Ask not

I was only a kid in primary school, but I vaguely remember the buzz after John F. Kennedy's inaugural address and the famous line that helped pave the way for the creation of the Peace Corps: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."  (A question for my writing buddies. . .would you call this rhetorical trick a "chiasmus" or an "antimetabole"? Is there a difference?)

Who knew that decades later I'd be a white-haired Peace Corps volunteer teaching English on the other side of the planet. Who knew that I'd be asked to celebrate Peace Corps Week by telling some of the stories my Chinese friends most want Americans to hear.

That's what was on my mind when "Bill" and "Eileen" showed up last week to make another batch of jiaozi and to unfurl red paper and set out the calligraphy brushes. "Bill" was about to paint some couplets on the vertical red strips that would later be mounted on either side of my door, couplets extending good wishes for the Chinese New Year to all who enter.

"Bill" first taught me how to grip the calligraphy brush, holding it vertically--pinching it firmly but as if I had an egg cupped in my hand. Although I have learned maybe a couple hundred Chinese characters in recent months, the characters I regularly write look nothing like those that swish off the tip of Bill's brush. Indeed, his characters are masterful, beautiful. 

And he didn't learn them at once. He remembers practicing each one hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. He remembers his teacher beating him if he made a mistake and, because his mother was present at all of his lessons, he would be shamed even more. She would say nothing on the tortured walk home, but once there she would beat him again--unless he fled to his nearby grandmother, begging for her protection. 

"Would you teach calligraphy this way?" I ask. "Yes," he replies. He thinks it's an effective method.

"Eileen" sitting nearby raises an eyebrow, having no doubt been brought up somewhat differently. She learned to make fabulous jiaozi and navigates my kitchen with the same confidence that "Bill" moves his brush. But she learned by watching her mother and father, both of whom love to cook, and then experimenting herself throughout long summers when they were away at work. Her experiments, some wholly unusual, were celebrated, I come to understand. 

While she teaches "Bill" her way to cook in my kitchen, "Bill" comments on recent heightened tensions between Japan and China. Knowing only a tiny bit about some of the atrocities committed during the Second Sino-Japanese War, I ask Bill what he wants Americans to better understand.

He proceeds to recount stories still told in his hometown, far north of Beijing, stories about the Japanese invasion in the 1930s. His voice lowers when he describes the thousands of people who had been buried alive in giant pits. Accounts of the infamous "Rape of Nanking" far to the south bring "Eileen" into the conversation. The stories historians tell about Nanking in books and on CDs are similar.  

Japan was hungry for resources in northern China, and its invasion of Manchuria eventually led to all out war. To the south, during the "Rape of Nanking," the Japanese were unmerciful, as this Wikipedia passage suggests:

Over the following six weeks, the Japanese troops committed the Nanking Massacre, commonly known as the Rape of Nanking. The duration of the massacre is not clearly defined, although the violence lasted at least until early February 1938. Estimates of the death count vary, with most reliable sources holding that 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were massacred in this period.
During the occupation of Nanking, the Japanese army committed numerous atrocities, such as rape, looting, arson and the execution of prisoners of war and civilians. The executions began under the pretext of eliminating Chinese soldiers disguised as civilians, and a large number of innocent men were intentionally misidentified as enemy combatants and executed as the massacre gathered momentum. A large number of women and children were also killed, as rape and murder became more widespread.

I don't have to condone the traces of animosity toward the Japanese to understand why it lingers. Consider that China has rarely been an aggressor. It's pretty amazing that China has a "5000 year history," but it's a history largely absent of external aggression. And yet China has suffered at the hands of foreigners--and it has been humiliated repeatedly by the Japanese, particularly in the Second Sino-Japanese War. Westerners may not fully appreciate why the recent conflict over the Daoyu Islands is so charged, what memories it stirs as well as what anxieties it provokes about control over future resources.

I'm not blind to what the US did to Japan and the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so I'm hardly pointing fingers. I'm only trying to understand the Chinese perspective, to understand why current tensions are so loaded with memories and feelings.

I'm grateful that in this politically charged climate there is nothing like art to break some of the tension. Japanese cartoons are enthusiastically enjoyed by the youngest generation of Chinese--and with the cartoons come another way of looking at the world.  Hooray for anime! The Japanese teacher at SWU, an energetic and dedicated young man who speaks Chinese fluently, is beloved by his Chinese students. I am hopeful.

Meanwhile, the Chinese everywhere prepare for the New Year. On the center of the door is an upside down "fu," wishing people good fortune.

Some students mounted these outside my closed kitchen door.

"Bill" had to put his greeting on the door
rather than on either side of the door because
of space problems.