Bamboo Sarissa's Open Salon Blog

Missing Links & Party Animals: A Reply to My Critics

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:08:18 -0400

Dear Mr Kerr (et al),

Herewith an extended version of my comment, re: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/aug/19/waiting-wikileaks-beijings-seven-secrets/

Since 2006 I have worked with Chinese who are journalists, editors, and television media personalities, producers, editors, directors, sales/marketing people, presenters, hosts, and cameramen. Previously (2002-2005) I was involved in a messy romantic relationship with the top and most highly-recognized news anchor of a municipal-level network; and from 2008 to 2009 I lectured to bi-lingual broadcasting majors at one of China's top-ranking specialty universities for broadcasting. I know more than a bit about how media/news in China works; and I note this, now, to give you a frame of reference for what follows.

If one works for state media, then one is doing state PR, and state marketing. Period. It is impossible to be in a broadcast/journalism major, to complete internships, and to get into print or broadcast media and not know that you are in effect working for an advertising agency. And for the most part, work in the media racket is pretty good, by Chinese government-sector (and sometimes by private sector) standards. I have made these points elsewhere, in greater detail:

http://open.salon.com/blog/bamboo_sarissa/2010/07/13/prcs_cnn_in_nyc

...and I refer you/parties to this discussion to that post.

In fine, however, it breaks down like this: Media work in China is great – if you can get it. But you get your post, advance, and keep your position in the system only if you’re willing to play the game the right way. If a mainland Chinese wants to use writing, journalism, photography, etc., to criticize the Party, then s/he had best stay out of media. In other words, one cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds too. Whistleblowers, hard-core investigative journalists, would-be reformers --- they’re not martyrs, or heroes, or brave souls deserving of “our” support and admiration; they’re just people who don’t understand their job description.

And that's one of the things that pisses-off department heads/cadres about these wannabe "dissidents": Media jobs are not always well-paying, and are glamorous for a few only; but the perks are sensational, and the work is pretty easy most of the time. Anyone actually attempting to exploit the structure of PRC media to reform the Party is the paradigmatic case of biting the hand that feeds. Alternatively, men and women who grandstand – stand-up to the Party, "take-on injustice", fight the good fight – are either (i) insane, or (ii) hoping to catapult themselves into the spotlight for personal gain.

Breaking the rules will only make the Party tighten its throttlehold on the media industry – and only the mentally-infirm or very selfish do not grasp this. There are better and worse ways to use journalism (etc.) to nudge things along, and often times certain officials/cadres want media to advance a new and perhaps heterodox idea. But the PRC's media machine isn't evil; it's the machine you get - perhaps: the machine you need - as you attempt to run an enormous country with a massive population that has inherited culturally a mindset rather unlike ours.

And so your friends, I’m sad to say, have got it all wrong. They’re not being harassed for attempting to do good journalism or good works; they are being harassed for attempting to do journalism in a country where real journalism doesn’t exist and where (at the moment) doesn't belong.

Here’s a story that might interest you -- I hope it helps me make my point a little clearer.

The “Balloon Fun” franchise once had several hundred shops in China. The chain was founded by a sister of a friend of mine, who I will refer to as ‘Dot’. If I remember the story rightly, Dot’s husband won rights to the brand as part of the divorce settlement. That meant that the savvy, enterprising Dot – now a single mother with a 2 year old boy – had to find another source of income – apart from the one or two retail outlets of the chain she continued to own and operate.

While out in the ZJ hinterland one day sometime in 2008, Dot found a little tea plantation (down near Taizhou, I think) that was growing a rare but not famous variety of tea. A tea connoisseur herself, Dot made some enquiries, and realized that these leaves were ripe for the picking -- that is, Dot could probably go into the tea business. As mainlanders grew in affluence and ethnic confidence, wealthy Chinese nationals were gradually (and selectively) reconnecting with tea culture and other aspects of Chinese high-culture. The tea and tea house industry in China had been bouncing back since the late 90’s (at least), and there was money to be made in small-harvest local niche teas.

Dot didn’t know much about agriculture, but she knew a lot about branding. Dot also knew that “the new countryside” was high on Beijing’s political agenda, and that applying economic stimulus to the local countryside would be appreciated – and facilitated – by the Party. Dot knew also that – for this very reason – local television and newspapers would run stories, articles, interviews, etc., about her, her venture, her product, and (eventually) her brand of tea --- for free. All she needed to do was make a few phonecalls to friends within the media industry -- and take them for tea.

Local Party chieftains get points for advancing things on Beijing’s agenda; and if you are the editor of a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast news-desk, you are forever thinking about what kind of copy you can run that is locally-relevant, doesn't feel like propagandistic pablum, and is...safe. Dot’s story had everything they could possibly want in good copy: there was the "green"/environmentally friendly angle; she was a young urban entrepreneur; a young urban female entrepreneur; young urban female entrepreneur making money by bringing money to the poor hinterland… Not really riveting stuff; but good enough.

So the news items ran for free, as did the mini-documentary. The writers and editors and camera crews sent out to do the writing and taping got to leave the city and go play in the village and eat at cozy little nong jia le establishments, wile the bosses (all the way up the food chain) were pleased with the copy. Locals liked seeing their little community on tv, and urban residents - especially those lately from the countryside - love to see evidence that things are getting in the outback --- and that there's money still to be made there.

Everybody wins.

Ask Dot - ask middle-class Chinese businesspeople - if they want wide-sweeping changes to the way news and information is managed in the PRC. You’ll find a greater variety of answers than you think --- at least when you're getting honest answers, which is unlikely if you are a foreign snoop talking through an intepreter to someone you don't know who clearly appreciates that you're exploiting her for your own purposes.

