanding and sharing of self. By blogging our life stories we can learn about each other and perhaps improve world peace. Hopefully it will work better and more creatively than trying to promote understanding through street protests.

The blogging world is highly diverse and diffuse, and so it requires exploring to discover blogs that convey this passion but they are out there, sharing worlds, connecting and empowering people. Some are empowering politically, giving people a chance to express views they wouldn’t have a way to publicize any other way. Some are empowering culturally, because sub-communities, outsiders, cliques, ethnic minorities, or in fact any group can band together and share ideas. And others are empowering creatively, because the creative spark becomes brighter when it connect with people in the world. Is blogging the only and true revolution? I don’t think so. Blogging and writing are just tools. The revolution that interests me most is to grow, individually and collectively towards greater wisdom.

One of the most surprising things about blogging is that it’s a form of performance. I have always been shy, preferring to avoid the public. Now, as I blog, I am learning how to extend myself towards strangers. Some become friends, in this new internet sense of friendship, while others remain onlookers. This means I am a performer, which is a mindboggling expansion of my social skills that I never expected to be achieving in my sixties. (I just turned 61 so I’m in the thick of it now.)

What’s next? As I learn more about life story telling, I realize that stories become powerful not just because of external events, but because the storyteller found the power in the events. This has caused me to look more closely at situations in my life that I always assumed were mundane, and what looked like blood and guts becomes the powerful, exhilarating struggle to find meaning within the ordinary. I intend to reveal more of what I discover through my blog and perhaps someday in a book. Over time I expect my investigation will lead in new directions. I find that, in a way, aging is a spiritual experience and at some point I may shift from finding the wisdom in the past into finding wisdom in the future. For now, what’s next is my next blog entry. I’m on deadline every week, under pressure to learn and grow, and find words that let me share myself with the world.

Local Paper Reporting "Apologies Forthcoming"

A local paper, Wayland Town Crier, interviewed me about my book. Read the report titled "A Look Back at China's Lost Generation" here.

Heroism, or Humanity?

Like my three sisters, I was named after a hero. In fact all of our names take the form “like so-and-so,” where "so-and-so" is the name of a (dead) hero who was receiving significant posthumous praise around the time of out births. In the 1960s heroes were abundant, and they put the cause – in this case the creation and construction of a Communist China – before their personal interest, including life. We were proud of these paragons of social virtue and their deaths didn't seem to be a sad thing. "Convert sadness to strength!" was a universal slogan. A hero always dies a proper death and thus it is weightier than the Tai Mountain, as Mao put it. As such we wouldn't cry for him or her with tears. We would shout "Learn from so-and-so!" instead.

When my big sister died at age 16 as a Red Guard, her comrades called her a "hero." As a child I was very confused by the notion that a life was tradable with the title "hero." I just wanted my dear sister back – who cared what her title was?

I think my aversion to heroism probably stemmed from that. I was certainly alone in this – but not any longer.

The Sichuan earthquake has created many stories of both heroism and survival, and several things are strikingly different from anything in my experience. Many have commented on the swiftness of the official response in proportion to the crisis, which seems to signal a significant evolution in the relationship between the Chinese government and its citizens. There is, however, something more subtle happening that is worthy of comment.

Right now one of the most hailed heroes in China is Jiang Min, a 28-year-old police woman from Beichuan (almost completely destroyed) working in Pengzhou. The earthquake took her two-year-old daughter, her parents, grandparents, and other relatives living at home. In total she lost 10 family members during those short minutes of devastation. Of course she did not know this at the time, but could only fear the worst. After her fear was verified the next morning, in the days that followed she worked nonstop in her duties with fellow officers dealing with the disaster from Pengzhou.

Following this prodigious effort, Jiang Min was interviewed about her situation. She answered questions stoically in the local dialect, then collapsed. Soon video clips of her interviews showed up everywhere on TV channels and the internet. The formal media tried to portray her heroism and hold her up as a role model. On the other hand, the informal reaction, manifesting itself through blogs and online forums, was divided. Some sided with the formal media declaiming Jiang Min a hero. A few blamed her as heartless to be able to continue to work when such a horrible thing had happened to her family.

