Page 4 of 4 CHINA'S MASSIVE WRENCH, Part 2 A new world under one Heaven
By Francesco Sisci
Will the Chinese living in modern apartment blocks become more like suburban
Americans, people living in Manhattan apartments, or the immortals of their
ancestors' dreams?
Meanwhile, the traditional culture of flat houses has been bulldozed away. Most
ancient cities, dating to early Qing times, have been demolished to make room
for new towers. Curiously, the Chinese have preserved former colonial Western
buildings - the houses of the British, French, Americans and even Italians -
but not the houses of the Chinese. It looks as if, despite the official
anti-colonial rhetoric, to modern China, the Chinese legacy
is less important than Western contacts.
Dresses and Chineseness
In India, a country that was under the foreign thumb for three centuries and an
outright colony of the British, men and women pride themselves on their own
dresses and clothes. Men sometimes wear a suit and tie, but not all the time.
In Africa, a continent partitioned by European invaders, men and women wear
their traditional clothes, and even when they don't, they often have suits with
bright colors reminiscent of their original taste for vivid tints. Even in
Japan, a place that chose to modernize and Westernize to avoid colonization,
although men have rigidly taken on the standard European three-piece suit,
women still wear the traditional kimono for important occasions.
In China, a country that was never a colony, traditional dresses have just
disappeared. Before Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, men used
to wear a Western-style military uniform, and women would put on Western
dresses or gowns inspired by the traditional Manchu women's dress, the qipao.
But after World War II, even those women's dresses were forfeited. In China,
women were encouraged to dress like men, with slacks and jackets covering their
femininity, while men stuck to "Lenin suits".
With the reforms, men started wearing ties and suits, and women regained access
to gowns and dresses. But traditional dress had disappeared. In the late 1990s,
Hong Kong fashion designer David Tang invented a new line of products that
adapted traditional Chinese designs to modern circumstances. But it has never
become a fashion trend, because both Chinese and foreigners feel awkward
wearing clothes that make them stand out in a crowd.
Conversely, peasants coming to work in cities proudly buy new suits and wear
them to the construction site - without even taking the tag off the sleeve. Qipao,
meanwhile, are just a curiosity found attractive mostly by Caucasian women.
Dresses are not superficial. They are complex statements that affirm identity,
aspiration and integration into a group. No 1960s rebel would go to an antiwar
demonstration in a suit, a tie, short hair and a bowler hat. Now, sporting long
hair and jeans in a high-tech company means freedom and innovation, a look that
is contrary to the suits and ties of Wall Street traders. Meanwhile, the
orderly suits on Wall Street signify reliability.
Just looking at appearances, we see that Chinese people have forsaken their
past and do not feel at ease going back to it. They want to become Westerners
even more than the Japanese because they do not have a mother or a wife in a kimono
reminding them of their origin from the mythical goddess Amataratsu, mother of
the nation.
It is a superficial statement, but the Chinese believe that everything is on
the surface. Everything about our characters and destinies is written on our
faces. According to traditional shouxiang (reading of the face), a
crease on the cheek or around the eyes reveals an aspiration and fate. But all
that is unintentional. The intentional choice of dress is even more important
and revealing because it is done to achieve a goal: to appear in a certain way
for the purpose of looking Western and modern.
This abandonment of old "Chineseness" can be very Chinese. The concept and word
for nation and nationalism (minzu zhuyi) came from the West. This is
strong evidence that we are facing a very different concept of "nation" when we
speak to Chinese people.
Even the names Chinese use for themselves are not consistent. They call
themselves huaren, an old term meaning "civilized people". The term
implies that those who can speak "Chinese" and behave "Chinese" are "Chinese".
That is, they are "civilized people" (huaren), regardless of blood
origin. The only other example we can find of this concept and attitude is in
America, with its policy of integration of all immigrants.
However, that was an old concept, and it different from that of Zhongguo ren,
the people of Zhongguo (the "Middle Kingdom"). This term is geographical,
implying all people who in live in China, including Tibetans, Uyghurs and
Mongols.
In China, the idea of an unparalleled civilization was so strong that it
divided the world in civilized (hua) and uncivilized (yi). This
vision came to an end with the maps of Italian Jusuit priest Matteo Ricci (
1552-1610), which showed for the first time that China was not the whole world,
that it was not even a great part of the world (tianxia), and that it
was not the only civilization in the world.
The people who drew those maps belonged to a world that could justifiably claim
to be a civilization on China's level On those maps, the Jesuits called the
land, which was only one part of the whole world (tianxia), "Zhongguo".
