Thoughts on Zhong Guo, Middle Kingdom, China (1)
I am Chinese. When I write those words it seems to have weight. It seems a vastly heavy thing. That word Chinese, the characters Zhong Guo Ren has weight. I don’t really understand what it means or why it has meaning and whether it should have any meaning.
I just exists. Me. Sum Yan. Yan Sham-Shackleton. Me as an individual with personal thoughts and experiences, I am friends with who I am friends with. I am related to those I am related to. I wake up and live my life.
I don’t really think about my Chineseness much. I know I am bonded to a country with a long history I know little off. I know I am part of a section of that country that was colonized, through history and decisions of men unknown, dead, and whose thoughts I do not agree with. But I cannot engage them. I cannot fight a past that has nothing to do with me. Although it has everything to do with me. Who I am. Where I live. How I think.
Somehow, I am related to a Tang Dynasty Poet that I cannot read. Somehow I am related to those who over threw the Imperial government and made China for a short while a Republic. Somehow I am related to those people who cut the hands of a pianist because he had the ability to play western music, that he was an intellectual and his knowledge must be destroyed, and I am somehow related to all those people who had to pick up from that time and forge a new China of economic importance in an increasing globalizing world.
But how I am related I am not sure of.
Through blood I suppose. Though lineage. Though some genetic chain passed down from one human being to another but if we take it to its logical conclusion, I am related to every single human being in this world by a mere 7 steps of genetic twist.
But being Chinese has meaning, it has weight.
It calls.
Like an obligation I must take up in the expense of all else.
I am not sure how it came to be. It was always in the back of my mind. Something to do in the future, when the time is right, and I was never sure if the time would ever come and whether it was at all important, the world is huge and wide, vast and expansive, we can’t partake in everything even if that is my wish.
Learning about China takes up the time from something else.
Learning Chinese means I won’t have the time to read all the things I want to in English.
Going to China and living means giving up on working towards a democratic Hong Kong or spending time with my family who now reside in the west.
It means I throw all the emerging contacts I have for writing in Hong Kong.
Maybe not being able to finish my film.
I had decided I didn’t want to live in China because of her political situation. I decided living in a land of the unfree was not something I wanted to experience.
Then it changed.
Overnight.
I don’t even want to look at a book of photographs I bought called “China’s Humanity” a book of over 1000 black and white photographs documenting the Chinese experience from 1949 to 2003. It makes me feel ignorant. Dumb. Stupid. I can’t read the Chinese captions. I don’t even know where most of those places are. I had to email certain people in China and ask them exactly where they are located although I had spoken with them for a few months over the internet already. People who I had invited to stay if they were ever in this part, but I never thought that maybe I would like to visit them in return.
I feel confused by this sudden surge of magnetic pull.
Like that’s all I want to think about. China. What it means, what’s within that country, how I can go experience the place. What’s in it. Who is in it. And what it should, could, may mean to me.
It’s like a part of my mind expanded and I found a hole.
It’s dark in there not because there is nothing there just that I don’t know.
It’s such a Hong Kong experience. We always have looked out into the rest of Asia, to Japan, to Singapore, and then further into the west, to Canada, to America, to Australia. But until recently, not until 1989 did we start looking in. Before that, China was something we laughed at. Those old fashioned people stuck in a time we have escaped from. And one day these unknown entities of the masses went into Tiananmen square and made us listen to them, and made us see their faces, gave them names, Wu Er Kaixi, Wang Dan, Shen Tong, Xiang Xiaoji, Ju Lin, and reminded us there was a new generation of China that had emerged, born at the tail end of the cultural revolution, and they were not the same people as the red guards or those in Mao suits that were our last strong image of the country or at least the one that made the biggest impression.
Whenever I go there and I spend a little time talking to the young women who seem to gravitate towards me because I am from Hong Kong, because I am also a young woman, who are fascinated by what that big city on the edge is like, after a while something in the conversation will lead to how they see China. And each time I am amazed and jealous of the surety they have of the country. The pride they feel about the place and their love of it. How China will be important, how China is important, and we as Chinese people are so strong. And that, I must come back, and how they will show me all the things I have not seen of the place. How I must learn about their city, their village, and how somehow they seem to understand all of us from Hong Kong are so ignorant of this great place.
And although maybe I would like to engage them with the ideas of freedom, of the rest of the world, their confidence in what they know simply submerges my ambivalence and I get as excited as they do about the country. I start seeing it through their eyes.
I know this has everything to do with the education they have had. One that teaches them to love country (ai guo) at the expense of questioning, to be patriotic at the expense of learning the truth, to be proud at the expense freedoms. But I can’t help but want that for myself. Just for a moment to be as sure as they are about their home and where they are from.