Dot couldn’t have launched her product if she had to pay for those column-inches and that airtime - because, let's face it: it wasn't that interesting, really - and Dot’s situation is similar to other businessfolk who know how to play the game. Many Chinese may complain about freedom of expression issues; but the ever-growing middle-class – the people best-positioned to redirect the shape of modern China – often have vested interests in not having free-market forces determine media content.

Look. The urban upwardly-mobile get their news online, and from dish network. They know how to get the information they need to make the decisions they must in order to realize the priorities they have according to the values they embrace; and this class of Chinese (so far as I can tell) appears very content (at least in the short-term) to let their less-mobile, off-line countryside brethren have whatever bread and circuses the Beijing media pipeline pumps into their TV’s and a.m. radios. The last thing the new middle class wants is a revolution of the Chinese proletariat, or plebiscites that could hazard the semi-illiterate majority derailing 30+ years of progress. Media works just fine in China – for most of the Chinese, most of the time. And as for the Party’s literal or figurative pistol-whipping of the “troublemakers”, I say: Most of them get what they deserve. But that's none of my business, really.

Now, I hope I never claimed or suggested that the Party has the support of the people tout court. What I have said and what I do maintain is that the flourishing of the Party requires only (a) that the Party remains responsive (or: seems to remain responsive) to the basic needs of the majority, and (b) that the Party shows always that things are getting better – economically and socially - and are not getting worse. Note also that the content of that “better” is a Chinese “better”, not an American "better"; and while there is some overlap, these value-sets are not identical. (Remember: We're talking about a culture where parents of unmarried children meet in parks and public plazas with placards advertising marriagble youth.) If you or anyone else is claiming that the Chinese want from each other (in their communities) and from each other (in their society) the same things Americans want, you are mistaken.

And what, Mr Kerr, do you “love” about China? Let’s examine this.

What can one reasonably say to "love" about a country? I address this issue towards the end of "Postexilic (4)".

1. "I love their history" – well, surely only the good parts. Unless one means “I love reading and studying history”, and in that case the object of one’s affection is the documented history of nation/people X, and the pleaure of becoming acquainted with it and understanding it; but this kind of love, surely, could not justify anything other than the perpetuation of X’s history (and hopefully: only the good parts!) and the renewal of works of history to peruse and enjoy.

2. "I love their culture" – ok, well, which parts? The culture of footbinding? The culture of eating dogs? The culture of xenophobia, and racism?:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/01/lou-jing-chinese-talent-show

http://blog.foolsmountain.com/2009/10/21/lou-jing-racism-gone-wild/

http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/lou-jing-faces-racism-tv-talent-show-china-over-skin-color-2542856.html

How very curious! Why are Chinese netizens heroes when they blog/post things that accord with liberal Western sentiments, but are invisible, beyond reproach, or simply unintersting when they - China's hoi bloggeroi - reveal the darker side of the Chinese psyche? It was odd that when Louisa Lim reported on the Lou Jing case for NPR, she failed to mention how very ugly the good neitzens of China can be. Why is that? (She also did not mention the www.chinasmack.com article -- which now a broken link, and which I'm sure informed and seeded her report.)

So “love” of China cannot mean history, or culture simpliciter – not without extensive qualification. So perhaps you mean the people – you love "the Chinese people".

But surely, not all of them – I imagine you would exclude the thugs and burglars and bandits and rapists and knife-wielding psychopaths who carve up school children. I am sure you would have no more love for a Chinese murderer than you would for a Dutch or Swiss or Canadian murderer, so, no – you do not love these Chinese. How about the Chinese snakeheads, who manage the children forced to sell flowers, the dirty tots who grab your knees and thrust roses into your closed hands? How about the Chinese who run rings of teenaged female prostitutes, and ship them around the country, from brothel to sauna to KTV? How about the Chinese merchants of human bondage? No, not these Chinese either. (Yikes! Some of these folks seem even worse than normal, well-adjusted Party members!)

No, I say the love you profess must be the love one has for the generalized and idealized Chinese - the Exotic Oriental Other-- because otherwise, there is nothing distinctly Chinese that is especially loveable that would not be shared by all love-worthy people, whatever their citizenship or ethnicity.

If you have found that the Chinese uniformly have some especially lovable trait that no other people has, and that they have this trait on account of being Chinese, please tell me. But I doubt such a trait exists, because, like everywhere else, there are Chinese arsonists, rapists, paedophiles, and cutpurses. Indeed, China has Chinese CCP members -- and they are intrinisically not lovable, right? How could you love a people who are oppressed, and are willing to suffer oppression rather than die honorably in noble revolt? (Answer: Perhaps there's less oppression and dissatisfaction and discontent than our media and our busybody academics say there is. Either that, or most Chinese are cowardly -- and if so, is being cowardly a loveable characteristic? One cannot have it both ways, I'm afraid.)

I suspect that what you love about China is how you feel when you are in China --- how you feel about yourself when you are in China. That, sir, I totally understand, for I too love being in China. I am at my best and I am happiest when I am there, and - for whatever reason - I feel like I am at home there. I love being in China. I love many things and some people in China.

And I am sure, too, that – though I love (some) of the food, (many) of the people, (much) of the culture, (most) of the philosophy, and do love to read Chinese history (etc.) – that it is still nonsense for me to say that I love China --- because: there is nothing to which that affective state ['loving China'] can attach itself without so much qualification that, eventually, there is nothing for the "I love China" to stick to. In everyday language, yes, sure: You love China. I love China. But in fact the phrase is... meaningless. And if it is not meaningless, then, it is nonetheless impossible to infer or to deduce from the fact that "I love China" any obligation to interfere practically with matters of state in a nation that I am not a legal citizen of.

Perhaps, Mr Kerr, I "love" China as you do, perhaps as much as you do; but though China is my adoptive (second-) home, and the land in which I find so much of what I do love, and love deeply, I do not confuse my love of China (etc.) with the reality that she is not my native land, that she needn’t embrace me as I embrace her, and that when I am there I am there as a guest of the Chinese people and their current version of (unloved) Chinese officialdom.