The term was recovered from 2,000 years before, a move that significantly
indicated that the states in the central plain hold the most ancient and truest
form of civilization vis-a-vis the newcomers. Qin, Chu, Qi and other states sat
on the rim of the central plains. Ricci also reshaped the Western world map,
putting "Zhongguo" in the middle to make up for the downsizing of its
dimension, a change that had hit at the country's pride and vision of itself in
the world.
Curiously, this massive cultural shock for the elite, as Ge Zhaoguang points
out, coincided with the Manchu invasion. The invasion also marked the arrival
of a foreign domination that tried to adapt to Chinese customs and made
extensive use of Chinese officials, but that also kept its own distinctive
characteristics.
It is important to consider that, according to Chinese tradition, the Manchu
Qing Dynasty came to power without usurping the existing power but by filling
the void left from the failings of the previous Ming Dynasty. It was an
ideological campaign of legitimization, which was as important for holding on
to power as was the military conquest. It came at a time in the 17th century
when the political-military power of kings in Europe was reshaping their
relationship with the religious-ideological power of the church. Military and
ideology, conversely, would remain the two levers of political power in China,
a country in which, although the military remains the power of last resort,
ideology commands military, and not vice versa.
There are also the Chinese abroad, who call their Chinatowns tangren jie,
the streets of the Tang (another dynasty) people. This is a curious phenomenon,
since the Tang ruled China from the 7th century AD, and they were partly
foreigners - their aristocracy was of Turkic origin, from the Tujue people
living in Central Asia.
Last, but certainly not least, there is the idea of han ren, the people
of Han (a weird idea - a nation named after a dynasty, as if the British were
to call themselves the Windsors, or the Americans the Washingtons, or the
Italians the Caesars). This nationalist notion was invented and used before
World War II to stress the idea of a national war against foreigners, be it the
Manchu Dynasty, the invading Japanese, or Western colonialists.
Countering the idea of a grand Han nationalism and of other people living in
the "Zhongguo", the communists adopted the Soviet strategy of recognizing
ethnic minorities and granting them special status. This has created strange
minorities like the "Hui", who are no different from the Han, except in their
religious beliefs - they are Muslim. Should Christians and Catholics be granted
the same status? Or should the idea of the Hui and the system of ethnic
minorities be abolished? What would then happen to restive minorities who are
uncomfortable with Han dominance, such as the Tibetans or the Uyghurs?
There cannot be just a piecemeal approach for China. China needs a broader set
of values with which to think of itself and the world. These new values are
currently non-existent. The Chinese economy has developed so far not because of
a particular model, but because Chinese individuals are good at doing business
and the government has not hindered this trend.
But management of the new wealth, the new world and the new developments needs
a new set of values. Ethics must go beyond the popular salutation gonxi facai
("wish you strike rich") offered at Chinese New Year celebrations. Laws, though
important, are the minimal level of social contract - normal personal and
social intercourse must find a course well above the minimal legal restriction,
rather than just bordering illegality.
China is now in the middle of a lot of things and can go many ways. The issue
for the next 20 years or so should be how to "groom" them - living with us
Westerners and us living with them. This, more than anything, will determine
our common fate.
Notes
1. For an extensive treatment of the issue, see the first chapters of Feng
Youlan's History of Chinese Philosophy (rev ed, 1952�53).
2. For centuries there were Chinese traders in Southeast Asia, or migrants to
America, but their activities were of no concern to the Chinese state.
3. The following argument is largely drawn from Ge Zhaoguang's Zhongguo sixiang
shi ("History of Chinese thought"). Shanghai, 2001, Vol 2, pp. 466-476.
4. Ge Zhaoguang, op cit, p 476.
5. One could argue that present advanced communications tools, including mass
media and the Internet, can make contact easier and more widespread, thus
shortening the time of assimilation. But challenging assimilation, there is the
huge difference between Chinese and Western culture, a gap wider than the one
that in Buddhist times divided Chinese and Indian tradition.
6. For these concepts, I am indebted to discussions with Dr Andrew Lo of the
School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
7. Translation by Lionel Giles,
A Gallery of Chinese Immortals.
8. For a detailed discussion of the subject, see Ge Zhaoguang's Zhongguo sixiang
shi ("History of Chinese thought"). Shanghai, 2001, Vol 2, pp 360-412.
Francesco Sisci, Asia Editor of La Stampa.
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