What's An Iconic Photograph? Thinking About Tank Man

 A lone student protestor blocks Chinese army tanks near Tiananmen Square.

In 1989, when this photo was taken, most people still believed in the power of a photograph to tell the truth.  With digital photography and Photoshop people are still taken in by the apparent 'truth' of a photograph, but many people are also much more skeptical.

PetaPixel writes about this photo:

"AP photographer Jeff Widener’s “Tank Man” photo, shown above, is widely considered to be one of the most iconic photos of the 20th century."

 Though Business Insider says that Stuart Franklin's image is the iconic image,

". . . Franklin's image is arguably the most iconic, having appeared in Time and Life magazines, and winning him a World Press Award."

There were actually four photographers who managed to smuggle their film out of Beijing that day, all shooting from balconies or rooms at the Beijing Hotel about half a mile away:  Widener, Charlie Cole, Franklin, and Arthur Tsang Hin Wah. A fifth photographer, Terril Jones, got shots from ground level, but did not publish them until the 20th anniversary in 2009.  He wasn't aware of what he had until the film was developed several weeks after the events.  There were also two videos made of the event that got out.

My questions today, 27 years later, are about what makes a picture 'iconic,' what story does it tell, and  how close is the story to what really happened (assuming anyone can even know that)?   I'm afraid I'm only going to make some quick stabs at answers, and perhaps raise more questions about how we interpret what we see.  

1.  What makes a picture iconic?

Wikipedia's definition is similar to many others I found:

An icon (from Greek εἰκών eikōn "image") is typically a painting depicting Christ, Mary, saints and/or angels, which is venerated among Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and in certain Catholic Churches. Icons may also be cast in metal, carved in stone, embroidered on cloth, painted on wood, done in mosaic or fresco work, printed on paper or metal, etc. Icons are often illuminated with a candle or jar of oil with a wick.

The term has evolved to have a more generic meaning which is appropriate to the idea of an 'iconic photo'  (from Oxford online):

"A person or thing regarded as a representative symbol of something: 'this iron-jawed icon of American manhood.'"

So, what exactly is the tank man photo a symbol of?

2.  What does the picture tell us?

Here's how the New York Times interpreted the photo in 2009:

"The moment instantly became a symbol of the protests as well as a symbol against oppression worldwide — an anonymous act of defiance seared into our collective consciousnesses."

Charlie Cole, one of the photographers on a balcony at the Beijing Hotel, says it this way (from the same NY Times article, in which  he also gives a detailed account of what happened and how he got his film past the Chinese Public Security Bureau):

"I think his action captured peoples’ hearts everywhere, and when the moment came, his character defined the moment, rather than the moment defining him. He made the image. I was just one of the photographers."

For people outside of China, this is probably the story we give to and take from this photo. [Yes, 'give to' because all interpretation is based on how our brains relate the meaning based on what we already know and expect.]

For Chinese officials, I suspect it represents the restraint of the Chinese government which patiently bore months of demonstrations.  It also showed the compassion of the tank drivers who didn't run over this man.  We get a hint of this in a 1990 interview Barbara Walters conducted with then Chinese Communist Party Secretary Jiang Zemin.

"Walters : Yes. Do you have any idea what happened to him ?
Jiang : I think the picture you mentioned just now shows exactly that the
person stood in front of a tank and the tank stopped. Why did the
tank stopped ? Did the child stop the tank ? It's because the tanks--
the people in the tanks -- didn't want to run over the people
standing in the way. But I think this picture just proved that."  (Emphasis added)
(Transcript of the interview are from a Google Group forum.)

I'd add one more interpretation.  I arrived in Hong Kong for my Fulbright at Chinese University of Hong Kong in July 1989, barely a month after Tiananmen.  I met a number of people who had been in Beijing during those times, and ended up taking a group of students to Beijing the following May.  It was a trip we had to schedule well before the first anniversary of Tiananmen, because the parents of my students didn't want them in Beijing during the anniversary.  One student wasn't allowed to come at all because his father thought it was potentially too dangerous.

But I'd like to highlight here just one story.  I had a student who was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).  He'd spent time in a mental hospital and had either thought about or actually tried to commit suicide (I don't recall exactly.)  He told me his interpretation of this picture, which went something like this:

"I wanted to be Tank Man.  I could end my life as a hero."

I'd say this was a version of what in the US is called suicide by cop.  When he told me this, he had a wistful smile on his face.  He considered this the perfect way to go.  This was his reaction to this photo.  [As I write this, 27 years later, I realize that I don't know if he had a wistful smile.  I've seen him with a wistful smile, but did he really have it when he told me that?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I'm just writing this to remind folks not to trust people's old memories.]

We could spend days studying what this image means to different people and whether it has any meaning to people in China at all?  The photo was suppressed in China.  Given the scope of the internet today, I'm not sure how many people have since had access to this picture.  But as I was working on this post, I came across a  Japan Times story on a photoshopped version of this picture from 2013 with Tank Man standing in front of a line of giant, yellow rubber duckies.  The article said

"Internet searches for 'big yellow duck' were blocked by Chinese censors, but the image went viral on social media overseas."

But let's move on to the more concrete aspects of the picture.  What does it factually tell us?

3.   How close is our understanding of the content of the picture to what actually happened?

Here's how Wikipedia describes the photo:

"Tank Man (also Unknown Protester or Unknown Rebel) is the nickname of an unidentified man who stood in front of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, the morning after the Chinese military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 by force. As the lead tank maneuvered to pass by the man, he repeatedly shifted his position in order to obstruct the tank's attempted path around him. The incident was filmed and seen worldwide."

Did you catch that?  June 5.  June 4 is the date of the so called Tiananmen Massacre.  The photo was taken the day after.  I didn't realize that until I was working on this post.  If you google Tank Man Tiananmen, you'll see a number of pictures.  This one is very closely cropped.  Others show a long line of tanks.  And here's one from the shots taken by Stuart Franklin (you can see it and more of the original slides and about Franklin's story here.)

Image from Business Insider

This is an image of one of the original slides that Stuart Franklin took that day from a balcony of the Beijing Hotel.
The green arrow was on the image I copied.  It points to Tank Man walking into the road.  I've added the yellow circle.  It shows Tiananmen Square, which continues to the left of the circle beyond the photo.  The tanks are headed away from Tiananmen Square.  In the bigger scheme of things, I don't think that means all that much, except for the way we in the West, most of whom have never been to Tiananmen Square, associate this with atrocities in Tiananmen Square itself.  Knowledge gained since June 3, 4, and 5, 1989, seems to show that most of the people who died did not die at Tiananmen Square, but at other locations in Beijing.  And most of the deaths were workers, not students.  Again, I think those are details that don't change the meaning of all this, but I am simply trying to discuss the difference between people's perception of the facts and the facts of the photo.  And how cropping
a photo can take away the context of the image.

Again, the images (since multiple images of this event  shot from the same location were published and now we can see many more that weren't originally published) have a meaning that goes beyond what happened that day.

And now that we've discussed the photo and questions about what it means, here's some video footage of the event that also gives more context (though it doesn't show the people walking Tank Man away.)






