Chinoiseries

A light-hearted l9ook at some of the more way-out and fascinating news stories on things Chinese

Edited by Tony Lambert, OMF China Researcher

MOB EATS BISCUIT CITY

Song Dong, the Chinese contemporary artist, ordered the crowd to start eating his biscuit city. It seemed such a shame to demolish his pristine chocolate digestive tower blocks, blue jellybean lakes and Ryvita flyovers. But once the first building was toppled there was no stopping the ravenous audience. Within a few minutes the edible highrise business district had gone the way of the shortbread and wafer Forbidden City. The biscuit city, built on the lower ground floor of Selfridges department store in London was Song’s contribution to greater Sino-British cultural understanding. It took Song and his helpers seven days to build.

“It is about the transitory nature of our lives. In Asia now cities grow up in a day. You remember the city in one way and then it is gone. I love it when the audience begins to eat.” Stephanie and Ashley, both 15, did as they were told. “Yum! I like the pink wafers best!” (Daily Telegraph, 23 February 2006)

ROLLING STONES KOWTOW TO CENSORS

Chinese censors have asked the Rolling Stones not to perform four songs from their greatest hits album that have been banned in the country. Unsurprisingly, “I met a gin soaked bar-room queen in Memphis” left some prudish cadres unamused. Sir Mick Jagger said, “We kind of expected that. We didn’t expect to come to China and not be censored. Fortunately, we have 400 other songs we can play.”

It has taken the veteran bad boys of rock more than 30 years to play their first gig in China. Even so, they will play to only 8,500 people at the Shanghai Grand State—nothing like the 1.2 million who massed in Rio de Janeiro to hear them in February. The price of the tickets ranging from US$35-350 is exorbitant by Chinese standards. Even in wealthy Shanghai the average monthly salary is only $240. Jagger said sarcastically, “I’m pleased that the Ministry of Culture is protecting the morals of the expat bankers and their girlfriends that are going to be coming.” (The Times, 8 April 2006)

OGRES TO SLAY?

Fuzhou, China. One of China’s newest factories operates here in the basement of an old warehouse. The people working here are “gold farmers.” Every day, in 12-hour shifts they “play” computer games by killing on-screen monsters and winning battles, harvesting artificial gold coins and other virtual goods as rewards that can be transformed into real cash. Affluent online gamers who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay the young Chinese here to play the early rounds for them. One gamer said: “For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters. I make about US$250 a month which is pretty good compared with other jobs I’ve had. And I can play games all day.” This virtual economy is blurring the line between fantasy and reality. There may be well over 100,000 young people working in China as full-time gamers. (New York Times, 15 Dec 2005)

FOR THE GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS?

YIWU: central Zhejiang, founded 2,220 BC. Now proclaimed by the World Bank to be the biggest “small commodities” market in the world for bulk buying of telephone handsets, toys, torches etc.

DATANG: Zhejiang. Now manufactures 30% of the world’s socks.

SHENGZHOU: Zhejiang. Now makes 80% of the world’s ties.

WENZHOU: Zhejiang—also the Christian ‘Jerusalem of China’—now produces 75% of the world’s cigarette lighters.

QIOATOU: Makes 60% of the world’s buttons.

(Daily Telegraph, 24 Nov 2005)

RELEASE YOUR INNER WOLF!

The author of China’s latest bestselling novel soon to appear in Britain, demands that his readers seek their inner wolf. Telling your audience that they are culturally sheep and need to rediscover their sense of the wild to avoid disaster may seem an unusual literary ploy. But Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem, a mystical adventure story, memoir and ecological tract, has been a runaway bestseller in China, selling over a million copies. Now its translation rights have been snapped up by Penguin Books for £55,000, a record for a Chinese book.

Rumors are circulating as to why Communist Party bosses failed to ban it. For woven through its pages is an appeal to Chinese people to struggle, wolf-like, for personal freedom.

Wolf Totem is the autobiographical story of a young student who is “sent to the country” from Beijing “to learn from the peasants” in 1967 during the Cultural Revolution. As he herds sheep on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia he considers the fate of the Mongol nomads who are his companions and the wolves with whom they share the land. He comes to see that though nominally foes, they share a similar spirit—a spirit that as the years pass by is gradually crushed as the way of life of both wolf and Mongol is destroyed. The destroyers are the ethnic Han Chinese like himself, who settle, develop and inflict their harsh rule across the countryside.

