This Generation

by Han Han

  Fortunately, though students care about the marks they get for their essays, they have little interest in the essay assignments. It’s things written off as junk culture that enable them to salvage a few shreds of imagination and creativity.

  It’s fair to say that many people’s experience of telling lies starts with writing essays, just as their limited experience of telling the truth starts with writing love letters. From an early age, model essays and essay-writing textbooks convey to students that the function of an essay is to eulogize and extol—to expose and censure, on the other hand, is considered negative and downbeat, dark and bleak. Some people may like to use Lu Xun as an example of how to get a point across,5 but the role he plays in the school textbooks is eulogy and extolment too, with him as the lead vocalist. Praise and appreciation are good things, of course—who doesn’t like praise and appreciation? The problem is that the subjects we can praise and appreciate are dictated to us. You’re not allowed to eulogize a girl’s butt, for instance, or extol a hooker’s technique. All kinds of restrictions force our essays into a straightjacket, until in the end everything we write is fake.

  Naturally, loyalists of the old guard may well say that no matter the quality of the essay, this kind of writing does develop a student’s ability to deploy language and create sentences, just as mathematics, though it has limited application after a certain point, fosters skill in logical analysis. Such people exemplify exactly the kind of blinkered and defective thinking that Chinese education fosters. They are simply underestimating their own intelligence. The ability to write develops hand in hand with skill in logical analysis: After you learn to read and accumulate some experience in reading, you are naturally capable of writing essays—if you can talk, you can write. Of course, some people can write better than others, and there’s not much one can do about that. At the same time, the ability to analyze things logically is not something one can acquire or enhance just through working on a few math problems—that’s just self-deception. Many scam artists capable of meticulous thought and impeccable logic have never had much education, whereas most people taken in by a scam will happily tell you the area of a shape in trigonometry. Our education system likes to give the impression that people have no natural talent and get everything from education. That way, after you leave school, you will naturally accept that human beings have no inherent rights—that rights are something only conferred by the government.

  Education in other countries does not fixate on this same specialized concept of “writing essays,” but I don’t remember hearing that people in those places have trouble putting words together to form a coherent piece of writing. And conversely, in our case, although people here have been learning to write essays for many decades now, fewer and fewer seem to be capable of doing so.

  Reading a lot is much more beneficial than writing a lot of essays—which, in reality, just means studying a lot of model essays so that you can imitate the topic assigned. Essay assignments not only weaken your ability to write, but they subconsciously tell you that saying things you don’t mean is normal and necessary, that it’s the very secret of survival. That is the sole value to students of writing essays—writing essays alerts them early on to the reality that speaking the truth will only lead to trouble. But essays also have the effect of destroying their interest in literature.

  Someone is bound to say that I am simply being contradictory, that I’m not capable of constructive suggestions—if everyone stops writing essays, then what on earth will they write? That’s a typical example of the impoverished analytical ability you’re left with after our education is through with you. It’s simple—just don’t write! Writing essays essentially is a hobby, a love, like gardening or fishing—it’s not something you can force people to do. Naturally, there will be some who like it and some who don’t. So let the ones who like to write essays write real essays, and let the ones who don’t like to write essays write love letters, and let the ones whose love letters go unanswered write a journal, and let the ones who like to write fake, pretentious, empty-headed essays serve as our leaders—that way everyone will be happy.

  Insults to China

  August 11, 2007

  It doesn’t take much, it seems, to insult our nation. Often on our news broadcasts we see reports that in some country or other a shop sign or T-shirt or literary or art work is suspected of insulting China. There was a story the other day about a pet shop somewhere that incorporated a parody of Tiananmen Square in its signage and was forced to take the sign down after protests by our foreign ministry.

  That certainly counts as high-level attention. If I were to poke fun at the White House or the Kremlin at a shop of mine, I’m sure I could live my whole life through and still be waiting for the United States or Russia to complain.

  We Chinese people have very thin skins. We respond very poorly to any kind of unfavorable opinion, whether in the form of jokes, satire, or criticism. To us, this all counts as insults to China. In movies, we are always encountering problems of this kind. Mission: Impossible, I remember, was suspected of insulting China—on account of a shot of laundry drying on a balcony, apparently. For this to have become an issue gives you the feeling that hanging clothes out to dry is something that we Chinese never do—they’ve taken some custom common in India and accused us of it! Oh, dear—now I’ve insulted India.

  Now it’s Pirates of the Caribbean and Mission: Impossible 3 that have offended us. Every time there’s a movie that is said to insult China, I make a point of watching the uncensored version, and more often than not I come away completely baffled. Far from evidence of insults to China, what I see instead are a lot of Americans making complete fools of themselves and foreigners being humiliated by the power of Chinese kung fu. And from the big movies these days, more and more people are aware that this is a nation that can’t afford to make jokes. Apart from enthusing about the looks of the Oriental Pearl, it’s best not to say anything else.6 It’s like with a little kid—if you crack a joke at their expense, they will make such a fuss that in the end nobody dares say anything funny. This is a completely different matter from respecting someone.