I reprimand mainland friends and colleagues when they reveal their racist sentiments; but I have not yet found that it is my duty to correct “Chinese racism”. I try to be civil and courteous according to those Western norms I know best; but I am unaware of any obligation to or warrant for Westernizing “the Chinese”, or encouraging them to embrace Western norms of civility as I understand them.

Nor, for that matter, would I let my child piss on a metropolitan sidewalk, or ride in my black Audi A-6 with her head out of the sunroof like a Golden Retriever, or detonate commerical-grade recreational ordnance on the sidewalk she just pissed on. (Normal Chinese behaviour.) I wouldn’t keep a caged bird. (Ditto.) I wouldn’t drive drunk, or force dinner guests to gan’bei themselves into a coma. (Ditto.) I wouldn't keep a mistress, or pay for her affections with a studio apartment, a Mini Cooper, LV bags and Lancome skincare products. (Ditto.) I wouldn't wait until my son is 11 years-old before I have him submit to a circumcision -- and then tell him that whacking-off is bad for his health. (Ditto.) I wouldn't force my post-partum wife to suffer a month of old-style yue'zi on account of the fact that my mother and the local witchdoctor said it would be good for her. (Ditto.)

Aye -- there are a million things I find questionable about many Chinese norms, and about the Chinese lifestyle; but I know that these are tethered somewhere, somehow, to a suite of values, and that some of these are very different from my own. Given that - and given that I am a guest in their country anyway, with no legal right to be there save at with their permission – well, how could it be my business to... reform them? ...even if I love" them, and want the best for them? The Chinese allow me to live and work in their country because I have some valued skill or skills; they do not allow me to live in their country because they want or need lessons in Jack Cameron's understanding and interpretation of Western etiquette or Western morals, or Dr Cameron's lectures on political theory.

Political reform – and reform of rights to self-expression – require adjustment to the wild and weird matrix of values that make the Chinese so different from Americans, and perhaps from Westerners generally. The Chinese cannot be an open, democratic society (like the US) and still be the same Chinese --- it doesn’t work that way. You can't take away their bao'zi and let them eat it too.

And anyway, I’d much, much rather see interloping, know-it-all, paternalistic Americans lobbying aggressively for, say, Chinawide legislation requiring Chinese motorists to keep their children in approved child-safety seats, and policies that strictly prohibit the little emperor from crawling on mama’s unbelted lap while baba texts his mistress and dodges jaywalkers, or enforcement of rules regarding the detonation of fireworks in densely-populated urban areas.

But that's not my fight, even though I'm guided by the very best of intentions --- as well as the wish not to be run down by a black Audi A-6, fragged by commercial-grade fireworks, or witness to a toddler having his head turned into cranial quince on the windshield of baba's black Audi A-6. (Does that make me selfish?). Somehow, though, none of that is as exciting as "stopping CCP corruption", or "stemming the tide of Han encroachment upon Chinese Turkestan", or "freeing 'dissidents'", is it? And anyway, I don't think the majorAmerican thinktanks and charitable trusts offer grants and fund research for such unsexy things.

Misunderstanding -- no, wait. Sorry. That's 'Ms'.

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:08:14 -0400

(This is the anecdote with which I close "Tongue Ties That Bind", and it has recently been suggested that it was the only part of the overlong post worth reading. Herewith, edited. JC)

During the SARS crisis, a friend of mine - a tall, good-looking rake, a native son of Philly who at the time was just beginning to shuffle-off his China-illiteracy - entered a Japanese-style KTV-lounge/brothel in the Jiading District of Shanghai, looking for a drink and someone to wash it down with. When the pandemic-scare reached fever-pitch, this particular KTV-lounge/brothel was one of the few bars that remained open. He and I usually drank at the Yi Fan ("One Sail") Bar, which along with just about every other hostelry, massage parlour, and little restaurant had suspended operations.

This is the story he told me. It might be true.

My friend walks in to the lounge and discoveres immediately that all female service staff - who doubled as the female service staff - were, because of the SARS-scare, wearing surgical facemasks. (The irony.) The waitress/prostitute brought a drink list to my friend, and asked him if he would like a kou'jiao ["KO-JOW" = facemask]. As noted, my friend was then studying Chinese languages via comparative anatomy, and so he knew that this phrase (or one sounding very very much like it) meant 'oral sex' -- although it is rumoured that back in 2001 not many mainland Chinese men performed oral sex on their female partners, and so kou'jiao pretty much just meant 'blow-job'.

"Shen'me?", he asked in joyous surprise -- "What?"

"Kou-jiao, kou-jiao" she replied, elongating each vowel and enunciating each syllable great care. She pointed to the facemask she was wearing, but it seemed to him that she was gesturing to her mouth. Given the nature of the establishment in question, this was sufficient to confirm for him that he did indeed hear what he thought he heard, which was what he'd hoped he heard.

"Zhe'li ma? Xian'zai ma?" -- Here? Now?

"En -- shi 'a!" -- Yup.

"O,...na hao ba -- hai you yi ping Lao'hu'pai pi'jiu" -- Er, ok -- and I'll have a bottle of Tiger Beer with that.

She returned a few moments later with the beer and the facemask. Here now the remainder of the dialogue, as he told it to me, in English only:

[She attempts to hand him the facemask] "Oh, thanks -- I don't want this".

"But, you said you wanted a kou'jiao".

"Oh, yeah -- so, I need to wear this?"

"You said you wanted a kou'jiao".

"Yes, er, well, ok".

[He takes a long sip of his beer; she stretches out her hand, which is holding the bill, and continues speaking]

"Ok, do you mind paying for this now?"

"No -- no problem." He looks at the slip -- RMB35 for the beer. That's not too bad, he thinks -- but she hasn't written-up the blowjob. Wondering what that will cost, he considers for a moment whether the sex workers in this joint bill separately for parts and labor.