The clearest voice, however, was that of sympathy. Many people commented that what she did is a natural way to deal with tragedy – by clinging to the familiar and going through motions. Heaping neither praise nor blame on Jiang Min, they simply said that their hearts went out to her and others like her. Some angrily condemned the cruelty of a reporter who asked Jiang Min, "Do you miss your daughter when you are helping other children?" Some called on the reporters to leave her alone and urged Jiang Min to say "No" to interviews.

This kind of sensitive feeling and great sympathy being expressed surprised me in a very positive way. While that type of response might seem natural in America, it was anything but for the China I grew up in.

Yet more reporters continued to rush to Jiang Min like bees to flowers. She was also invited to Beijing to attend CCTV's big benefit performance Sunday, an honor that surprised her. In Beijing high government officials shook her hands while speaking bureaucratic jargon to praise her heroism. This again provided more pollen to the reporting bees.

A new video clip I saw last night showed that, in Beijing, Jiang Min seemed to be getting used to the role imposed on her by the journalists and officials. This time she was speaking Mandarin, and in a more confident and comfortable manner.

Jiang Min's role aside, the divergence in attitudes between common people and the official media signals an important shift.

So, what has changed? What is different now? It is not simply the magnitude of the tragedy. I can remember Tangshan Earthquake in 1976 during my youth. The death toll then was even higher. We learned the news long after because the official media did not reveal it immediately. There was a great shock and grief, but it was a sadness we took upon ourselves, not a sadness we felt for others. China’s history is full of suffering, and almost all Chinese have felt that suffering weigh on them personally, even when they were not directly involved. Has material affluence in China pushed the people over a barrier where they recognize the suffering of others is not directly impinging on them, and is that the source of sympathy? Or is the expressed sympathy a result of the guilt that they are not sharing in the suffering? Or is it simply that the value of Chinese lives is finally on the rise?

When I heard that the CCTV benefit telethon Sunday night had, in a few hours, raised over 200 million US dollars to help the earthquake victims, I could not believe it. That is an amount that goes beyond duty and obligation, the two mainstays of Chinese support. Something has changed.

More to this is that people are no longer passively following the official media, like my parents did. The common audience's level of understanding has surpassed the journalists, and I cheer for that.

It is when people do good things without any agenda that something special happens. Concerns originating from humanity instead of propaganda-heroism will go a much longer way.

Hard Work Ahead for Boston-Aid-Sichuan

Newton, MA – In the wake of Sichuan's catastrophic earthquake last Monday, 85 Chinese organizations in the Boston area jointly set up an interim "Boston-Aid-Sichuan Committee" last Wednesday to coordinate relief activities. As reported here, the committee's first meeting set the goal to raise a million dollars in a month. Within five days, by Monday night, the member organizations have collected $170,000.

"It is still far away from our goal," the committee's elected convener Jiang Hong says. "We must work harder."

Jiang Hong says she is heartened by Beijing people's successful relief fundraising. Xinhua.net has reported that CCTV's benefit performance on Sunday night raised over two hundred million dollars, "the largest relief fundraiser in history." Internationally acclaimed film director Zhang Yimou donated $15,000.

Working toward the goal they have set, a member organization of Boston-Aid-Sichuan, the MIT Chinese Students and Scholars Association, will hold a benefit concert, to be performed at MIT on Sunday, May 25.

Another member organization, the Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association, is planning a three-mile walk around Boston Common on Saturday, May 31 from 10am to 2pm. A $10 registration fee, which includes a T-shirt, and a minimal $25 donation are required for each adult participant.

For information on relief donations in general, contact Jiang Hong (蒋红): jiang_hong91@hotmail.com

PLEASE HELP THE VICTIMS OF CHINA'S DISASTROUS EARTHQUAKE

– A letter from Beijing

Dear Friends,

I am writing to appeal for help of any kind for the victims of the catastrophic earthquake that hit Southwestern China on May 12th. Initially estimated at 7.9, the quake has now been revised to an 8.0 magnitude, but the devastation it has wrought is fundamentally unmeasurable.

While the Western media has covered this event to an extent, information will surely begin to peter off as other "news," like Paris Hilton's latest hairdo seizes the media's fickle attention. Meanwhile, the human suffering caused by this colossal natural disaster is only just unfolding and the need for aid in the form of money, medical supplies, expertise and assistance, clothing, shelter, clean water, food, baby formula, and other basic life necessities will only increase and become more urgent as time goes by.

