A note to those who are imprudent enough not to follow the Japanese side of Frog in a Well:  Jonathan Dresner has a smart, witty, and informative piece, Credentialism and Other Modern Traditions which riffs on the proposal to make 和食 [washoku, Japanese cuisine] an “intangible cultural asset.”  Jonathan is especially sharp about the idea that Japanese food is uniquely unique, which plays along with my comments on “authenticity” in my piece on Chop Suey.

Meanwhile, Bruce Springsteen’s keynote speech to the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin took on the critics who wanted to keep rock and roll pure. Springsteen said we live in a “post-authentic world” with new forms, genres, influences, and instruments he couldn’t have imagined when he started out. Whether an artist is using a computer or a guitar, “there is no pure way of doing it, there’s just doing it.”

It’s all chop suey. We can still decide that something tastes awful, but we can’t dismiss it simply because it’s not “authentic.”

I’ve been doing a class that deals with cartoons, and Feng Zikai is a major part of it

One problem with teaching popular art is that a lot of the work of someone like Feng has never been collected or is hard to find. I was therefore very happy to see that Hong Kong Baptist has put Feng’s 1945 book of wartime cartoons on-line, and thus I was able to show my students two of my favourites of his which I have not seen re-printed elsewhere.

The first is entitled Yesterday’s Hero

The second is Battlefield Dog

One thing I find interesting is that Yesterday’s Hero is from 1933 and Battlefield Dog is from 1938. So I would guess that the Hero was someone who had fought the Japanese in 1932 or so and has now been forgotten. I would guess that in 1933 Feng had not thought much about where his foot ended up, but after a few years as a refugee being bombed (and encountering wild dogs) made him think more about these things. In 1945 he put them facing each other on two pages, so I would guess he would see them as a matched pair the same way I do.

I recently got Understanding China Through Comics which is Liu Jing’s cartoon history of China. The first volume goes to the end of the Han, then the next two will take the story up to 1911, 1911 being apparently the year History Stopped in China. Is it any good? Sort of. Is it an interesting project? Yes. My natural comparison for this book is the first bit of Larry Gonick’s A Cartoon History of the Universe. This is not very fair, since it is possible to not be Jimi Hendrix and still be a pretty good guitarist.

One difference is the Gonick is just a better artist. Compare these two panels on the Fall of Ur and the Fall of Wang Mang.

Gonick obviously draws better, the panel is laid out better, and it is much more dramatic. I particularly like the guy at the bottom who is apparently about to shoot the lamenter. Gonick does action well.

Both of them include little primary source quotations, like the lament for Ur above and this from Confucius’s Great Learning¹

I assume that in both cases they are using the quotes to get a more direct connection to the sources and because they are just cool, but they also connect to the purposes of the two projects. Liu’s purpose is to write a book for people like his son, who need to understand Chinese history, which is a 5,000 year quest to create a xiaokang or middle class society.² Gonick’s purpose is to tell a bunch of interesting and important stories, but if they don’t add up to a coherent narrative that’s o.k. So we have one pretty nationalist book and one more liberal-artsy one. The Great Learning is there because it is important.  The Lament for Ur is there just because it is great.

You can see their different goals in what they choose to talk about. Gonick is quite happy to mix myth with history, since legends and stories fit in fine with what he is trying to do. He can do this by inserting his narrative voice (he likes to talk about his sources)

Or he can do it graphically

Liu skips rapidly from the culture heroes Fu Xi and Nu Wa to the ‘more historical’ Yellow Emperor and keeps pretty tightly to a standard historical development timeline. He has things to get through, and he is going to get through them.

This is quite a nice panel. It would be hard to sum up Confucianism, Daoism and Legalism in this few words any better. Of course one could spend more words on classical philosophy, but Liu is in a hurry to get on to building the empire, so he is not going to follow Zhuangzi around the way Gonick follows Socrates around, although some have done that.