I want a little bit more of that for myself.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 
In some ways, I think I understand. After spending most of my teenage life looking westward, I’m beginning to look back east, to the place where my ancestors came from.
Learning about China, for me, has meant dropping philosophy and German. In some ways I miss that opportunity (especially as I would dearly love to read Heidegger in the original), but in some ways, I’m learning about the place where, indirectly, I came from. I’m finally putting things in perspective.
Sometimes I can’t help but feel proud of my people. There’s so much in these old imperial dynasties that I find so awesome: the poetry, the literature, the science and the art. There’s bravery and brilliance, and also cruelty and tyranny and darkness, but it’s a tapestry that has special meaning for me. It’s mine. My family’s there, my ancestors are woven into that tapestry. From time to time, as I read the histories, I see names that are in my family genealogy, and I feel truly connected to this strange land that I’ve never visited but still somehow manages to claim a part of me.
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Many years ago two friends of mine — one American and one Japanese — ate hallucinogenic mushrooms and wandered into the hills behind L.A. We spent the usual amount of time discussing life, the cosmos, etc. We guzzled mud but stopped when Masaaki started coughing up blood. Not important. What is important is, in the midst of all of that chaos, the clouds parted and the sun shone down on a hill overlooking the 5 freeway. Ordinarily — and I say this despite its being my hometown — that hill is about the ugliest place I have ever seen. There are huge power lines, smog, cars, and scrubby chalk cliffs as far as the eye can see.
But at that moment, when the sun broke through the mist, it illuminated the hills in just such a way that suddenly the whole landscape took on the appearance of an old Chinese painting. It was absolutely beatiful. We all saw the same illusion at the same instant and, in discussing it afterwords, realized that, despite our cultural differences, China is always there: something to be awed by, envied, studied, and (yes) even feared. It may have had some bad times lately, but what are two centuries among four dozen?
It may be true that you give up certain current projects to concentrate on China, but what you gain in return, by being on the inside, will only improve your ability to communicate and empathize with people whom whom Hong Kong must come to terms with in its struggle to maintain freedom. If nothing else, remember that many influential dissidents spent their time abroad before returning home to resume their fights (Sun, Ho, Castro, etc…).
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My first thoughts are. It warms my heart that someone overlooking the ugly freeway of 5 with no redeeming qualities whatsoever in terms of views (don’t know which part you were looking at but would agree it’s ugly no matter what) can see China while having a mushroom trip. You just have intersected three things in my life (LA, China and trips) that are massively symbolic and I have much affection for all in one comment
Thank you.
yan
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Hi… I’m sorry to say it, but you’ve attracted yet another angry white male expat (six month student, actually) and I have negative slightly assholish things to say about your post.
First, I know you’re in love with China. That’s not odd. It’s hard to find someone with any sense of romance who doesn’t fall in love with China at some point in their life. But what you say sounds a lot like the logic the Party uses to justify shitting all over your rights in HK. It reads like an ode to the greatness of One China or something. Your vision for China could be much different than the Party’s, but I’m tempted to blame that kind of starry-eyed, giddy awe about a place for all kinds of atrocities in the past. Just be careful of what can happen when you’re drunk on a place.
The other thing that I realize, having come here from the US, is how fragile “China” is and always has been. It is NOT, nor has it ever been, one people or one empire or one distinct history. This ain’t Poland, and without the careful management of military and trade affairs over thousands of years by dozens of different dynasties, China would have come apart several times over. It’s a delicate, fragile thing, especially right now (I’m assuming that all economic bubbles burst, China’s environmental problems will catch up with it, etc.). Be aware that it could all unravel anytime.
That’s what I think. 🙂
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It looks like you’re searching for personal meaning. You won’t find it in China. You will only ultimately find it in yourself.
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Nick,
I don’t think she was providing political commentary. I think you missed her point. (Unless your point was to weigh in on party propaganda…)
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Hmm. I think he’s just trying to say that China is not one long continous government. He simply has point of view that is based on political leadership as the meaning of a country. He views “China” or Chinese people as the forms of government, so therefore each different dynasty is then a different country.
Which is completely antithisis to how CHINESE people view our country and people. We’ve had this debate before. He’s new around these parts.