And, here's another take on the image.  Stuart Franklin talks about another image he took during the demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in spring 1989, that he would prefer symbolized Tiananmen demonstrations.

From Business Insider

"This is an image that changed everything because, for me, it crystallized the spirit of revolt. The uprising in Tiananmen Square was one of the most moving events I’ve witnessed. It was a tragedy to see unarmed young people shot down in cold blood. It was a movement for freedom of expression, for basic rights, and against the outrage of official corruption. It ended badly, a stain on the reputation of a great country. The facts should not be denied, but discussed, so that people can move on. A lot of things were misreported on both sides. A lot of outside actors were involved that may have worsened the situation for the students and their protest. I want this photograph to be available to people for whom this is an important memory. It symbolizes the courage of the time. What it doesn’t show is the bloodshed. I am best known for the image of the tank man. That is called an ‘iconic’ image, but what such images sometimes obscure, with the passing of time, is all the other pictures that lend explanatory power to the story. I’m interested in history, and this landmark event changed my life.” — Stuart Franklin

An ironic twist I can't help but mention, TechDirt reports that a Chinese firm now owns the rights to the Tank Man photo.

And finally, I'd note that Tiananmen 天 (tian) , 安 (an) , 门 (men)  means, literally, Heaven+Peaceful+Gate (Door)

Why Did The Japanese Bomb Pearl Harbor? Has Anything Changed?

The China Mirage tells the story of how missionaries serving in China and wealthy descendants of opium traders (like both the Roosevelt presidents) believed in the Christianization and Americanization of China and were easy prey for the Soong sisters who were married to Chiang Kai-Shek, Sun Yat Sun, and the richest man in China, banker H.H. Kung.  Their Chinese father had gone to college in the US in the late 1800s and became a Methodist.  And saw how much money Christians were sending to China and decided to take advantage.  All three sisters had gone to Wesleyan college in Georgia and spoke excellent American English.  Their brother TV Soong, graduated from Harvard and played an important role negotiating with top American leaders, including President Franklin Roosevelt.


Author James Bradley makes the argument that the Soong family took advantage of Americans' desire to believe that China was ready to become Americanized and Christian.  They helped form, with a number of prominent Americans, including the son of American missionaries in China, Henry Luce, the owner of Time  and Life magazines, The China Lobby.  Bradley tells us Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Mayling were on Time's cover more than any other people on the planet, including being Man of the Year in 1937. The Lobby painted this greatly misleading picture of China for politicians and the American public.

This false image of China played well and led, according to author Bradley, to disastrous results in China and Southeast Asia.  By aligning with the Soongs and Chiang Kai-Shek, Americans failed to see the rise of Mao in China and speeded up World War II's spread  into the Pacific. The US gave money and weapons to the Soong-Chiang alliance to fight the Japanese who had invaded Manchuria, but Chiang was more interested in fighting Mao and Ailing, the oldest sister, was more interested in filling her husband's bank.

There are lots of examples in the book of Americans dealing with the Soong-Chiangs - Americans who spoke no Chinese and had no background in Chinese history or present.  They'd go to China for a week on tour led by the Soongs, and come back with reports of their great army and how some military help would keep the Japanese at bay.  Bradley even says that the Soongs staged war zones and suggests that the Japanese soldiers they showed them in the binoculars were really Chinese actors.  The results almost always that the Soong's, with their perfect American English, good looks, and charming ways, successfully sell their highly misleading story of China and China's affinity to the US.

Overlooked was Mao's growing power and bond with Chinese peasants who made up most of the population, the loyalty and enthusiasm of Mao's army, or the incompetence of Chiang's army, and Chiang's interest in fighting Mao rather than the Japanese.  And not known to most, was that many of those Americans - missionaries, diplomats, businessmen - who lobbied for the Soongs, were also on their payroll.

Here's the plan one of their American educated Chinese employees offered to gain US support:

"1.  Recruit American missionaries, arm them with evidence of Japanese atrocities, and have them return to the U.S. to give testimony and speeches. (Tong emphasized that the American target audience would not know that the paid missionaries were acting as agents for the Soong-Chiang syndicate.  Tong wrote that he would 'search for international friends who understand the realities and politics of the Chinese war of resistance and have them speak for us, with Chiinese never coming to the fore.')
2.  Hire Frank Price (Mayling's favorite missionary) to lead the missionary campaign.
3.  Recruit American newsmen and authors to write favorable articles and books."

Besides lobbying for money and arms, they were lobbying to stop the US from selling oil and steel and other materials to Japan, which Japan used to invade and bomb China.  People at the State Department feared an embargo would prod Japan to retaliate.  At the very least, Japan would head south to take over the oil in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).  Having read other accounts of this battle in FDR's administration, I'm surprised that Bradley never (well, I still have another hundred pages to go, but I'm 3/4 into the book) mentions another argument - the money that US oil companies were making and and how that was helping an economy still recovering from the Great Depression.

Probably, you can see where I'm going with all this.  We know this is still going on today.  Who did the Bush administration rely on for advice on invading Iraq?  Which Afghans and Syrians have been advising our government on Afghanistan and Syria?  To what extent have Western educated natives of those countries been able to have undue credibility because their knowledge of English and of the US was so superior to our knowledge of their countries?  And how misleading were their assessments of how the war was going and how was their own personal wealth affected?

There were Americans who understood what was going on in China.  The US embassy's military attaché in China, in 1936, Colonel Joseph Stilwell, for example,

"observed Chiang's dragooned 'scarecrow' soldiers:  many were less than four and a half feet tall, under fourteen years of age, and barefoot.  Stilwell wrote in his diary, 'The wildest stretch of the imagination could not imagine the rabble in action except running away.'

Forty pages later,

[Colonel Stilwell] wrote:  'No evidence of planned defense against further Japanese encroachment.  No troop increase or even thought of it.  No drilling or maneuvering.  Stilwell also observed Mao's warriors, about whom he noted, 'Good organization, good tactics.  They do not want the cities.  Content to rough it in the country.  Poorly armed and equipped, yet scare the Government to death.'"

Then there's the secret army that FDR sends to China (led by the man who will be Stilwell's biggest nemesis later when Stilwell's in command of the US military in China.)

"Roosevelt was now running an off-the-books secret executive airforce through Ailing's front companies.  Claire Chennault was a private contractor - a mercenary - being paid by the China Lobby.  Roosevelt was sheep-dipping:  taking U.S. personnel, cleansing them with the fiction of their resignations, and then sending them off as secret mercenaries.  Today, many mistakenly believe that Chennault's mission was an American invention controlled by the U.S. military, but when he returned to Asia, Chennault reported back to Washington not through American military channels but privately, through his boss, T.V. Soong."

Bradley argues that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because Dean Acheson managed to block oil shipments in August 1941 without Roosevelt knowing.  This, plus the mercenary air force in China, and the movement of US navy ships to Hawaii, sent signals to Japan that led the Japanese to do what neither the Japanese nor the Americans wanted - start a war between the two nations.  While our history books paint the Pearl Harbor attack as a dastardly, the US was already supplying China with bombers and pilots - offensive weapons that could be used to attack Japan.

