No Enemies, No Hatred

by Liu Xiaobo

  Sometimes romantic middle-aged women, people of some social repute, get up on stage as guests, bringing family members to cheer them on, and flaunt their private history with no sense of taboo: sexual awakening in childhood, first romantic love, the bittersweetness of marriage, their criteria today for choosing another partner, the pleasures and anxieties of single womanhood, the excitement and inevitability of adultery. When she reaches the point of greatest passion, the special guest’s eyes glimmer with tears, and the host chokes back a sob. The audience is moved, too, and everybody joins the “reality show.”

  Today’s television dramas all include at least one of: a love triangle, an extramarital affair, a mistress, or whoring. It doesn’t matter if the topic is ancient history, martial arts, business, officialdom, anticorruption, military affairs, police chases, or small-town life, the bed of the mistress is the site of the downfall of a corrupt official. A love story cannot happen these days without some display of the body of the “other woman”; even dramas whose theme is nostalgia for the Communist revolution are laced with extramarital dalliance. Only the backdrops are different. In recent times, most of the clandestine sex happens at sites of high-level consumerism: Western restaurants or bars at expensive hotels; or the clubs, swimming pools, racetracks, or (the increasing favorite) golf courses of the power elite. Couched in environments of soft music and fresh flowers, one finds coffee to sip, cigars to smoke, Western liquor to savor, sweets to eat, limousines running to and fro, and expensive diamonds for use in flattery. Interspersed with the scenes of luxurious consumption, which are shown in color, we often see flashbacks, which are shown in black-and-white, to the way things used to be in the years of poverty: roadside stands, the barracks-style apartments of the socialist work units, plain clothes and simple food, cheap engagement presents, love held in the stranglehold of politics, and so on.

  Of all the possible methods of castrating the human spirit, to feel fully satisfied by performance of fake intimacy must be the cruelest.

  The reason for the explosive popularity of the new movie Cell Phone is its revelation of the private dirt of China’s urban elite today. Here the age of sexual chaos and the age of high tech fly wingtip to wingtip; the cell phone, an indispensable tool of the adulterous husband, turns into a double-edged sword as the wife uses it to monitor the wayward spouse. The excitement and joy that the husband’s affair brings to him gradually gives way to fear and embarrassment that the wife will track him down. The potential that either flirting or terror can emerge from the cell phone drives the husband to panic and constant falsity: each sentence he speaks is a lie, each facial expression a tawdry fraud. A mask of virtue covers a private world of secret motives, foul behavior, and perpetual jockeying to maintain the mask. Every conversation is a lie. The marriage is a lie. Each attempt at diversion is a farce, because the adulterous affair is a lie, too. Disgusting faces tell the lies, lascivious voices do the flirting. The film draws its material from the dark side of the human spirit, but in so doing gives us an honest account of the cynicism that pervades the life of the urban elite in China today. It shows not only how they hide their true thoughts from public view but also the duplicity in the ways they treat people in private. In its plot design, characters, dialogue, and music, Cell Phone is a comedy; but the ways in which it reveals the moral squalor of our society are hardly funny. It dresses in a well-pressed suit of clothes, but these cannot cover up people’s sickness or the ruthless ways in which they treat one another. It highlights the moral contrast between children in the mountains, before the age of the telephone, and the movers and shakers of the cell phone culture in China today.

  Outside of film, in the real world, and taking advantage of the new fungibility of power and money that pervades our society, the sex industry has burgeoned. Across the country, in rural and urban areas alike, streets are lined with shabby barbershops, foot massage parlors, Karaoke clubs, video parlors, small hotels, little restaurants, and motels—many offering sexual services on the side. In the big cities, high-class hotels, nightclubs, bars, and social clubs provide nights of sex for rich and influential men. Vacation getaways and seaside cities offer “mistress villages” and “lovers’ gardens.” Prostitution remains illegal in China, but rough estimates put the number of prostitutes in the country somewhere above six million, making us number one in the world. Commercial competition and the fungibility of money and power have created a category of women who are packaged mainly as gifts for clients: lover-secretaries, hired “public relations” consultants, and banquet escorts. It has become common courtesy when doing business to invite clients to “float” [the Chinese term is a homonym for “enjoy sexually”—Ed.] these women.