"What about the kou'jiao?"

"It's free".

"So... then... I need to wear this, right?"

"Only if you want to".

But I want the kou'jiao.

"Crazy! I just gave you the kou'jiao!"

Apparently it was at this point that she worked out that there was a bit of... misunderstanding. She burst into a fit of laughter that her facemask couldn't conceal, and called over a coworker to explain to her what just transpired. At least that's what he thinks happened, since the two young women spoke rapidly and in a local dialect. As he tells the story, they found him so lovely and charming that they both sat and drank with him.

Later that evening, he claims, one of them gifted him a free facemask.

Tongue Ties That Bind: On Cadres and Cunning Linguists

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:08:16 -0400

A river severs Northern shore and Southern land;

Between my home and me but a few mountains stand.

"Moored at the Ferry", Wang Anshi

re: http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=36722&tx_ttnews[backPid]=7&cHash=c2040e95b2

(Thanks to Bridgewater State University [nee College] Professor WKT for sharing this with his Facebook friends. This comment will make sense only for those who have followed the story and/or read the above hyperlinked news item.)

* * *

I am unaware of any efforts on the part of the Party to stamp-out topolects. To the contrary: television programs in local topolects - Hangzhouhua, Shaoxinghua, etc. - are increasingly popular, and seem to have tacit if not explicit government support. In Zhejiang Province, topolect programming has strong government support, precisely because it helps keep the Mandarin-challenged, work-a-day subclass of local rustics connected to the Party's media teat.

Then there's this: Central- and local-government initiatives, often promulgated by ministries of culture and tourism (and very often promoted at the specific behest of Beijing) seem actively and consciously to celebrate local cultures, not stifle them. This is in part because Beijing is scrambling to have just about everything under the Mainland sun listed on UNESCO's 'intangible cultural heritage' register. Promotion of distinct local cultures - their local food, beverages, folkways and handicrafts - serves to bring tourism and therefore money into areas that have not benefitted much from trickle-down enconomics with Chinese characteristics; and when it is "green tourism", it helps communities recover from or temper industrial sprawl and its typically environmentally-taxing creep.

Local-languages are part of this: they're colorful, keep the tourist experience authentic, and enable many rural and sub-urban have-nots to sustain their communities (and maintain their margin-of-existence livelihoods) without the language skills typical of better-educated Chinese citizens. The Party is also very keen to ensure that those still waiting to move up from a bicycle to an electric scooter - or: from an outdoor well to indoor plumbing - feel like they are still valued members of the Da Zhongguo family. Any attempt to rub-out a topolect (nevermind a language-group as large as a dialect) would be seen as a classist move, and would be strategically ill-advised. (Zhongnanhai isn't that foolish.) Celebrating local topolects also serves as public evidence that China can achieve harmony despite its domestic heterogeneity. (It also "proves" there is flourishing domestic heterogeneity. This is of increasing importance, since the Chinese government is often on the hot-seat for steamrolling or "Han"-icising ethnic minorities.)

Now, it may be that - because of Hong Kong's unique and complicated colonial heritage - Beijing from time to time likes to take the cat out of the bag and wave it at the HKSAR, or rattle the sabre with a tad more gusto than usual; but that's in part because the Hong Kongnese tend sometimes to get more excitable than other PRC populations --- one might say they sometimes flare-up out of proportion to the nature and ammount of accelerant Beijing sprays them with.**

'Linguistic centralization' is an unfortunate phrase. (Western anti-Party propaganda again?) The people of China have, as does any polity anywhere, a legitimate interest in promulgating a national language -- even if it is 'artificial' (Waldron's term -- though putonghua isn't 'artifical in the way the Esperanto or Vulcan is.) China's economic boom, to the extent that it relies in large part upon export-manufacturing, requires or at least benefits from businessmen in Heilongjiang being able to speak effectively with merchants in Guangzhou, who can speak effectively with a logistics company in Chengdu, who can liase with a Mandarin-speaking French-national. As there is no evidence that the Party wants to wipe Cantonese/Yu-derivative topolects from the face of the Earth (or from the Middle Kingdom) - and no good reason why it would want to - the very worst that can be said is: from time to time national interest requires governments to make decisions that are unpopular locally -- something that sometimes is an ineliminable part of state-building, and often a necessary part of state-stabilization. Requiring French in Canda, or pushing Spanish in the American classroom, may or may not threaten the traditions (if not interests) of Anglophones; but (statuatory) bilingualism in both nations is, or may be, highly-desirable. What we are witnessing, now, in Hong Kong is not linguistic genocide.

That's why it will be unfortunate if Hong Kong pride becomes stubbornness: this is indeed exactly the kind of case where ugly push can become uglier shove faster than the beat of a hummingbird's wings. Foreigners with academic-only interest in China (read: educated voyeurs) need really not to let their visceral antipathy for the CCP interfere with their critical-thinking skills; and if non-nationals are going to weigh-in on these sorts of things, I hope they will (ahem) dare to get 'truth from facts'. (I always forget -- who said that? William James or Mao Zedong?)

And anyway, just because a progressive think-tank like The Jamestown Foundation says it doesn't have a political agenda doesn't mean... it doesn't. Those who have limited command of Chinese languages, nota bene: the inset photograph of the man holding the sign "I love Guangdonghua" seems suspiciously propagandistic. Unless I am misunderstanding the point both of the sign and the photograph's explanatory caption, "Wo ai guangdonghua" sounds in Mandarin the same as "stew winter melon [dong'gua]". I guess it sort of does. But if someone told me "wo ai guangdonghua" I would not for a moment think s/he was taking about cooking gourds, and so the joke is on the sloganeers.