  Maybe the problem is that I’m just not sensitive enough. Sensitivity and frailty are two major traits that we Chinese are expected to have, as a way of distinguishing ourselves from other nationalities. In this area I suffer from a real deficit: When someone tells me that there are various things they don’t like about my native home, I seem never to get angry. All that happens is that I discuss the problems they raise one by one, identifying those that are genuinely widespread, those that are special cases, and those that are common throughout the world, and while I’m at it I mention a few other issues they have overlooked.

  But when I mention problems in someone else’s hometown, they often respond as though I have committed an act of gross indecency in front of their mother. If I ask, for instance, why the people there are so given to cursing others, they will answer with a torrent of abuse. I have never been able to understand this: So often, if we are born in a place, if we live in a place, it’s not because we are in love with it, but because we had no choice—we weren’t smart enough to avoid being born there. If you’re not actually in love with it, the only explanation for your extreme response has got to be that you’re just too wound-up, as though disrespect to your homeland is a personal insult. Even though these people privately have a whole heap of grievances against their homeland, their employer, and their school, they just can’t endure for an outsider to scold them. “Even though I have no control over my own domain,” they think, “if you criticize it then you’re cursing me.” When you see how they go for the jugular, you realize you have somehow damaged their faith in themselves.

  But if I were to say to them, “Actually, I’m God. Sorry I made those unkind remarks about that homeland you love so much. I’m so touched by your determination to defend your country’s honor at the cost of your life that I’m going to reward you with a chance to be reborn,�
�� I’m pretty sure that eighty percent of them would be off like a shot to be reborn in America, while the others would all be frantically trying to decide which country in Europe would make the best destination.

  What’s more, this kind of logic is highly elastic. So, if one day Europeans say something bad about Asians, don’t expect the Japanese and the Koreans to be all up in arms—it will be we Chinese who react most intensely. And if one day extraterrestrials were to announce that we earthlings are fools, again it will be we Chinese who take this most to heart. If we encounter that kind of provocation, there’s no doubt that we will organize—in best Chinese style—several hundred thousand people to assemble in the grasslands and form four gigantic words: “We are not idiots!” We’ll do that in part, of course, to show those aliens what we’re made of, but more importantly because this’ll give us a chance to get into the Guinness Book of World Records.

  The reason why we Chinese so often feel insulted is that we have so little self-respect. We like to think of ourselves as intimidating, sure enough: “People better not offend us! Our foreign ministry is going to take action if any little foreign shop takes liberties with our cultural icons! Just one impertinent sign is going to bring down the whole weight of Chinese disapproval on its head! Our film bureau can prohibit the import of any movies that we don’t like!”

  But do you really think this is the way to win people’s respect? Actually, they’re shaking their heads over how infantile we are. And we have no firm position on things, anyway. If a country compliments us, for example, then we’re over the moon: “We’re brothers, you and I! We just adore your splendid nation!” But if you indulge in any of that China-insulting, then we’d aim all our missiles at you if we could. And it doesn’t take much for us to feel insulted—anything that’s not praise sounds to us like disrespect.

  Shut the door and have a look at our domestic discussion forums: When people talk about the Japanese or Koreans or Indians, you see lots of derogatory epithets, and in our chat rooms, shop signs, and news coverage, there’s plenty of content that could be seen as insulting to Korea or America or Japan or India, and we regard the deliverers of these insults as patriotic heroes (of a minor sort, admittedly), and there’s nothing to stop them carrying on like this, since we’ve never seen any sign of other countries’ Internet users or media or foreign ministries registering protests and taking punitive action. So, our citizens have a long way to go before they qualify to be citizens of a great country—our citizens, in fact, still don’t amount to being a “people” in the full sense of the word. Don’t try to comfort yourself with the thought that these attitudes reflect cohesiveness and unity when dealing with the outside world. If the Americans were to say, “Chinese people are bastards,” I have no doubt that we would be all ready to form a huge army to punish our assailants. But all the Americans would need to do is arrange for a few undercover agents to spread dissension in our ranks, saying things like “Shanghai people are bastards,” “Beijing people are bastards,” “Henan people are bastards,” and “Guangzhou people are bastards,” and I reckon that the whole army would be in complete tatters long before it got anywhere near the United States.

  If and when the day comes that we are no longer always crying and wailing about how other people are insulting us, that’ll be the time when there is no more risk of civil war in China.

  Market day for patriots

  April 20, 2008

  In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, after the Olympic torch relay was disrupted in Paris by supporters of Tibetan independence, protests were staged in and around a number of supermarkets in China operated by the French Carrefour chain, culminating in an effort to promote a mass boycott of Carrefour on May Day, a public holiday in China.