  When adults are increasingly open about sex, the attitudes and behavior of the young naturally fall in line. Offspring of the urban elite are frequently single children who have grown up in the lap of luxury, with no brothers or sisters to provide competition. They are “little emperors” at home, and outside the home struggle to present themselves as “new-era types,” “bourgeois-Bohemians,” or the like. In matters of sex, they seek early and immediate pleasure and like to follow their impulses into one-night stands and “Internet romance.” They feel no shame about premarital sex and favor postponement of the responsibilities of marriage and family. The Chinese Planned Parenthood Association did a survey of 196 research studies and found that 60 percent of people have had sexual experience before marriage. A saying that circulates among young urban Chinese says, “Going to bed before marriage is as simple as going to the toilet.” Reports of young women abandoning infants are increasing. A recent newspaper headline tells us: “Young Girl Has Sex with Her Pet Pekinese.”

  The fashions of sex have brought innovation even to the restaurant business. We have already seen the “gold banquets” designed to shower good luck on customers and the “infant soups” that are supposed to bring them longevity, but we now we see “female body banquets” that deliver erotic rewards. A nude female human being reclines on a table and waits as her body is piled high with sumptuous dishes. Presto! A multifaceted feast for the senses. A famous restaurant in Shenzhen, which sells a dumpling that it calls a “humpling,” is hardly alone in inventing sexually charged names for its delicacies. Here are some other new names for dishes: “Hooker Grabs a John,” “Thrice Tricking the Mistress,” “Love That Viagra,” “The Beauty Disrobes,” “The Little Secretary Comes to the Boss,” “Beauty Exits the Bath.” Even the order of presentation of dishes can follow the order of lovemaking: a meal begins with “Love at First Sight” and moves to “Exchange of Flirting Glances” and then to “Fooling Around”; next we get “Glued as One,” after which comes “His Pleasure, Her Joy”; finally, at the sweet sorrow of parting, everybody is served a dish of “Lover’s Tears.” Especially stunning is the fact that cultured people—literary people—can view this kind of blatant “sex banquet” as a form of high culture. They quote the poetic line “With bodies warm and stomachs full, thoughts next turn to sex” and cite the Chinese sex craze as evidence that the society is achieving middle-class prosperity. Cuisine is “three parts flavor, seven parts culture”—and that is very high-class. China today is beyond subsistence worries, and it is only right that lust-culture should be next. This is progress, an advance, even a kind of spiritual and moral pursuit.

  The Eroticization of Nationalist Hate on the Internet

  The erotic carnival on the Internet expresses more than sex alone. Nationalist extremists, who call themselves “patriots,” borrow sexual language to express hate. When their targets happen to be women, misogynist language does double duty. In the furor over reports that a group of Japanese men bought Chinese prostitutes in Zhuhai, for example, the “patriots” not only heaped teeth-clenching anger upon the Japanese; they also directed verbal violence at the Chinese girls who had sold themselves.

  On April 4, 2004, on a bright, warm Sunday in Beijing’s Yuyuantan Park, crowds came out to enjoy the “cherry-blossom festival.�
�� When two young Chinese women, dressed in Japanese kimonos, were taking photos under the cherry blossoms, they ignited the ire of a group of “patriots,” who surrounded the two and beat them. Onlookers gathered, but no one intervened. In fact the crowd began to taunt the victims: “Being Chinese isn’t good enough for you?! You have to go be Japanese?! You deserve it!” When news of the incident hit the Internet, a few voices did decry the violence, but many others said the beating was exactly right. Chinese women who “adore Japan” like this not only should be cursed and beaten; their beaten bodies should be shipped off to Japan, to brothels, where they can “adore Japan” all they like.