I hope that each one of you can reach inside your heart and offer whatever kind of support and assistance you can to help ease this devastating calamity.

A few basic up-to-date facts and info about the current situation.

To date, over 32,000 people have been confirmed dead. This number is expected to reach 50,000 as the 7-day mark passes and the chance of surviving in the rubble declines precipitously. At 150 hours, the soldiers and relief workers are are still digging survivors out of the rubble. People are not giving up hope.

One woman, who escaped being crushed because her husband flung himself on top of her at the last minute, managed to stay alive only by drinking her own blood. In order to get out from under the tons of concrete pressing down on her leg, she had to saw off her own leg with a rusty saw and a pair of scissors that the relief workers were able to pass through a hole in the rubble. Of course she had no anaesthesia. She told reporters that the only thing that kept her alive was the thought that she had a responsibility to raise her teenage daughter into a decent, contributing member of society. There are so many others like her.

A primary school teacher refused to run for safety when she saw that her little charges were paralyzed with fear inside the classroom. She made three rescue trips back into the shaking building before it collapsed on her. She was dug out with children under each arm, over her shoulder and one in each hand. Elsewhere, a mother saved her infant by making a bridge over it with her body. She died in that position, and three days later the child was saved.

Another man, in one of the many regions not readily accessible by rescue teams, tells of trying with his bare hands to dig his 16 year old son out of the rubble, hearing his voice become weaker and weaker over the ensuing 4 days before rescuers were able to get through, by hiking on foot over the mountains. His boy called out one last time, "Ba," he said, "I'm sorry, I'm can't hold on any longer," and perished before the rescuers were able to dig him out. The impossibility of transporting cranes and other heavy-lifting machinery into such areas has led to the loss of an enormous number of lives.

Although there has been a laudable and prompt reaction from the Chinese government, markedly unlike the reaction of the US government during Hurricane Katrina (American soldiers are said to have stood by with their guns and refused to help, while the Chinese soldiers came armed with only shovels and tireless determination to save lives), the earthquake has devastated a huge area of mountain towns, villages and cities, making the rescue effort tortuous and extremely difficult. Dams have cracked or broken, roads and bridges have collapsed or been obstructed by mudslides caused by rainstorms, and falling rock from the sides of mountains that broke loose during the quake, making it almost impossible to airlift or otherwise transport goods and personnel to the innumerable stricken areas. Flooding is another imminent danger that has caused evacuations in a number of areas. Meanwhile, severe aftershocks and new earthquakes--this morning a 7.2 quake hit a nearby area, killing 3 and injuring another 1000 people--continuing to settle the rubble and hinder the rescue effort.

The Chinese people, too, have been admirable and moving in their relief efforts, already donating almost as much money as the government--somewhere in the ballpark of $180 million US dollars. Han Chinese and Tibetans (who form a significant part of the population of Sichuan) have worked together to save each other's lives. From sports stars (Thanks, Yao Ming) to companies, from contemporary artists and arts people holding relief auctions to ordinary citizens sending whatever they can, donating blood and volunteering to go help on the ground, the people here, including the huge expat population, have rallied together to do whatever they can. The victims themselves have also been heroic in their own attempts in the relief effort--turning aside food and help when it is more urgently needed elsewhere, and there is a conspicuous lack of disorder that often comes in situations such as these--no looting, raping, robbery and pillaging, just an incredible upsurge of mutual aid and selfless support.

But there is so much more work to be done before the lives of the victims can come even close to going back to normal.

Today, at 2.28 pm, exactly 1 week after the earthquake struck, a national period of mourning began with the wailing of sirens and honking of horns on streets across the country for three minutes. Here in Beijing, the moment was solemn and sorrowful. I went to the curb, along with everyone else in the area, and stood listening to the cacophony, weeping for those who could not be saved.

32,000+ are dead so far. 50,000 expected.

About 1/3 of this number are school children. The government is investigating corruption in what are called "tofu construction projects" made by greedy contractor with substandard materials and in violation of safety regulations that may have been resulted in the unprecedented number of schools and hospitals that collapsed completely, and has vowed to punish those responsible. It has also been much more open about the crisis than in previous situations, and welcomes assistance and support from all corners of the globe, for there is still so much left to do.

