In our case, it came right when we walked through the front door, when my friend wondered aloud “Are you supposed to call it ’Peking duck’ or ‘Beijing duck?’”  The rest of us earnestly performed the second ritual of shrugging our shoulders, unable to answer.  Undaunted, our friend continued: “And how come they changed the city’s name in the first place?”

This is a question I’m used to hearing.  I’ve heard it when I visited Peking University, when I went to see a performance of Peking Opera, or in short did just about anything with the word “Peking” in it.  And it’s a question that had loitered around the corners of my own mind for years, nudging me every so often until at last I went out in search of the answer.

The short answer — or the one given on Wikipedia, in any case – is that in Chinese, the city’s name has always been pronounced “Beijing,” but early Western visitors to China (specifically, 17^th century French missionaries) rendered it into the Roman alphabet as “Peking.”  When the PRC introduced the Pinyin system in 1958, the new spelling “Beijing” was adopted to more accurately reflect the name’s pronunciation.

But while Pinyin was universally adopted throughout mainland China, the rest of the world continued to use preexisting systems for transliterating Chinese names into their own alphabets.  In English-speaking countries, this was the Wade-Giles method, named after its 19^th century British co-creators.  Their intransigence was not simply due, as is commonly assumed, to an anti-communist refusal to play by “Red China’s” rules.  Indeed, not even the Soviet Union adopted Pinyin, but continued to refer to China’s capital as Peking and its leader as Mao Tse-tung.

Rather, the West simply saw no need to make such a change when the old systems of transliteration had worked so well.  Instead of protesting against this obstinacy, China continued to use these Western systems rather than Pinyin in materials issued to a foreign audience.  For example, the most important English-language periodical printed by the Chinese government – one of the only conduits between the PRC and the outside world during China’s strictest periods of isolation – was a magazine titled the Peking Review.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s Pinyin was widely used within China as a tool for promoting literacy.  But with the start of the Cultural Revolution, Pinyin’s strongest advocates in the government and academia were persecuted, and the system itself was condemned and abandoned.  Pinyin was quick to reappear amidst the post-Mao reforms, however, and was hailed as a vital tool of the new economic modernization campaign launched by Deng Xiaoping.  And so on January 1, 1979, China began to use Pinyin in all of its foreign language publications, a change that was announced in the newly-renamed Beijing Review.

International reactions were mixed.  In the United States, press agencies and publishers debated whether or not to follow China’s lead.  The New York Times was one of the first major newspapers to make the switch to Pinyin.  A Times editorial declared that “The new system of transliteration is more logical than the old Wade-Giles system, which was a godsend to linguistic snobs.  They knew that Jenmin Jih Pao (People’s Daily) was really pronounced Renmin Ribao; now the rest of us will know, too.”  NBC news anchor John Chancellor similarly promised viewers that Pinyin “will make us all sound like old China hands.”

But not everyone agreed.  Many veteran China-watchers bemoaned the confusing preponderance of Z’s, Q’s, and X’s introduced by Pinyin, and laughed at the absurdity of calling Hong Kong “Xianggang” or Tibet “Xizang.”  And while the New York Times saw the rise of Pinyin as the end of “linguistic snobbery,”    the Washington Post’s Hong Kong correspondent Jay Matthews saw the opposite, a system unintelligible to all but “those few who have been initiated into the mysteries of the new system.”

But in the end, they all came to the same decision.  By March 1979, Pinyin had been almost universally adopted.  But there were some very important exceptions.  In almost every instance of a switch, China’s capital remained Peking.  A common explanation for this decision was that “Peking” was essentially an English-language form of “Beijing,” much the same as European cities like Muenchen and Roma were called Munich and Rome. The Chicago Tribune was more blunt, declaring that “it’s already too late to change” and that the name Peking had “become so ingrained in our usage that we can’t get used to [a] new one.”