Jiang’s theory is that China’s farming culture created a desire for peace secured by a strong ruler. Confucianism and an authoritarian education system created a nation of sheep, weak in the face of aggression. Among the predators were wolf-like nations such as the Mongols, who subjugated China under Genghis Khan. Now, he says, the danger is reversed as the sheep take over crushing the free spirit of the minorities like the Mongols, and destroying the environment. In private, Jiang warns that the rise of China without democracy risks becoming like Nazi Germany, an analogy that infuriates the Chinese leadership. The book itself, however, is subtle enough to have won favorable reviews in the State media, an irony not lost on the author. “Young people are longing for freedom, to speak and to experiment.” (Daily Telegraph, 29 October 2005)

PANDAS—NOT PING-PONG!

Once in the Mao-Nixon era it was ping-pong diplomacy that opened China to the outside world. Now could it be panda diplomacy which will bridge the gulf between China and Taiwan? So far, the signs are not promising.

On March 24 Taiwan told China to keep the pandas it had been trying to give the island and return them to the wild instead. In a diplomatic snub that will outrage Beijing a notice appeared on the Taiwan government website saying the animals would not be “happy” to come to Taiwan. The offer was first made last summer when the leader of the Taiwanese opposition Kuomintang party, the Nationalists, made a ground-breaking visit to Beijing. The panda idea was seized on gleefully by China’s propaganda machine. There was a rigorous selection procedure to choose the animals and a competition to name them. This was won by Tuantuan and Yuanyuan, words that together mean “unity.” (Daily Telegraph, 24 March 2006)

ANOTHER MYTH DEBUNKED

For years people have accepted the myth that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure visible from the moon. A new book on the history of the mammoth structure effectively debunks this. Julia Lovell in her book The Great Wall: China Against the World 1000 BC to 2000 AD (Atlantic Books) reveals that it was the American showman Robert Ripley who back in 1932 popularized the idea that the Wall was the only man-made structure visible from the moon—decades before anyone could possibly know if it was true. In 2003 the first Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei returned from orbiting the earth to announce he had been “unable to spot a single crenelation.” Actually, anyone flying into Beijing from the north finds it hard to pick out the Wall from 30,000 feet up, let alone from space.

CONFUCIUS INSTITUTES

Ms. Xu Lin, head of the Chinese government’s new effort to promote the Chinese language overseas, is creating a global network of Chinese cultural centers, called Confucius Institutes. They will teach foreigners throughout the world a language with a forbidding reputation for difficulty. But far from having to round people up, Ms. Xu is finding they are rushing to join. “There is a China frenzy around the world at the moment,” she said. “The launch of this program is in response to the Chinese language craze.”

The choice of a name like Confucius Institute which evokes images of anything but a rising new power, might seem odd, given Beijing’s increasing penchant for high-tech imagery and slick public relations. Yet the carefully chosen label speaks volumes about the country’s soft power ambitions. Using the name of the country’s oldest and most famous philosopher avoids reference to the official ideology which remains Marxism. Confucius, who was an educator and quasi-religious figure, also stands for peace and harmony—values that China insistently proclaims today, hoping to disarm fears about its rapid rise.

The effort appears to be paying off. Indonesia, which for three decades banned the teaching of Chinese because of Beijing’s support for communist rebels, recently lifted the prohibition. Vietnam, which has long had strained ties with Beijing, has accepted a Confucius Institute amid a boom in Chinese language instruction. In South Korea, an American ally that fought alongside the United States in a war against China’s troops half a century ago, Chinese has reportedly outstripped English as the most popular foreign language among students.

Eleven Confucius Institutes are now running in Europe and Africa as well as Asia.
One center is already operating in the States, at the University of Maryland, and five others are expected in Honolulu, Kansas City, Missouri, San Francisco, Chicago and New York. Twelve more are under discussion.

Today 90,000 foreign students come to China every year to study Chinese, with 30 million more people around the world studying the language. (New York Times, 2 March 2006)

AND FINALLY ... STORM IN A TEA CUP?

For centuries, the Chinese have delighted in the simple rituals of making and serving tea. Now they are having to learn a new skill—coffee!

So many of China’s middle classes have begun drinking cappuccino and cafe latte, that the country’s labor ministry has declared an official skills shortage. About 10,000 trained coffee-makers and servers are needed in Beijing and Shanghai alone.

Since Starbucks first ventured into China six years ago it has opened 230 branches and plans to open a further 10,000 in the next few years. (Sunday Independent, 14 May 2006)

Copyright 2006 OMF Interational