Blogger’s dilemma

 I’ve become hard to please, at least when it comes to books about China and maybe all non-fiction. I read fellow Columbian Peter Hessler’s River Town long before I had any inkling I’d be walking in his footsteps, a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in a mid-China river town. His book certainly wasn’t boring, but I couldn’t quite understand why it was so well received. Nor could I understand how he could get away with quoting his students’ writing as extensively as he did. (I, no doubt, have a peculiar perspective of such things, having been tortured by so many Institutional Review Board consent forms in my day.) And perhaps I’m just jealous—he was a “China 3” and enjoyed a degree of independence as a writer and traveler that is perhaps more limited for us “China 18s.” More on that in a minute.

I reacted even more strongly to Paul Theroux’s Riding the Iron Rooster, partly because Theroux writes so much more strategically and powerfully—and partly because what he writes so well is so outrageous. If you had only Theroux to go on, you’d think all Chinese people were spitters and hawkers and total philistines. I was unforgiving, even though Theroux wrote over a quarter of a century ago and drew most of his conclusions from his berth on a train, as if that is the way to get to know a people and a culture. But Theroux would be the first to admit that travel writing, his anyway, is essentially autobiographical—and maybe he was less interested in what was outside the window than in his notebook. But again, I find myself jealous. He wasn’t afraid to be rude to anybody or anything.

What would he say if he were less independent, if were, say, in the Peace Corps writing a blog, perhaps monitored on several fronts? And then I remembered! Ah! He was in the Peace Corps! And he was kicked out—long before there were any such things as blogs. And, as if we were in a conversation, I read on and found Theroux justifying his negativity by saying it’s simply too hard for writers to make nice people interesting. He doesn’t deny that decent human beings exist, even if they don’t make good fodder for stories.

So just as I was wondering if you have to be a misanthrope to be an interesting writer, especially about China, I happened to read Mark Salzman’s decades-old review of Theroux’s Riding the Iron Rooster. Salzman nailed the thing that bothered me most: Theroux writes masterfully about “the barren deserts of Mongolia and Xinjiang, the ice forests of Manchuria and the dry hills of Tibet” but not about the Chinese people. He doesn’t seem to know them. This gripe is from a writer who has also written a book about China. Salzman’s beautiful memoir Iron and Silk lightly and tightly describes his experience teaching English in China while pursuing his passion for Kung Fu. It’s delightful reading—and Salzman doesn’t seem to be a misanthrope.

Glad to have my faith in humanity restored a little, I found myself reading Will Schwalbe’s End of Life Book Club (not about China) and suddenly wishing that he could be a little more Therouxish. I’d given the book to my son because, based on reviews, I thought it described the book-loving mother-son relationship we had. But I found myself agreeing with what another reviewer said (wishing I’d read this review first): “Discretion and familial loyalty are fine characteristics . . . But these are not qualities that make for a scintillating memoir. To paraphrase Joan Didion, a writer is always ratting somebody out. A great memoirist, even one moved primarily by love and devotion, must possess a certain amount of ruthlessness — toward himself if no one else. Schwalbe’s book contains little of the lacerating honesty that marks Didion’s recent memoirs of loss.” Hmmmmm.

So here’s the conundrum: how do you aim for some sort of truth, truth that is also wise? Could I—should I—write with more “lacerating honesty” even if I weren’t in the Peace Corps and serving in China, with all those constraints? I’m not sure I could. Frankly, though, I’m not sure that either Didion or Theroux give us lacerating honesty, let alone wisdom, even though they both give us memorable prose.

It’s the biographer’s dilemma, the autobiographer’s dilemma, every creative non-fiction writer’s dilemma. And a blogger's dilemma. To their credit, neither Theroux nor Didion think they can tell us anything other than how “it” appears to them; both admit they’re ultimately, in their notebooks at least, writing about themselves. Didion says, “But our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable ‘I.’” And others, Lynn Bloom among them, see that that implacable “I” as an ethical stance, one that doesn’t pretend to be saying anything other than what “I” think. But what is the writer seeing from that “I” stance? What, for example, is being seen in China?

All I’m doing is keeping a little ole’ blog—but I’m keenly aware that I am in the Peace Corps and serving in China with those constraints—and I’m conscious of the tension between art and non-fiction everywhere—and the tension between regard for loved one’s feelings and unexpressed observations.

Mid-Autumn Festival on JinYun Mountain

. Holidays come with trade-offs. We celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival today with our share of moon cakes, but we will have make up classes on Sunday, followed by a straight week of classes, and another weekend full of classes to make up for the upcoming National Day. So! Ou Yang, Martha, and I figured we better make the best of today's breather while we could. At nine o'clock we found ourselves shoulder to shoulder with dozens of university students waiting for Bus 585, bound for JinYun Mountain, the ridge that lords over all of Beibei. 