This continued to be the state of affairs for the next several years.  But on November 26, 1986, the New York Times announced that it would now stop using the name Peking, since “through widening contacts between China and the West, ‘Beijing’ has now become equally familiar.”  By 1987, every major newspaper and news magazine in the US had followed suit.  The change came a bit more slowly in Britain.  The Guardian didn’t change until December 1988, and the BBC continued to broadcast reports datelined Peking throughout the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

When the Chinese government adopted Pinyin for use abroad in 1979, one of the main reasons given was that it would standardize spellings across different languages.  But over thirty years on, this goal is as distant as ever.  While almost everyone in the English-speaking world now refers to China’s capital as Beijing, the city remains “Peking” in German; “Pekin” in French, Spanish, and Russian; and “Pechino” in Italian.  And as frequent travelers know, the thousands of suitcases and bags arriving from every corner of the world at Beijing Capital International Airport continue to be tagged with the three letters “PEK.”

Sorry, no non-Youtube version for all you non-VPNers (does anyone not have a VPN these days?)

18MMW Bio
Quite possibly the world’s most psychotic Asian American Theatrical Comedy group, the Warriors have been together since 1994 and in that time have created innumerable all-new material feature shows, 4 original collaborations with Culture Clash, Campo Santo, Latina Theatre Lab, Lodestone Theatre, OPM and Cold Tofu and performed in New York City, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Chicago, Vancouver, Houston, and Phoenix, among other cities and at the world famous Comedy Store and Laugh Factory. Inspired by groups such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Culture Clash, SNL, and Kids in the Hall, their irreverent style of skit comedy ranges from slapstick to political and takes no prisoners.

H/T Lonnie B Hodge

In October of 2010, I was invited to take a welcome break from my life on the hamster wheel that is Shanghai, and visit Jinhua’s famous Taoist temple and caves. I was very excited by this invitation, partly because of my interest in Taoism and its place in Chinese culture, and partly because I had been invited by my new friend Kathy; a US-educated professor of Biochemistry, Taoist, and my guide to the considerable development of Taoist activity in and around Jinhua.

Meeting a dream butterfly

“This is Meng Die,” my friend Kathy told me. Meng Die was a slight woman in her thirties, dressed in the simple robes of a daoist acolyte. She had a ready smile, and a strong Beijing lilt that to me sounded out of place on this secluded bamboo-clad mountainside in Zhejiang province.

Over the best tea I have ever tasted (Da Hong Pao, no less!), we learned that Meng Die had been a Taoist for many years, and a disciple of the renowned Master Wang Liping. Until last month, she had been working as a yoga teacher in Beijing, when she made the decision to leave it all behind, and move to a small cottage in the mountains of Jinhua to cultivate herself full-time. Now she spends her days reading Taoist books, meditating, guiding tourists, and teaching ‘Taoism classes’ once a week in the town at the bottom of the mountain.

From left to right: the author, Kathy, and Meng Die

Meng Die is not her birth name. It means ‘Dream Butterfly’, and she chose it because the famous Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi (circa 400 BC) once had a dream in which he turned into a butterfly. When he awoke he was unsure if he had been dreaming he was a butterfly, or whether he was a butterfly who had been dreaming it was Zhuangzi.

Meditation in caves

A three minute walk from Meng Die’s little abode was a cave entrance. The sign read ‘Chao Zhen Dong’ – Towards the Truth Cave. I was told that Taoists had been using the cave for thousands of years to meditate and cultivate themselves in seclusion. Apparently Taoists choose these isolated mountain locations very carefully, as the geographical location has an impact on the result of the meditation. I asked why, and my (Taoist) guide said that Taoist alchemy, or transformative self-cultivation, works in accordance with the energy meridians of the body, that are so important in TCM.

But energy meridians are not merely confined to human bodies, say the Taoists. The Earth itself has locations which are on energy meridians, and these are the best places to practice Taoist alchemy. All the self-cultivation in the world will not yield the maximum results unless you are in the right spot. Old pre-Christian belief systems in my native Britain also refer to ‘Ley Lines’ – energy meridians which are found in certain locations, and had mystic significance attached to them.

