This Generation (7 page)

If a CNN anchor were to bring a hand grenade into China and quietly pull out the pin and blow up a few people, I'm sure that would provoke much less indignation and much less boycotting and much less strident demands for an apology than if he were to say something derogatory about the Chinese people. We can be completely indifferent to the sufferings of so many of our fellow citizens here in China, but we are hypersensitive to criticism by foreigners, and this is all because we are so self-conscious about our image. All
those deaths and injuries, embezzlements and crooked deals here in China—they don't affect our self-image one bit, but those jolts we get from abroad do terrible damage to our big-nation psyche, that mighty aura we like to imagine we project. In an age of peace, love for one's country is nothing more than love for one's own opinion of oneself.

Patriots, please don't try to equate this conflict with the incursion by Anglo-French forces in 1860 or the invasion of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance in 1900 or the occupation by Japan in the last century. If you really think this is an issue of the same magnitude, your reaction suggests you must really be intimidated by the enemy! If you're so convinced that we've lost face, then go and win some face back for us, but just be careful you don't end up losing even more face.

I personally don't feel we have lost face at all. I think that here in China, whether it's a matter of our government or of private individuals, we are just as prone to criticize other countries, and to me it's no big deal if they criticize us and we criticize them, for it's not as though they've launched an armed invasion—all that's happened is that one side suddenly can't afford to get involved. It seems to me that if some other nation was in charge of the passing of the Olympic torch, then, with the exception of our country, where it would definitely pass off without incident, it would be bound to run into protests of one kind or another in other countries—perhaps even more. Along the torch relay course, whether or not the protests are based on the facts or not, whether they amount to insults or not, ultimately all they amount to is the expression of opinion, and we need to be capable of accepting different opinions, even those that distort the facts and are ill-intentioned. We can't go on over-reacting as though we have never met someone who disagreed with us, for that is just too embarrassing.

As our country gets stronger and continues to open up, we are bound to be exposed to many more things that we may find unpalatable, both domestic and foreign, and in the future when we look
back we'll only feel ashamed of the way we once behaved. If you're so convinced that loving one's country is the quintessence of being human, then okay, go ahead and be a patriot, but don't be a Patriot missile. What we can't do is keep appealing for a more pluralistic society here in China, but then, as soon as we hear something negative and hurtful to our self-image, suddenly jump backwards several decades. Otherwise, watch out, or in the end . . .  uh-oh!

June 4, 2008

This year is a year
with many disputes, and our people have accordingly got angry on numerous occasions. Of course, often we can't show anger about things that happen in China, so we never let the chance slip to get angry about things that happen abroad—for that costs us nothing.

When I heard what Sharon Stone said,
⁸
I too felt it was very callous, and I also felt that she had no understanding of the Buddhist concept of karma, because all I saw in the Chinese media were her
lines, “I guess that's karma” and “it was very interesting.” I also saw a widely circulated video clip.

Only later did I read the full text of her remarks in the Hong Kong press and discover that if you look at her actual words we have no reason to be so angry. It's a bit like if the media asked you, “What do you think about the tsunami in Indonesia?” and you answer, “The Indonesians have been very mean to us, and so at the beginning I was very pleased, I thought this was karma. But later I saw the tragic effects of the tsunami, and my friends told me we need to do something, and that made me cry. I realized that my first reaction was completely inappropriate, and this has been a big lesson for me.” And then the next day you find the media quote only your first two lines, that “I was very pleased” and “I thought this was karma.” How would you like that, then?

This way of doing things is, in its own way, quite inhumane. Many media outlets in China quoted only those first two remarks, going out of their way to provoke the indignation of viewers and readers, including myself. We shouldn't attach so much importance to what she said, but we do, because among all the unhappy news reports we have heard recently this is the only one that allows us to vent openly and experience some release. Her exact words no longer seem to matter very much. After the earthquake we cared so much about human lives, saving everyone we could, never giving up even when all possibility of survival would seem to have passed, so why can't we go the extra mile for this foreigner who at least is capable of some self-reflection, instead of treating her as our enemy?

Humanitarianism shouldn't be directed solely at one's own countrymen. Naturally, if disaster strikes here, we should first rescue our own citizens, but a true humanitarian is concerned about all lives, even a dog's life. To be honest, when Japan and Indonesia suffered natural calamities in the past, the thought of karma also occurred to me, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that—when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States, for example, relish and satisfaction were obvious in the headlines covering the story in Chinese mainstream
media. But I very quickly felt that I was wrong, that I shouldn't think that way. Apart from making a donation to the tsunami victims, however, I'm ashamed to say I didn't do anything else. Fortunately, these two countries didn't come out with any “Donor Rankings” and didn't take people to task for not contributing aid. But nonetheless I felt bad about not doing more. So when the earthquake struck Sichuan, I personally visited the disaster zone and did what I could to help. Of course, if I stay at home, people may think I am doing nothing, and if I go to the disaster zone, people may think I am simply making a nuisance of myself, but the fact is that during our eight days in Sichuan we did not make a nuisance of ourselves but helped out a little bit, and we never put on a show for the cameras. When I got back and at last had time to go online, I discovered that people who have time to go online every day directed a great deal of unwarranted abuse at volunteer aid workers like me. Even though this won't change what I do in the future, I have to say I find this disheartening.