There's a big difference between a facemask and a oral sex ("kou'jiao"), between the rare equine species the grass mud horse and fuck your mother! ("cao ni ma"), and "shooting an airplane" and, well, shooting an airplane ("da fei'ji "-- a handjob.) One rarely hears any of these phrases and confuses it with something homonymic but semantically improbable.*** Apparently, the photo was selected for placement in this news item because the clean-cut, educated-looking middle-aged man is an exemplary representative for the protesters -- and golly, there's even English there for all the lao'wai (foreigners) who enjoy seeing "the people" stand-up to the Party.

That was sweet of them. Guess they knew the photo would be running in places where people don't read Chinese characters -- or the traditional characters favoured in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

* The Shanghainese pride in their distinct versions of the Wu dialect is legendary, and throughout Zhejiang Province (the only region of China I know with any real intimacy) "tu'hua" is solidly the lingua franca.

Parties to this discussion should note, too, that 'Shanghainese' spoken on the 'dong' side of the Huapu differs (Pudong, a.k.a. Pudong Development Zone, "East of the Huangpu River" -- the bit opposite The Bund with the Oriental Pearl Tower and a clot of steel and glass architecture that looks like a Godzilla movie set) from that spoken on the 'xi' side (Pu'xi -- "West of the Huangpu River" -- the original, or, main part of the city of Shanghai) --- one can even find variations between old timers from up by The Bund and the coffin-dodgers down in Hongqiao District. Huzhounese and Hangzhounese - though neighbors whose respective cities have urban centers not more than 45 minutes apart by car - speak rather different topolects, as do Ninbgonese from Ningbo Central and Ningbonese from Yuyao (etc., etc.).

The point is (and I'm not 100% sure Mr Waldron [cit supra] makes this crystal clear) that Cantonese is indeed one of the major dialects (Yu), but up and down the Mainland many millions of ordinary Chinese are not speaking putonghua as their first or default language. The "Mandarin or Cantonese?" bifurcation is far too simple, and is misleading.

** Remember, always, that the Qing lost HK because of the nasty policies and gunboat diplomacy of the British Empire. (The Queen would have had Zhoushan, too, China's largest archipelago, which is off the coast of and is administratively part of Zhejiang Province; but the imperial court said no to that one -- see Hanes/Sanello The Opium War.) Beijing is more than a little sensitive about Hong Kong, and one can hardly blame them for that: Rightly or wrongly, it was embarassing to many Chinese to have a colony of white-folk on their doorstep, given that the colony was among the spoils of very unjust policies and imperfectly justifiable wars. Many mainlanders, too, seem to have mixed feelings about their southern brothers, and more than a few don't mind Beijing yanking on Hong Kong's choke-collar now and then. Western media will likely sidestep this fact, but my experience is that many mainland Chinese nationals are either indifferent to requring a more putonghua-accessible Hong Kong, or are in favor of it. This being an instance of Beijing actually promulgating policies that are consistent with the public will and majority sentiment, we can expect this detail not to be discussed in our quality press.

*** Having said that: During the SARS crisis, a friend of mine - a tall, good-looking boulevardier who at the time was shuffling-off his China-illiteracy - entered a Japanese-style KTV/lounge/brothel establishment in the Jiading District of Shanghai. It was one of the few places open when the pandemic-scare reached fever-pitch. This is the story he told me. It might be true.

All female service staff (who are also the female servicing-staff) were wearing surgical facemasks. (The irony.) The waitress/escort brought a drink list to my friend, and asked him if he would like a kou'jiao [facemask]. As mentioned my friend was studying Chinese languages via comparative anatomy, and so he knew that this phrase (or one sounding very very much like it) meant blow-job.

"Shen me?", he asked in joyous surprise -- "What?"

"Kou- jiao, kou-jiao" she replied, pointing at her facemask and enunciating each syllable with great care. It seemed to him however that she was actually gesturing to her mouth; and given the nature of the estabishment in question, this was sufficient to confirm that he did indeed hear what he thought he heard, what he hoped he heard.

"Zhe'li ma? Xian'zai ma?" -- Here? Now?

"En -- shi 'a!" -- Yup.

"O,...na hao ba -- hai you yi ping Lao'hu'pai pi'jiu" -- Er, ok -- and I'll have a bottle of Tiger Beer with that.

She returned a few moments later with the beer and the facemask. (The remainder of the dialogue, as he told it to me, in English only:)

"Oh, thanks -- I don't want this".

"But you said you wanted a kou'jiao".

"Oh, yeah -- so, I need to wear this?"

"You said you wanted a kou'jiao".

"Yes, er, well, ok".

[He takes a long sip of his beer. She continues speaking:]

"Ok, do you mind paying for this now?"

"No -- no problem." He looks at the slip -- RMB35 for the beer. "What about the kou'jiao?"

"It's free".

"So... then... I need to wear this, right?"

"Only if you want to".

But I want the kou'jiao.

"Crazy! I just gave you the kou'jiao!"

Apparently it was at this point that she worked out that there was a bit of... misunderstanding. She burst into a bit of laughter that her facemask couldn't conceal, and called a coworker over to explain to her what just transpired. At least that's what he thinks happened, since the two young women spoke rapidly and in a local dialect. As he tells the story, they found him so lovely and charming that they both sat and drank with him.

Later that evening, one of them gifted him another free facemask, he claims.

PRC's CNN in NYC: 怕不怕？

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:07:06 -0400

re: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/7/12/can-china-gain-journalistic-credibility/what-chinese-reporters-face

Note: I have worked with - and, as a fully-contracted employee, for - a mainland Chinese television network since 2006. I am currently a contracted consultant with the same entity. What I suggest herein resonates with what I have stated elsewhere. I attemped to post this comment on-line, in the comments section to this thread (supra). The attempt was not unsuccessful. I'm not sure why.

Edited 13 July 2010, at 7.20pm.