Disturbing that not much has changed.  Even though we have better access to information about what our leaders are doing, there is still much we don't know.  And Edward Snowden is still in Russia because they don't want us to know.  Democracies are in a quandary.  There's a need for voters to be able to assess what their leaders are doing, yet you don't want your enemies to know as well.  But better understanding of the Soongs well funded and massive campaign at the time, might have helped people ask for a more accurate assessment.  It will be very interesting to hear what Obama and others have to say in 20 years about who was doing what to influence our foreign policy in his administration.

I'm a little skeptical of Bradley.  I think he too may be overly sold on his own thesis.  Despite the power of the China Lobby, FDR's leadership style has his subordinates constantly in competition.  Instead of groupthink, there seemed to have been epic battles over policy, with FDR getting to hear a wide range of views.  Though the groupthink link above gives the failure to anticipate the bombing of Pearl Harbor as an example.  The book makes it clear that Secretary of State Hull was vehemently opposed to the oil embargo in fear of prodding the Japanese into a Pacific war, but I don't think bombing Hawaii was what they had in mind.  This may not have been so much groupthink as failure to understand what the Japanese were thinking.  There's an interesting passage in the book where Secretary of State Hull negotiates with the Japanese ambassador, a former naval admiral whose English was poor.  They didn't use an interpreter and the book's account has the ambassador not understanding Hull's warning and sending back to Japan a totally incorrect interpretation of Hull's message.

While we are warned that history repeats itself, it's also true that picking the wrong examples from history leads to bad assessments.  The domino theory was a key argument to get into Vietnam after Eastern Europeans fell into the Soviet sphere in 1946.  But was it the right one?  Would the Southeast Asian countries have fallen one-by-one to Communist leaders had we not gone to war in Vietnam?  That's still debated, but in part, we supported authoritarian pro-Western leaders (at least those who portrayed themselves that way as did the Soongs) over the nationalist, anti-colonial leaders, like Ho Chi Minh, who found support from the Soviets when we rejected them.

Life is endlessly complicated and seeing through the complications to the real issues is too.  Probably why a candidate like Trump appeals to a sizable minority - he makes it all simple.  He tells them what they want to believe, just as the Soongs did.

[Update Jan 31, 2016:  I should have mentioned that a 2012 post goes through Doris Kearns Goodwin's description  (in No Ordinary Time) of the lead up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Bradley's book cites Goodwin's book, and there's nothing that's inconsistent, but the two emphasize different details.]

Mao: “I used to read [these outlawed books] in school, covering them up with a [Chinese] Classic when the teacher walked past . . . "

As a boy, Mao read voraciously, developing what would become a lifelong habit.  “What I enjoyed were the romances of Old China, and especially stories of rebellions,” he later recalled.  “I used to read [these outlawed books] in school, covering them up with a [Chinese] Classic when the teacher walked past  . . .  I believe that perhaps I was much influenced by such books, read at an impressionable age.”

I read this on the ferry into Seattle to catch the train to the airport earlier tonight.  I couldn’t help noting the irony between this quote and an article in today’s LA Times  about how four men involved in a book company in Hong Kong that publishes political books about Mainland politicians, disappeared in October this year.  Their work, based on the one country two systems policy, is legal in Hong Kong.  [Can't get the link right now as we prepare to board, but will try to add it later.]

Where will the future Mao’s come from?  Well, Mao’s legacy is pretty grim, so maybe those books should be available too so people don’t repeat what he did.  

The original quote comes from James Bradley, The China Mirage:  The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia.   

Bradley, who also wrote Flags Of Our Fathers, started this research trying to understand what had caused the US to go into the war in which so many died, and his father had fought.  

So far, the basic premise is that American Christian missionaries along with the traders who got rich smuggling opium into China, painted a picture for Americans  of China just waiting to become Christianized and Americanized.  And a few Chinese students in the US played this fantasy to their advantage.  

Sound familiar?  

Seems like we’re still running blindly into other parts of the world we are woefully uninformed about and are easily swayed by Americanized nationals, especially those of wealth, good family, and a US education, and a story that matches our narrative of the US greatness and as the savior of the world.  

Bradley traces how Warren Delano was among the opium traders who created family dynasties.  Delano's fortune was passed on, in part, to  both Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Franklin’s story of China came directly from his Grandpa Warren and his mom Sara who had spent a few early years in a completely isolated rich quarter in Hong Kong.   From this she was an expert on all of China.  

What do we really know about the Middle East?  Sure, there are a lot more sources today, but think about some of our recent adventures, and think about what some politicians are saying we should do.  Their realities are just as wishful as those who invested in Chiang Kai Shek in the 1920s.  

Bahram nodded, 'Democracy is a wonderful thing, Mr Burnham,'

he said wistfully.  'It is a marvellous tamasha* that keeps the common people busy so that men like ourselves can take care of all matters of importance.  I hope one day India will also be able to enjoy these advantages - and China too, of course.'
'Let us raise a glass to that!'

 This conversation takes place on page 377 of River of Smoke, by Amitav Ghosh.  It takes place in 1839 in the foreign enclave (really the small island ghetto, the only place foreigners are allowed to live in Canton, China).  The occasion is a goodbye party for William Jardine who was returning to England, to lobby the British government to force the Chinese to open to more trade.  The Chinese were trying to shut down the opium trade which had made Jardine, the Indian trader in the book, and Burnham very rich. 

Wikipedia describes this event:

Jardine left Canton on 26 January 1839 for Britain as retirement but in actuality to try to continue Matheson's work. The respect shown by other foreign opium traders to Jardine before his departure can be best illustrated in the following passage from a book by William C. Hunter.

A few days before Mr. Jardine’s departure from Canton, the entire foreign community entertained him at a dinner in the dining room of the East India Company’s Factory. About eighty persons of all nationalities, including India, were present, and they did not separate until several hours after midnight. It was an event frequently referred to afterwards amongst the residents, and to this day there are a few of us who still speak of it.

The farewell dinner to Jardine was held on 22 January 1839 with several members of the Foreign settlement in Canton mostly traders. Among the guests were the Forbes brothers of the prominent Forbes family and Warren Delano, a senior partner in the trading firm Russel & Co. and maternal grandfather of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Qing government was pleased to hear of Jardine's departure, then proceeded to stop the opium trade. Lin Zexu, appointed specifically to suppress the drug trade in Guangzhou, stated, "The Iron-headed Old Rat, the sly and cunning ring-leader of the opium smugglers has left for The Land of Mist, of fear from the Middle Kingdom's wrath." He then ordered the surrender of all opium and the destruction of more than 20,000 cases of opium in Guangzhou. He also ordered the arrest of opium trader Lancelot Dent, the head of Dent and Company (a rival company to Jardine Matheson) since the Chinese were more familiar with Jardine as the trading head and were quite unfamiliar with Matheson. Lin also wrote to Queen Victoria, to submit in obeisance in the presence of the Chinese Emperor.