Once inside the cave, it stretched back almost a hundred meters. There were little narrow channels which could be squeezed through to get to other chambers, and a substantial population of bats, whom we smelled first, and then saw hanging upside down from the ceiling in one of the higher vaulted chambers.

Which cave contains frogs, ham, immortal curtains, and the largest cave waterfall in China?

Our next stop was the big sister of Towards the Truth Cave. Shuang Long Dong, or Double Dragon Cave, is the main attraction for tourists here. It is much larger, and more glam too, having coloured neon lights at strategic points to highlight some of the formations caused by thousands of years of mineral-saturated water dripping down through the roof of the cave. They were worth highlighting too, as the shapes they make are varied and bizarre, and have been named accordingly, such as The Frog Who Steals Heavenly Grass (naughty frog!), The Ham, and The Immortals Curtain.

We continued into the cool, dripping interior of the cave towards the sound of pounding water. The final chamber, which is called Ice Pot Cave, contains a raucous waterfall that gushes out of the rock at the top of the chamber and falls 26 metres down into a natural underground pool. This is the largest cave waterfall in China.

Priest Yu and his project

From the right: Priest Yu, Kathy, Me and Jason.

After leaving the caves, and visiting the nearby Jinhua Taoist Temple, we drove down the mountain, until we pulled up outside a small temple nestled in front of some modern single-storey housing in a pleasant rural setting. Dogs ran out to greet our car, followed by an old man in Taoist robes, and his long hair piled up in a bun, skewered by a long pin.

The old man took us to meet Priest Yu, a young man with a ready smile and a dignity that seemed beyond his years, who seemed to be in charge. If the first temple was small, the one currently under construction made up for it. The skeleton of the building was already in place, consisting of huge timbers –- the largest I have ever seen — joined at right angles. I was told the framework for the temple would be all timber — no steel or concrete.

The timber frame of a new Taoist centre under construction near Jinhua

I asked what the plan was that required such a impressive feat of engineering with timber only. Apparently it will become a Taoist centre to help bring Taoism to the local, and wider, community. Activities, and workshops in meditation, would be made available to residents and visitors, thus bringing Taoism into the lives of non-taoists. Funding for the project was coming largely from donations, which are evidently pretty substantial. It seems the land is being donated by the local government.

The re-emergence of Taoism?

Taoism certainly seems to be experiencing a renaissance in the scope of it’s activities. In Hubei Province, Zhong Yun Long heads up the Wudang Taoist Association which has hundreds of registered priests and nuns, and a college for teaching Taoist arts like Qi Gong, Taiji, and traditional Taoist music. Through tourism, Taoist culture in Wudang Mountain has become one of the main sources of income for the town of Shiyan, Hubei Province.

In Zhejiang, Jinhua Temple is frequented by both tourists, and young Taoists seeking ‘The Way’, as is it’s sister temple in Hong Kong. Based in Shandong Province, Master Wang Liping, author of “Opening The Dragon Gate: The Making of a modern Taoist“, publicly teaches the ‘internal alchemy’ techniques he apparently learned over many years of study under three Taoist hermits. Master Wang’s students are numerous and come from many countries, including: the US, Germany, and Russia.

Both in Jinhua and Wudang, the promotion of Taoist culture is aimed at local and international audiences, is well funded, and has the support of local government. It appears to be engaging people at the  grass roots level, while clearly being in contact with the upper echelons (our guide in Double Dragon Cave was both a Taoist, and a PLA general). Is this more marketing of packaged ‘Ancient Chinese Culture’ a la Shaolin Temple? Or are we seeing a renaissance of Chinas oldest organized belief system, which has in the past exerted enormous influence over both Chinese society and its rulers?

A quick guide to Taoism:

What is Taoism?