Liu is not going to give us the story of Sima Xiangru or Jing Ke, because whatever they can tell us about Chinese culture they don’t tell us much about the growth of the Chinese state and Chinese power. Gonick has similar problems in the later volumes of his history, where he gets trapped into more of a World-History textbook story of development.³ Both authors try to humanize their subjects, which is easier for Gonick. Since he is more interested in things like technological change he can include more commoners to help him show the march of progress.

Both of them are sort of stuck with the fact that most of the sources for the early period deal with elites, and thus much of what they say about the personal lives of these people centers on sex and violence. Violence is easier for Gonick, who is not writing for kids. Thus we get the death of Joab,which Liu matches with the castration of Sima Qian

They also both use humor. Some of Liu’s humor is, I think, inadvertent and connected to translations problems.It actually does make sense to refer to Cai Lun, the inventor of paper, as having been an “entry-level eunuch” at one point but I find the phrase hilarious. Gonick has more room for humor, since he is free to stuff in anything he wants from word origin stories with cute picturesto pigs

Why use a full page on this? Because seasick pigs are funny, and even if they don’t push the narrative forward they are worth putting in.

Liu gives us this little guy, the perfect toady and informer.

He’s worth a grin all by himself, but he’s only here as part of a full page denouncing the foolishness of trying to get the rich to pay taxes.⁴

While this may be at attempt to draw historical lessons for use in contemporary society, Liu will also include things that have nothing at all to do with the present. Here he gives us the student protests of 169 A.D.⁵

And their suppression

In general though, things like student protest that have nothing at all to do with contemporary China get short shrift from Liu. I teach a class the covers much the same period as his book, and I spend a lot more time on the age of philosophers and much less on the rise of state power in the Han, presumably because I am more interested in the development of Chinese culture than in finding the roots of Chinese power. Liu is also much more concerned with comparisons that make China look more advanced than the West

or at least draw parallels.

So while I may not be wildly impressed with Liu, I am looking forward to the next volumes, since a chapter with a title like  “Jesus is my bro: Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace Rebellion” is something you just have to look at.

Maybe the problem is not one of the author’s skills or intentions, but just that the medium of comics is better suited to the “Overview of Classical Civilization” approach than the “Graphical Textbook” approach. Or maybe historians just need to start writing history differently.

Why am I going on about this? It’s not as much a desire to beat up on Liu Jing or praise Larry Gonick as a desire to think more about presenting history graphically. This is something I have been working on for a long time Almost all of my undergraduate courses were just words in the air and on the chalkboard, with maybe one slide lecture a semester. In grad school I ran into a professor who regularly put black and white transparencies up on an overhead, and this was a habit I carried over to my own teaching. So I spent a lot of time looking for pictures that would work in black and white and would actually say something beyond “This is what Liang Qichao’s head looked like.” Powerpoint of course made pictures easier, and now I use a lot of images. Unlike Gonick and Liu, I don’t draw my own, so I am stuck with what I can find.⁶

I sometimes think about how the availability of ‘found’ images affects my teaching. I have found some nice ones. If you want to imply that Chiang Kai-shek was a neo-fascist dictator this works well

If you want to hint at the insanity of thinking that Chairman Mao Thought could make crops grow in a desert, this one works well

There are lots of horrors of war pictures, but as I only show them to students for a few seconds and I am not going to post them here.⁷ On the other hand, there are lots of things I would like to say that I have not found good pictures for. Sometimes you can make graphs or whatever, but you end up with parts you can do well visually and parts you can’t. If even Larry Gonick struggles to integrate words and text what hope do the rest of us have?⁸

1. did you know that Confucius wrote the Great Learning? Gonick seems to have done better research
2. He does not say so, but here he is citing the ancient philosopher Deng Xiaoping
3. This is not fair to Gonick, and to continue the musical metaphor from above, it’s like saying that the Violent Femmes never did anything as good as their first album. Even at his weakest, however, I don’t recall Gonick becoming as non-graphical as this, from Liu.
4. Liu Jing is a successful businessman in China today
5. Gonick is also willing to draw lots of contemporary lessons, which is especially evident in his feminism.
6. Also, I don’t do bullet points, just an outline followed by lots of pictures and maybe some quotes.
7. These dead people may have been gone for a long time, but I feel dirty if I use their suffering to entertain my students’ baser urges longer than I have to.
8. I am leaving out the level of technology and skill in using it, of course.