It's interesting how Ghosh has developed in this reader an affection for the trader Bahran and the men who work for him.  Even though we know that his whole life is defined by smuggling opium into China.  I think the positive side of this, is that as human beings we can connect to the way have to fight to make their way in life and how they can do evil things, yet the path to getting there seems quite reasonable.  If we can have empathy and understanding for such people, surely the differences among American citizens are not insurmountable.

It seems that their view of democracy is shared by quite a few who hover around state capitals and Washington DC.  

* tamasha is defined in an earlier post I did on River of Smoke and the richness of the language

River of Smoke - A Word Junkie's Heaven - What A Tamasha!

"Everywhere you look there are khidmatgars, daftardars, khansamas, chuprassies, peons, durwans, khazanadars, khalasis and lascars.  And this my dear Puggly, is one of the greatest of the many surprises of Fanqui-town - a great number  of its denizens are from India!  They come from Sindh and Goa, Bombay and Malabar, Madras and the Coringa hills, Calcutta and Sylhet - but these differences mean nothing to the gamins who swarm around the Maidan.  They have their own names for every variety of foreign devil:  the British are "I-says" and the French are "Merdes".  The Hindustanis are by the same token, "Achhas":  no matter whether a man is from Karachi or Chittagong, the lads will swarm after him, with their hands outstretched, shouting:  "Achha! Achha! Gimme cumshaw!'
  They seem to be persuaded that the Achhas are all from one country - is it not the most diverting notion?"

In Amitav Ghosh's River of Smoke the pages are sprinkled, sometimes dripping, with words odd to the American ear.

Some, like Achha, are explained, as you can see above, in the text itself.   And we'd learned a couple of pages earlier about Fanqui-town:

"And so at last to the foreign enclave - or 'Fanqui-town' as I have already learnt to call it!"

And we'd also just learned about the 'Maidan':

"And so, following my young Atlas, [a coolie carrying his luggage from the boat] I stepped upon the stretch of shore that forms the heart and hearth of Fanqui-town.  This is an open space between the factories* and the river-banks: the English speak of it as 'The Square', but Hindusthanis have a better name for it.  They call it the 'Maidan' which is exactly what it is, a crossroads, a meeting-place, a piazza, a promenade, a stage for a tamasha that never ends. . ."

But many other words are left there for the reader to either figure out or skip over, or gradually pick up through hearing it used, just like we learn words in our own language.  And, after all, the basic linguistic ingredient in this book is English. 

It was about this point - page 173 of a 500 page book - that I thought perhaps I should look up some of these words to see how much actually knowing what they mean adds to the reading.  I googled up a couple:

"las·car

ˈlaskər/

noun

dated

noun: Lascar; plural noun: Lascars; noun: lascar; plural noun: lascars

1. a sailor from India or Southeast Asia.

Origin early 17th century: from Portuguese lascari, from Urdu and Persian laškarī ‘soldier,’ from laškar ‘army.’"

and

"ta·ma·sha

təˈmäSHə/

noun Indian

noun: tamasha; plural noun: tamashas

1. a grand show, performance, or celebration, especially one involving dance.

   • a fuss or confusion.

     
     

     "what a tamasha!"

Origin via Persian and Urdu from Arabic tamāšā ‘walk around together.’"

But when I started jotting down a list, I was on the page with the quote at the top and quickly my list was:

khidmatgars
daftardars
khansamas
chuprassies
durwans
khazanadars
khalasis  

I'll never finish the book if I have to look up all these words.  But, I thought, maybe someone has already done this.  

It turns out Neel [one of the characters in the book] did.  While it's not in the book, it's on Ghosh's website.  It's not a glossary, he calls it a  chrestomathy.

"The Chrestomathy then, is not so much a key to language as an astrological chart, crafted by a man who was obsessed with the destiny of words. Not all words were of equal interest of course and the Chrestomathy, let it be noted, deals only with a favoured few: it is devoted to a select number among the many migrants who have sailed from eastern waters towards the chilly shores of the English language. It is, in other words, a chart of the fortunes of a shipload of girmitiyas: this perhaps is why Neel named it after the Ibis.
But let there be no mistake: the Chrestomathy deals solely with words that have a claim to naturalization within the English language. Indeed the epiphany out of which it was born was Neel’s discovery, in the late 1880s, that a complete and authoritative lexicon of the English language was under preparation: this was of course, the Oxford English Dictionary (or the Oracle, as it is invariably referred to in the Chrestomathy). Neel saw at once that the Oracle would provide him with an authoritative almanac against which to judge the accuracy of his predictions. Although he was already then an elderly man, his excitement was such that he immediately began to gather his papers together in preparation for the Oracle’s publication."

I learned about the Chrestomathy at The Asia Collection which adds this insight into the language:

"It wasn’t until I had almost finished the book that I came across a glossary – and not just a regular glossary but a chrestomathy (technically, “a collection of literary selections, especially in a foreign language, as an aid to learning a language”), no less! The Chrestomathy, appearing at Ghosh’s website, was originally compiled by Neel, a character in both the first and second books of the Ibis triology, but also an ancestor of Ghosh, who passed down to him his love of words. Neel, according to Ghosh, “was of the view that words, no less than people, are endowed with lives and destinies of their own,” and his Chrestomathy “is not so much a key to language as an anthropological chart, crafted by a man who was obsessed by the destiny of words.” Like a number of Neel’s earlier descendants, Ghosh was given the task of not actually recreating the Chrestomathy but of “provid[ing] a summary of a continuing exchange of words between generations.”
It was in the Chrestomathy, then, that I found all those words and phrases that had challenged me while I was making my way through the book. Neel’s research and documentation in the late 19th century and Ghosh’s “summary” must have entailed painstaking work, indeed. And if you think all the above is a goolmaul, a gollmaul, atamasha – a puzzle, also, an uproar or a big fuss – try and work it out as I did with Ghosh’s masterpiece, or better still, read the book! And by all means use the Chrestomathy to ease your way through it."

Here's another example of mixing languages. 

"Patrão, the munshi's here - Freddy sent him.
Achha, munshiji, he said.  Why don't you sit on that kursi over there so we can look each other in the eye.
As you wish Sethji
In stepping up to the chair,  Neel had a vague intuition  . . . ."

Patrão comes from the Portuguese because Vico is from Macau and this is how he addresses his boss
Kursi, like some words, becomes clear in the next sentence, as Neel steps up to the kursi.

But what about munshiji?

From the Chrestomathy

+ munshi/moonshee: see dufter

+ daftar/dufter: This was another word which had already, in Neel’s lifetime, yielded to an ungainly rival, ‘office’. This too carried down with it, a lashkar of fine English words that were used for its staff: the clerks known as crannies, the mootsuddies who laboured over the accounts, the shroffs who were responsible for money-changing, the khazana-dars who watched over their treasuries, the hurkarus and peons who delivered messages, and of course, the innumerable moonshies, dubashes and druggermen who laboured over the translation of every document. It was the passing of the last three, all concerned with the work of translation, that most troubled Neel: those were the words he would cite when Englishmen boasted to him of the absorptive power of their language: “Beware, my friends: your tongues were flexible when you were still supplicants at the world’s khazanas:  now that you have the whole world in a stranglehold, your tongues are hardening, growing stiffer. Do you ever count the words you lose every year? Beware! Victory is but the harbinger of  decay and decline.”