As the pre-eminent, and as far as I know only, meta-physical religion to originate in China, Taoism by its nature tends to defy definition in conventional terms. This is made clear in the opening sentence of the Daode Jing, the most influential Taoist text, which says: “Dao can be spoken of, but it is not the constant Dao.”

Accepting the short-comings of any definition I might offer, I will venture to say that Taoism is a belief system that directs its followers to seek an understanding of their place in the harmony of nature. It advocates a path of self cultivation and transformation to a higher state of understanding.

The development of Taoism in ancient China

The Daode Jing was written around the 4^th century BC, at a time when there was not any formal Taoist organization or institutions, as far as is known. It wasn’t until the 2^nd century AD that Zhang Daoling established ‘The Way of The Celestial Masters’ – a lineage of Taoist teachings and practice which Taoist priests today claim as their heritage.

From the 2^nd to the 7^th centuries AD, Taoist rituals and literature developed and became known as an institutionalized belief system, which exerted considerable influence. The high political profile of Taoism in this period meant it held precedence over Buddhism, which had been brought to China by missionaries from India and Tibet; although Buddhist ideas and practices were absorbed into Taoism.

During this period royal advisors would often be respected Taoist adepts, and government ministers were known to retire into contemplative seclusion in Taoist monasteries. According to legend, one such seeker of ‘Dao’, or ‘The Way’ was Xuan Wu, a prince, who retreated to the holy Wudang Mountains in Hubei Province. After 42 years of self-cultivation he became an ‘immortal’, and today is one of the principle deities in Taoist lore, also known as Zhenwu Da Di (True Warrior Grand Emperor).

Around 600 years ago, after claiming Zhenwu’s help in winning out over his rivals to ascend the throne, the third Ming Emperor Zhu Li actively encouraged recognition and development of Taoism in his Kingdom. The magnificent and unique temples and architecture at Wudang Mountain perhaps best represent Zhu Li’s efforts.

Taoism in the modern era

The period 1949 to 1980 was not kind to the institutions of Taoism that had developed over the millennia. The overt practice of Taoism was banned outright, and many temples were destroyed. However, in 1980 Taoism ceased to be an illegal practice, and since then Taoists in and outside of China have been working to re-establish their traditions.

Members of the “Lost Legion” are then theorized to have worked as mercenaries for the Kingdom of Kangju (modern north-central Asia). The Kangju lent out the mercenaries to a Xiongnu chief named Zhizhi who was having troubles with the rather powerful and expanding Han Dynasty China. Accounts from Han historians mention a small group of men fighting to defend a local Xiongnu fortress in a “fish-scale” formation.

The legend (or hypothesis, if you’re historian Homer H. Dubs — who pioneered the theory in the ’50s) states that the Romans along with other defeated Xiongnu prisoners were granted land by the Chinese, which became the now defunct city of Liqian (modern day Zhelaizhai, Gansu) on the fringes of the Gobi.

The mystery has swirled around for decades, and may well go back much much further as some locals of the area have the very un-Chinese characteristics of light hair and blue/green eyes. Dubs theory was largely put to bed in 2007 when tests concluded it just wasn’t possible. However, new testing seems to suggest that up to 56% of some villagers’ DNA are Caucasian in origin, lighting new interest in the “Lost Legion” connection.

From The Telegraph (Nov 23, 2010): Many of the villagers have blue or green eyes, long noses and even fair hair, prompting speculation that they have European blood.

A local man, Cai Junnian, is nicknamed by his friends and relatives Cai Luoma, or Cai the Roman, and is one of many villagers convinced that he is descended from the lost legion.

Archeologists plan to conduct digs in the region, along the ancient Silk Route, to search for remains of forts or other structures built by the fabled army.

“We hope to prove the legend by digging and discovering more evidence of China’s early contacts with the Roman Empire,” Yuan Honggeng, the head of a newly-established Italian Studies Centre at Lanzhou University in Gansu province, told the China Daily newspaper.