We're only halfway up the mountain here, looking down onto Beibei.

Bamboo groves are plentiful all over the mountain.

The noodle and ice cream ladies sell Ou Yang a bottle of warm water.

This family is more interested in relaxing with their tiny dog
than hiking the rest of the way up the mountain.

I admit that I'm surprised I don't witness more accidents, given what might be called free-form driving habits. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured in this motorcycle/car collision at the foot of the mountain.

White hair, white chalk

I thought nothing of the fifth or sixth day of round-the-clock rain, so excited I was to start my own lessons. To be a student again--more than an occasional student! Xiao Kairong had kindly arranged my teaching schedule this term so that all of my classes will be in the afternoon or evening, leaving my mornings free to enroll in a five-day-a-week, four-period-a-day comprehensive Chinese course for foreign students.

Monday morning found me a tad bit disappointed that we were just ushered into a large hall, where I sat shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of foreign students from all parts of the planet. Interesting, though, was which parts of the planet were most heavily represented. There were lots of Koreans and Indians, as I would have found at a similar gathering at home, but also hundreds of Thais, a good many Russians, people from various --stans, and many Africans. The president of the student union, a big, striking man from the Congo dressed immaculately in an all white suit, addressed us in several languages.

I elected to start at the beginning again, partly to build confidence and partly because, at the rate these courses torpedo along, I might be hopelessly behind in just a few weeks if I had enrolled in an intermediate class. Moreover, my tones are bad and my listening is worse. So, there I was, happy to be a conspicuous white haired lady in a beginners' class, along with people from Surinam, Malawi, Vietnam, Korea, Russia, India, and the Congo.

With the rain hitting the glass window and thoughts of other world troubles tentatively far away, I just enjoyed feeling like I'd stepped into a time machine. We stayed put in our brightly-lit classroom, while  three different teachers rotated through, each coming to us--one to teach speaking, one to teach listening, and one to teach reading and writing. Such a fragmented philosophy of language teaching might have struck me as crazy until I was saddled with the job of having to distinguish by one little stroke this character from dozens of look alike characters--or having to distinguish only by tone or context a word from others that sound similar. It takes Zen-like concentration for me, at least, and I need the temporary focus on just this or just that.

Today I was sent to the blackboard along with a chubby guy from Vietnam with orders to write everything we heard the teacher say, her earrings flashing in the light of the overhead projector. As the chalk dust flew,  my nervous classmate slid his eyes over to see what I was writing. He was the one, after all, who had had a devil of a time distinguishing "h" and "k"and had been whacked with a pen every time he made a mistake. It was a friendly enough whack, delivered with giggles, but enough of a whack to send the Russian ladies' eyebrows up. If others found this friendly corporal punishment surprising, they didn't let on. I'm not sure what the Indian thought, the one who delivers every syllable in a monotone. He, too, had received his share of friendly swats. The man from the Congo with a booming voice, conscientious about his role as our class monitor, was chided at one point, "Don't shake your belly!" which he had rubbed for only a second.

The whacker was the littlest and giggliest of the three teachers. Beautiful, immaculately groomed, and otherwise friendly. She gave us her cell phone number and invited us to call her 24-7 with questions about our Chinese. The others, too, eagerly coaxed us along with an fascinating mixture of charm and Chinese teaching methods.

I sit near the window in front and all three teachers tend to start with me--"Pan Jing, . . ." and I have to set the example. It's a good thing I'm doing things that are ridiculously easy for me at the moment, because I'm capable of being a deer in headlights when asked the simplest of questions.

Eventually, though, the rain did turn my thoughts to faraway places, including Boulder, my probable future destination. I have no idea if my family there and my friend (and possible future roommate) who lives in Boulder Canyon are okay. Here's hoping they are.

Those two meta-narratives

Who is Eric Li?

If interested, check out his June 2013 TED Talk , timely for two reasons. One, as one of my fellow teachers noted while we were zooming down Tiansheng Lu to a before-school dinner, TED talks can be lively conversation starters in language classes. Two, we were fuming over the possibility that Congress had already voted to support an air strike in Syria. Someone in the front seat had heard (mistakenly) that it was a fait accompli,  and our Chinese colleague "Sparrow" thought the US could learn a thing or two from the Chinese: resist assuming it has the answer for everyone else's problems. Resist assuming it has some universal moral supremacy. Someone in the back seat said why that was precisely Eric Li's point in a TED talk last summer.

Mind you, in his June 2013 TED Talk, Eric Li was not addressing Obama or an air strike on Syria; rather, he was chastising what he considers Western hubris and the wrong-headedness of imposing Western-style democracies on everyone, whether they want them or not. Also, please bear in mind that none of us in that car is planning to use that particular TED Talk for reasons I could explain later.