Shroff was actually a word we learned the year we lived in Hong Kong.  To get your parking ticket validated at the mall, you had to go to the schroff.

I'd note the warning here to the British about their language.  Ghosh is a Bengali Indian.  English was imposed upon his country and in these books he's stretching his tongue (and maybe sticking it out a bit at the British) and saying, you left this here so don't tell us how to use it.  We're going to spice up  this language you left behind with all sorts of exotic linguistic ingredients.  

Just as the English have discovered how bland their food was when they started eating Indian found, they will discover how bland their language was too before the Indians stopped worrying about writing it 'properly'. 

But it's not just words from the subcontinent that flavor this book.  Other former British colonies also contribute phrases.

The Cantonese we learned in Hong Kong helped in other parts of the book.   Here's where Neel begins writing the Chrestomathy.  He meets the Chinese printer who is the author of a book Neel has seen often in the hands of Chinese trying to speak pidgin to the foreigners:

"The title of this short booklet was translated for Neel as "The-Red-Haired-People's-Buying-and-Selling-Common-Ghost-Language'.  It was more commonly known however as 'Ghost-People-Talk' - Gwai-lou-waah - and it sold very well . . ."

He does explain the words, but  Gwai-lou is what white foreigners are still called, and waah is the word for language. Both still alive and well in my brain.  Does it add to one's appreciation of the book to also independently recognize the words?  Made me feel good anyway.

That night Neel wonders why a similar book hasn't been written for the foreigners.  He decides fate has brought him together with Compton, the printer, and the next day he proposes they do it together.  Compton says he had thought of it too but couldn't find a foreigner to partner with him.

"'They think-la, pidgen is just broken English, like words of a baby.  They do not understand.  Is not so simple bo.'
'So will you let me do it?'
Yat-dihng!  Yat dihng! [Somewhere from my dusty brain I heard "Certainly! Certainly!"]
'What does that mean?' Neel inquired a little nervously.
'Yes. Certainly.'
Do-jeh Compton. [And thank you was one of the first words we learned, though Cantonese has a thank you that is only for physical gifts and another one for helpful actions.]
M'ouh hak hei  [This is obviously, 'don't mention it'.  I get the M'ouh  which means 'not' or 'nothing' but I don't remember the hak hei.]

Neel could already see the cover:  it would feature a richly caparisoned mandarin.  As for the title, that too had already come to him.  He would call it:  The Celestial Chrestomathy, Comprising a Complete Guide to and Glossary of the Language of Commerce in Southern China."

One other link to an interesting discussion of the language in River of Smoke from a bi-lingual culture blog. 


A final note on doing something I've never done before 

Words and books are semi-sacred to me.  Highlighting books always seemed like a desecration and I still don't mark books with anything more than a pencil.  So it was with a giant effort today that I ripped out the first 115 pages of the book.  I told myself what I used to tell students:  You should do something you've never done before, every day.  I try to do that, but this one was a particularly big one and I put it off as long as I could.  But I've invited a friend to be a guest at our book club when we discuss River of Smoke.   I've tried to get him a copy but neither Title Wave nor Barnes and Noble had copies.  The public and university libraries didn't have available copies.  Amazon wanted $46 to ship it in two days.  So I decided to give him a chunk of the book I'd already read.  If I gallop through the rest, maybe I can finish it before he needs more pages.  

I know for many this is no big deal.  I've even heard of travelers who would rip out the pages after they read them so their book was lighter.  That's not me.  

Something For Alaska And US Majority Leaders To Think About

 This comes from the movie Confucius. (孔子 (Kong Zi) Director: Mei Hu).

Confucius consents to an audience with the royal consort of Wei against the wishes of his disciples.  She has a reputation as a beautiful woman with a sketchy past and she clearly is intent on seducing the great scholar.

She starts off by asking about the Book of Odes, and the love poetry in it.

Screen shot from Confucius. (孔子 (Kong Zi) Director: Mei Hu)

He politely rejects her request to become his student and to meet again.  She then asks about his theories of government. 

Screen shots from Confucius. (孔子 (Kong Zi) Director: Mei Hu)

Screen shots from Confucius. (孔子 (Kong Zi) Director: Mei Hu)

Screen shots from Confucius. (孔子 (Kong Zi) Director: Mei Hu)

While there is much about Confucian teaching that is problematic today - particularly his rigid hierarchical power structure and his low regard for women - there is also much of use to our political leaders today.

I'd note that Thomas Jefferson, one of the inspirations of the Tea Party,  was something of a China scholar.  From a scholarly paper "Thomas Jefferson's Incorporating Positive Elements From Chinese Civilization" by Dave Wan.
(Note that the poem Jefferson clips out in the passage below, is the one referred to by the Royal Consort of Wei in the film - "The Book of Odes."  The poem is a tribute to the Prince of Wei - several hundred years prior to Confucius.)

"Founding Inspiration from the Confucius’ Classics

       In the nineteenth century intellectuals in the United States often enjoyed creating personal scrapbooks, in which they would cut out their “favorite newspaper articles and poems” and past “them onto the backs of old letters to create a sort of personal literary anthology.”  None of us will feel surprised to know that Thomas Jefferson, “an Enlightenment intellectual,” created a scrapbook in his own way. Some time from 1801-1809 Jefferson included in the section of his scrapbook titled Poems of the Nations an ancient Chinese poem from The Book of Odes. His love of the poem provides us with a window through which we can look into his efforts to learn from Chinese culture. What he wanted to learn from the poem?

       Below is Jefferson’s clipping of the poem:

                                           A Very Ancient Chinese Ode
Translated by John Collegins seq
Quoted in the To Hio of Confuciues
(….from a manuscript presented in the Bodlein Library )

SEE! how the silvery river glides,
And leaves' the fields bespangled sides !
Hear how the whispering breeze proceeds!
Harmonious through the verdant reeds!
Observe our prince thus lovely shine!
In him the meek-ey'd virtues join!
Just as a patient carver will, Hard ivory model by his skill,
So his example has impress'd Benevolence in every b[re]ast;
Nice hands to the rich gems, behold,
Impart the gloss of burnish'd gold:
Thus he, in manners, goodly great,
Refines the people of his state. True lenity,
how heavenly fair !
We see it while it threatens,—spare!
What beauties in its open face!
In its deportment—what a grace!
Observe our prince thus lovely shine!
In him the meek-ey'd virtues join!
His mern'ry of eternal prime,
Like truth, defies the power of time!

