by Jianying Zha
Beida, Beida!
It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
1.
My friend Liu Dong is a warm, colorful character. A professor of comparative literature at Peking University, he is a large, bulky man with a large, bulky head and a big, sonorous voice. “If I wasn’t a scholar, I’d certainly be an opera singer,” he told me. In his youth Liu had trained to be a tenor and had seriously considered a career in singing. Even now, he is prone to showing off his top-of-the-line sound system, his opera CD collection, and his own vocal talents: with any excuse he’ll let out a famous aria right in the middle of a conversation, then, with a childlike smile, wait for praise. Of course, thinking and discussing have long overshadowed singing in Liu’s life. He’s also known as much for his hospitality as for his love of talking: to be his guest usually means to be his listener and debater. Liu is very good at trapping people in marathon discussions.
A discussion that has obsessed Liu lately is “Beida reform,” a topic that has gripped not just Liu and his colleagues but a lot of educated Chinese as well. This is partly because Peking University—or Beida, as everyone calls it—is not only the nation’s number-one university but also a beloved symbol. An American scholar familiar with Beida’s history once said to me: “For the Chinese, Beida is really Harvard, Oxford, and Ecole Normale rolled into one.” This is hyperbole, but only if one takes it literally.
As the country’s very first “modern” university, Beida has always been tied to the fate of China’s modernization. Its faculty in the early twentieth century used to be a list of who’s who in China’s “New Culture Movement,” boasting celebrated scholars like Hu Shi and Qian Mu as well as great writers like Lu Xun and Shen Congwen. Student movements at Beida had a tendency to occur at critical moments, giving rise to watershed events influencing national politics. This tradition’s last glow was in 1989, when Beida stood at the center of the Tiananmen protest, producing famous student leaders like Wang Dan. The campus was an early arena for founders of the Chinese Communist Party to spread their message (Li Dazhao taught here; young Mao worked as a library clerk). Yet it also abounds with traces of the West, especially America: the campus with its landmark pagoda overlooking Weiming Lake, was designed by an American architect; the gorgeous garden mansion near the lake belonged to John Leighton Stuart, the famous American missionary educator who had been the president of Yanjing University, which later merged with Beida; and Edgar Snow is buried here. Such a place, inevitably, stands for a great many things and becomes an overloaded symbol.
It’s not unusual, therefore, to find someone like Liu Dong, who, though he joined the Beida faculty only in 2000, talks about Beida with intense feeling. His favorite routine with visitors is taking them on a leisurely tour through the beautiful old parts of the Beida campus and telling them that this is the only spot left in China that still has an “aristocratic spirit.” After that, he usually brings up John Fairbanks, who was supposed to have said, “I’m not a religious person, but Harvard is my religion.”
“Well,” Liu would add, “I’m not a religious person, but Beida is my religion.”
Beida is my alma mater—I graduated from the Chinese department in the early 1980s before leaving for the United States—and so I once joked to Liu that he had the fervor of a new convert. He smiled and shook his head, then confessed sheepishly that in fact he had always romanticized Beida: fifteen years before he became a Beida professor, he had written a sentimental play about the life of Cai Yuanpei, Beida’s legendary president in the 1920s. At the time, Liu was a young assistant professor at Nanjing University and the play was never produced, but Beida remained an idol in his heart. It must have been a dream come true when Beida finally embraced him as one of her own.
The love and idolization Beida commands in the hearts of so many Chinese is probably what made the controversy over the “Beida reform” such a ferocious one. The first time I heard it discussed was at a dinner party in a Beijing artist’s loft: within fifteen minutes the conversation turned into an argument, then escalated into a shouting match. With Liu Dong, the subject never failed to unleash a torrent of opinions which, more often than not, would end up in an emotional explication of why, for a unique institution like Beida, the best thing is to “conserve” it, not to “reform” it. “If this makes me a conservative,” Liu would say, “so be it.”
2.
The so-called “Beida reform” was essentially a proposed plan to reform Beida’s faculty hiring and promotion system.
It began in May 2003 during the SARS period. While the city lived under quarantine and campus life came to a halt, a document the Beida administration had issued to its deans and department chairmen for feedback somehow appeared on the Internet. Though coated in dry, technical language, the changes it proposed were significant. The old system of the “iron rice bowl for all” would be cast away; an American-style “tenure track” system would be adopted, though tenure would be granted only at the rank of full professor. Assistant and associate professors would be given two chances to apply for promotion; then it would be “up or out.” Beida would not hire its own graduates, as had been the tradition, but would fill future vacancies through a global “open search,” with at least half of the jobs reserved for outside candidates. Outside reviewers would be invited to participate in the promotion/evaluation process. The departments that continually ranked low in their disciplines would be shut down. One item stipulated that Beida faculty should be capable of teaching in English.