I am not particularly sure if he’s studying China or wants to understand china. If it’s the latter, he’s gonna have to reframe his whole idea of what “Country” and “People” means in order to understand this part of the world. He can come in here and bring a separate paradigm in viewing the country, however it’s not going help on iota of comphrending how people in the country feels and it’s not going to make sense at the end of the day.
yan
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OVERWHELMED TO THE POINT OF INTOXICATION
Maybe romanticism is a bottle of sweet Cabernet Merlot and a China duckling tour pints of beer. Maybe on the label of the bottle it reads “A complex of a China in its expansive best”. Could it be possible that we are speaking in our hangovers?
Well written, very well written indeed, Yan. Lashlar and Clay too. I too feel a wee bit drunk after reading the stuff. But time to wake up.
Yan talked about moving to China at its calling. Now, are you or how are you ready to bridge across the rough valley from learning about China to living in China?
I’m not talking about the foods, I’m not talking about the air, coz if you don’t read the news and your stomach and lungs are tough enough, then fine. What I’m talking about is your inner self.
Let me put it this way:
Tell me, what is the captial of Hong Kong? In a blink, tell me what you truly believe.
Let me guess: Central? Upper Albert Road? Stanley? Victoria Harbour? Statue Square? LKF?
How many of you really believe that Beijing is HK’s capital? Maybe it is a dry fact and true answer, but I can’t bring myself to believe this answer in every bit of heart.
I can easily identify myself with my Chinese nationality. But, wait a minute, I mean I am a Chinese with the best of democratic and humanity traditions of the West. I don’t claim to be a Chinese living in China. Whenever I register with whichever website, I can easily fill in HK in the City column. I don’t fill in China. No, I can’t.
Do you? Why?
To me, China in its entirety with its O L D history is luring all of us Chinese. But China in its modernity is also a name that gives us so much pains and, pardon me, disgrace or even fears. Maybe the western worldview has something to do with such feelings of mine. But a China under the roughshod of the communists with the many Mainland Chinese I have came across without much senses of a civilian really put me off.
Yan may think that I sound old. But that is the political and social reality, let alone the hygienic parts, you have to come to terms with when you cross that rough valley to “living in China”. I may make a lot of money there but probably not many achievements for my own sake as a person.
Don’t read me wrong, I am, haha, patriotic to the core. But China to me is still a bottle of plonk, I am not going to taste it yet.
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We have a problem here already. Hong Kong is but a city in China. We do not have a capital. China’s capital is Beijing. Hong Kong is part of China. Therefore “my” capital is Beijing. Shock! Horror! Yes! That’s how I view it.
Yes. I write Hong Kong, China if I had to fill in where I live and it’s an open space. I didn’t for a long time, I used to get pissy at mail that came to me that read “Hong Kong, China.” but that was pre-1997, which just meant the fool on the other side is not up on the realities. Post-1997 I had to accept that to be fact and deal with it. As the years gone by, I have come to embrace it also.
I know exactly what you are saying Nevin. Feel very much the same as you. Which is why I NEVER wanted to live in China. Not until last week.
Which is why I am confused.
Which is probably what I have been saying on all the other posts. How easy it is to forget the realities of modern china, the forgettable fear of the country and the realities of it’s despotic government when ecomomically it’s oh so incredibly.
If I didn’t get drunk on the old China, I sure got drunk on the sexiness of Shanghai. Can’t help it. Happenned before, happenned again.
Yeah. I want to go live there, for a while anyway. I think Clay is right. Unless I understand the country better, I can’t really understand how it all works in relation to HK. How and where I fit in the big picture. I went to England for two months a while back and it brought home the fact what colony means, what old and new world meant. Now its time to go to the mainland.
However, if I come back and do a Christine Loh, and modify all my thoughts to the point where maybe I might as well join the communist party just because it’s better to keep peace then to fight. Please hit me over the head in person.
Yan
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Just want to add. I never ever saw London as the capital of Hong Kong. Never. It was a colonizing power and did not allow us to have the rights of a citizen there. Now the interesting thing is those of us in HK want MORE rights than those of our own country. So in many ways we are a rougue state in China’s eyes. Rougue or not. We’re part of it for better and worse. Which is why I am starting to increasingly see, that instead of wishing for democracy in Hong Kong and autonomy for this place. I wish for a democratic China.
Yan
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Your answer seems to me that you are more ready to live in China than, maybe, I do. Or maybe you haven’t seen the darksides of it enough.
Yes, we can all wish for a democratic China. It reads W-I-S-H. Now, still don’t lose your heart for Hong Kong. And the best part of it is that in Hong Kong we can not just wish but FIGHT for democracy. Democracy is not a gift. To wish for it is not the point to start with for at least me.