* * *

The channel for which I work - Zhejiang Radio & Television Group's "International Channel" - began broadcasting to overseas viewers in the summer of 2006. I was recruited to join the channel in August of that year, having been poached from Intouch Zhejiang magazine, of which I was executive managing editor for about a year, and in which capacity I helped launch Hangzhou Weekly newspaper, the first (and only) English-language weekly newspaper in Zhejiang Province. The latter was and is published in cooperation with and under the auspices of the Hangzhou municipal ministry of news and infromation; the latter was obliquely supported by the provincial level of the same organs, and is currently operating under the umbrella of the That's brand of publications. That's was founded in the late 1990's in Shanghai by British national Mark Kitto, and remained under his control until he was nudged away from the helm by larger competing interests. (Google him.)

Word was, as I heard it at the time, that the ZRTVG International Channel was cooked-up in response to a top-down directive from Beijing, which offered incentives for regional networks that expanded internationally-broadcast programming aimed at the Chinese diaspora. It seems that Beijing was concerned that the hua'qiao ("Overseas Chinese", pronounced "hwa chow") community was partial to Taiwanese programming, and that such mainland programming as existed was failing to win (or keep) mainland hearts and minds. There was the fact, too, that hua'qiao communities tend often to maintain strong links with their hometowns, and abroad tend also to stay close-knit. For that reason, it was hoped that demographic-specific programming (from Zhejiang, for overseas Zhejiangnese) would be attractive to at least two categories of viewer: homebound housewives of Chinese businessmen (who themselves have little time for television), and the greying parents who have at last been brought over to the new world from China. The other (but not the last) item on the agenda was the children of Overseas Chinese. These may or may not speak the local topolect of the parents, but they probably do not speak Mandarin (pu'tong'hua), and generally know little about their ancestral homeland. Hopes were that our limited amount of bi-lingual (English and Mandarin) programming would strike a chord with the kids, who - growing-up overseas - were rapidly losing touch with their Chinese roots. (This, by the way, is something Beijing is very worried about: the assimilation of overseas Chinese youth, who grow up French, Dutch, Australian, etc., marry outwith the Chinese community, and cease to support - ideologically, or otherwise - the development of China.)

Two weeks ago, in late June of this year, I met for the first time with the new head of programming for our channel -- Mr G. Mr G stands about six-two, and the morning we met was dressed like the Land's End model he more or less resembles. His English is excellent - impressively so - and he's seen more of the United States than I have. I liked him immediately, and he seems to have disliked me less than many of my colleagues.

I asked Mr G directly if my understanding of our programming brief and our agenda is as I had long understood it to be. He took one of my Double Happiness cigarettes, nodded, and commented with admirable frankness. Yes, he said, I'm half right. "But we are trying to make excellent programming that will compete with other Chinese international channels, and be excellent in our own right. This is our biggest challenge".

It is a big challenge --- and it is CNC World's challenge, too. Our channel draws very little in ad revenue. Funding comes mainly from the state. That doesn't mean that we are at the beck and call of Beijing, but it does mean that we have to take programming opportunities as they come. Let me explain.

The show I first co-hosted was named "Made in Zhejiang" -- you can find some episodes on-line (www.cztvworld.com). We visited Zhejiang-based manufacturers and companies, and told their story -- how scrappy bosses pulled themselves up out of obscurity (and often poverty) and founded multi-million dollar entities. We toured factories, spoke to workers, and from the shop floor to the executive suite captured their story on professional-grade videotape. It was good copy, and to be perfectly honest the weakest link in the chain was usually me.

Funding for the program was limited, but we had all the right green lights, and the government liked what we were doing. We were celebrating the commercial achievments of China's first generation of entrepreneurs, and in so doing we were helping to put a good spin on "Made in China" and build the Zhejiang brand. Each episode was a 20-minute epic that began with adversity and ended with triumph, a tale of scientific development with Chinese characteristics.

We didn't need government officials telling us how to tell the story, or how not to probe factory workers about wages, work conditions, and accommodation arrangements -- though, frankly, we weren't in the horror-story sweatshops anyway, and in any event our fluffiest show was still more honest than any given episode of Ghost Hunters. Almost all of our "directors" were under 30, and they did everything from direct shooting to write the script, slap together a rough storyboard, and oversee editing -- most in fact did the editing themselves. The directors were proud of these entrepreneurs, and admired them; they also loved (or at least liked) their job.

Work in a Chinese television station is about as good as it gets in China. If you're a director, host, or camera operator, you get to travel, sample local cuisine, and stay in decent hotels. Salaries aren't high, but your business cards are cool, and there's an ample ammount of freedom -- and don't let the "media studies" wags tell you otherwise. In our unit, we had 20-something-year-old directors running small crews and hobnobbing with China's millionaires. One of our youngest directors pulled a few national awards, ensuring that her rise up the ladder would be smooth. (I was the host of some of these award-winning shows. She didn't share the honors.) We were all on a long leash, and supervision for "Made in Zhejiang" consisted of little more than getting approval for the subject of the program, and a screening of first-edits by our channel's bosses. Nice work if you can get it.

And that's Chinese media: You know what side your bread is buttered on, and only the very stupid throw it on the carpet butter-side down.

Viewers liked "Made in Zhejiang": each episode was a tribute to Zhejiang, and her people. Station brass liked it: it was good copy, cheap to make, and people actually watched it. The government liked it: it showed the Chinese as a commerically-astute, hard-working, innovative and enterprising people, pulling themselves, their families, their communities, and their country up by the bootstraps. The fact that we were state-funded seems not to have compromised what we did and how we did it."Win win", as the Chinese love to say.