If there’s any truth to the legend, it’s extremely unlikely that any Roman money would be found — as it’s doubtful that any of the Kingdoms they passed through as slaves and mercenaries would have left much in their pockets, never mind the initial capturing of them by the Parthians and then also the Han Chinese. Generally I think the rule was if you left with your life, you didn’t leave with your wallet.

Will be neat to see what develops. Might be found that Marco Polo’s got nothing on these guys, that is if he even went to China at all.

For more information:

• A Roman Legion in China
• Wikipedia

Photo from jshire113

However, I should give it up to the PRC for putting on a hell of a parade. I only managed to catch a bit of it yesterday via the CCTV link I posted the day before. Between browser conflicts and choppy streaming (even in China), it was a bit too much to bear. However, what I did see seemed damn impressive.

This was all the more confirmed when watching news shooter Dan Chung’s well-crafted, and fantastically visual video of the event:

China’s 60th Anniversary national day – timelapse and slow motion – 7D and 5DmkII from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

The parade in Tiananmen Square to mark the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China – as seen in timelapse and slow-motion.

Slow motion shot on a 7D at 720p/60
Time lapses on Canon Eos5DmkII and Nikon D700.
Edited on Final Cut Pro

For more details on how this was shot head over to www.dslrnewsshooter.com. For more on China from the Guardian go to www.guardian.co.uk/china.

On one side we seem to have Western activists shaking their fists and demanding action, recognition, acknowledgement, better bumper stickers and other assorted things that activists define themselves with; and on the other we have a nation of people saying “Anniversary? What anniversary? Oh… so?”

Whether crying injustice, or feigning indifference — I feel neither properly defines my thoughts on the matter. Do I join with my largely Western brethren and fight the power or do I take the attitude of my complacent co-residents and leave the scab where it lays?

I truly believe that anything, whether a person or country, is made stronger by understanding its faults. But who of us ever looks at their faults when on the defensive? No, much better is the time spent defending and deflecting. Even the people, the poor whelps living beneath the alleged yoke of repression, will side with their overseers before allowing foreign commentary to tell them what is in their best interests.

And so I know this is a China problem, for China to look at and China to decide. I’m here, I’m watching, I’ll remember – but action, in my opinion, is not my duty nor my decision. I don’t even feel qualified to state whether action needs to be taken. Sure, freedom of speech and a free press would be an awesome step ahead for China, and I sure as hell would like unfettered access to the Internet, please and thank you.

But something about the rah-rah-rights! being shouted from abroad doesn’t feel appropriate to me. Maybe it’s my time here that’s tempering my views, or just that in my time here I’ve aged a bit, but the protester of my youth is starting to see things differently. Starting to see that to understand China and the actions of her government, you need to understand that its mechanisms don’t work in four-year terms. Everything moves at a lengthened pace.

Anniversaries are a good time to examine that. Twenty years is no small amount of time, but it’s also not a long time. It’s a good amount of time to reflect on the changes that have come since the student protests in Tiananmen.

Hell, I woke up this morning and China was different from yesterday, never mind two decades ago. The majority of its people enjoy a quality of life unseen in its multi-millennial history. Despite wide-spanning attempts at censorship, your average Chinese person has more access to information from around the globe than ever before. Never has matching, and possibly exceeding, their counterparts from “developed” nations been so within the grasp of your average Chinese.

It may not be conclusion reached, and there is yet much ground to be covered. However, I don’t think it can be argued that it’s not the right track. And while much of that course was set in ’78, I wonder if ’89 didn’t do more to create modern China than we give it credit for. Motives not withstanding, the spring protests of that year said in no uncertain terms that the people weren’t satisfied.

Often it is called a violent repression, a stifling of a peaceful movement. And it was these things, but from the government’s standpoint, it was an act of defence. Violent or not, the entire institution of power was being attacked and China’s history is nothing if not littered with similar examples — ending one power to allow another, virtually identical, power rise in its place. Do I agree with the action they took? No, of course not. Never. But understanding isn’t agreement, isn’t complaisance. It is merely understanding.