There were other measures aimed at micromanaging faculty, all in an effort to establish a more open and competitive system. As though a bomb had been tossed into a still pond, the reaction to the plan was explosive. Beida’s Web sites, as well as many other sites, were instantly jammed full of cantankerous comments. Professors from Beida and elsewhere—including many overseas Chinese academics—posted their remarks; many sent in full-length articles. The division of opinion was as sharp as it was revealing. The supporters, many from the sciences and social sciences and with Western training, cheered the plan as a brave step leading to China’s long overdue university reform. The critics, many from the humanities and locally educated, called it “shock therapy,” a high-handed, misguided act from the arrogant Beida administration—an act that slavishly copied the American system but coldly betrayed the Beida faculty.
Within days, mainstream media smelled blood and rushed in. A flood of coverage followed: newspaper reports, television forums, magazine features. Reporters relentlessly chased Beida officials and professors for interviews, pushing the controversy quickly beyond academic circles. With the city barely recovered from the shock of SARS, Beida reform was already becoming the new hot topic in town. Several years earlier, when Beida designed her new “core courses” using Harvard’s curriculum as a reference, some Beida history and philosophy professors had written to People’s Daily accusing Beida of having a Harvard fixation. That was nothing compared to the opposition this time.
Surprised by the media uproar and stung by the criticism, the Beida administration issued a second draft in June, qualifying and modifying many “offending” clauses in the first draft. The ready compromise disappointed the more radical supporters but failed to stop the critics. More comments poured out. The debate kept going. Six months later, the Beida administration still hadn’t issued its third—reportedly final—document, and the dust around “Beida reform” refused to settle. In December, three collections of articles on the subject ca
me out, a fourth book came out in January, and several more were at the printer. In educated circles, the subject was still discussed with heat, sometime venom. Public curiosity hadn’t faded either: every time a Beida official faced the media, he was bombarded by questions about the “reform.”
Then, in January, CCTV, the largest television network in China, aired in its popular show Dialogue an hour-long conversation between Beida president Xu Zhihong and visiting Yale president Richard Levin. Inevitably, the host pressed Xu Zhihong on the question of Beida reform. Xu replied that Beida would carry on with reform, but emphasized that it would be a “step-by-step” process, not “shock therapy.” He said that he, as a scientist, never believed in radical changes, and that the experience of China’s reform proved that radical changes had no future. Levin ended up endorsing the Beida reform by saying that he’d do the same if he were the Beida president.
Toward the end of the show, Xu spoke of the toughness of being a university president in a time of rapid change, when one must confront so many levels of reality at once. He said he envied the American university presidents, who could rely on a well-established system and even have some leisure time to “go sightseeing with their wives after a conference,” whereas a Chinese university president must hurry back to the big pile of work waiting for him at home. “Being a university president in China,” Xu said, “is like sitting on top of a volcano.”
He wasn’t totally exaggerating. As he spoke, Min Weifang, Beida’s Party secretary and de facto number-one official, was in the hospital. Doctors suggested that Min stay there for a while to get some badly needed rest. Min had been suffering hearing loss induced by stress and exhaustion.
3.
Volcano. Sickness. It reminds me of how a Beijing intellectual friend of mine once summed up the present state of the Chinese universities: “A mountain of problems, and sick to the bone.” He is a pessimist, one of those Cassandras who has been predicting for years the coming collapse of China and each year wonders why on the earth it still hasn’t happened. But as extreme as he sounds, it’s not a minority opinion. The feeling that Chinese universities, Beida included, are sick with problems and badly in need of “reform” is widespread. Too much political control. Too little intellectual freedom. Overemployment. Underfunding. Growing commercialism. Slipping academic standards. Lack of mobility. Sloth. Inbreeding. Factionalism. Corruption.
But who to blame for these ills? How to fix them? Well, that’s where the quarrel begins. Some accuse the Party and the state, others the market and capitalism. Some lament the spineless professors, others attack shortsighted administrators and greedy bureaucrats. Plenty of critics, no consensus.
Meanwhile, the lives of the professors keep getting better. In the early 1990s, my Beijing academic friends owned nothing but their books. Every one of them lived in a small, cramped rental apartment overloaded with books. Now all of them have bought homes—more spacious, freshly renovated apartments—at a subsidized mortgage rate. Many have bought second, even bigger places while renting out smaller ones. Some have bought cars. Back then professors were just making ends meet; now they go to restaurants, take holiday trips, attend all-expenses-paid conferences at scenic spots. The star professors, though still a new breed on the scene, are joining their cosmopolitan cousins, enjoying a lifestyle similar to that of the globe-trotting intellectual elite, visiting Davos, London, Harvard, Berkeley. In the 1990s a young Beida professor’s salary was one-tenth that of a Beijing taxi driver’s income, and you could tell how low the scholars were in social status by popular phrases like “Those who make the atom bomb earn less than those who sell tealeaf eggs,” or expressions like “as poor as a professor.” Imagine the intellectual who, just a few years earlier, had been regarded as the leader of the public, the conscience of the society: yesterday he was the priest, today he is kicked down from the altar and has become the church mouse! What a psychological shock! But then, all of that changed again. Now, Chinese professors’ incomes are at their highest point since 1980. On the job market, an academic career, with its comfortable income, stability, and respectability, has once again become a very attractive option. All these metamorphoses have occurred within a short span of twenty years!
