China And The Cricket

Was reminded of this final scene from the movie The Last Emperor. Puyi, former emperor, now ordinary worker, returns to the throne room of the Forbidden City. A small boy accosts him. To prove who he is, Puyi finds a hidden jar, home of the cricket he received as a boy himself. Puyi vanishes—but the boy finds, to his wonder, that inside the jar the cricket is still alive.

When I first saw the film, as a 16-year-old Sinophile, the scene moved me to tears. The cricket is China, persevering through all the horrors of the Twentieth Century. To witness this was a beautiful thing.

(Though remember that Puyi was both a Manchu and a collaborator with the Japanese.)

Currently two carrier groups of the United States Navy are facing down a Chinese carrier group in the South China Sea. Is war imminent? It’s closer than it was five years ago, and far, far closer than in 1988. The CCP regime seems intent on annexing Taiwan, ending its democracy, and bending the region to its will.

Taiwan frightens the CCP because it proves there is nothing natural or necessary about the oppression of the Chinese. Over the past four decades, the people of Taiwan have managed to forge a free nation—not perfect, any more than any free nation is, but still joining in the mutual quest of all free people for a better life for human beings.

The United States needs to stand beside Taiwan because it is in the United States’ interests to make sure freedom thrives around the world (lest authoritarianism eventually end up on our doorstep). So we must stand up to the CCP. But how far? Should America risk nuclear war to ensure Taiwan remains free? The CCP seems increasingly more desperate, more paranoid. We see the agony of the Uyghurs, the suppression of religion, the Xi cult of personality. What are they willing to risk?

Attached to the CCP are the one billion plus individual people of China. If war comes, it is they who will suffer most.

I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want to see Beijing, Hangzhou and Xian in ruins. I don’t what the Chinese people have managed to build in the past forty years to be destroyed.

The Warlord Era. The war with Japan. The Civil War. The Great Leap Forward. The Cultural Revolution. Do we want to start this cycle again?

Let there be peace. Let the horrors of the past be the past.

Let the cricket live.

China!!!

This morning the WordPress administrative interface filled in the People’s Republic of China on my map, as it did Denmark earlier in the year.

This is a joy for me. As a teen, I discovered Chinese history and culture, and the study of these things was formative for me. Though I mourn the authoritarian regime that now rules the nation, it is still a great people.

Whoever it was, they only popped in and looked at the front page. I have no idea how they found the blog. It seems that the “Great Firewall” doesn’t block LYSID, or at least not all of it.

So that fills in a great segment of my map, but leaves an unsightly blank spot between Russia and China. I must start thinking about that post regarding the fascinations of Vajrayana Buddhism in Mongolia, to see if I can draw some readers from there.

Cui Hao: The Yellow Crane Terrace

Where long ago a yellow crane bore a sage to heaven,
Nothing is left now but the Yellow Crane Terrace.
The yellow crane never revisited earth,
And white clouds are flying without him for ever.

Every tree in Hanyang becomes clear in the water,
And Parrot Island is a nest of sweet grasses;
But I look toward home, and twilight grows dark
With a mist of grief on the river waves.

-From the 300 Tang Poems

Hong Kong & Kashmir: the Common Element

In recent weeks, the people of Hong Kong have been leading protests against the threat of Chinese oppression. Today in India, the government announced they intend to revoke the statue that allows the state of Kashmir self-determination and will split it into two union territories, ruled directly from New Delhi.

These are two instances of the same phenomena. In both cases, the vicissitudes of history have made these territories extraordinary. Nationalism cannot stand that. They must be reduced, brought into the fold, broken and remolded and melted into the whole.

In both cases, there is a larger picture. If the Chinese government cannot keep Hong Kong placid, what hope do they have of ever enticing Taiwan to rejoin the motherland? If, after more than 70 years, Kashmir still chafes at Indian rule, what hope is there for the unification of Akhand Bharat?
Yet, to the nationalist mindset, it would be intolerable to let them go. Thought form is destiny. If the people of these territories will not see reason, they will see force. They will be made to see the glory of New China/Bharat Mata.

There’s a basic problem in that the Enlightment idea of human rights was developed in the Western sphere (despite the fact that those of the Western sphere have often ignored it). Therefore in the other major spheres–the Islamic sphere, the Sinosphere, and the Indosphere–there will always be some measure of resentment of the idea. It will always, to some degree, be considered an alien intrusion. In these days of rising nationalism, that degree is increasing.

The ironic thing is that the idea of the nation state was also developed in the Western sphere, but hardcore factions of all spheres seem to take to it like a duck to bread.

But whatever intellectual chuckling I get to have at the nationalists of other spheres ignoring the foreign origins of their actions is bullshit compared to what’s at stake. Kashmir has been an oozing sore for decades. The Chinese government, judging from Xinjiang, seems enthusiastic about crackdown.

Power to the people. To the people of Hong Kong. To the people of Kashmir. It’s hard to see how all this will turn out well. But there’s still hope.

Li Bai: Song for Yuan Danqiu

Every day is another day I could post more Chinese poetry on this blog.

Yuan Danqiu loves celestial beings
At dawn drinks from the clear flows of the Ying River
Returns at sunset, purple and sacred mists within the mountains and hills
Thirty-six peaks circle all around

Long time in their spiral, I follow the rainbows and stars
Riding upon a flying dragon, wind sounds in my ears
Across the river, astride the ocean, connected to heaven
I know how to travel with heart-mind to the outer edge of Infinity.

(Translation unattributed)

Dream: The Museum Exhibit

Last night we went to the museum. I got separated from my wife & kids and wandered into a room containing a massive scale-model diorama of Hong Kong and the entire Pearl River Delta. I could see tiny cars crossing the bridges, and see crowds around the bases of the skyscrapers.

A voice came over a PA. This exhibit was on the earthquake threat to the region. Sluices in the walls opened; water began to pour into the room. The diorama started to to shake.

I saw the bridges break, imagined the hundreds of cars falling into the sea. The streets began to flood, the skyscrapers to crumble. The PA explained that in the event of such an earthquake, the region would subside. I watched Hong Kong and Shenzhen, with their millions, sink beneath the rising water, until it was just me, standing waist-deep, with nothing else visible above the surface.

Drains opened. The water poured away and the diorama rose again for the next demonstration.

When I caught up with my family, my 6-yr-old asked “What did you see, Daddy?” I didn’t tell her. I didn’t want to scare her.

Then I woke up.

My Mondegreenest Adventure

I have always heard the Doors’ “Light My Fire” thusly

The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
China we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre

Let me explain. There was a phrase, common in the McCarthy era: “Who Lost China?” As in, who was responsible for allowing good, decent, Pearl-Buckesque China to be subsumed by the Kremlin Red Slava Rodina Konspiracy (Spoiler: McCarthy, upon consultation with what he pulled out of his own ass, decided it was Owen Lattimore)? By including the saying in “Light My Fire,” Jim Morrison was mocking the anticommunist piety of the previous decade, putting the ghost of Tailgunner Joe on the altar of his Fire

Did I honestly ever think those were the lyrics? Not really. But that’s what hit my brain.

(I also got the first line wrong, though not in any way that changed the meaning)