       The poem pays tribute to Prince Wei from the State of Wei, who was loved, respected and remembered by the people of his state. Confucius (551-479 BC) highly praised Prince Wei, described in the poem, when he quoted this poem in his famous book, The Great Learning, to provide a standard to inspire other princes and leaders of various states to follow. Confucius said,

In the Book of Ode, ‘Ah! The former kings are not forgotten’ Future princes deem worthy what they deemed worthy, and love what they loved. The common people delighted in what they delighted them, and are benefited by their beneficial arrangements. It is on this account that the former kings, after they have quitted the world, are not forgotten."

Important themes that we should remember from Confucius is his emphasis on ethics, on education, on harmony and treating people with respect and taking care of the poor and less fortunate. 

Just something to think about on a cloudy Saturday.


____________________________
I don't particularly recommend this film as a film.  But as an easy (and visually beautiful) overview of the life of Confucius it will do.   It tends to give us a series of vignettes of his life,  with very little character development.   The two actors in these screenshots are (from Wikipedia):

• Chow Yun-fat as Confucius or Kong Qui, also known by the honorary title Zhong Ni.
• Zhou Xun as Nanzi, the royal consort of Wei.

Zhou Xun was in Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2002) a film very much worth seeing.  She was also in Cloud Atlas. 

"Facing Human Vulnerability in a Dangerous World"

I'd love to do an in depth post on this, probably starting with something about how human behavior and moral dilemmas and the debates about what is the right ethical path has been hotly and insightfully debated for over 2000 years.   Professor Aaron Stalnaker is going to be here tomorrow (Wednesday March 18) to talk about what ancient Chinese philosophers said about the same kinds of issues we face today.   I'd like to write about how easy it is for us to think that people living today are so much smarter than those who lived in the distant past.  But that there were people living then who whose abilities to think through complex human issues were as powerful as anyone alive today. 

But I've got lots of other things to do and this talk is tomorrow evening, so I'll just send this on for people who might wish to gain some perspective on our current ethical debates. 

Here's the official announcement: 

Confucius Institute invites you and your family to join our next academic Lecture, to be held in the UAA/APU Consortium Library, Lewis E. Haines Meeting Room, Room 307, on Wednesday, March 18, from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m.

 

“Facing Human Vulnerability in a Dangerous World: 

Two Chinese Responses.”

 

This lecture will address Mengzi’s (and perhaps Xunzi’s) defense of ritual as an appropriate response to human desires and aspirations, given our nature and the nature of the world as a whole; and then turn to Zhuangzi’s criticism of received ritual forms, in favor of a more radical acceptance of unstoppable change.  

Our speaker Dr. Aaron Stalnaker is a distinguished scholar and philosopher. He is an associate professor of Religious Studies, Philosophy, and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. He is a core faculty member in the Department of Religious Studies, serves as the Dean of Graduate Studies, and has made tremendous contribution to the Department of Religious Studies in building its strong academics. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Stanford, and obtained his PhD from Brown. He is an expert in ethics and philosophy of religion, giving serious attention to both Chinese and Western theories and practices.

He is the author of Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine (Georgetown University Press, 2006), a comparative study of different models of moral and religious personal formation. He recently co-edited Religious Ethics in a Time of Globalism: Shaping a Third Wave of Comparative Analysis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). He has lectured at many leading universities, including Harvard Divinity School, Princeton University, University of Michigan, Georgetown University, etc.

And for those who want to do a little homework first, here's an excerpt from a review of Stalnaker's book Overcoming Our Evil:

Having made these points about Stalnaker's interpretation and analysis of Xunzi's theory of self-transformation, let me turn to a lingering concern about the overarching goal of comparative analyses. Stalnaker makes a very strong case for needing forms of spiritual exercises to accomplish self-transformation toward better, moral forms of life. Furthermore, he, like I, wants to be able to retrieve some of these practices for contemporary purposes, to be used to transform lives today. Yet our desire to retrieve these spiritual exercises must confront the problem of whether or not they can be divorced from their conceptual and cultural context and still remain effective practices for self-transformation. Stalnaker believes it may be possible to retrieve some practices once we untangle the complex web of relations between the context and the practices themselves, the kind of work he undertakes in this book. 

 I picked this paragraph because it raises questions about the extent to which the ancient Chinese practices are applicable, as I suggested above.  

Events like this are just one of the many benefits of having a good university in our city. 

AIFF 2014: Barefoot Artist and Coney Island

Barefoot Artist turned out to be a really good documentary.  Maybe.  I have some second thoughts, but I can't deny I was pulled right into the story from the beginning and the movie traveled far - geographically and emotionally, and raised lots of questions about art, fulfilling one's own destiny, and duty to others.  More on this later after I've thought it through.

Alessandra Giordano after Coney Island

Coney Island, Dreams For Sale was yet another film that shows the how hope and dreams can inspire a community  and how a film maker can be entangled into a long terms commitment to a story.  Like Divide In Concord,  Coney Island followed community organizing over a public decision,  The film showed a wide variety of interesting characters and pulled a lot of loose ends together well.





I also saw Last Stop, Flamingo.  There were a lot of interesting parts here - I liked the animation between parts.  I didn't get a sense of it all fitting totally together, though there was a theme of the present and the past and change as he looked at different people and places that reflected unfulfilled dreams, and change over the centuries.  The film reflects a lot of talent.

I also realized that I could use the back of the Museum's auditorium to walk back and forth while watching Flamingo.  I really needed to be doing something other than sitting.  I think for just one movie, sitting is fine.  Especially if you can walk or bike to and from the movie.  But for a festival where you're watching two or three or more movies a day, there's a need to move around while watching.  

Hong Kong Democracy Movement Heats Up

It seems like the whole world is full of governments trying to control their people and people taking to the streets in protest.  It's hard to keep track of them all.

But I spent a year in Hong Kong, just after Tiananmen, when everyone was jittery because the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong coming in 1997, looked a lot more ominous after June 4, 1989. 

A recent white paper from the Beijing government on Hong Kong sent the notice that elections the people of Hong Kong had been expecting soon, would have Beijing approved candidates only.

This has pushed democracy advocates into action.

(Reuters) - Violent clashes between Hong Kong riot police and students galvanized tens of thousands of supporters for the city's pro-democracy movement and kick-started a plan to lock down the heart of the Asian financial center early on Sunday.
Leaders and supporters of Occupy Central with Love and Peace rallied to support students who were doused with pepper spray early on Saturday after they broke through police barriers and stormed the city's government headquarters.  [For the whole article, click here.]

Part of Hong Kong is attached to mainland China.  Then there's Hong Kong Island, the heart of the business district.  Central - as in "Occupy Central" above - is where many of  the modern office buildings and the main government offices are located.  I don't have a good feeling about how this is going to end.

One of those arrested, according to the Reuters piece, is 17 year old student leader Joshua
Wong. 

Wong has already won one major victory against Beijing. In 2012, he forced the Hong Kong government to shelve plans to roll out a pro-China national education scheme in the city's schools when the then 15-year-old rallied 120,000 protesters.

 Here's a BBC article
And China Daily's take on this.
It says China's deployed 7000 police to keep order.  If there were 70,000 protesters, that would mean one cop for every 10 protesters.  Even if there were 700,000 it would still one cop for every hundred protesters.  Now do you understand why I don't feel good about this.