I humbly report that I have a piece –  “Who’s Afraid of Chop Suey?” — in the most recent Education About Asia (Winter 2011). The journal has generously made it available online for free (click here).

Chop Suey offers a convenient way to talk about the fate of Chinese food and cooking in the US before recent times, when the level of care and appreciation rose tremendously. The piece also argues that it is a mistake to dismiss the dish for not being “authentic.”

It is fair to say that Chop Suey in most restaurants is very likely to be a gooey mess — too salty, too sweet, too mushy — but it is dangerous to say that it’s not authentic. “Authenticity” is  too often used to police the cultural borders against intruders, cosmopolitans, hybrids, and mongrels, and  assumes that “authentic” means pure and unspoiled, “true to itself.” Good enough. I”m all for it. But who gets to decide what’s authentic? The House Un-Authentic Activities Committee?

Years ago I got a lesson in the ironies of authenticity angst. I had just come back from Taiwan, where I had spent a lot of time in restaurants and street stalls which had cooks and customers who were trained in the old ways on the mainland. I thought I knew something about authentic Chinese food.

I searched up and down the streets of Boston Chinatown for the place with the dimmest lights and the most Chinese customers. I found just the spot and ordered  the Special Lunch or ke fan. This was a cup of soup and a mound of rice with your meat or veggies on top, served on a flat plate. I politely turned down the spoon they brought and demanded  chopsticks. Only after a few minutes of chasing the rice around the plate did I look around to see that all the old Chinese men, the ones whose authentic presence had drawn me in, were eating with spoons.

I had demanded chopsticks because I was worried about authenticity. What was I thinking? I was a six foot blue eyed blond. Did I think that if I used chopsticks nobody would notice that I wasn’t Chinese? The actual Chinese in that restaurant didn’t worry about authenticity: All they wanted to do was to get the food into their mouths. No matter what they did they were still “Chinese.”  They were sensible; I got rice all over my shirt.

By the same authenticity test, I would never have ordered Chop Suey. Somehow Chop Suey wasn’t “Chinese,” or at least not authentic Chinese. In the following years I came to realize that just as there are regional cuisines inside China, there are regional Chinese cuisines outside China. American Chinese cuisine is one of them, and it’s just as authentic as can be. I’ve had dreary Peking Duck in China and excellent sweet and sour pork in the US.

A few years ago, I came back to Chop Suey, or at least to the idea of it. For a book about how Americans thought about China, I wanted to write a biography of a food item that started in the 19th century and came down to the present.  The ups and downs of Chop Suey show a great deal about Americans, some of them of Chinese ancestry, many of them not.

Some recent good books beat me to the punch. Jennifer 8. Lee,  a New York Times reporter, got out into the field to talk to people about how the Chinese restaurant business actually works, and combined this with some pretty good library research. Her  The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food (New York, NY: Twelve, 2008) is lively and full of smart points. She argues that the close-knit world of Chinese restaurants set them up for the same type of  “cloud sourcing,” or “group entrepreneurship” that fueled the take off in Silicon Valley computer industry. She tells a lively story of creativity and constant innovation.

Andrew Coe’s  Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2009) also tells a good story based on delving into historical records. J. A. G. Roberts, China to Chinatown: Chinese Food in the West (London: Reaktion, 2002) follows Western reactions to Chinese food over the last few centuries.

On a more theoretical but still accessible level, Daniel Little’s Understanding Society blog piece,  “Cultural Authenticity and the Market” (here) shows us how to use the idea of authenticity without spilling philosophical rice on our philosophical shirts.