In the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake, the worst performance has been by those commentators who keep pointing fingers at others. One minute they want to blacklist so-and-so, the next minute they are cursing someone else's entire family, or exerting moral blackmail on some celebrity or other, or begging for money from some company, and they pretend this is all for a good cause, to benefit the people of the disaster zone. Most telling of all, they themselves are convinced of this.

The proposal to blacklist Sharon Stone, like the Carrefour incident awhile ago, makes me feel that we can't blame Chairman Mao for the Cultural Revolution—our people are just naturally drawn to mindless uproar. The good thing now is that there are some legal restraints on disturbing the peace, now there's a price to pay—even if it's just a hundred yuan, that's enough to scare away more than half these protestors.

As for Sharon Stone, if she'd made only the first half of her remarks, then clearly her head's not screwed on properly and she
fully deserves the roasting she's been given. But the fact is that she made the other remarks too, although you'll find virtually no trace of them in our domestic media. Of course, that's the way people like it: The entertainment news is all about celebrities putting on charity performances for our benefit, after all, and as soon as something like this happens, everybody can enjoy tearing someone to shreds in the name of some lofty principle. If Sharon Stone is a friend of the Dalai Lama, some people say, then that should automatically put her on the blacklist. But then, Jet Li is a friend of the Dalai Lama too. The Dalai Lama has a lot of friends, and some of them are friends of ours, and the most ideal thing—and what would be best for our country—is that the Dalai Lama becomes our friend, so that Tibet could be stable and at peace. But we get furious at the slightest provocation, wanting to blacklist this person, to boycott that business, to rail against such-and-such country's image—do we really think this shows how strong we are?

In the wake of the Sichuan tragedy, the great majority of us have shown generosity, charity, and concern, but after the media's willful manipulation of a faded film icon's comments we suddenly have become fierce and savage, with all our talk of blacklisting and dumping and excommunicating, particularly in this unusual period, when everyone is so overwrought because of the terrible loss of life.

If you browse through the chat room comments Chinese people posted in the past few years about the tsunami in Indonesia and the earthquake in Kobe, you'll find that the bulk of them talk about those events as karma—everywhere you see remarks like “Only six thousand dead, why not six hundred thousand?” Many of us still have a long way to go before we have a truly humanitarian attitude, to refrain from treating others in a way we ourselves would not appreciate being treated, as Confucius once put it. All these Chinese who relished foreign disasters and hailed them as karma and never got around to reflecting critically on their own attitudes—don't they compare poorly to Sharon Stone, who at least had the sense to realize she'd been wrong? We shouldn't be so harsh on others, and so
indulgent to ourselves. I'm actually surprised that people from those other countries didn't make a point of collecting all the hostile comments from our Internet users and use them to stir up sentiment to oppose
us
and boycott
us
. I guess they are just not as cohesive a force as we are and are unable to come out with such a neat message.

A country needs friends, but our people seem to want only friends who can say nice things about us. We should avoid getting into a situation, however, where, when we really need friends, we find that we've boycotted them all and the only foreign friends we're left with are people more shady than we are. Sharon Stone, to be sure, speaks only for herself, and boycotting her doesn't mean we are boycotting the United States. But given the full text of her comments, I don't think she deserves to be condemned in such virulent terms. Our criticism of her is far more extreme than our criticism of the people behind the shoddily built schools and hospitals that collapsed in the earthquake. This demonstrates once again how selective we are in our tolerance of things: We can endure the suffering caused by natural disasters and the bitter fruit of man-made disasters, but what we cannot countenance is foreigners criticizing us. We're a nation that insists on not airing our dirty laundry and we shoulder our burden in the hope of winning other people's praise. When that praise is not forthcoming, the weight of our burden gets dumped on their heads.

What I hope most of all to see is that one day, when a foreigner says something insulting that hurts our feelings, we won't need to have everyone from the highest diplomat to the attendant in the laundromat make a statement about it, and the population at large won't have to all blow their tops off. As I see it, when others take you to task over some practical issue, all you can do is reason with them. If we can manage not to work ourselves into a fit of hysterics and avoid shitting our pants when somebody criticizes us, we'll be doing well.

June 21, 2008

The other day I remarked
that I don't care for the writings of Ba Jin and Mao Dun. Bing Xin, I said, I find quite unreadable. Many literary critics, however, seem to think that a writer's overriding professional duty is to keep the joss sticks constantly burning in front of the idols. So they claim to be scandalized. “You have the gall to scold the great masters!” they gasp. “You insult them, you undermine them, and you pour dirty water on them!”