In this rhetorically-savvy fifteen-minute or so talk, Eric Li first trashes what he calls two meta-narratives, one the prevailing ideology during the Cultural Revolution (when he was born), and two the prevailing ideology of many Western democracies, each one tracing a linear progression of political systems to the culminating "best one"--whether communism or democracy. The fallacy of both is universalizing a progression that places one and only one system at the top. After saying he had been a Berkely hippie who thought this and that, the venture capitalist proceeds unabashedly to defend China's one-state policy on the grounds that it is characterized by "adaptability, meritocracy, and legitimacy." He somewhat paradoxically calls for plurality of viewpoints about political systems elsewhere while vehemently denying the need for any such thing at home. The venture capitalist doesn't pretend to be defending communism; he is defending the firm grip of a one-party state, which is not quite the same thing.

The speech is fascinating partly because it is slick. He is a gifted orator. His casual tone at the beginning might soften some of those who wouldn't otherwise hear him out. But the speech is full of contradictions and paradoxes, all the more provocative because the issues are so important.

Just days before the vote on the Syrian air strike, I find myself in a curious position, agreeing heartily about some things with people I might take serious issue with at other times on other points. Since when would I align myself with Tea Party members against something Obama wants? And when would I align myself with some of Eric Li's claims, even as I find very problematic some of his other assertions?

And yet, brutal and horrible as the activity is in Syria, I think it would be a grave mistake for the US to intervene. Worse than breaking one's word about a threat, the infamous red line, is assuming that we have the answers for Syria. We don't. And we don't have the prerogative to ignore the will of the UN.

With this, I'll give Eric Li the last word: "If [Western democracies] would spend just a little less time on trying to force their way onto others and a little more on political reform at home, they might give their democracy a better chance. China's political model will never supplant electoral democracy because, unlike the latter, it doesn't pretend to be universal."

Selfish selflessness-or just what is altruism?

I was still wiping the sleep out of my eyes when I read HaiXia's email:

"Would you tell me why do you help others who are strangers even if they are foreigners? If some people say that you doing good things to people because you want to get praises and you are selfish, is it true? If it is not true, how do you look on they?"

Of course, we're all selfish devils. The whole human race. But, still, I was pretty sure I knew where Haixia was coming from, what the project is she's working on, and why she suddenly found herself questioning the very thing she intends to advocate. Just what does it mean to be a volunteer--or for that matter do anything supposedly altruistic? Are we ever without selfish motives? Is there any such thing as altruism?

Haixia and I aren't exactly the first ones to be thinking about altruism. Pick your philosopher, your theologian, throw in Darwin and all the game theorists, and you'll have a lively conversation. But what struck me was that Haixia's question came the day after I stumbled across these two websites: Global Volunteers and World Teach. Oh! I see! You can go somewhere for a week or two and be a TEFL teacher. Ouch! I've lately been thinking a lot about fly-in-for-a-week experts and helpers.

And, yet, suppose those week-long TEFL teachers don't have top notch certification, so what? I've often thought that what matters most about teaching in the humanities is intellectual curiosity and dedication. Some of the young handsome guys up the hill from me have no background in TEFL or English, but they're doing a great job teaching conversational English here in Beibei and are beloved by their students. And those week-long teachers, so what if they are on feel-good vacations? Is that any worse than any other kind of vacation?  Ultimately, they're participating in cross-cultural exchanges, which, if the dialogue is two-way, I have believed in my whole life.

Teaching, cross-cultural exchanges, even vacations--they all can be defended, I think, whatever size package they come in.

But Haixia is going for something else. Chinese skepticism about volunteers is warranted, not only philosophically, but also because of China's own experience with foreigners. Legions of missionaries have come--and still come--to China to teach English via hymns and Bible stories and so on. The hegemony of English and Western customs is justifiably questioned. The "white father" do-goodism of Peace Corps and all those "baby Peace Corps" organizations has been justifiably questioned when the assumption is "we have something better to give you"--even though that decidedly is not the assumption driving most of my fellow volunteers' work here.

What is in it for us? Among my fellow volunteers are writers, adventurers, and travelers who may have their own ulterior motives. Some are aiming for careers in the foreign service, international studies, or foreign language teaching, so the experience is a step--decidedly relevant--in their own career development. But most are also somewhat idealistic--they believe in the value of service, of doing something that at least isn't harming anyone and is not directly for material gain.

So, while there are indeed the selfish motives (there always are), I think there also is some of the thing Haixia is asking about, somewhat selfless service, altruism. What motivates it, if it exists? I wonder how any of you would answer.

Even if you think altruism exists, you might not want to risk explaining, but I was asked and I'll try. I think it has most of all to do with little choices. More on those in a second. But I'm also guessing that the desire to act for the good of the whole is not unique to any particular culture, and we're all animals who figured out a long time ago that the whole benefits from a little bit of sacrifice on everyone's part. And just about every cultural and ethical system has some version of "the Golden Rule."