This, however, has not won universal approval. There is a view that Chinese intellectuals have been “tamed” since 1989, the year of Tiananmen. The state first silenced them with tanks and guns, then “bought” them with material gains (subsidized mortgages, discount housing, fat bonuses for officially commissioned research projects, licenses for “university corporations,” opportunities to make money and fame from the foreign and domestic academic market) and turned them into silent, corrupt partners in a march toward prosperity that is as dramatic as it is troubling and inequitable.
So, here is the landscape in 2004, fifteen years after the massacre on Tiananmen Square: there is no political reform, the local media carefully avoids the same taboos, self-censorship is pervasive, and the dissidents—a small cluster of hardheaded, isolated individuals—are locked up, kicked out of the country, or kept on the margins. Beida, with her long tradition of political activism, had been heavily involved in the Tiananmen protests and had thus been singled out afterward for punishment and special monitoring. In the first years after the massacre, the government forced all Beida freshmen to spend their entire first year in military training and indoctrination. That notorious program has long since stopped. However, Beida’s campus gates are still patrolled by security agents every June 4, the date of the massacre, except the patrol has become less noticeable and so far no “disturbance” has ever occurred.
And the intellectuals? Well, the intellectuals are becoming comfortable, some even affluent. I recently asked the question, “So, what’s happening with the Chinese intellectuals these days?” of two Beijing intellectual friends and got two answers. One said, “Everyone is making mortgage payments!” Another used a phrase tu beng wa jie, which means “coming apart like dust and tiles.”
There is an old Chinese proverb: “He who understands the times is smart” (识时务者为俊杰). And it is in this sense that the majority of Chinese intellectuals have turned out to be smart rather than stubborn.
But not everyone looks upon this situation kindly. And once in a while, a jarring note might disrupt the silence, reminding people of the compromises they had to make in order to get on with life.
In October 2003, at a Beida conference entitled “Beijing: Urban Imagination and Cultural Memory,” one of the speakers broke the taboo and told a story about June 4, 1989, the day of the Tiananmen massacre. The conference, jointly sponsored by Beida’s Chinese Department and Columbia University’s East Asian Studies Department, had been going along smoothly. Scholars from China, Europe, and America had been examining the city from a variety of perspectives. Dozens of papers were delivered—on old architecture, on traditional literature, on drama during the republican era. It had all been quite professional, genteel, refined—as a conference should be. Then, toward the end of the second day, Chen Danqing, an artist invited to join a roundtable discussion, rose to speak.
Beijing’s urban imagination, Danqing said, has always been dominated by big power: emperors, Mao, and today’s city authorities, real estate developers, and big international architects. It is their willpower that decides Beijing’s urban landscape, while the ordinary Beijingers’ task is to be cooperative in being moved away from the city to the outskirts. And Beijing’s cultural memory? Well, it is full of holes or simply frozen. He said he looked carefully over the titles of every paper presented at this conference, and all of them referred back to a “time” before 1949—the precommunist time, the time of the officially permitted “cultural memory.” This is like an old man’s memory, he said: he remembers only things in the distant past but not the more recent happenings. Finally, he said he’d tell a little tale that might help patch up a bit of the memory cracks. The story was simple: it was about a man, a Beijinger, who fled Tiananmen Square in the ea
rly dawn of June 4, 1989. The man ran and ran toward home, and out of sheer horror and madness, he cursed loudly all the way until the sound of gunshots gradually faded behind him. But when he reached the beautiful Houhai park, he suddenly heard a different sound: amid the chirping birds in the trees came sonorous, long, drawn-out singing. The man stopped, listened, and slowly came back to his senses: it was the voices of old Beijingers practicing Peking Opera, the urban sound of a Beijing familiar to him and generations of Beijingers.
While Danqing told the story, the conference hall went dead quiet. When he finished, there was a moment of silence, but then loud applause rose, and it went on and on. The conference sponsor tried to speak several times, but the audience, mostly students (and a few faculty members), went on applauding for a long time.
Afterward, one of the students in the audience posted a long report on Beida’s Web site describing Danqing’s speech as “shaking up the entire conference.” When people increasingly speak in a genteel, indirect style, the student wrote, he was truly impressed by Danqing’s courage. “But I also noticed,” the student went on, “that among those who expressed their gratitude and respect to Chen Danqing [after Danqing’s speech], there were no mainland Chinese scholars. Not one.”
I heard about Danqing’s Beida speech almost immediately. Friends who happened to be in the audience that day called me afterward, describing it vividly, excitedly. It was obviously an unusual occurrence, something worth retelling. But they also noted that Danqing has a U.S. passport, which gives him protection and in a way explains his “courage.” They speculated about whether or not something might happen to Chen Pingyuan, a Chinese department professor who was the conference organizer for Beida. Chen Pingyuan was not protected, like Danqing, and could have been held responsible for this “incident” if someone sent a “little report” to the “higher ups”—to the authorities. After all, this has happened often enough: the actual troublemaker is spared, but those who are supposed to prevent it from happening are punished. In other words, skip the criminal, nail the police. It looks arbitrary but works quite well: it has turned more people into police.