Besides, everything is an authentic something or other. The touts on downtown Nathan Road in Hong Kong used to offer “genuine” ROLEX watches. Smart tourists wouldn’t bite when they noticed the RALEX or ROLOX logo, so a few years ago the touts began to ask “do you want to buy a fake Rolex?” People bought them so they could have a cute story to tell their friends.  These watches were “authentic,” that is, “authentic fakes.”

So let’s not get all authenticer than thou.

As someone who is a member of an academic department and of two University-wide committees I think a lot about bureaucracy. Since I am teaching Modern China this semester I am also thinking about the history of bureaucracy. Actually, I’m not sure it -has- a history, since the basic principles seem to be timeless and unchanging. The example below comes from Huang Liu-hung’s A Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence Written in 1694 this is a manual for district magistrates; the men who, having passed the civil service exams, were now to be sent out to run a county, the basic building block of the Chinese administrative system. Just like recent graduates everywhere, they found that their education did not fully prepare them for the world of work. This sample is an informal report that Huang sent. He is complaining about two military officials who are in his district but not under his command. He is complaining to their superior, (who is not his superior) about their performance in office. This missive is sent on the occasion of Huang starting his mourning leave (unplanned) so it is not clear if he was warming up to send this in any case and wants to get it in before he goes, or if he just figures this is a good time for a parting shot. As it is an informal complaint he does not have to prove anything or track down the source of any rumours, but since he is an official and sent this letter it has the potential to put Commander Yang in a bad spot if things blow up in the future and it is clear that he has not looked into this warning. If you want to understand perfect bureaucratic trouble-making, this is it.

An Informal Report Presented to Provincial Military Commander Yang
Since your humble subordinate arrived at the post, he has paid special attention to the organisation of the pao-chia system and ordered patrolling duties day and night because T’an-cheng, being close to the wooded hills of I-chou, I-hsien, and the Western Hills, and bordering P’ei-hsien and Su-ch’ien in Kiangsu province,  is a convenient refuge for lawbreakers from these places.¹ Your humble subordinate has also made frequent night inspections himself to insure the peace of the district and relieve Your Excellency’s anxiety.² As to the garrison officers stationed in the district, your humble subordinate has tried to cultivate their friendship. The soldiers of the two military posts have also been entertained frequently. Since the civil and military personnel are colleagues, their cooperation is needed in times of emergency. Your humble subordinate has been the magistrate of T’an-ch’eng for two years. Fortunately, the unlawful elements have not attempted to create trouble during this period. This is mainly due to Your Excellency’s authority which has been acknowledged far and wide, and also to the cooperation of the garrison officers, who have carried out the good intentions of their commander.

Unfortunately, your humble subordinate has lost his father and while in deep grief is awaiting the arrival of the succeeding magistrate. Recent news from intelligence sources indicates that outlaw groups in P’ei-hsien and Su-ch’ien are preparing to take some action.³ The safety of the whole district will depend upon the garrison officers. Traditionally two officers are stationed in this district: one in the city, responsible for protecting the district seat, granaries, and treasuries; and the other in Hung-hua-pu, responsible for control of the main thoroughfare of the district. Only people with ability, courage, experience, and determination can discharge these heavy duties with success.
Lieutenant X, who is now stationed in the city, is good natured but too easygoing and lackadaisical.⁴ Lieutenant Y, stationed in Hung-hua-pu, is young and arrogant and maintains no discipline over his soldiers. The two officers, therefore, are less than perfect. Your humble subordinate has enjoyed the confidence of Your Excellency for a long time. He cannot keep silent when it is his duty to report what he has heard-hence this  confidential report.