My another fear is that if I live in China long enough, I will understand it more, I will understand what the heck they mean by throwing up “xxx with Chinese characteristics” in face of the questions they are not going to fix sooner nor later, and I will see things their ways. I met those people. I couldn’t prove to them that BL23 was not the least necessary, that Martin Lee visiting the States no big deal. They are however the very same people telling me how they held grudges against CCCP for what they have done on June 4th and for all those political arrests. Drunk.
Will there be an exceptional case for Yan?
At least for me I can easily get very drunk with a bottle of plonk than what have you.
And to me keeping Hong Kong the way it has been is and will be the best chance for making the democratic China wish come true. Throughout its history Hong Kong has always been the factor of change for China. It sill is and forever will be. How China may work in relation to Hong Kong? Look no further beyond CH Tung. Hong Kong shall not come to terms with what is handed down from China. Beijing may be Hong Kong’s capital. But while it still has so many areas to correct and improve, and is not going to do it any time sooner, we in Hong Kong must step our best foot forward, make a good example and stand up to it for its mistakes. How many examples in this planet can you give me that political changes stemmed from within, especially what we are talking about is a despotic bunch of power-greedy men and women. We let go Hong Kong with its more western traditions is not helping China. And the effective way to let go is, to me, see how China may work in relation to Hong Kong.
I shall go on learning more about China. But I shall keep every bit of Nevin critical of it, or to be exact, a China under CCCP’s regime.
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Nevin, I agree with you.
Democracy is never free. It isn’t something that people can “wish” for, it’s something that has to be won, especially from regimes used to autocracy, to wielding power unfettered by any law higher than themselves.
My being Chinese is not something that is determined by the government of China. My being Chinese is my identification with a civilization, a history, and also an ethnicity. It isn’t an unquestioned identification, either. My worldview is still deeply influenced by the Western world that I’ve lived in, the books and the philosophies that I’ve read.
I focus on imperial China (that long stretch of time before there was either the Republic of China or the People’s Republic, more specifically the Sui and Tang dynasties) because I am fascinated by the past. My major is history, for Pete’s sake. That doesn’t mean that I’m glossing over or forgetting the fact that the present government of China is an autocratic regime, and one that has caused more than its fair share of misery, oppression and grief. If I ever forget that, if I start spouting the ‘Party Line’, I hope that those people around me will come over and slap me in the face until I recover my senses.
I am skeptical about the CCP. I feel that they’ve screwed up badly. I think they are still screwing up. We tend to forget that when we look at economic growth figures and the new ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ facade that the Hu and Wen government is putting on. I want to believe that there’s going to be reform, but I’m too much the cynic to believe that it will happen.
But, and here I must say this, I cannot do much about it. I’m living down in Australia. I’ve never set foot in China in my life. I would like to, so that I can see firsthand what I’ve only read about secondhand, but for the near future that isn’t likely to happen. So I read my histories, the poetry, literature and philosophy, and art, and avoid talking about the present government of China because I don’t have much to say, and because it would be the height of arrogance for someone who has never lived in China, never experienced firsthand the oppressive weight of that regime, to say anything about it.
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Watch your back, Yan. Maybe I’ve been brainwashed by propaganda (probably) but my perception of China’s ruling government is one that doesn’t encourage somebody with your spirit to rail against THE MAN. Everyone that’s posted here has only done so because they care about you.
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You’re too hard on yourself – how can you help how you have been brought up? Not being able to read the language, not truly understanding the culture of your race, these aren’t things you think about bothering with learning while growing up in foreign places. Hello, feeling stupid because you don’t know certain places of a country you’ve, I presume, had little personal experience of (I’m still trying to figure out the story of your global soulness)?
Surely the important thing is that you’re trying, and that, perhaps unconsciously, has inspired me to do the same. Not with my race yet, but with the country that I grew up in. I spent 9 of my formative years in Indonesia and I’ve been to many corners of Java, but I don’t have the faintest clue what that country is about. I cringe when people ask me easy enough questions about this exotic land and I can’t tell them the answer. So now, in between all my freakin’ studying for university, I’m reading a book about the history of Indonesia. It’s a start.
I’m a Malaysian national of Chinese descent, was born in London, grew up in Jakarta, have collectively spent a few years in Kuala Lumpur, have lived in Birmingham for almost 6 years, only speak English, have an American accent, and hate the question “Where are you from?”.
Very often those of us who grew up experiencing many countries and cultures but truly knowing none find ourselves ashamed – ashamed of not grabbing those unique experiences with both eyes wide open, ashamed of not being able to communicate with our grandparents who we see maybe once a year. But hell, we can’t blame ourselves for it, we were children. We were too busy growing up.
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