And whether I, we, or they deem it the “wrong” action, it did force Beijing to tighten its focus on wealth, prosperity and capitalism. Things desperately needed in a country with an imaginable level of poverty.

And from that wealth is a slow growing justice for all, which in turn is paving the way to a level of liberty and personal freedom that is, if not the same, comparable to the West.

So when I think of the events that happened on this day 20 years ago, I’ll not forget the tragedy, the unneccessary violence and the terrible loss of life. But I’ll also not shame their memory by thinking they died pointlessly and that nothing has changed.

From Simpson's Episode

Tweets are filling my screen with reports that Twitter.com and Flickr.com are both inaccessible in Mainland China. They join YouTube, as well as WordPress and Blogger blogs as the latest casualties in the Great Firewall of China’s war against free speech.

Undoubtedly the blocks are in an effort to curb online commentary and the dissemination of information about the , which on celebrates its 20th anniversary.

As of this writing, my Twitter client, TweetDeck, was still able to send and receive tweets — however, tweets in Beijing and Shanghai seem to indicate it was being blocked as well (blocks tend to propagate at different rates depending on your location in China).

I can only predict the next few days will see more and more sites being blocked, hopefully with things returning to normal shortly after (though if past blocks are anything to go by, it could be weeks or months).

If you don’t have a good VPN, be sure to check out Hotspot Shield (free, but slow), or personalVPN/Witopia (minimal yearly fee, but fast). A VPN creates a secure tunnel that will allow you to view the Internet as if you were in the country the VPN is hosted in (US, UK, etc.). I have used services such as Tor in the past, but couldn’t stand the slow speed. I bit the bullet and signed up with WiTopia about a year ago and couldn’t be happier. I have no experience with Hotspot Shield, but have heard it is decent in a pinch.

Also, if you care to watch what is getting blocked where in real-time, check out HerdictWeb – and for Twitter blocks in China in particular see here.

If you know of other solutions, please post them below.

Maki Sushi by Nagy David

I was away at college when my family first got into sushi, but I remember the story well. During one of our weekly Sunday night telephone conversations, my mother drolly recounted to me how she and my sister had been sneaking take-out from a new local restaurant into the house behind my grandmother’s back.

While my mom is Chinese, she was born in America and harbors no personal resentment toward the Japanese or their culture. My grandmother, on the other hand, lived through the Second World War, witnessing the occupation of her homeland as a child. Like so many others of that generation, she’s been on boycott ever since.

When she discovered the family’s dirty little secret, her disapproval flowed forth, endless and unchecked; she vowed never to take part in such a callous betrayal of principle. As time went by, however, this outrage simmered to interest—be it guilty and heavily-guarded—and whenever sushi was brought home she could be found prowling about the margins of the table, feigning indifference with a cursory glare, declining invitation with a shake of the head. My mother and sister would roll their eyes in amused and unspoken laughter. They knew that for someone like my grandmother, to whom food is the be-all and end-all, it was only a matter of time.

And cave she did. After all, one little piece couldn’t hurt. Placing a slice on the tip of her tongue, she chewed the maki skeptically, choking it down and affecting a great deal of effort in the process. “Terrible,” she spat, quickly exiting from the room. Five minutes later, she came wandering back. “Just one more. Then that will be it.”

Growing up, I’d never fully understood my grandmother’s aversion toward all things Japanese, at best writing it off as an individual item on a longer list of quirks. Not until coming to China did I see this enmity in its broader, national context; did I realize how deep-seated it is within the mindset of a people. During a lesson on conditional phrasing, I asked my students, “If you only had one more day left to live, what would you do, and why?” The first hand raised? “I would kill as many Japanese people as possible. Because I hate them and they are evil.”

Sure, the Chinese take a hard-line approach, but their anger is understandable. The mutual history shared between these two great nations is lengthy and often punctuated with violence, yet another example of China’s past humiliation at the hands of a foreign power. By Chinese estimates, wars launched by Japan have resulted in the death of over 20 million citizens. During the Rape of Nanjing (or what the Japanese prefer to refer to as the Nanjing “Incident”), approximately 300,000 civilians were slaughtered in the streets.