The deployment of soldiers in the various townships should be frequently reviewed, yet Lieutenant X has never ventured outside the city gate to check their performance. He is not known to have fulfilled any night patrol duty for months on end, which proves that he is rather negligent of his duties. One of the squad leaders, Chang San, allowed his wife to gather wheat from neighbor Shao Chiin-ai’s field on the tenth day of the fifth month. Two soldiers, Chang Chin and Shih Erh, forcibly sickled the grain of
the village elder Chang Mao-te on the twenty-third day of the sixth month.⁵ When Chang Mao-te went to question ,them, they assembled their comrades and beat him brutally. The chief warden examined the victim and declared that “the wounds covered his whole body like fish scales:’ The people of the whole district are uneasy about the incidents.⁶ When soldiers are allowed to beat people at will, what discipline is there? Chang San also manacled the night-watchman Wang Chia-ying; another soldier, Chen Yu, knifed the tax prompter Li Ying-yang; and a squad leader named Wang let his son Yuan-chen and others hit the runner Wang Chin-li until the latter’s face was covered with blood. These victims were all employees of the district yamen.⁷ Another soldier, Tai Chin, entered the house of constable Chao Ying-chi, demanded drinks and raped his wife. These incidents illustrate the way the yamen staff are mistreated by the garrison soldiers. However, the said lieutenant was guilty only of lack of discipline, not knowing how to control his men; there was no intentional malice involved.⁸

The other lieutenant’s performance has been even more outrageous. He has led his men in committing all kinds of atrocities. For instance, when he was making a call at the time of his arrival at the post, he met a courier of the office of the Director General of Grain Transport, Yang Shou-fu, on the road. When the courier did not dismount to let him have the right-of-way, the lieutenant was incensed. He had the courier manacled and brought to his garrison headquarters and did not release the latter until after dark. The courier was detained for a whole day just because he failed to dismount. Only express documents marked with time limits are carried by mounted couriers. Who but the courier would be blamed if delivery was delayed?
The market of Hung-hua-pu is a strategic point on the north-south communication line. The key to the gate of the stockade of the town has traditionally been kept by the village headman. When a messenger from the post station had to pass through, theheadman would open the gate for him at any time. Since the arrival of the lieutenant, the key has been kept at garrison headquarters. Sometimes when messengers are held up at the gate they try to run the blockade or beat the grooms. If a memorial or
an imperial order must be delivered urgently, who bears the responsibility for such a delay?

By tradition there has been an annual festival celebrated at the Hung-hua-pu market in honor of the horse deity. During one such festival a stage play was in progress when the lieutenant arrived. The female impersonator did not stand up to show respect for a dignitary. The lieutenant had him flogged. Not until all spectators knelt before him and begged for clemency did the flogging stop; the actor had already received three heavy blows. The lieutenant had walked into the theater unannounced. How
could he punish the female impersonator for insolence? This is only one instance of his arrogance.
One time garrison soldier Chang Wen-teng and other soldiers went to sleep while on duty, having ordered night watchmen Chang Yin-shan and T’ang Hsiao-shih to make their rounds. When the latter wandered too far from the garrison, the soldiers had them suspended in the air and beaten. The people of the market sympathized but made no protest. When Chancellor Kuo of the Grand Secretariat passed through Hung-hua-pu, a squad leader named Lu and others went to the post station and commandeered
four horses to perform some military transportation duty. The horses were not sent back until the next day at sunset and were almost dead of exhaustion. This shows how reckless Lieutenant Y’s soldiers were.
The most startling incident of all happened on the eighth day.⁹
The most starling incident of all happened on the eighth day of the seventh month, when there was an altercation between a Hung-hua-pu post station groom named Chang T’iao-yuan and an egg seller, Wang T’ai-p’ing. A garrison soldier named Chiang Te-sheng suddenly intervened and beat the groom with a heavy object. When the groom reported the incident to the lieutenant, the latter not only did not discipline his soldier, he ordered squad leader Lu to beat the groom to the brink of death. From then on
the garrison soldiers turned on the grooms at every opportunity. The result was that the entire group of grooms left the post for several days during which urgent documents could not be delivered. All these incidents were witnessed by the people of the market.
The intent of the government in establishing local garrisons is to protect the people. These garrison soldiers are committing all kinds of atrocities, and their officers not only fail to keep them in bounds but encourage them by taking part in their outrageous activities. The relationship between the people and the military is threatened, not to speak of the protection supposedly afforded by the military.
Battalion Commander Chu Cheng-ming and Lieutenant Shih Ying-pei, who were formerly in command of garrison headquarters in T’an-ch’eng, were respected by the soldiers and loved by the people.¹⁰ When on night patrol they always went before their
soldiers. Both could be labeled officers with ability, courage, experience and determination. When Battalion Commander Chu was ordered transferred to another post in the winter of the ninth
year of K’ang-hsi, your humble subordinate sent a petition, based on an appeal from the people, to retain him at the post. However, Your Excellency refused to approve the request on the ground that the established regulation should not be interfered with. Now, may your humble subordinate repeat his request to have Chu Ch’eng-ming and Shih Ying-p’ei replace the incumbents, so that the soldiers will once more be disciplined and the peace of the district protected?