  Around the same time, “patriotic” netizens showered sexually laden invective upon Central Television anchor Zhang Yue after she wore a scarf that seemed to bear the “rising sun” of the Japanese flag. The tough guys of the “angry youth” took offense. Eventually Central Television released a clarification: Zhang Yue’s scarf was a famous Italian brand, and had nothing to do with Japan.

  But of all the examples of how hooligans attack Chinese women in the name of “patriotism,” none beats the “Japanese Flag Clothing Incident” that befell movie star Zhao Wei. In 2001, in making an advertisement for a clothing company, Zhao wore an item that bore an image that resembled something in a Japanese military flag. Someone noticed, pointed out the resemblance, and posted photos on the Internet. Nationalist passions immediately gushed from across society. Heaven-rending, earth-shattering denunciations and curses filled cyberspace. The self-righteous invective originated not just from ordinary netizens but from so-called scholars and experts as well. Under immense pressure, a helpless Zhao Wei could only apologize. But that did not prevent the “Japanese Flag Clothing Incident” from surviving as a hot topic on the Internet, right to the present day. A call to denounce Zhao Wei still pops up near the top of search-result lists at NetEase, where, as of mid-2004, it had received more than 40,000 clicks, more than any other item.

  With popular nationalist passions cresting higher and higher, and with the government, which needs nationalism in order to ease the crisis of its moral legitimacy, in no mood to cool things down, netizens are free to wield the blade of patriotism any way they like. The continuing Internet attacks on Zhao Wei include denunciation, demands that she make further apologies, and demands that the film industry ban her from work. But they go further, to include language of obscene violence. The People’s Daily, which is the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, runs an Internet chat room called “Strong Nation Forum” where a great deal has been said about what kind of physical punishment Zhao Wei deserves for being a traitor and a whore for soldiers. Should her breasts be cut off first, or should that privilege go to her nose and ears? At Web portals like Sina, NetEase, and Sohu, people debate which kind of male animal should rape Zhao Wei. Which would be most satisfying to watch?

  Zhao Wei’s purpose in wearing the clothing company’s clothes had been purely commercial, but the eyes of the “patriots” saw much more. To them, she had been supporting Japanese militarism, and that was treason. Such treason turned her into a “sex chick” for the Imperial Japanese Army, in essence a high-class comfort woman. A shameless hussy like that? If the little Japanese soldiers can do her, why can’t we patriots do her? It was not enough, either, to attack Zhao Wei alone. Her female forebears had to be got as well: “Fuck eight generations of her ancestors!” as one put it. The venting of hatred led to an explosion of obscene language; “patriotic” passion led to unbridled sexual violence.

  Patriotism is generally viewed as a moral position sufficiently exalted that no one questions it. Add to this the fact that the Internet provides people with nearly perfect anonymity, and the combination leaves Internet “patriots” utterly free to spout opinions as they like, brimming with confidence and with no inhibition from either fear of repercussion or the fetters of conscience. To put it bluntly, patriotism provides a cover of legitimacy for sexual abuse on the Internet. Vulgar verbal violence against a female movie star can dress up as something right and proper—a way to express everybody’s nationalist passions—at the same time that it allows hooligans a way to indulge in fantasy about inflicting sexual violence on a beautiful and famous woman. It is just one more item in the erotic carnival we have been considering, except that this one takes place under the veil of patriotism. Next to the crude body-writing of the “pretty-girl writers,” however, this kind of hiding eros inside stately arches of patriotism is more shameless, more vulgar, and more brutal. Patriotism has become the moral cover under which bullies carry out verbal assassinations and indulge animal desires, even as they pretend to be passing moral judgment on others. It is not merely the last refuge of political scoundrels; it has become a cudgel in the hand of moral scoundrels, too.