Since then, the Japanese government has offered numerous apologies, but none have come close to the level of sincerity or remorse demanded by the CCP. Most recently, in 2005, then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi issued a statement of regret over the pain and suffering caused by his country during the years of World War II. He did not mention China specifically in the apology, however, and a visit made by members of parliament shortly thereafter to the Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial which glorifies the fallen soldiers of Japan (among whom are included several convicted Class A war criminals), led Beijing to reject what it perceived as nothing more than another disingenuous stab at détente. Beginning in childhood, students here are taught to hate their neighbors to the east, from detailed accounts of wartime atrocities in their textbooks to wicked, often sadistic portrayals of characters in film.

One can only imagine my surprise, therefore, when I stumbled across a vendor selling sushi down by the river that runs through town. It seemed a futile—if not entirely suicidal—enterprise. Consuming raw fish off the streets of rural China isn’t something I’d normally recommend, but I’d been eating the same oil-drenched meals for almost ten months straight, in desperate need of variety. Like every other local restaurant claiming to serve foreign food, only half of the menu was available. I finally settled on a roll of salmon and some other fish of unknown characterization. Crossing myself just to be safe, I called out an order of each. It might as well have been Fugu.

The bustle of the nightlife, the stillness on the water. Writing everything down, the vendor rushes to the supermarket, dissolving away in the crowd. I set up by the curb on a red plastic stool, surveying the length of the street, pedestrians streaming down the road in a mass and perpetual exodus. Within a nearby construction site, rebar rises forth from several unfinished columns, leaning softly against the sky, cranes raking the spangled heavens of their starlight overhead.

A second supermarket, recently opened directly across from the first, glows candent in the night through the PVC curtaining of a strip door in front. An elevator shaft built of steel and glass, the first of its kind in town, sticks to the building’s façade like a giant silver remora, shuttling customers to and from the 天天 (Everyday) Internet Bar, as if people here need any more encouragement to spend their every waking hour inside those smoky, crowded dens.

The spread is impressive: rows of stylishly-upholstered ergonomic chairs, brand-new flat screens, an enormous waterfall window to dampen the drone of machines. Meanwhile, outside, in one of the many karaoke tents that line the public square, a man howls off-key into a  microphone like a flockless muezzin. Men and women gnaw at the wings of chickens splayed in cruciform across bamboo skewers. Toddlers empty themselves in the street.

Starry Night by Mangpages

The vendor returned two cigarettes later hauling a bulky bag of goods. Rolling out his mat, he set to paving a handful of the soft vinegared rice upon a brittle sheet of nori, wearing those thin plastic gloves the Chinese sometimes use for fries. As with every other dish in Hunan Province, a dollop of hot sauce was added topped with strips of cucumber and carrot. Pineapple followed by pork floss. To my relief, the salmon came from a package which had been brought in from Guangzhou that week. To my surprise, a tin of sardines. Sushi with Chinese characteristics.

I watched as he sliced the rolls into twenty slender coins then thanked him and paid and took the food back to one of my usual hangouts, a music shop adjacent to the school, because I didn’t want the chef at the restaurant where I park my bike to think less of his loyal foreign customer.

As I pulled up, a middle-aged man reeking of alcohol greeted me at the entrance, brandishing a pack of Shuangxi cigarettes and shoving a thumb in my face. An inebriate’s show of approval. From the owners I learn that he is a local government official whom no one’s especially fond of, his rank being the only thing that affords him any leeway. I pull up a stool and open the carton of fish. The party official stands beside me placing cigarettes behind my ear one after the next until finally I begin to feel like some addicted, one-trick magician. Being younger and slightly more interested in learning about foreign culture than honoring historical grudges, my friends all dive right in. For the most part, they like it. Infuriated by the fact that we are eating Japanese food, the party official drops down at the drum kit and starts banging away uncertainly. A harebrained Paleolithic. We sit there eating, unable to hear ourselves talk. The hiss of the snare drum, a not-so-occasional crash.