Your humble subordinate has never offended the garrison officers during his tour of duty at T’an-cheng. Why should he bring wrath upon himself now that he is about to leave the post? It is prompted by his concern for the future safety of the district which has nothing to do with his personal feelings toward either the former or the incumbent officers. It is urgently hoped that Your Excellency will kindly consider his request for the benefit of the people of the district. Your humble subordinate will feel
forever grateful.
A Follow-Up Report
With regard to the case of Shao Chun-ai, your humble subordinate had already sent a petition which must have reached the attention of Your Excellency.

Your humble subordinate harbored no acrimony against the two officers. He did not expect Your Excellency to order a thorough investigation. It was your humble subordinate’s concern for the future welfare of the district that prompted him to request a change of the garrison officers. Since your humble subordinate had enjoyed Your Excellency’s trust for a long time, he had no reservations about what he thought should be made known to Your Excellency. It was not his intention to make these incidents
into a big case. Now, not only is the future of these two officers hanging in the balance, your humble subordinate also feels remorseful for taking such a blundering action.
Your humble subordinate has received your instruction to summon the important witnesses Chung San and others, some thirty odd people. The order will, of course, be carried out. However, those summoned are mostly artisans or laborers who support themselves by manual work. The distance between the
provincial capital and the district is over 700 li. They cannot earn a livelihood while traveling such a long distance back and forth. When they heard about the summonses, they were scared and
came very near running away. Your Excellency’s order was intended for the preservation of peace of the district, but it resulted in the creation of alarm and loss of livelihood for these poor people. This is not what your humble subordinate had expected from Your Excellency’s benevolent decision.

Accordingly, your humble subordinate sincerely implores that the cases be dismissed without further investigation.¹¹ Not only will the future careers of these two officers be preserved, the conscience of your humble subordinate can rest at ease. The summoned witnesses, Shao Chun-ai, Chung San, and others
will also receive the benefit of Your Excellency’s wise decision, which will symbolise both mercy and authority. Your humble subordinate dares to present this irrational request because he has continuously enjoyed Your Excellency’s favor and hopes that the request will be granted.

1. The border of two administrative regions was always a popular location for bandits.
2. I have gone above and beyond my responsibilities.
3. So nothing has happened yet, but I have reason to think it may soon.
4. A bit of praise makes it clear that the criticism is not just personal
5. Lots of very damming specifics, yet oddly no reports on the the criminal prosecution of these malefactors.
6. Always good to add some customer reaction
7. If they will attack other officials they must really be out of control. Just like a cop-killer is worse than a regular killer.
8. What will you bet that the next officer will be outright malicious?
9. They also seem very likely to get Y’s boss in trouble with higher-ups
10. so the problem does not lay in the soldiers or the district
11. Not sure if this is a final bit of CYA, or if the response from above was more potent than expected.

Slate has a piece up on the Asian-ization of Western classical music. It’s more historically informed than you might think for a Slate piece, although it seems to be lurking in the author’s mind that Classical Music is a universal component of Western Culture. In fact  a lot of it was created for the aristocracy, and there was only a fairly brief period¹ when major cities were supposed to have a symphony orchestra supported by bourgeois ticket-buyers. Paarlberg points out that Jews dominated violin performance for years, so its not surprising that the torch is being passed to a new subgroup.