Over 200,000 people are injured, over 15,000 have sustained severe, life-threatening injury or have been maimed. There are huge numbers of orphans, and families whose children have died.

4.8 million people or more are homeless. Their livelihoods have been crushed into oblivioun along with their homes and places of work.

Millions of animals, from livestock to pets, have been rendered homeless or injured. Foreign Animal Protection Societies need to get involved to help these animals, and administer shots to the packs of homeless dogs that are now starving, hurt, disoriented and being shot for fear of rabies and other diseases.

MOST NEEDED:

MONEY, tents, blankets, first aid supplies and other medicines: especially: medicines to stop bleeding, antibiotics, pain-relief medicines, disinfectants rain gear (rain coats, umbrellas, boots), baby formula, food stuffs, feminine supplies, clothing, toilet paper, other basic life supplies. People with expertise in PTSD and who can offer basic training in psychological counseling are needed as well.

The threat of disease spreading in places where huge numbers of people are crammed together is enormous. The Chinese government and people has been admirable in its relief efforts, but this is a disaster bigger than any country can manage by itself, especially after the huge, and devastating blizzard that put South China under ice in February, and the enormous output of investment in infrastructure development for the Olympics, this kind of damage isn't going to be fixed quickly or easily.

Possible places to channel relief aid (their news is often quite out of date already, but they can help direct contributions to the right places):

This site has a plethora of good ways to donate and help out.

http://cnreviews.com/uncategorized/china_earthquake_relief_and_donation_guide_-_will_update_20080514.html

The RED CROSS CHINA site was hacked into by reprehensible vultures, so I won't offer a link to their site at present.

INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS

http://www.redcross.org/news/in/profiles/Intl_profile_ChinaEarthquake.asp?s_src=pre_aspLink

OTHER CHARITIES INVOLVED

http://www.charityinchina.org/2008/05/16/charities-to-help-victims-of-chinese-earthquake-in-sichuan/

http://www.globalgiving.com/china.html

http://www.mercycorps.org/chinaearthquake/?source=1062

http://www.china-crossroads.com/index.php/2008/05/12/sichuan-earthquake-how-to-help/

I have no idea which of these organizations is "best," but I think any kind of help at this point is of great value. Please act now and do or give whatever you can.

Also, see info on the Three Shadows Earthquake Relief Benefit Silent Auction (this info is only partial, as of May 13th, other artists including :

RongRong & inri

Adou (Sichuan native)

Xiong Wenyun (Sichuan native, donating a 1999 photograph from Wenchuan county, the earthquake epicenter)

Zhao Lian

Han Bing,

Qiu

Huang Lei

Gao Bo (Sichuan native)

He Yunchang

He An

Mo Yi

Jiang Zhi

Yu Bogong

Alberto Garcia-Alix have also donated works to the benefit

Others are welcome to join!).

If you are in Beijing, or elsewhere, I urge you to make donations and come to the Benefit on the 25th.

http://www.threeshadows.cn/beta/en/news_Rescue.html

www.threeshadows.cn

Other info on the crisis and numerous links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake

We have gone through our home and donated an array of things from clothes to cooking utensils, photography art works and signed books (for the benefit auction being held by Three Shadows Photographic Arts Centre in Beijing) and cash. None of this can possibly comes even close to enough, so I hope I can rally some of you to lend a hand.

Times like these are reminders of both the incredible fragility and also indefatigable resilience and tenacity of human life. I am reminded of the last lines of a poem by Marge Pearcy, For Strong Women. She writes, "Until we are all strong together, a strong woman is strongly afraid." I think the sentiment holds for all of us human beings, and is a reminder of the need to overcome the petty, artificial boundaries of nation, gender, age, religion, and even, way of life, and stand together in the face of adversity.

Let's be strong together in supporting those people whose lives have been devastated and yet are standing bravely side by side, struggling to overcome unthinkable obstacles.

Wishing you peace, love and the good fortune to live your lives unobstructed by disaster, disease, war and other catastrophes--humanly created and naturally occurring alike. It's easy to forget just how good we've got it.

With respect,

Maya Kóvskaya
Art Critic, Curator, Writer

www.mayakovskaya.blogspot.com

People in Dark Times

"Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in theirlives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given them on earth."

– Hannah Arendt (From: Men in Dark Times)