A friend once recommended a book which looks at the history of China with a macro view. So I leafed through the book and did not even think much about the author's methodology or approach. Now here I am, trying to talk about the two-lane traffic of Chinese life, especially the life of Chinese intellectuals.
It's a well-known fact that the Chinese life had one jammed but well- constructed lane: the Confucian way. Confucianism made us accept a state pyramid with the Emperor sitting on the top with unparallelled and unchallenged power blessed by the Heaven above. The rest in the empire could only aspire to be the king's men. There wasn't even a requirement for any of the king's men nor the emperor himself to be intelligent, the emperor was born with the power. Power bred cruelty and nastiness most of the time. And the examination takers were at their best a bunch of guys with brains which resembled Xerox machines the most. Closer to home we had our family pyramid with the father having the absolute authority in spite of the fact that some fathers are really idiots.
Still some attribute the lasting power of Chinese culture to this social hierarchy constructed out of Confucius' rigid mind. History had, indeed, witnessed long lines of Chinese men who had been determined to climb the social ladder this way, with a miserable failure rate I may add. Even the success stories did not come without pitfalls or moral corruptions. It's a Chinese drama classic in which Chen Shimei who abandoned his rural wife after passing the examination and being wedded to a princess. Even in ordinary household, the domineering father hasn't stopped causing a lot of misery for many people till today.
One comforting fact is that an educated Chinese man did not have to choose the Confucian way of life. There was always the Taoist way: roaming the mountains and valleys, reading and writing poetry, and painting bamboos and creeks. That was exactly what Li Bai did after wearing out his welcome in the royal court or getting fed up with the ugliness of the royalty. "Since the water of the Yellow River is dirty and tastes bad, I the God of Poetry will go sailing along the Yangzi River." Han Shan Zi and the gang of hermit took one step further to practice their Taoist lifestyle as hermits.
I'm awaiting for one of the knowledgeable to tell me more about those who devoted their lives to Taoism or Buddhism in temples. And I know there had been many other groups or clans basing their activities on fringe belief systems. Some call those cult-followers, and the officials simply labeled them as bandits because they operated in a typical underground fashion. The matter of fact is that one's got to find a way or ways to bring some meaning to life. I can go on a little further on this but I seem to have restricted myself in the discussion on mainstream life, and more specifically the lives of Chinese intellectuals. So, I will just drop the topic here.
Back to the original topic. To make not-so-clean-cut a distinction, I would say that the traditional Chinese bureaucrats were products of the Confucian school while most of the poets and artists devoted their lives in following Taoist teaching. The greatest difference between the Confucian way and the Taoist way is how much freedom is allowed to an individual believer or practitioner. A Confucian would argue the necessity that individuals must sacrifice his/her freedom to achieve greater social order, while a Taoist simply smiles and tells you that if you simply act free and indulge yourself in the ways laid out by mother nature, you will be well taken care of.
In retrospect, it's safe to say that the Confucian way did not demand much individual creativity and imagination but discipline and obedience, and sometimes even mediocrity from its participants. This is why many well-known figures, or the talented ones, of the Chinese bureaucracy are the those who led a double life: officials by day and poets or artists by evening, like Wang Wei, Bai Juyi, Wang Anshi, Su Shi and many others. Du Pu may be a special case here because he devoted himself to Confucianism both in the official and private capacity and yet tried to speak for the ordinary. Again, I am awaiting a Du Pu expert to enlighten me about this.
And I may add that bureaucrats with limited imagination are no longer uniquely Chinese. What a relief, you say?
2. A Public-Relations Bust
I know that there are many out there are frustrated as I am while confronting a powerful Western media and public misconception which refuses to recognize the difference between the Chinese government and the country and its people. On top of all, there are groups who are basically racist and hateful intentionally bashing the Chinese as a race while building their arguments on the deeds of a government which is 50 some years old as opposed to a people and culture with thousands of years of history.
But we have to admit that the Chinese government is a huge reliability in terms of dealing with the new-age phenomenon: public relations. It does not surprise me if there are souls in the government who feel lucky that the Great Wall still casts long enough shadows for them to conduct business in their age-old way which is arrogant, to say the least. Something refuses to change there in the Central Kingdom; or maybe there has accumulated too much mediocrity in the bureaucratic machine and change means death to some of them?
The bottom-line is that the Chinese people have the same aspiration as any race on God's Green Earth to live free and comfortable. There should not be any reason that we have to endure any laughter, sinister or not. In other words, just feeding and clothing 1.2 billion (not all of them have got it yet) is not enough for a government to justify its holding on to power. There is, indeed, a material side to the responsibility of a government. But there is also a huge spiritual or even psychological side to this responsibility to which no government should ignore. All the peoples under its sovereignty are also entitled to happiness, pride, dignity, glory, and equality to the rest of the global tribes.
In today's world, it may have reached the point for the Chinese government to give up its stubborn clinging to an ideology, i.e. communism, which is out of date, out of practice even by itself and draws negative reviews from all over the world. It's no longer productive to call yourself something you really aren't. That's common sense.
3. The 4th World Conference on Women
Facts indicate that Chinese women on the mainland may enjoy more power, though not yet equal to men's, than any of the countries in the entire continent of Asia. My earliest reaction to the news of this year's women's conference in Beijing was that maybe the world is honoring this record, though not perfect, that the Chinese government has managed to achieve under strenuous circumstances.
Whatever it was, by the time of the conference, everything has been washed off, except loud and very loud China bashing from the conference to the rest of the world.
What the hell is wrong here? Maybe the ineptitude of the Chinese government has reached the point of impossibility? Or maybe the West has zero intention to give China any break in whatever form or shape?
But let's look inwardly this time. Going back to the Confucian way versus Taoist way, I guess it will take at least centuries for some working in the Chinese government to accept that there is a wide world out there. The Chinese population has its diverse beliefs and pursuits; adding the rest of the world only make it more so. And yet the Chinese government chooses to close its eyes on this.
The women's conference is a PR disaster for the Chinese government: there goes another opportunity for the Chinese, especially its government, to open up and learn and merge with the rest of the world. Instead, most of all the government and then the people get their face slapped and spat on and their back pointed and laughed at.
There is more to the opening-up than mere economic development. There is no way to dodge and nowhere to hide. That's also common sense. And yet common sense is like endangered species everywhere we go.
Let's make no mistake here. We the Chinese are a proud people but some of us are just plain arrogant.
Summer, 1995