The Story Of Mankind: History Of The Middle East In 300 Words

click to enlarge the images

"The story of Mesopotamia is one of endless warfare and conquest. . .

"In the fortieth century before our era, the Sumerians had entered Mesopotamia.  They were soon afterwards overpowered by the Akkadians . . . A thousand years later, the Akkadians were forced to submit to the rule of the Amorites, another Semite desert tribe whose great

Damascus, the capital of modern Syria, is in the middle

King Hammurabi built himself a magnificent palace in the holy city of Babylon and who gave his people a set of laws which made the Babylonian state the best administered empire of the ancient world.  Next the Hittites whom you will also meet in the Old Testament, overran the Fertile Valley and destroyed what they could not carry away.  They in turn were vanquished by the followers of the great desert god, Ashur, who called themselves Assyrians and made the city of Nineveh the center of a vast and terrible empire which conquered all of western Asia and Egypt and gathered taxes from countless subject races until the end of the seventh century before the birth of Christ when the Chaldeans, also a Semitic tribe, re-established Babylon and made that city the most important capital of that day.  Nebuchadnezzar, the best known of their kings, encouraged the study of science and our modern knowledge of astronomy and mathematics is all based on certain first principles which were discovered by the Chaldeans.  In the year 538 B.C. a crude tribe of Persian shepherds invaded this old land and overthrew the empire of the Chaldeans.  Two hundred years later, they in turn were overthown by Alexander the Great, who turned the Fertile Valley, the old melting-pot of so many Semitic races, into a Greek province.  Next came the Romans and after the Romans, the Turks, and Mesopotamia, the second centre of the world's civilization, became a vast wilderness where huge mounds of earth told a story of ancient glory." (pp. 84-87)

This is from Henrik Van Loon's The Story of Mankind, the first book to win the Newbery Prize for outstanding contribution to children's literature in 1922.  It has over 500 pages and as you can tell, it's a little dated and Eurocentric.  The first index reference to China, for example, isn't until World War II. 

This is a book I got as a kid.  I don't remember how much of it I actually finished.  But with my son here looking through the closets and garage for stuff he's left behind, this book showed up. 

What strikes me is the much larger context it gives the events in the Middle East today.

Like, "In the fortieth century before our era."  Forty centuries.  That's 4,000 years.  Add two thousand years since the birth of Christ and we're talking about 6000 years.  Since the so called 'first Iraq war' in 1991, the US has been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan about 23 years out of that 6000.

Despite those who believe in American exceptionalism,  we're still a relatively young nation, and throughout history there have been many powerful nations that have ruled large portions of the world, and then have faded into obscurity.  I thought I'd put up these maps to remind folks of the geography - I have a modern map with the countries that border Syria here - and also to remind us that the limits of our knowledge plus our biases cause us to believe our version of Truth which inevitably will change as time goes on.  That's not a bad thing.  In fact it's inevitable.  But we're wiser and probably more effective human beings if we remember that and leave a keyhole of doubt in all our certainties. 


The Story of Mankind, it seems, was made into a terrible film in 1957 - the last film to have three Marx Brothers.  You can learn more about the film (and see a couple of clips) here.

Chinese Week At UAA - Food, Movies, And Other Treats

The Confucius Institute at UAA is sponsoring a Chinese culture week.  There's food, movies, and other activities. 

This is a heads up for next week.  It looks like everything is free.  I'll have to check if they have free parking passes for events too. 

I'll try to find out more about the movies - there are three short films - the poster they sent me is a little hard to read.  

Click to enlarge and focus

The Confucius Institute is the Chinese version of things like the American Libraries abroad or the German Goethe Institute, used to spread Chinese culture around the world.  The Confucius Institutes are connected with universities.  There have been some reports that they are part of the Chinese espionage system.  Whether that's true or not, these events are available and past events that I've attended were pretty good to excellent. 


I'm at LAX waiting for my plane out of the heat and back to decent weather. 

A Hundred Billion Gallons Of Water Exported From Drought Stricken California To China

That caught my eye.  Was there a water pipeline?  Ships carrying water to China?

If so, we'd all know about it I'm sure.  The full claim is this:

"A hundred billion gallons of water per year is being exported in the form of alfalfa from California," argues Professor Robert Glennon from Arizona College of Law.

You can read the details in a February 2014 BBC post.

It seems that focusing on the water use was a good way to get people's attention.

A Las Vegas television station has a long post on this dated May describing how the Chinese demand for alfalfa has caused California farmers to switch to the water intensive crop.  The post raises possible changes in the water agreements.

"Glennon hopes deals can be cut in which cities like Las Vegas pay farmers to use water more efficiently, still grow their hay for export, but leave a little water for everyone else.
“Farmers use just over 80 percent of the water in the country. If you include livestock, it’s 85 percent. If that 85 percent were cut down to 78, say 7 percent, that would double the entire nation's consumption for domestic, commercial, and industrial,” Glennon said.

[I had some trouble understanding the numbers and emailed Professor Glennon.  He replied that municipal and industrial use only comes to between 5 and 10 percent so a 7 percent reduction by agriculture would about double the supply.]
 

Photo from a  recent flight to LA.  I was struck by the contrast between irrigated land and the unirrigated land. Now I'm wondering if the green is alfalfa.

Seeing Water In Alfalfa

Critical for me is the indirect nature of this water transfer.  Stopping farmers from shipping alfalfa to China (to feed cattle there) would seem a violation of the farmers' rights.  But if they were just shipping the water, you know there'd be a giant outcry. 

'Seeing' involves more than noting the obvious.  It requires seeing beyond the superficial.  It requires a brain that asks questions. 

Glennon, Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy in the Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona,  is a water specialist and has found a way to catch the public's attention by translating alfalfa into the water needed to grow it.


Pushback

And not everyone is happy about this.   Dan Putnam, Alfalfa & Forage Specialist at UC Davis takes on what he sees as an attack on alfalfa:

Exporting Water a new Angle?  The targeting of exports with regards to water represents a new  shift in the ongoing Mark Twain-ian  water fights over the best use of water (“Whisky’s for  drinking, water’s for fightin’ over”). Do we really want to go there? What about the embodied  ‘water’ in all of the goods (including food)  imported  into the US?
What about exporting water in  the form of silicon chips?  Is exporting ‘water’ in the form of almonds, citrus, wine or alfalfa hay  to consumers in China, Japan, or  Europe, really any different than exporting ‘water’ in the form of California food products to New York, or for that matter, Phoenix or Las Vegas?
What is the  moral or economic issue here?  Farmers depend upon these markets.  Most economists laud the  value of exports to the US economy, and agriculture is one of the bright spots in US exports,  which have struggled  to match the onslaught of imports from (guess where)  -  China.

[Note, this is from an undated pdf file.]

Putnam doesn't seem to totally disagree with the idea of thinking about crops and even manufactured goods in terms of the water used to produce them.  His main concern it seems, and this is reasonable for someone connected with the California Alfalfa Workgroup, is that alfalfa has been singled out from among all the other water users. 