  On this issue, everyone is fully convinced of the justice of their cause: First of all, Carrefour’s owners have done this and the French government has said that; and secondly, whatever it is they did or said, our goal is to make the international community aware of our attitude, demonstrate our strength, and force people to apologize.

  To my way of thinking, apologizing is easy, but it’s hard to change people’s views about us, and after this business it will probably be all the more difficult.

  Why does it have to be Carrefour that is targeted for protests? Well, actually it doesn’t have to be—it could just as well be some other French company and we could just as well be asking: Why does it have to be so-and-so? But government propaganda always tends to seize on some representative example, and under its influence people at large are now perfectly capable of focusing on a “typical” case as well.

  Boycotting Carrefour, I feel, is not patriotism, but a game for losers. An action that is truly patriotic requires you to put your money where your mouth is: When you are willing to shoulder an economic and personal cost for your beliefs this reflects a genuine commitment. But to kick up a fuss outside Carrefour is simply tacky. Another country humiliates you, and you give a supermarket a hard time. Some people boycott it, others deface it with slogans, or stage a demonstration, or just come to watch the excitement. Some pay for something small with a hundred yuan note, in the hope of making them run out of change, or there are people who lower the Chinese flag flying outside Carrefour and then take a picture to show that Carrefour is flying the flag at half-mast. I think these actions are all pathetic, especially the last one, which combines surliness with a craving for disorder. Patriotism can sometimes be a form of self-preservation, but sometimes it is a matter of the tone you set, and the tone we are setting shows we have no class.

  Of course, you can reproach me and say, okay then, you do something more dramatic—lay siege to the French Embassy, or go to France to protest, or blow up an A380 Airbus. The thing is—why should I do these things? The idea would never occur to me. I just carry on doing my regular work, writing and car racing as best I can and improving year by year. In racing now, our level compares well with other Asian countries, and we can give the high-performing Japanese and Malaysian drivers a run for their money. Another few years, and I reckon we will have caught up with second-tier European teams, and I’m hoping that our best drivers will be able to rival Europe’s top drivers . . . including Sébastien Loeb, the French World Rally Champion. Never mind whether or not we can achieve this goal—at least we are working in this direction. But what other people are doing is kicking up a fuss outside a supermarket—and if you don’t join them, then you’re a traitor and a sell-out!

  All it takes for everyone to get so agitated is for foreigners to direct a few words of criticism or abuse our way. But with indignation comes complacency, complacency about how unified we are, complacency that “our country finally is strong, so some countries are starting to be afraid of us, and now they are scheming to undermine our territorial integrity.” But I see no evidence that our people are demonstrating the kind of strength that would spread fear all around the world. You protest against Carrefour, putting the Chinese employees of Carrefour in a terrible position, and then more and more Chinese gather round, and a few disruptive Chinese smash a few things up, and then a troop of Chinese riot police is mobilized, and the Chinese media is lapping it all up—and I’m sure from start to finish not a single French person has been involved.

  Those who support us and compliment us, we feel, are our friends, and those who oppose us and belittle us are our enemies. This is a childish attitude that reflects far too much concern about matters of face.

  Why is our national self-respect so fragile and superficial? Somebody says you are unruly, so you curse him and wish you could beat him up, and then you say, “No, we’re not unruly!” That’s a bit like if Xiaoming says you’re an idiot, so you go wave a card in the face of Xiaoming’s girlfriend’s little brother’s dog which reads “I’m not an idiot.”7 Xiaoming will get to hear about this, sure enough, but he’ll still think you’re an idiot, even if you feel wronged and are convinced that Xiaoming is more stupid than you.

  What makes me uncomfort
able now is that there is simply no debate—you just have to show your colors: Are you going to boycott or not? If you boycott, that shows you’re a good sport, you’re a Chinese, you stand with the right side; if you don’t boycott, then you’re a traitor; and if you don’t show your colors, then you are a coward. But I’m sure that if the French government were to loosen its restrictions on immigration from China to France, there would be plenty of takers.

  The situation we’re in now basically is this: Carrefour is an inflatable doll in the grip of a bunch of people with urges they need to relieve, for a life of confinement requires some kind of outlet—and one that costs nothing. As they abuse the doll, they keep asking it and asking its maker, “You see how strong I am? You see how much of a man I am?” And when they find that others are not interested in molesting the doll, they accuse them of impotence.

  Just what will happen on May 1, we still don’t know. But I really doubt that people are so fired up with indignation. I think it’s more that so many years have passed since the last time people had the chance to congregate and stage a demonstration. It’s fun and exciting, isn’t it? And doing it under the shelter of patriotism is a very safe bet, right? If you really can’t stand the insult, if you really believe that the current situation is equivalent to the invasion of Chinese territory in 1900 by the Eight-Nation Alliance, that we’re facing a national emergency—a critical situation with enemies on all sides—and the solution is to protest outside a supermarket, then I respect your view and understand your feelings. But still the sense I’m left with is: You just love to go to the fair.