But how those choices get translated into practice may vary. So, even as China is hurtling headlong into a market economy, it is still a thorough-going collectivist society. Making choices still matter—especially if “choosing” makes the difference between ethical decision-making and simple rule-following. But if the larger culture is serving the common good, at least in principle, then the role of agency may be somewhat deferred.  When everything in your bones is for the common good, when you are duty bound to see yourself as only part of a larger family and culture, then there is no need to go out of your way to serve the public good, the common cause. You've been doing it since you took your first breath. In collectivist societies, you express somewhat selfless acts constantly. But, that said, the difference between being an ant in ant colony or a bee in a beehive and being a moral person in China is still exercising the choices one can make, exercising agency where one can, and Chinese people do it every day. In Western cultures, singular acts of serving the common good are perhaps more conspicuous and therefore risk being taken as naive, hypocritical, or patronizing--and often are, especially if not integrated into a whole set of little acts, but I'd like to think that, well, we can still just do our dogged best, whatever that is. And in any culture, I think it's the pattern of little choices that probably matter most.

So, I'll spare Haixia this long ramble and answer her simply that, first of all, I see my volunteerism as a form of cultural-exchange more than service and, if she wants me to, explain why. But as for altruism, even though I think, of course, it's always coupled with other motives, I believe it is  possible--and not even unusual--to want to do things for the common good. Most Chinese people do that every day.

Letting it all hang out

If Shanghai is the most populous city in the world (by some measures it is, although Mumbai and Tokyo might say otherwise), it's probably one of the worst energy hogs in the world. But think twice before you blame the Chinese for wasting energy on clothes dryers! A five minute walk in downtown Shanghai tells this story . . .

But what does "let it all hang out" mean? Have you ever thought about the splitting headaches English speakers give the rest of the world with that damned word "hang"? There may be more verb phrases with "hang" in them than there is Shanghai laundry . . . hang about, hang around, hang a left, hang a right, hang back, hang fire, hang five, hang in, hang in the balance, hang it up, hang loose, hang on, hang out, hang tough, hang up. Yep, please hang in here with me and be patient if you want to know . . . what the past tense of "hang" is.

  By the way, those energy-saving folks in Shanghai can't outdo my neighbors in Beibei . . . or anywhere else in China. Laundry dries in the sun everywhere.

What was that thirteen year old thinking?

What was that thirteen year old thinking, that adolescent named Qin? Surely, planning one's funeral is not on the minds of most teenagers, most of whom are still psychologically immortal. But before exploring Qin's fears about mortality and his insurance plan for immortality, consider this tyrant's imagination, an imagination that has in turn captured the imaginations--and cameras--of millions of us around the globe.

Jim Curley photograph

 He was just an ordinary king among the warring states for most of his teenage years, but he declared himself emperor of China (the name of which is arguably derived from his - Qin/Chin) in 221 BC. In just 15 years he brutally squashed whatever might be in his way, but he also did utterly amazing things to unify and establish the nation of China. (I wonder, does it take a tyrant to do things on such a grand scale?)

• establishing the first imperial dynasty in China after unifying the country
• starting the Great Wall (and asserting control over a massive labor force to do so)
• standardizing currency
• standardizing units of weight and measurement
• standardizing the width of an axle to complement the building of a national roadway
• establishing new norms for language

 But what has fascinated millions of people in the last fifty years is his insurance plan for his death--the necropolis for his tomb in Xi'An and the four pits around it, three of them containing thousands and thousands of life-sized, individually crafted terracotta warriors. But we're told that he wanted entertainment as well as protection in death, and he arranged to have acrobats, musicians and strongmen in other pits. To produce these individually crafted figures on such a large scale required not only the technology, but also management--including what must have been mass production of the arms, legs, and eight or so general faces, each of which were then individually finished with particular features. These warriors, some standing near their horses, were placed underground with real weapons, including steel swords plated with chromium to keep them lethally sharp--to this day.

But suppose you weren't a megalomaniac--just an ordinary person imagining a little world to accompany you to the hereafter. Would you think to have rivers (flowing with mercury to look real)?

Two millennia later, Xi'An is still an amazing place. A wall that once encircled the medieval dynasties is still there, enclosing the ancient buildings and shutting out new Chinese architecture on steroids. The wall is wide enough to cycle around on bikes, from which one can look through turrets a thousand years old to see plenty of those metal cranes populating every modern Chinese city.

 Above and below tour members pause for pictures atop the wall.

Jim Curley photograph.

Today Xi'An offers the best jiaozi I've yet had--look closely (above) and you'll see the little ducks. Below tour members wait on a shawl for the train from Xi'An to Beijing. (All this was over two weeks ago.)

Ulrike Klaus photograph