I mostly wanted to mention this as a great way to plug Richard Kraus’s fine book Pianos and Politics in China: Middle-Class Ambitions and the Struggle over Western Music in China. Kraus deals with the role of Western music in defining (and denouncing) China’s new middle class. Although other forms of Western music were important in creating modernity in Asia ‘classical’ music was an important class signal, just as it was in the West. Under the Communists the music of the urban elite had to be swept away along with the elite.

This Cultural Revolution piano announces that Art should serve the workers, peasants, and soldiers, but its still a piano.² During the CR, of course, any sort of Western music was problematic. The big bold quote from Chairman Mao saved this piano from being smashed, but lots of its brethren. were not so lucky.

This dates from the early 80′s I think,³ and is one of the oddest Chinese propaganda posters I have ever seen. Yes, things changes fast during the Reform era, but a housewife whose kid is learning the violin? Less then a decade after the fall of the Gang of Four? The class symbolism of music may have made the quickest comeback of anything during the reforms. And apparently, its one thing that it pretty similar in Asia and among Asian Americans.



1. o.k. a century or so
2. This actually made me wonder how ‘classical’ a piano would have been in China, as for me a piano would not necessarily bring up thoughts of a classical orchestra.
3. via Landesberger

Ho-fung Hong has an interesting post up on the Wukan protests and the history of popular protest in Imperial China.¹ While in the Western media protests like Wukun are usually presented as signs of the impending crack-up of China, Hong argues, correctly I think, that they need to be read as part of the history of Chinese forms of protest. Protests of any sort are culturally constructed, meaning that different actions have different meanings in different cultures. Wukan involved some violence.

which in many western cultures is the red line between protest and rebellion, but for Hong it was at its heart a petition movement.² Petitions, no matter how presented, acknowledge the legitimacy of state power (in this case the central government rather than local) and the supposed benevolence of the rulers is assumed, otherwise why petition? As a bit of confirmation of these different ways of viewing things the Financial Times seems surprised that protest leader Lin Zuluan has been appointed Party secretary “capping a potential breakthrough in the way Beijing deals with dissent.” But of course bringing protest leaders into the fold is very much part of the Chinese tradition for dealing with dissent.  It’s too bad Hong skips over the Republican period, (He implies you can draw a straight line from the Qing to the present) but it’s only a blog post.

1. I have not yet read his book. It was a good Christmas, but I did not get everything I wanted.
2. Which is also what Tiananmen was, to start with.

This week you run across dragons just about everywhere.

President Obama welcomed the Year of the Dragon from the White House (here), while Paul French did likewise from his lively blog,  China Rhyming:  Welcome to the Year of the Dragon.  He has a particularly cool dragon from the cover of his real life murder mystery, Midnight in Peking on the Australian version, though the US version doesn’t have one. Maybe Americans are afraid of dragons?

If you think that Dragons will “shake the world,” just a reminder that there’s no evidence that Napoleon ever said “beware of China, for when the Dragon wakes it will shake the world.” I talked about this in China Rises, China Wakes? (February 12, 2010).

The release of the film, Girl With the Dragon Tatoo, inspired a bunch of people to get tatoos, some of them on body parts I didn’t want to know about.. Google images for “Chinese Dragon Tatoo“  gets pictures and pictures and pictures.

I can’t resist — the restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s didn’t use dragons in its decor, but decided to welcome the New Year with the old Chinese custom of handing out “red envelopes” which contain a surprise, maybe a free desert on the next visit. Of course, the chain sells food that’s defined as Chinese, but there are no Chinese  in the top management. The “Chang” was chosen because it would fit on the signboards and sounded Chinese. The “P.F.” is for “Paul Fleming,” one of the creators of the Outback Steakhouse and the entrepreneur behind the chain.¹

Send in the dragons.

1. Jennifer 8. Lee, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (New York: Twelve, 2008), p. 18)