* * *

Coverage of China by American media (perhaps Western media generally) does indeed seem hostage to a small number of presuppositions and prejudices about the Chinese state, the people, and the relationship between the latter and the former; and when combined with the standard strategic journalistic modus operandi (viz, shock when one can be credibly shocking, otherwise inform in a way that conforms to reader/viewer expectations), the picture of China and her people tends to be distorted, in ways that have long since become predictable: The simmering discontent of the Chinese people for their unelected leaders - now bubbling, now boiling, but always warmer than room temperature - is almost always the ideological mis en scene. This paradigm has long since passed its best-by date, and China's new international news agency might serve to correct this unfortunate distortion. We need however to know more about the average mainland Chinese journalist.

I have worked with Chinese journalists, and for a while lectured to bilingual broadcasting majors at one of China's premiere media and communications universities --- and here's something participants in this discussion need to know: If you're mainland Chinese, and are training for (or aspiring to) a career in journalism (or on-air broadcasting), then you know from the earliest days that you are going into marketing, not news. That is the basic rule - one could say, the only rule - that undergraduates, under-studies, and interns in the empire's media industry need at all times to remember; and they tend not only to remember this rule but embrace it. Buttered-side: up. Don't drop it.

What then becomes of China's "real" writers and journalists? The investigators and whistle-blowers, the diggers, the question-askers? Silenced? Marginalized? Ah, there's the rub. The problem here is in the way this question is phrased, and in the assumptions inherent in it.

In the West, we tend to associate "real journalism" with grit -- with tough-got information that either conforms to and confirms our fears (e.g., corruption documented, demonstrated, and exposed), or surprises us (corruption discovered where it wasn't expected). There's a blood trail (literally or figuratively), and someone's about to have his head laid upon the block (literally or figuratively). Great. "Good news" is viewed with suspicion (and is called propaganda), "community affairs" stuff is denounced as "filler" (unless the community affair is the take-down of the serial killer living next door), while bad news makes for good copy. Media reform in China has given readers/viewers more bad (and therefore: "good") news copy about their country, but local news networks are as likely as not to have features that aim to entertain, to edify, or to support Party works. (And what's wrong with that?)

The diggers and exposers aren't really mavericks, or martyrs,though: They are rule-breakers, who for whatever reason calculated (often wrongly) that the benefits of breaking rank outweigh the consequences, saw some value in getting butter on the rug. They're not "real journalists" who got caught (because: China-style "news" isn't really "news"); they're grand-standers who violated the trust of the state-run marketing agency that employed them.

That's where China is in 2010, and that's where it is likely to stay for a while. Get over it. Think of it this way: I don't want the kid making my burger to get all avant garde and Chef Ramsey on my Big Mac, and neither does McDonalds. (You probably don't want it either.) I know where to go for my gourmet grease, and I want my Big Mac to be a Big Mac. And that, more or less, is the situation with China's government-managed news agencies: billions and billions are served --- happily. Fancy some variety? Quality? Novelty? Nutrition? Go elsewhere.

A former student of mine (she graduates next year) is on the fast-track to a brilliant career in international communications. She recently interned at the Xinhua bureau in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, where she helped facilitate Chinese to English translations. We met earlier this month when I was back in Zhejiang on business (I lived there from 2002 to 2009), and she said that she won't be training her career crosshairs on Chinese media organizations. The "management" of content - the adjustments, rearrangements, tactical reconfiguration of details - was too much to bear. No more Xinhua for her confused hua xin.

But don't mistake her for a potential ally in the war against China's state media machine. She's an idealistic 20 year-old Anglophile, born to well-heeled parents, slightly beautiful, and collosally naive. She has a long list of Western friends, and has visited Socal and Hawaii, and in the words of a colleague of mine, she "has the world's oyster by the string". The brass ring for which she is now reaching is corporate communications, and a few Western multinationals are already in her sights. She didn't have the spine for Xinhua, but she said that doesn't diminish the importance or value of the agency. The masses need that kind of news, she confided; those like her can read The New York Times (etc.) on-line. "Between these two extremes, I can work out what's really going on". A good lesson for us all.

Will the new CNC World agency be at least slightly propagandistic? Of course. Why shouldn't it be? Rather than engage them with full-throttle a prioristic dubiety, however, Americans ought to view this new portal to information (and opinion) with at least as much (but no more) circumspection and suspicion as they do Fox News, left- or right-slanted periodicals, and our nation's leading broadsheets. In our hemisphere, market forces and reader/viewer demographics channel (and at times determine) copy content no less than do Party apparatchiks over in the PRC. This is something my idealistic former student - and many like her, both there and here - have yet to grasp.

Mr G and I are in agreement that Fox News is both very entertaining, and disturbingly undignified. Their programs are slick, well-produced, and slightly quirky at times. They have an agenda, and they push it. They have perfected the commodifcation of "news" and its presentation as a form of entertainment, and if their version of American is rarely mine, stopped clocks have still the virtue of being right twice daily. At least you know where you stand with Fox. The professional media man in me loves their packaging, their flow, and their reach. The philosopher in me worries about their impact upon our less-reflective citizens.

But then again, I'm American, and so I'm right to worry about, say, the surely noxious influence of the ravings of Glen Beck.

As for CNC World: bie pa. Fear not. Let Zhongnanhai run Xinhua, run CNC World, run all Chinese media agencies and outlets. We'll still have that edgy, gritty, soccer mom and Chardonnay propaganda from NPR to help balance our distortions.

Postexilic: Further Scribbles from the Middle Kingdom (4)

Thu, 1 Jul 2010 11:07:59 -0400

Wednesday 30 June 2010

The heavy rains would come later, and when they did, lightning reflected in the glass and steel of new buildings, and thunder rumbled like the empty belly of an angry god. But the morning began with a searing hot sun -- sharp, hurtful, sticking into you like a bundle of needle-fine rays reflected through a dirty magnifying glass. It was a welcomed change.