Putnam also notes this trend is simply following the market.

"Alfalfa receives no subsidy  and the crop  mostly follows free market principles  –  so growers seek the best  market for their  crop. These markets represent important economic opportunities for California  farmers." 

Alfalfa crops, per se, may not receive subsidies, but the water allocations in the southwest are not market driven.  They are agreements between governments, old agreements that allocated a huge proportion of the water to agriculture.  Putnam himself acknowledges this indirectly:

The ability to pay has,  and always will,  favor urban  water  use over agricultural use.  But this  is not specific to alfalfa  –  there are virtually no  food-producing  enterprises that can  compete economically with  urban demand for water.  Food takes a lot of water to produce,  whether  its lettuce, walnuts or alfalfa,  either from rain or irrigation.  Questions arise,  though,  about the long-term  consequences of degrading our agricultural capability by moving water from  food production to urban use.

So, there are market forces and government forces involved in what appears to be a paradox in California water use.  By the way, government water allocations to farmers have been cut during the current drought.

China White Paper Changes Rules Of Hong Kong Basic Law

Police crackdowns on protesters make good television.  And even without video or photographs, the stories have concrete images that readers and listeners can quickly comprehend.

But technical wording changes in long 'white papers' are much harder for the news media to present.  Especially when the history behind the documents is unknown.

China has recently made  significant changes in the rules that govern Hong Kong - The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR.)  Rules that foreshadow crackdowns on the freedoms that Hong Kong residents enjoy that aren't shared in the rest of China.

In this post I'm going to

• give a very brief history of the Basic Law and the context of Hong Kong at the time based on my experiences living in Hong Kong when it was promulgated.
• offer an excerpt from the new white paper that gives a sense of the kind of language that is making the people of Hong Kong fearful.

Hong Kong 1989/90

On April 4, 1990, toward the end of our Fulbright year at the Chinese University of Hong Kong,  the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) was passed by the Third Session of the Seventh National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing.

There were still seven years to go before the UK would hand over Hong Kong to the Chinese.  It was less than year since Tiananmen and people in Hong Kong were worried that all the freedoms they had under the British would be swept away. (I'd note that compared to the US, their freedoms were modest already.)  People were seeking escape routes in case things got bad.  News stands were full of new magazines that highlighted countries where Hong Kong residents could apply for citizenship.  I remember big ads in the newspaper for citizenship in Botswana for people who could invest, if I recall right, US$250,000.  Vancouver was becoming known as Hongcouver because so many people were buying property and establishing residency there.

Although Hong Kong was a British colony and people had British passports, people had discovered that when they renewed their passports, the words 'right to abode' were no longer in them.  Britain was not prepared to have 5 million Hong Kong residents move to London.

The Basic Law offered Hong Kong special rights and freedoms that were not available to mainland Chinese.  At the time, Hong Kong was a wide open capitalist* city full of consumer goods and high rise buildings - all the glitter and free trade of the west.  In mainland China things were still grey from people's clothes to the most rudimentary shops with few goods for sale.  You'd tell the clerk what you wanted.  She'd write out a receipt which you took to the cashier.  When you paid, you were given a receipt to take back to the clerk who would give you your item.  Every hotel floor - and even the 'foreign expert housing' I stayed in on campus in when visiting Beijing - had young giggling girls who monitored guests as they came and went from their rooms.

China had to make some guarantees to the British that Hong Kong wasnt going to revert to the severe Mainland communist control and that the people of Hong Kong weren't going to lose all the freedom they had.  And Beijing, it seemed, didn't want to kill the golden goose that was bringing in so much foreign currency, much of it sending Chinese products to the rest of the world.   This was before Deng Xiaoping made his southern tour and declared there was a place for capitalism within China.  It was before Shanghai's transformation.

The answer was the document known as the Basic Law.   A key phrase in the Basic Law was "One country, two systems."  As Hong Kong reverted back to China after its 99 year lease to Great Britain, it would be allowed to maintain its own system.  The border from Mainland China into Hong Kong was heavily controlled.  That was the deal.  This last week, following the tens of thousands in Hong Kong who publicly commemorated Tiananmen's 25th anniversary, China released a white paper that appears to change the rules originally set out in the Basic Law.

One part of the Basic Law says that eventually the people of Hong Kong should be able to vote for the chief executive.  In 2007 the date for such elections was set as 2017.  It appears that many people in Hong Kong believe if such an election does take place, Beijing will limit candidates those who 'love China."

I haven't had a chance to read it all carefully.  But here's an excerpt that I found that seems to highlight the kinds of changes that are causing severe heartburn for people in Hong Kong right now.

"One country, two systems" is a holistic concept. The "one country" means that within the PRC, HKSAR is an inseparable part and a local administrative region directly under China's Central People's Government. As a unitary state, China's central government has comprehensive jurisdiction over all local administrative regions, including the HKSAR. The high degree of autonomy of HKSAR is not an inherent power, but one that comes solely from the authorization by the central leadership. The high degree of autonomy of the HKSAR is not full autonomy, nor a decentralized power. It is the power to run local affairs as authorized by the central leadership. The high degree of autonomy of HKSAR is subject to the level of the central leadership's authorization. There is no such thing called "residual power." With China's Constitution stipulating in clear-cut terms that the country follows a fundamental system of socialism, the basic system, core leadership and guiding thought of the "one country" have been explicitly provided for. The most important thing to do in upholding the "one country" principle is to maintain China's sovereignty, security and development interests, and respect the country's fundamental system and other systems and principles.

The whole text can be read at the South China Morning Post here.


Given that Hong Kong was a British colony, one might expect Great Britain to be concerned about changes in the agreement they signed when they handed over Hong Kong to China.  But I can't find any official reaction out of London.  That may not happen as China's premiere Li Keqiang is headed to London for significant trade talks next week.

Should anyone be surprised about this?  I think not.  I would guess that the Basic Law gave the British a way to say, as they left, that we've made sure you'll be ok, though they had nothing to do with writing it.  It was the Joint Declaration that they worked out with China as conditions for the handover.   The Basic Law always had enough ambiguity   that China would be able to have as much control as they needed.  I think while people knew this, they still held out hope that they'd keep their freedoms.


*The capitalist label is a little misleading.  Most Hong Kong workers lived in low rent government housing blocks and different business sectors had guaranteed seats in the Hong Kong government.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/11/world/asia/hong-kong-beijing-two-systems-paper/index.html 

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/729661-china-releases-white-paper-strengthening-authority-over-hong-kong/

 http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/protests-in-hk-after/1145922.htmlhttp://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/protests-in-hk-after/1145922.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/hongkong/10889465/Hong-Kong-must-accept-Beijings-control-Chinas-Communist-Party-warns.html

[I've tried reposting this because Feedburner is having trouble updating links on blogrolls.  There was a lot of extra coding in the HTML that apparently came in with the quotation.  I've eliminated it, but hope I didn't cut out any of the post at the same time. And I'm not sure this will fix the pinging problem. But I posted the bear warning and it had no problem. That's why I think it's something in the coding of this post. ]  [It worked.]