When at last he dismounted, my ears were nearly bleeding. He came over with a shit-eating grin plastered to his chin and thrust a drunken thumb slantwise in my face. Via pantomime, he invited me to a brothel by jamming one finger in and out of the curled sausages of an opposing fist. At this point he was really starting to piss me off. He asked for some sushi with that same air of casual indifference I’d heard tell of from my mother and at once I saw an opportunity flash before me. With careful deliberation, I selected the most mangled piece I could find and spread a heaping pat of wasabi across the surface. Oblivious to what this green paste was, he tossed it into his mouth. It took three or four chews for realization to set in, but soon there was an accusatory index finger, not thumb, leveled in front of my eyes. Hawking, heaving, coughing, he ran out into the street. He didn’t come back. My friends burst out in applause as we opened the final carton, gorging ourselves on sushi in the darkness of rural China.

A laowai in the thick of it.

I ran across an article at Found in China entitled Chai Ling: then and now, which made mention of Philip J Cunningham, author of a new book called Tiananmen Moon.

Over the years I’ve seen an article here or there about Cunningham, but had no idea he was so intimately involved in the protest, being one of the few foreigners to have marched with the students to on May 4. Tiananmen Moon captures that march, as well as the weeks leading up to the fateful day that lives in silent infamy here in China. Marking the 20th anniversary this year, Cunningham provides day-by-day recounting of the significant events that converged in catastrophe and carnage.

Though the book isn’t officially released yet (May 28th, I think), Cunningham provides us with some fantastic excerpts on his blog Frontier International. A few grabs from the post entitled The New May Forth Spirit:

There are not enough mimeographed song sheets to go around so marchers scribble down lyrics in their notebooks, copying them off handout sheets and public blackboards. No cribbing is needed for the Internationale, as everyone knows the anthem inside out.

Why sing a song embraced by the establishment? The idea is brilliant in a way. If you sing it enough, you own it. The communist-indoctrinated youth of Beijing are waving the red flag to beat the red flag, employing iconic rhetoric of rebellion to remake China in their own image.

The more things change…

Standing in the swirling, excited pack of protesters, I am hit with a pang of self-consciousness. Not because I am over six-foot tall, a 190-pound blond man in a sea of black hair and thin physiques; this is a political rally in a country where foreigners live in separate buildings, eat in different restaurants and shop in different stores using different money from local people. Everywhere I go, thousands of curious and sometimes resentful eyes observe my every move. Any lapse of judgment on my part will be magnified many times over because of the stigma of difference.

Insightful

Daily life in the People’s Republic has been excellent preparation for the practical and dramatic demands of staging political theatre at Tiananmen. It was the art of skirting the edge without crossing the line. It was rebelling within the orthodox vocabulary of rebellion. On what grounds could the May Fourth inspired Communist Party object to a May Fourth march of students waving red banners and singing communist anthems?

Already townspeople were swarming towards the protest, and they too knew how to play they ambiguity game. If questioned they could say they were watching out of curiosity, not in solidarity.

Powerful…

We surge southwards like a river swollen with rain, seeking Tiananmen. Crossing Second Ring Road, one of Beijing’s key arteries, brings east-west traffic to a halt, leaving taxis and busses stranded and abandoned. Meanwhile, construction workers halt their heavy lifting to line the streets, some of them waving and shouting rowdily. As if on cue, the Arts Choral Group accordion players change tack, “The red sun shall shine all over the globe,” fading out on the line, “The Internationale shall definitely be realized,” to launch a new tune. When I hear the lyrics I know why. It is proletarian agit-prop outreach time.

“Peasants, workers, soldiers, unite together!”

The gaggle explodes in celebration upon hearing the call for solidarity. The rhetoric is not new, but hearing it in this context is.