I walked to the Starbucks on Hushu Nan [South] Road, three klicks or so from the hotel. The main entrance is at the periphery of a small plaza - a plazette? - that stands between two clean modern buildings, and at the mouth of the Hong Shi residential compound. "Hong Shi" means "red stone", and toddler-high san serif letters - something like Arial Bold - on the margins of the plazette spell it out in English. The 'N' is backwards.

I'm sitting in the sun, working on my Guan'zi, hoping my skin clears up before I see my girl again --- a few shaving nicks, a stubborn ingrown hair, bad tweasers, tropical humidity, and my chin looks like its been nibbled by a weasel with gingivitis. In the mornings I patch it up with calamine lotion as best I can. It gives me a look that seems to frighten the natives, though I think I did that before I applied chalky pink primer to my fissog.

A friendly voice, my old friend "Dugal", calls my name -- he's walking out of Starbucks carrying some kind of overpriced juice drink with expensive proprietary packaging. Dugal and I have known each other for most of this decade, and in years past we've had some fun. We met for the first time one night on the wrong side of midnight in a tacky overpriced franchise cafe/restaurant in the center of Hangzhou, he with a girl he just met and me with a buddy I now hardly know. I was trying to keep him from assaulting a native with whom push had come to shove and who'd just reached for the dull blunt-tipped knife that is the least non-lethal component of the meal-service flatware set. Dugal - Scots Algerian, or Algerian Scots, I can't remember - is a DJ, and a painter, who since 2003 has been keeping himself in whisky and acrylics by punting grammar to students at an upscale English language training center. He is possibly one of the most entertaining and humorous people I have met in my life, and already a minor deity in Hangzhou's pantheon of lesser barbarian gods. He is handsome in a way that women seem to find irresistable -- boyish and charming, something in his eyes and in the alignment of his jaw nonetheless has him at the threshold of looking downright menacing. Has a short fuse. I'm pretty sure he's nobody's fool.

I didn't recognize him at first. His hair was shorter than I'd remembered, and black wayfarers covered a third of his face. Pleated trousers, oxford shirt buttoned at the cuffs, and black brougues that didn't need buffing --the very figure of a gentleman. We'd not met in over a year, maybe two, and catching up took about an hour. Hangzhou's become quite an all right city to live in, he said, knowing that I know that he was previously not wholly enamoured of the place, and had more than once come close to being repatriated on account of his low boiling point and swift right hook. He cited a few examples of how the provincial capital has improved, and spoke some about his medium-term plans. They're good ones. We confirmed each other's contact details, and shook hands. It was the handshake of good friends, sympathetic friends far from home, meeting after a long absence and knowledegable of the uncertainty of reunion. He left, to teach English to Chinese yuppies. I stayed, to wrestle with 2300 year old Chinese sages.

* * *

"The questions of contemporary time can be exlpained by examining similar questions of the past. The future can be foreseen by doing research on history". Guan'zi

* * *

In the morning, many of the city's older male residents can be seen taking their birds out for a walk. Hours before thousands upon thousands of cars appear on Hangzhou's streets, a number of the city's seniors are taking their birdcages and their captive residents onto hillsides and into parks. It is a charming if puzzling sight, and personally I am undecided as to whether the ritual is unintentionally perverse. Ren or bu ren? Is this The Way of Heaven? I'm not sure. Taking a caged bird into a park seems a bit like having kindergarten-aged kids sit at their desks during recess and watch streaming video of a busy playground.

In May of last year, at the foot of one popular approach to Baochu Hill, a favourite with the white-haired bird men, I had chat with a young scholar who was then in China on some Ivy League junior research grant. It is irrelevant, but I will tell you that she was, and presumably still is, quite pretty, in a way that is both striking and unmemorable, like an LL Bean model. (She'd be flashing a broad smile while carrying one end of an Old Town canoe, and not modeling tartan Polartec pj's.) She was a recentish graduate of a respected and moderately prestigious Boston college, with a boutique degree in something like "Peace, Faith & Justice", and had come to China fresh from an extended stay in India where she'dbeen researching locally-run microfinance initiatives (or something like that). I forget how she got my email address, but seemingly I was recommended to her as someone worth chatting to. I am confident that, by the time our conversation ended, she felt she had been misinformed. The Spring of 2009 was a bad season for me, and I should not wonder if I made the kind of lasting impression that I wish she'd forget.

We talked about China -- our impressions of the country and her people, about Hangzhou, about life here, and where China and her people will be years hence. I just love it here, she said, smiling, tossing a tangle of bright brown locks over her shoulder, and brushing errant bangs over her ear. And what do you love about it, specifically?, I asked.

Oh, just... everything!

Except the food, she added -- that, she said, was taking a while to get used to. It wasn't the healthy down-to-earth fare she had anticipated, and it wasn't agreeing with her. But I love being in China!

And the traffic. That she did not love. She had a bicycle at one point, but quickly thought better of it --- a prudent move. Some figures suggest that, in Hangzhou alone, there are on average 400 newly-registered cars on the road every day. The newspaper I edited (from May-August 2006) reported at the time government figures claiming 30,000 new cars were added to the city's already heavily taxed roadways in May 2006 alone. My interlocutor was wise not to cycle here, and I told her so.

But really, I love China!

Public transportation didn't turn her on too much, though, and she said that she found the buses hot, smelly, and always overcrowded. (Heaven knows how she survived India.) Taxis were the way to go, even though the driver's tended to be surly and impatient.

But China is just...awesome!

Except maybe for the people --- those, she confessed, were starting to get on her wick. The staring, the touching of her hair, the pointing and the giggling, the neverending echo of "lao'wai!" ("foreginer", intrinsically perjorative); the spitting in the street; the parents helping their children to piss on metropolitan sidewalks; the daily incivility, and nagging curiosity. Nice people, you know, but, after a while... I understood, and told her so.

But I mean, it's such an experience! I love China. I will definitely be back!

I'm sure she will be. I forget where she was headed next. We didn't stay in touch.

I'm thinking it was possibly something I said.