  This perverse “patriotism” not only confuses right and wrong but carries to an extreme that distortion of true patriotism that says “better to be a slave at home than to suffer a single insult from abroad.” In a television drama Fragrant Flowers of May, the Chinese characters are callous, deceitful, scheming, and cruel—hardly better than wolves—in the ways they treat other Chinese. But don’t worry, the film director can rescue their moral status by showing us how “patriotic” they all are. He can do this because, although Chinese people cheating other Chinese people may be immoral, Chinese people cheating foreigners shows ethnic solidarity and the integrity of patriots. The boss of an antique shop can oppress his fellow Chinese into agony and death, but because he blocks the flow of national treasures out of the country, he is a paragon of patriotism. In principle this is no different from the way Mao Zedong is credited, right to the present day, as savior of the nation, the one who let “the Chinese people stand up.” Mao never came close to treating the Chinese people themselves as human beings, but that somehow is beside the point.

  The Place of the Erotic Carnival in the Society and Politics of China Today

  From fiction to real-life diaries to graphic language, the pursuit of eros in China in recent decades has brought ever more audacious exposure of the human body, and the vast, borderless Internet has helped to make the spread easier and more open. Most of the millions of Chinese who use this new high-tech medium use it for pleasure, and, among the pleasures, sexual titillation and fantasy have reached to unprecedented extents. The spiritual emptiness of China today is now clearly visible from the angle of sex.

  How should we understand this spread?

  Many point their fingers at the marketization and globalization of our society, and there can be no denying that many of the modern modes of exploitation of the female body for commercial purposes have come to China from the West. Western women who have marketed exposure of their bodies by daring to create “live nude shows”—such as Madonna walking down the street naked, or Italy’s porn-starlet politician “La Cicciolina”—have made sensational entertainment news in China. Our country’s pretty-girl writers may have been influenced by their examples. In an age of commerce, when reputation becomes a commercial commodity, body-writing is not purely about sexual release, sexual fantasy, or sexual pleasure; it is also an extremely powerful and practical way in which to become well known. Especially in China, a patriarchal society where political power is the most important kind of power, if an unknown young woman wants a shortcut to a better position in the world, it is only natural that she make use of her specifically female resources and sell her appearance in exchange for wealth, status, or attention. The shortcut that mistresses take is to market themselves among the male power elite, competing to see who can hook the highest-ranking and richest man. The shortcut that the pretty-girl writers take is to sell their bodies to the public in literary form, tearing down one taboo after another in a competition to market the body by seeing who can expose more of it.

  In my view, however, to attribute China’s spiritual and moral emptiness to marketization and globalization is superficial. The “New Left” also blames marketization and globalization for China’s polarization
of wealth and its mind-boggling corruption, but this explanation, whether we speak of sex or corruption, diverts attention from much deeper causes. It ignores the obvious fact that China’s system itself is antihumane and antimoral. The biggest and most destructive shamelessness in China today is political shamelessness. The best way to understand sexual shamelessness is to look at how political shamelessness caused it.

  Step one is to understand the utter bifurcation between pretense and reality in these matters. In its language, officialdom still presents the noble face of “rejecting the slightest hint of corruption.” Traditional ethical norms still stand, in their immaculate dignity, and the Communist Party officially opposes corruption and prohibits the power elite from keeping mistresses. At the same time, though, officials everywhere, including those charged with the anticorruption efforts, slip into debauchery. One needn’t rely only on ubiquitous rumor for evidence. Why, if sexual corruption were not such a problem, would the new “Party discipline” rules that have just been announced be so specific in their prohibitions? No “keeping mistresses,” no “hunting for lovers,” and no “whoring,” say the rules.

  In its public stance, the regime calls itself a “representative of advanced culture.” It sometimes cracks down on prostitution and has no taste for the competition in literature to see who can get their pants off first. It prevents Chinese women from doing “live sex shows”—they can be nude only in writing or photographs. Meanwhile, at the personal level, no one actually cares about ethics. Just as in matters of revolution, political power, patriotism, fame, profit, and many other things, in matters of sex, too, the end always justifies the means. This makes it possible for government departments in charge of stamping out pornography to open dance halls; for law enforcement agencies to shelter underground prostitution if they want; and for officials who denounce corruption during the day to slip into the beds of their mistresses at night.